{"id":15216,"date":"2012-02-22T11:54:24","date_gmt":"2012-02-22T16:54:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/?p=15216"},"modified":"2012-02-23T10:57:11","modified_gmt":"2012-02-23T15:57:11","slug":"conference-looks-at-equity-in-education","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/2012\/02\/conference-looks-at-equity-in-education\/","title":{"rendered":"Conference looks at equity in education"},"content":{"rendered":"

Educators need to do more to make immigrant and refugee students feel welcomed and supported in Canadian schools, says an education expert and keynote speaker at an upcoming Faculty of Education<\/a> conference this month.<\/p>\n

\"Denise

Denise Armstrong<\/p><\/div>\n

Ali A. Abdi will speak about how Canadian teachers engaging African immigrant and refugee students at Brock’s Equity Engagement conference<\/a> on Feb. 28. Abdi is a professor of educational policy and co-director of the Centre for Global Citizenship Education and Research at the University of Alberta.<\/p>\n

We assume that education leads to the social well-being of everyone, including refugee and immigrant students, Abdi said. But schools are actually structured in a way that benefits the middle class.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat is not effective for the learning and social of development needs of these populations,” Abdi said. The needs of refugee children are higher than other students, and most are coming in with little money and no formal schooling. For almost all of them, English is not their first language.<\/p>\n

\u201cMany are coming from refugee camps and are, socially and educationally speaking, in a very vulnerable situation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Schools need to be more understanding and proactive, he said. Otherwise, the students will not succeed in school. There are many ways to achieve this, but it\u2019s important that we do it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m proposing a higher level of open mindedness and policy\/program inclusiveness where teachers understand the background as well as the needs of the learner and respond to them,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Abdi is one of three keynote speakers at the conference. Heidi Mirza from the UK\u2019s University of London will speak about the intersection of class, race and gender in Britain. Gerardo Lopez from the Loyola Institute for Quality and Equity in Education will speak on the politics of immigration in the U.S.<\/p>\n

The conference brings together educators and community activists to talk about equity and social justice, said Denise Armstrong<\/a>, associate professor in the Faculty of Education.<\/p>\n

There will be panels and group discussions about how to ensure that education is equal for everyone, she said.<\/p>\n

Other speakers will include Jennifer Brant from the Tecumseh Centre, Margot Francis from the Centre for Women\u2019s Studies, and employees from local public and Catholic school boards.<\/p>\n

Armstrong anticipates a welcome meeting of minds.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur research shows that educators who are involved in equity often feel alone,\u201d she said. \u201cThere\u2019s often resistance in schools to people who are committed to it, particularly if they\u2019re challenging the system. We want to provide a safe space for people to create sustainable networks.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Educators need to do more to make immigrant and refugee students feel at home in Canadian schools, an expert says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15218,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[32],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15216"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15216"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15216\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15317,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15216\/revisions\/15317"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15218"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}