Growing up in Namibia’s rural Ohangwena region, Lydia Lungameni dreamed of becoming a teacher.
But with racial divides preventing all children from having the same education, she also dreamed of change.
Lungameni received her Master of Education during Brock’s Fall Convocation on Friday, Oct. 12. While she was filled with pride as she crossed the stage to mark her achievement, her focus had already shifted to her next goal: helping to decolonize Namibian education.
Alumni, Lydia Lungameni, Master of Education, MEd
Categories: News
Congratulations to our newest graduates and alumni!
Today the Faculty of Education has 152 new alumni, from our two most recent PhDs to our certificate programs in Adult Education.
We are very proud of each graduate. They, their family and friends have invested significantly in their success. They have worked diligently in their studies, their practicums and their research. Some, such as Spirit of Brock medal winner Nigel Crosscombe, were recognized with awards. Many have overcome significant hurdles – caring for family members, working full and part-time, or being away from family and friends in their home country and community.
Graduating from our programs does not mean our relationship ends. It is only one step in a life-long partnership. We look forward to learning about our graduates successes – as teachers and administrators, as scholars and as community leaders. We look forward to welcoming some back into our masters and doctorate programs. And, we look forward to celebrating your achievements.
To our newest alumni, we wish you all the best as you take your next steps.
Alumni, Convocation, Fall Convocation
Categories: News
Oct. 5 is World Teacher’s Day and we want to celebrate the incredible teachers in our communities. Many of them are helping to shape the educators of the future by working with teacher candidates from Brock and other institutions.
This year’s World Teachers’ Day theme is “The right to education means the right to a qualified teacher.”
The theme was chosen in honour of the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), which recognized education as a fundamental right. Without trained and qualified teachers, this right cannot be fulfilled.
Around the world, children and youth have limited access to their right to education because of a shortage of teachers. According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Institute of Statistics, the world needs to recruit nearly 69 million new teachers to achieve the 2030 Sustainable Development Goal of universal primary and secondary education. For girls, children with exceptionalities, children living in poverty, children in remote areas, or refugee and migrant children this “teacher gap” is even wider. Right now, more than 265 million children out of school worldwide. Of those, 22% are of primary school age.
The first World Teachers’ Day was held in 1994. It commemorates the signing of the 1966 Recommendations Concerning the Status of Teachers by the UNESCO and International Labour Organization’s (ILO). This Recommendation sets benchmarks for the rights and responsibilities of teachers. It also sets standards for the initial preparation and further education, recruitment, employment of teachers as well as teaching and learning conditions. World Teachers’ Day is co-convened in partnership with UNICEF, UNDP, the ILO, and Education International.
We know a great teacher can make all the difference. If you want to recognize an incredible teacher making an impact here in Canada, consider nominating them for the Prime Minister’s Awards for Teaching Excellence or the Prime Minister’s Awards for Teaching Excellence in STEM. The nomination period for the 2019 awards is now open.
In honour of SSHRC’s 40th anniversary, we wanted to share some of the our faculty research that has been supported by SSHRC, helping us to expand understandings of learning and teaching around the world.
SSHRC Connections Grant
The 2015 Digital Pedagogy Institute was support by a SSHRC Connections grant. A partnership between Brock University, the University of Guelph, the University of Toronto Scarborough, and the University of Waterloo, the annual two day conference includes keynote addresses, presentations, workshops, and digital tool training that focus on the innovative use of digital technologies to enhance and transform undergraduate and graduate teaching.
The grant helped grow the Digital Pedagogy Institute conference into an annual event. The 2017 and 2018 Digital Pedagogy Institute conferences were held at Brock University. In 2019, the conference will move to the University of Waterloo, furthering strengthening the Ontario universities partnership.
SSHRC Insight Grant
Tiffany Gallagher (Principal Investigator) and Arlene Grierson ( Co-Investigator)
$129,141 | April 2016 – July 2021
This study is beginning year three of five years of data collection. The central research question is: how do coaches support educators in the implementation of responsive literacy programs that foster student learning? This study will extend existing understandings by: (a) investigating conceptualizations, functions, and outcomes of coaching; and (b) documenting the experiences of coaches and the educators they coach, as coaches collaboratively construct understandings of the differentiated processes of teacher change and explore how to use these insights to optimize coaching.
Impact and Publications: Five conference presentations at Council for Exceptional Children (CEC), Canadian Society for the Study of Education (CSSE), and Literacy Research Association (LRA).
Publication: Gallagher, T.L. & Grierson, A. (2018). Research Report for Ontario Ministry of Education, Curriculum & Assessment Policy Branch. Supporting Coaches as they Facilitate Teachers’ Professional Learning. St. Catharines, Ontario: Brock University, Faculty of Education.
SSHRC Insight Grant
$448,800 | April 2015 – April 2020
Jacqui Specht (Principal Investigator)
Co-Investigators: Sheila Bennett, Tiffany Gallagher, Lynn Aylward, Kimberly Maich, Tim Loreman, Roberta Thomson, Sharon Penney, Tara Flanagan, Nancy Hutchinson, John Freeman, Elizabeth Nowicki, Kim Calder Stegeman, Angela AuCoin, Mireille LeBlanc, Jennifer Katz, Wanda Lyons, Donna McGhie-Richmond, A. Marshall, Steve Sider, Jamie Metsala, Scott Thompson, Jessica Whitley, Gabrielle Young
This study is beginning year four of five years of data collection. The aim of this study is to provide a Canada-wide perspective on the self-efficacy and beliefs about teaching of graduating teachers as they leave their respective faculties of education. Through this study, we hope to gain a better understanding of how student teachers perceive their ability to teach in the inclusive classroom as they finish their preservice teacher education program. As they graduate and move into the world of classroom teaching, we will continue to survey them during their first to third years post-program to ascertain how their knowledge and skills in teaching and self-efficacy are developing.
Impact: Four conference presentations at Council for Exceptional Children (CEC) and Canadian Society for the Study of Education (CSSE).
SSHRC Insight Development Grant
$59,939 | April 2013 – June 2016
Tiffany Gallagher (Principal Investigator) and Xavier Fazio (Co-Investigator)
The focus of the Insight Development Grant from SSHRC was to utilize design-based research focused on discovering whether a multimodal instructional curriculum that integrated literacy and science positively contributed to enhanced learning outcomes with students in elementary schools. Design-based research is a genre of research involving iterative development of curricular solutions to educational challenges with teachers and researchers working collaboratively. Working with grade five teachers in two school districts, our findings found that teachers varied in their implementation of the instructional unit. This resulted in differential outcomes in students’ literacy and science outcomes. Teacher variation in implementation highlighted the need to differentiate professional learning to effectively address teachers’ pedagogical requirements for improving disciplinary literacy instruction.
Overall, our findings relate to the utility of design-based research and underscore the value in establishing a collaborative foundation for professional dialogue. Based on student learning outcomes, we have evidence of the positive impact of implementing science-based multimodal literacy curriculum in elementary classrooms.
Publications:
SSHRC Insight Grant
$103,548 | 2016-2021
Early in 2019 the first part of Lissa Paul’s project will be complete and a biography, Eliza Fenwick: Early Modern Feminist will be published by the University of Delaware Press. A riveting early feminist success story emerged out of her research on Eliza Fenwick (1766-1840): a portrait of literary life in London, a chronicle of slavery and rebellion in Barbados, a tale of immigrant life in Upper Canada, an unexpectedly modern take on family life, all unfolding in counterpoint to her prescient though largely forgotten novels, short stories, children’s books, and pedagogical texts. and as an immigration success story of a single, working mother and later grandmother whose networking, entrepreneurial and adaptation strategies enabled her to contribute to the social fabric of Upper Canada in the 1830s.
By revealing Eliza as a potentially iconic figure, Paul argues that her life-writing deserves recognition in Canadian literary and historical studies achieved by her more famous contemporaries, Susanna Moodie and Anna Jameson. Eliza was a much better author than either of them and her writing feels more modern to twenty-first century readers.
Publications:
SSHRC Insight Grant
SSHRC Insight funded Maker Literacies led by Jennifer Rowsell is a five-year research study in Niagara elementary and secondary schools with the overall aim of expanding notions of literacy for curricular and policy changes in ways of teaching and learning contemporary literacy. Premised on international research on makerspace approaches to learning and multimodal forms of pedagogy, teachers work and plan with professionals in the media, technology, and creative arts sectors to teach students about how to design ‘modern’ texts like documentaries, videogames, and coding. The project has three key objectives. First, to contemporize approaches to literacy, professionals will be invited into K-12 classrooms to collaborate with educators on multimodal projects and adapted forms of assessment to 21st Century learning. Second, to adopt design frameworks and processes, professionals will teach approaches to a mode (e.g., graphic design) and work with educators to create assignments that evaluate student learning. Third, to invite students to see talent in their own community, the project will feature professionals within the immediate Niagara community and connect projects with community hubs such as museums and centres for the arts.
The hoped-for impacts of the Maker Literacies research are to: (i) further research and innovation in the area of K-12 students’ digital literacy and creative design skills in order to contribute to Canada’s future competitiveness and growth; (ii) develop project participants’ skills in research and knowledge creation and thus increase research capacity and enhance career prospects; (iii) develop a network of researchers, creative industry professionals and educators who can collaborate to develop educational materials and tools to foster children’s digital literacy and design skills in Canada; and (iv) offer recommendations for research, policy and practice (in industry and education) about the ways that maker literacies pedagogy can inform teaching and learning. There is a website that features the research: https://www.makerliteracies.com.
Publications:
2015-2020
Sandra Bosacki (Principal Investigator) and Victoria Talwar (Co-Principal Investigator)
Emerging adolescence is a key transition period for self-identity, intellect, physical maturation, and social behaviours. Adolescents moving from elementary to secondary school face a number of challenges that include social, psychological, physiological and contextual changes. Early to mid-adolescence is a peak developmental period for boredom where children’s school motivation declines as they navigate their relationships and growing identity.Beyond childhood, little is known about the links between understanding others’ minds and the formation of relationships. Theory of Mind (ToM) is the ability to infer others’ mental states (including emotional, spiritual, and moral states) within the context of social action. Theory of Mind enables the understanding of multiple perspectives that lead to more effective communication with others. Emerging adolescents developing ToM foster their ability to reason about their own and others’ thinking during the school day. As young people experience significant life changes, their developing ToM has implications for learning. Therefore, ToM is important for adolescents negotiating the transition from elementary to secondary school. This 5-year multi-method longitudinal research project investigates adolescents’ social-cognitive ToM abilities to make meaning of human thoughts and feelings in relation to their sense of self and peer relations as they move from elementary to secondary school. Specifically, we will address the question: How do emerging adolescents use their ability to understand the inner lives or worlds (mental, emotional, moral, spiritual) of others to help them develop a sense of self and navigate peer relationships effectively during the transition from elementary to secondary school.
Educational strategies that foster the development of ToM can serve as valuable tools to help youth develop a sensitivity to social information, and to develop control and a sense of responsibility over their social lives. This ability to reason about the connections between mind and behaviour is important given the difficulties that some young people face transitioning from elementary to secondary school. Theoretically, this project will illustrate the bi-directional patterns between intra- and interpersonal features of psychological understanding concurrently and longitudinally, and provide the most comprehensive conceptual and empirical bridge to date between emerging adolescents’ psychological understanding and their social experiences. Practically, the results will provide a base to build positive youth intervention programs and curricula that encourage the use of mental state talk to promote adolescents’ socio-cognitive and emotional competencies and enhance adolescents’ social adjustment over the course of school transitions
Publications:
2014-2017 | $232,230
There is a growing interesting in study abroad including short term international service learning programs (ISP) and International Experiential Education programs (IEE). Researchers from Brock University (Michael O’Sullivan), University of Saskatchewan and York University who had engaged over the years as scholars and as ISL/IEE practitioners (e.g., leading groups on such trips) realized that there was a gap in the literature on the impact of global northern visitors on the global southern host communities that they visited. The researchers felt that if these visits were to occur within the framework of equal partnerships and not business arrangements where the northern were, in effect, ‘renting a village’ we needed in depth input from host villages in two countries we were particularly familiar with: Nicaragua and Guatemala.
SSHRC funding supported a project to conduct almost two years of face to face interview with some 200 indiviudals in 8 villages, four in Nicaragua and four in Guatemala. Interviews were conducted by local anthropologists. A culminating workship involving four delegations from each of the 8 communities was held in August, 2017 in Managua, Nicaragua. This constituted a form of triangulation.
With the exception of one village that ceased to offer such programming after visitors resisted their locally defined expectations, the reports from the other villages were positively disposed to continuing such visits but had some serous concerns and resulting recommendations to improve the experience from their perspectives.
In general, the visitors felt that the visitors, mostly senior high school students and undergraduate university students, had not been adequately prepared to take full advantage of the program and did not fully comprehend the expectations of the community when they arrived. These expectations ranged from not being willing to engage in all aspects of the program to not knowing how to treat elders and traditional authorities respectfully. They also felt that teachers and university instructors (and other community leaders and religious leaders who brought down groups) had their own program in mind and were not willing to negotiate input by the local community leaders. These leaders argue that they have a story to tell and no visit to their community should not have the telling of that story fully integrated into the program followed by their visitors.
The Instructional Resource Centres are hosting a series of Future Ready Sessions for students, instructors and faculty. All sessions qualify for Experience Plus for students.
These 45-minute sessions will focus on exploring future-ready instructional resources available in the IRC as well as discussions of how these can be incorporated into classrooms. Future readiness and STEAM awareness are defining characteristics of the contemporary learner. The objective of these sessions is to prepare for the risk-taking, digital literacy and innovative instructional strategies required to serve future learners.
Sessions will take place in the IRC at each campus.
St. Catharines IRC sessions
Tuesday sessions are held at 11 a.m. and 1 p.m., while Thursday sessions are held at 1:00 pm and 3:00 pm. For those whose schedules conflict with the sessions offered, there is an opportunity to book alternates times for groups of four or more people. Contact dpotts@brocku.ca to book sessions or with any questions.
Hamilton IRC sessions
For students at the Hamilton Campus, specific topic sessions (listed above) can be booked for groups of four or more to accommodate schedules. Contact swelbourn@brocku.ca to book a session. Upcoming pre-scheduled sessions include:
We know a great teacher can make all the difference. That teacher can be you.
The Faculty of Education is hosting a series of information sessions on Brock’s Consecutive Teacher Education program. Join us to learn more about the program, application timelines, admission requirements and more.
Register to attend on Monday, 17 September 2018 from 6:00 PM – 7:00 PM. This session takes place in WH209.
Register to attend on Tuesday, 18 September 2018 from 10:00 AM – 11:00 AM. This session takes place in STH216.
Consecutive Teacher Education
Categories: Events
The Brock Learning Lab is looking for volunteers to participate as a tutor in its Reading Support Program and Math Support Program as well as its School Support Reading Program.
Tutoring and internship opportunities are available for the Reading Support Program and Math Support Program at the Brock Learning Lab, located at the Brock Research & Innovation Centre (130 Lockhart Drive, St. Catharines). These programs use games, activities and technology to reinforce skills for students in an engaging and enjoyable way.
The Brock Learning Lab has also partnered with the Niagara Catholic District School Board to provide Reading and Literacy support in the classroom at local elementary and secondary schools. These sessions are offered on-site at these schools.
Volunteers plan and facilitate one-hour weekly sessions with support from the Brock Learning Lab. Times vary (mornings, early afternoons, and evenings). Tutors work with the same client for a total of nine weeks during the fall or winter semester or for five weeks during the spring.
View the Brock Learning Lab Volunteer & Internship Tutor Information page to learn more and volunteer for the fall session (September 24, 2018 – November 30, 2018). Clients and their families may contact the Learning Lab directly (905 688 5550 x3548) to begin the registration process for the literacy and/or numeracy tutoring program or literacy assessment.
As a tutor, you will be able to gain and enhance your teaching skills in the following ways:
Reading Support Program
• Implement programming based on formal diagnostic assessments
• Create personalized, skill-based literacy tutoring programming
• Use evidence-based and instructional methods
• Enhance your expertise and knowledge in literacy
• Conference with educational specialists
Math Support Program
• Implement programming based on curriculum-based assessment
• Create personalized, skills-based math tutoring programming
• Enhance your expertise and knowledge of math education
• Conference with educational specialists
Please contact the Brock Learning Lab for more information:
(905) 688-5550 Ext. 3548
bllab@brocku.ca
Brock Learning Lab
Categories: News
Through a new college partnership, Brock University is building on the success of its online programming and reaching out across the country to existing and inspiring adult educators in the trades and technology fields.Read more
Adult Education
Categories: News
Brock’s Faculty of Education (FoE) took the next step in its evolution on July 1, with its two departments and two of its academic centres becoming part of the new Department of Educational Studies.Read more
Perseverance runs deep in Dolana Mogadime’s family.
Her mother was a teacher and her father a doctor. In other places at other times, their careers would have provided a comfortable life for their children. In Apartheid-era South Africa, their race made them targets of systemic discrimination.
From 1948 to 1994, black South Africans, along with people of other races, were oppressed by a series of laws privileging white South Africans.
Mogadime, an associate professor in Brock’s Faculty of Education, recently shared some of her family’s experience at the opening of Mandela: Struggle for Freedom at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR) in Winnipeg. The exhibition explores the fight against Apartheid, from the legacy of Nelson Mandela to the efforts of human rights activists in Canada.Read more