Dean’s letter: The act of education is an act of hope and imagination
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The act of education is an act of hope and imagination. Anti-Black racism, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the pandemic and climate change have all exposed habits of educational and societal practice that ask us to act and imagine new ways forward.
Sharon Murphy
The Faculty of Education is constantly working to enliven new visions of education and society, visions of possibility, equity and social justice. This is difficult work, but it must be done individually and collectively. Our work focuses not only inward on curriculum and pedagogy, but very much looks outward towards the idea of education being situated within a complex and seemingly evermore fragile world.
Our engagements reflect these interests, whether they be on reducing the impact of COVID-19 on the homeless, engaging in conversations about anti-oppression and anti-Black racism, or reconceiving how we think of young children as they enter into their own engagements with the social world.
Our pedagogical and research engagements extend from our campus sites to our neighbourhood communities and to several provinces of Canada and countries of the world. In our actions of trying to make sense of and share the world with others, we aspire toward cultivating momentum for new educational and social realities.
Sharon Murphy Interim Dean, Faculty of Education
The Faculty of Education’s Summer Institute going strong all year
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One of York University’s hallowed traditions, the Faculty of Education Summer Institute (FESI), may have bowed to COVID-19 in terms of format, but it is unbowed in terms of mission and content.
For 2020-21, the institute has morphed into a series of five free webinars titled Up Close and Personal: Conversations on Anti-Oppression. Two of the seminars are complete and available online at https://fesi.blog.yorku.ca/. The next is scheduled for Nov. 25 and two others will follow. The upcoming webinar in November will focus on decolonizing mental health.
Vidya Shah
“There has been an increased focus on mental health and trauma-informed practices over the past five to 10 years,” said Vidya Shah, an assistant professor of education, who is a member of the FESI organizing committee. “So much of that discussion is decontextualized, ahistorical and separate from larger systems of oppression, perpetuating the myth of neutrality and pathologizing the individual. We want to think about how trauma and intergenerational trauma from colonization and other intersecting forms of oppression affect our health and well-being.”
FESI has long been a force for change in the education landscape.
“As is the long-standing tradition with this conference, FESI 2020 will continue to challenge and question long-held educational beliefs, policies and practices that have become embedded and normalized in educational landscapes,” reads the website. “It aims to disrupt the taken-for-granted assumptions, ideas and practices of what constitutes education, who has access to it, and which values are legitimated by it.”
Carl E. James
The institute was created about a dozen years ago by renowned Faculty of Education Professor Carl E. James and his colleagues, and it continues to be a force for change in education. James, the Jean Augustine Chair in Education, Community and Diaspora and the University’s senior advisor on equity and representation, sits on the organizing committee, along with Shah, Jack Nigro, a superintendent of Education for Ontario’s Durham District School Board, and the co-chairs, who are usually educators in the public system seconded to York. This year’s co-chairs are Sultan Rana and Sayema Chowdury.
“FESI began as a desire to foster deep connections between the academy, schools, families, policy-makers, teacher candidates and community organizations serving young people,” Shah said. “The goal is to address relevant and timely issues of schooling through dialogue, research and connection, and to honour the knowledge that exists in communities, the families and the classrooms.”
Each year, the co-chairs work with a larger committee of 20 or more representatives from school boards in the GTA and community organizations, as well as teacher candidates and researchers, who decide on the conference themes the co-chairs suggest to them.
“The leadership rotates,” said Shah, who co-chaired FESI in 2016 and 2017 when she was a teacher seconded to York. “It allows for fresh perspectives and different experiences. We tackle important topics that educators are grappling with in schools every day.”
FESI also tries to bring a different lens to these topics.
“We try to provoke dialogue, not simply give answers; it’s in the conversations that we acknowledge and grapple with multiple perspectives and work collectively towards justice-oriented change,” Shah said. “FESI has built a reputation among school boards as a place you can express questions, think differently, and join a network of people committed to anti-racism and anti-oppression in education.”
In the past, FESI took place on campus toward the end of the summer when schools were preparing to return to class. It offered educators and faculty an opportunity to get re-energized and focus on valuable issues.
“We’re excited about this year’s format,” Shah said. “We always wished we could extend the institute throughout the year to keep the conversation going and that possibility has now opened up.”
The new format has been successful, too. In addition to the live participants, 1,000 viewers have watched the first webinar and almost as many have viewed the second.
The opening webinar looked at designing systems and structures that center anti-racism and anti-oppressions at every stage and in every aspect of decision-making, and “designing to imagine new futures,” said Shah.
The October webinar explored anti-racist approaches to the child welfare system, something with which educators come into contact with time and again. On Nov. 25, as noted, FESI will explore decolonizing mental health.
“Given the increased challenges with mental health now as we live through the pandemic, it’s important to make sure we understand the systemic issues that inform and harm our mental health and that we are inclusive of many knowledge systems,” Shah said.
As always, the conversations are presented in ways that will promote action.
“This year, we are developing lenses, skill sets and habits of mind to see how systems have continued to oppress certain populations, hoping it affects practices within school boards,” Shah said. “FESI is a space in which decision-makers, parents, educators and community members are all in conversation about how to create more just and humane conditions for schooling.”
By Elaine Smith, special contributing writer
York lab explores solutions for youth homelessness
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What would you do if you discovered that 50 per cent of Canada’s current homeless population had their first episode of homelessness before the age of 24?
Stephen Gaetz
If you were Stephen Gaetz, the York University Research Chair in Homelessness and Research Impact and a professor in the Faculty of Education, you’d use your excellent research and communications skills and grant-writing ability to attack the problem.
Gaetz is the director of the Canadian Observatory on Homelessness, the Homeless Hub, and Making the Shift – Youth Homelessness Social Innovation Lab (MtS), all based at York. As a young man, Gaetz worked in a community health centre for homeless youth, an experience that opened his eyes to homelessness and influenced the course of his career.
MtS, the newest member of his “family” of endeavours focused on homelessness, was created in 2018 and is led in equal partnership with A Way Home Canada, a national coalition working to contribute to the transformation of our response to youth homelessness. MtS seeks to provide leadership in helping communities and governments to move away from crisis response solutions for youth homelessness to finding solutions that help them exit homelessness or prevent it from happening. As with Gaetz’s other projects, MtS’s work is focused on research and knowledge mobilization, although the lab also has a service component, assisting youth and their families.
“The hospital emergency room is often used as a metaphor for how we should address homelessness, which in practical terms means we put most of our energies into helping those individuals who are sickest or who have been homeless the longest,” Gaetz said.
“While well-meaning, this system actually puts people in harm’s way by expecting people to wait until things get really bad before we really help them. For young people this means exposing them to potential harms associated with life on the streets, where their physical and mental health declines, they experience trauma, self-medicate and face a much more difficult road in moving forward with their lives. Basically, this indicates that the problem of youth homelessness in North America isn’t taken seriously enough – it’s often seen as a distraction.
“What if we treated the pandemic as we do homelessness? We’d forget about masks, a vaccine, social distancing and containment. We’d just make big waiting rooms and help people when they are really sick.”
One lesson Canadians have learned from the pandemic is that prevention is essential. Gaetz would like to see that lesson applied to youth homelessness, too.
“It’s a radical concept, when it shouldn’t be,” he said. “MtS’s hope is to contribute to that transformation and make a difference in creating change.”
MtS’s research focuses on developing and testing effective strategies to prevent youth homelessness and help those who are homeless to move out of it quickly and achieve housing stability. This focus intersects with three major goals:
enabling health, well-being and inclusion;
enhancing outcomes for Indigenous youth; and
leveraging data and technology to drive policy and practices.
MtS is currently funding 14 innovative research projects to help achieve this agenda. A few of these projects include conducting longitudinal research on better outcomes for youth transitioning from care, innovative strategies to prevent Indigenous youth homelessness in Saskatchewan and analyzing school-based early intervention.
The lab’s work also centres around creating change through knowledge mobilization – processes of engaged scholarship designed to move research into active use so as to enhance its impact on policy, programs and practice.
As Gaetz noted, “You can do the best research on prevention in the world, but if you don’t get it into the right hands with the right supports, it means nothing.”
One way MtS is spreading the word is through the LivEX network and it’s In Conversation series of virtual conversations with young scholars who have lived experiences of homelessness. Gaetz also involves young researchers in these public events to give them experience and exposure to more established colleagues. The first conversation of this series called on York alumnus and assistant professor, and renowned author, Jesse Thistle, a Métis scholar with lived experience of homelessness, to share his insights.
In addition, MtS is engaged in demonstration projects targeted in 12 locations nationwide targeting youth homelessness. Housing First for Youth is a rights-based intervention taking place in Toronto, Ottawa and Hamilton. It is an adaptation of the successful Housing First model used for adult homeless persons, modified to meet the needs of adolescents and young adults.
The Youth Reconnect program in Hamilton is a preventive intervention designed to provide support to vulnerable young people in the communities where they have developed social connections and supports, while encouraging youth to engage or re-engage with education.
Eight cities – Calgary, Edmonton, Fort McMurray, Grande Prairie, Lethbridge, Medicine Hat, Red Deer and Toronto – are home to Enhancing Family and Natural Supports, an effort focused on preventing and ending youth homelessness through strengthening relationships between vulnerable young people and their support networks, including family.
“The most common reason that youth become homeless is family conflict and childhood trauma,” Gaetz said, “but bad experiences with the family doesn’t mean that there aren’t positive relationships possible within the family. We want to keep youth connected to their families.”
His research shows that 40 per cent of all young people who are homeless had their first experience of homelessness before they were 16, whether due to childhood trauma or bullying or other reasons.
“We don’t do anything for them when they’re younger than 16, but if they’ve been couch surfing for a couple of years by the time they’re 15, there’s a lot of damage to undo,” Gaetz said. “We need to start supporting them as early as we can.”
Of course, it takes a village – or a team, in this case – to make an impact, and Gaetz is committed to involving undergraduate and graduate students, as well as post-doctoral fellows in research and knowledge mobilization. At MtS, there is a group of students who has lived experience of homelessness to serve as mentors to youth.
“York University has been very good at supporting my interdisciplinary approach to research and the Faculty of Education has been an ideal place to do my work, given its strong focus on equity and its multi-disciplinary nature,” he said. “I can find common ground with many others and there’s a willingness not to get stuck in silos.”
Perfect, indeed, because challenges within youth homelessness need broad solutions and a meeting of many perspectives, and the engine Gaetz has created will continue rolling toward practical remedies.
By Elaine Smith, special contributing writer
Crisis: Only one of the experiences shared by students and faculty
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Students in the Dadaab Refugee Camp work on an assignment for their studies with York University
There has been considerable change in lives worldwide in 2020 due to the novel coronavirus, and the persistence of systemic anti-Black racism.
Rachel Silver
Participants in the Faculty of Education’s Borderless Higher Education for Refugees (BHER) program have seen the impact of change upon multiple fronts, because the program involves faculty, students and community partners at York’s Keele Campus, as well as in the Dadaab Refugee Complex in Kenya. Rachel Silver, an assistant professor of education at York, with the help of a team of her colleagues in both Toronto and Dadaab, has created a virtual colloquium series, Reciprocal Learning in Times of Crisis, for the program’s faculty and students and other interested parties to consider the issues arising from the confluence of education, the pandemic, and the new waves of resistance to anti-Black racism.
“We’re in this moment together, despite our different individual positions, different colonial histories, and different national public health and education system responses,” Silver said. “It’s an opportunity to learn from each other about how we make sense of and respond to a global crisis in distinct local contexts.
“We can see how systemic inequity is reflected in each space, and how COVID-19 brings to light the underlying systemic issues.”
The Dadaab Education Centre in Kenya
Silver put together a committee comprising Esther Munene, the academic administrator of the BHER Learning Centre in Dadaab; Philemon Misoy, the BHER project co-ordinator; Molade Osibodu, a Faculty of Education colleague whose work draws heavily on African de-colonial theories; and two international York graduate students, Sharareh Kashi from Iran and Theodata Fafa Bansah from Ghana, to plan and organize the colloquium, which is a monthly event.
Esther Munene
“We have planned to change the format each month with different speakers and different hosts,” said Silver. “We are drawing on the talents of diverse graduate students and academics in Kenya and in Canada. But we also wanted to feature our Kenyan institutional partners and BHER students speaking from their lived experiences in the camps.”
“This series is not only for a scholarly audience, but also for community leaders, NGOs and students in both countries.”
The remaining events in the series will touch on a range of topics, including the unique needs of inter-African migrants in southern Africa during COVID-19; the Toronto diasporic community; and the gendering of pandemic-related risks in Kenya, featuring a panel of York’s academic and organizational partners there.
“The series is even more important since we haven’t been able to meet face-to-face with our York colleagues for months due to COVID-19,” said Misoy. “This really opens the lines of communication and allows us to share our experiences working during the pandemic.
Philemon Misoy
“We can look at issues of social, economic and racial discrimination and consider how we support people emerging from conflict. We can take stock of achievements and, by hearing from different people, get ideas how we can shift toward the future. It’s important for north-south relations that we can share ideas freely and help each other.”
Munene agreed.
“It’s good to get the Toronto context on many issues, such as race and gender and learn what it’s like there,” she said. “They can also get to understand our context.”
An eagerness to learn about the Dadaab context was apparent at the most recent session of Reciprocal Learning in Times of Crisis on Nov. 4. It focused on the educational challenges faced in Dadaab due to the pandemic and featured representatives of York’s partner organizations in Dadaab, as well as Abdikadir Bare Abikar, a graduate of the first class of York’s Dadaab-based Masters of Education students, who is now teaching in Somalia. All of the educational organizations based in Dadaab collaborate to ensure that there is no duplication of effort.
Schools in Dadaab have been closed since mid-March, forcing educators to be creative in offering lessons in the camps, where not every student has a computer or laptop and internet connectivity can be suspect.
York U students living in the camp work on the assignments at the Dadaab Education Centre
“The president of Kenya announced the school closures on a Sunday and they had to close the next day,” said Norah Kariba of Windle International Kenya, which runs the secondary schools in Dadaab. “This left students confused about how to continue.
“The quick fix was to introduce radio lessons, although not all learners were able to access them, and there wasn’t enough air time to handle all of the content. However, at least it was a starting point.
“Teachers also formed classes through WhatsApp [a popular phone application used to communicate with groups] and contacted their students. They were able to create a timetable and students were able to download lessons.”
At the university level, there was also disruption.
“Kenyan universities didn’t offer online learning,” said Munene. “It delayed graduation and caused stress, something we had to address with students. A few universities offered online exams, but exams here are usually administered in person, so it was a big hill to tackle.”
Luckily, York continued to offer online courses through its BHER project, and even though the learning centre in Dadaab was closed, students could access lectures.
“It was an abrupt shift to online learning, and many students weren’t used to the lack of interaction,” said Munene. “BHER also had to buy laptops or tablets and data bundles, so the students had access. We have learned to adapt to technological change.
“However, many students had lost jobs due to the pandemic and it was tough for them to concentrate on school. We tried to comfort them and did some mental health awareness work about the value of sharing their concerns.”
The centre is equipped with computers and supplies, which are essential for student success in the online learning environment that was made necessary by the global pandemic
Dakane Bare, a representative of the United Nations High Commission on Refugees in Kenya, offered an observation that served as the motto for the group going forward: “With calamity comes opportunity.”
Silver and the colloquium organizing committee hope that the series continues to provide excellent opportunities for learning and connection.
“Our big goal is to push back against the notion of expertise being located only in one geo-political space, such as the university,” Silver said. “There is much learning to be done.”
Educators convene speaker series to address pressing questions in early childhood education and research in the 21st century
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Parents should avoid intense teaching sessions and enjoy quality time with their children
Lucy Angus and Cristina Delgado Vintimilla, assistant professors new to York and the Faculty of Education, have created a lecture series entitled Disrupting Early Childhood: Inheritance, Pedagogy, Curriculum to explore new ideas about early childhood education (ECE) and create a space to bring together the innovative research conversations that are changing the field of ECE.
Lucy Angus
“This is a way of starting a new conversation with a wider network, across faculties and outside the University,” Angus said. “ECE is a field that draws on many disciplines, but rarely are there spaces that convene conversations around the new questions and innovative research imaginaries affecting early childhood education. The talk series invites speakers who address pressing educational questions from interdisciplinary perspectives. We see the series as a way of extending the pedagogies of early childhood education.”
Delgado Vintimilla finds that early childhood is often an afterthought.
“Early childhood as an area of study, particularly in the Canadian context, is often like the last wheel on a car or seen as just the site for the application of different pedagogical models,” said Delgado Vintimilla. “This is a space where we can shed light onto generative early childhood education research and share the inventive work that can emerge at the intersection with other disciplines.
Cristina Delgado Vintimilla
“People think of ECE as a service so that parents can go to work while their children are kept safe and healthy, and it’s generally a service based on child development theories that focus on the different stages children go through. These ideas of progression and linearity are all embedded in preconceptions regarding who is a child, what is the purpose of early childhood education and who is an early childhood educator.”
Angus and Delgado Vintimilla are receptive, in their own research and as organizers of this series, to the ways that ECE and the interlocking fields of childhood studies and pedagogy have grappled with normative views of childhood that crop up on the horizon of many educational approaches. As one speaker featured in the series explained, imagining alternative and non-normative views of children and education can pose new questions for established fields like ECE but it is also field-making. Angus and Delgado Vintimilla view the talk series as an invitation for faculty colleagues, students and practitioners alike to learn how cutting-edge early childhood research is remaking the field of early childhood education.
“We want to give ECE a space for imagining other futures,” said Delgado Vintimilla. “Children do this all the time and we dismiss it as ridiculous, but we want to consider the different trajectories and processes we might put in place to create different possibilities of thinking and being.”
Delgado Vintimilla believes that individual educators, the entire faculty and the broader University will benefit from engaging with the series and its disruptive spirit.
“We’re trying to create a broader conversation about early childhood education at York, one that perhaps hasn’t been there, previously,” she said. “We’re contributing to early childhood by creating novel connections, relationships and other ways of thinking.”
To date, their lecture series has met its objectives of being disruptive and providing new perspectives.
“The series has really grown over the last year,” Angus said. “And during the COVID pandemic, the series has moved online, and our talks have drawn an international audience.”
Their last event, held virtually, brought together 250 people from around the world, all interested in reimagining ECE.
The series began last February and has been curated thematically in sets of three. A new series of three talks will be featured in the winter 2021 semester.
To date, their topics have included the non-chronological childhood education, the vitality of touch and the queerly magical child. Often, the topics focus on research being done at the edges of what the two educators call “a bounded discipline.” In their series, all manner of theories and approaches are open for consideration as a way of breaking these rigid boundaries: pedagogies that explore movement or non-innocence or the tensions that exist in childcare spaces, for example.
The next instalment of the lecture series is taking place in January 2021. It features a talk by Hannah Dyer (Child and Youth Studies, Brock University) and Casey Mecija (Communication Studies, York University), who will share their recent scholarship on the sonics of childhood and transnational caregiving.
The ECE series logo focuses on reshaping early childhood education
What shape might a brave new world of ECE take? Angus and Delgado Vintimilla point to the work being done by the Early Childhood Pedagogies Collaboratory for ideas about the changes in approach that are possible. The collaboratory is “a hybrid and experimental space where educators, researchers and grad students trace and experiment with the contours, conditions and complexities of early childhood education pedagogies in the 21st century.”
“We see that we’ve sparked new curiosity about ECE. We are excited that this forum for experimental, theoretical, and pedagogical thinking has been generative for both questioning inherited views of childcare and ECE scholarship and imagining new futures,” said Angus.
By Elaine Smith, special contributing writer
York research highlights challenges of teacher-student relationships during pandemic
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online learning
The emergency shift to online teaching at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted teacher-student and student-student relationships and made it difficult to assess how students were performing, according to the findings of asurveyof elementary and secondary school teachers.
The emergency shift to online teaching at the beginning of the pandemic disrupted teacher-student and student-student relationships
As part of a larger study, Associate Professor Sarah Barrett,of York University’s Faculty of Education, surveyed 764 teachers in May and June to explore and document teachers’ experiences of the unprecedented closures in the winter and spring of 2020. The survey provides a snapshot of teachers’ familiarity with online teaching before the pandemic and their circumstances, professional development and concerns during. Fifty-five per cent of participants were secondary school teachers and 45 per cent were elementary school teachers.
The survey found:
Forty per cent of respondents reported having caregiving responsibilities that “significantly impacted” their ability to teach online. This was the strongest theme in the anecdotal responses.
Eighty-two per cent of respondents said they had several students that they were worried would “fall through the cracks” with the new format. There were various reasons indicated in the anecdotal responses, including lack of equipment, special needs, and language difficulties.
Vulnerable students were made more vulnerable by the situation and teachers were often frustrated trying to make sure all students’ needs were met.
The survey respondents indicated they were most concerned about:
Balancing caregiving and teaching responsibilities.
Equity, accommodations for students with special needs, and access to technology.
Authentic assessment of student learning.
The disruption of relationships.
“These findings about online teaching and learning need to be taken in context. It was an emergency situation,” says Barrett. “Usually, online teaching and learning is a choice made by both the instructors and students. Usually, teachers have the time to prepare and plan. However, in this emergency situation, there was no real choice on the part of teachers, students, or parents. And, importantly, teachers’ efforts to adapt were complicated by the incremental extensions of school closure. This is because short-term lesson planning depends on long-term curriculum planning. The uncertainty made this long-term planning impossible.”
These findings will inform a final comprehensive report to be released in early 2021.
“Opening the Schoolhouse to All,” a special series on public education, starts Nov. 17
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EnochTurnerschoolHouseFEATUREd
York University community members are playing a key role in a provocative four-part series on the challenges facing public schooling.
The EnochTurnerSchoolhouse – originally the site of Toronto’s first free school – is sponsoring a community conversation on a number of current educational concerns. Located at 106 Trinity Street between King Street East and Eastern Avenue in Toronto, Ontario. Canada. It is the oldest school standing in the city.
Coordinated by Paul Axelrod, emeritus professor and former dean of education at York University with York PhD graduate Jason Ellis, the series, “Opening the Schoolhouse to All,” poses a series of questions that panelists will take up in successive sessions beginning on Tuesday, Nov. 17 and concluding in January 2021.
Paul Axelrod
“It’s quite a lineup of eminent speakers,” says Axelrod. “Concerns about education are front and centre these days, and this series will allow for a full airing of pertinent issues.”
How has the pursuit of wider educational opportunity evolved historically? How do educational experiences vary by race, gender, neighbourhoods, and disabilities? What kinds of teaching and learning will best serve individuals and communities in the years ahead? How is the COVID-19 pandemic affecting access to schools and the experiences of students, teachers, and families? These questions and more will be considered in this fascinating series of public events.
The first session, “The Promise of Equity: Race, Multiculturalism, and First Nations Education” will take place Nov. 17 starting at 7 p.m. and will be offered online. The session features presentations by a panel that includes Faculty of Education Professor Carl James, who is the Jean Augustine Chair in Education, Community and Diaspora at York University, and Natasha Henry, president of the Ontario Black History Society, and PhD candidate in History at York. The session will be chaired by York grad and University of Toronto professor Funké Aladejebe. Gillian Parekh, Canada Research Chair in Inclusion, Disability and Education in York’s Faculty of Education will speak in a session titled, “Doing the Right Thing: Disability, Autism and Special Education.” President Emerita Lorna R. Marsden and Qiang Zha, an associate professor in York’s Faculty of Education, will join a panel that addresses the question: “Does Liberal Education Matter in the 21st Century?” Former Premier and Education Minister, Kathleen Wynne, is a featured panelist in a session called “Are We Moving Closer to Gender Equity in Education?”
The series, free of charge, and accessible online, is designed for a broad audience interested in the past, present and future of Canadian education. To register and to see the full program, go to https://enochturnerschoolhouse.ca/category/events/.
Prof. Celia Popovic publishes virtual book as primer for educational development
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Celia Popovic, associate professor at York University’s Faculty of Education, recently launched a virtual book titled Educational Developers Thinking Allowed with Fiona Smart from Edinburgh Napier University.
Celia Popovic
The book serves as a primer to the field of educational development and has emerged from the collective experience and knowledge of a large number of educational developers in several countries. It explores teaching and learning in post-secondary education, and aims to provide guidance and resources from experienced educational developers. Readers will be able to gain information, advice and support in their work.
Educational development involves supporting those who teach in post-secondary education such as faculty, contract faculty and TAs.
“Educational developers came to the forefront when we all had to pivot to remote teaching in March this year, but they provide continuous support with online and in person teaching, as well as supporting AIF (Academic Innovation Fund) projects, helping to write research proposals, conduct research and publish,” says Popovic.
Popovic says she wrote Educational Developers Thinking Allowed (EDTA) because it was challenging to locate specific advice and resources early in her career.
“As director of the Teaching Commons at York University, I found it challenging to find people with appropriate knowledge and experience when recruiting, and ways to support newly appointed educational developers,” says Popovic. “EDTA is aimed at newcomers and those who might be considering joining the profession. It is also for people who may not have the role in their job title, but do this work, for example faculty members who support their colleagues with workshops, events, resources on teaching and learning.”
“Initially, we were going to publish EDTA in print, but we moved online when we realized that we would be able to reach our audience more quickly and engage in dialogue with them if we made this an Open Educational Resource (OER). All of the material is covered by Creative Commons 4.0 license – which means that it can be used as it is or repurposed by someone else,” says Popovic. “Every page has a discussion space. We are now engaged in encouraging debate and discussion on the site, making this a dynamic resource.”
There will be a “Speakeasy” event Nov. 19, and one of the authors will join Popovic and Smart in a debate anticipated to be provocative, engaging and energizing.
“I am very grateful to all the colleagues who wrote or reviewed pages in this resource, and particularly to my ‘partner-in-crime’ Fiona Smart of Edinburgh Napier University,” says Popovic.
The social, political and moral crisis of anti-Black racism
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Featured image AntiBlack Racism
What is it like to be a Black person in Canada? The question, posed to Faculty of Education Professor Carl E. James, was intended as a starting point for a frank discussion about anti-Black racism.
James didn’t bat an eye. “We’re asked that all the time. It’s a good place to start. But the fact that one would ask the question is interesting. Would a Black person ask a white person what it’s like to be white? Do we assume that a Black person would understand what it means to be a white person? If so, why does the Black person understand, but not vice versa, despite the fact that the two grew up in the same place, read the same material, watched the same TV shows, attended the same university?
He paused, then answered his own question. “Something’s wrong with the system. Something’s wrong given that the information we all end up with is so different. We have to know what the other person’s understanding if we’re going to survive in this world.”
Racism was born of slavery that became deeply entrenched in our society
However, gaining an understanding of Black people today is not necessarily achieved by taking a workshop on anti-Black racism. “I’m deeply skeptical of that training,” says Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies Professor Andrea Davis. “It tends to position Blackness as a problem that needs to be solved. Although the discourse appears to be coming from a liberal perspective of ‘How can we help?,’ it’s really asking ‘How can we intervene so that these problems don’t overwhelm the fabric of our society?’”
Carl E. James
Both academics have explored Blackness throughout their careers. James holds the Jean Augustine Chair in Education, Community and Diaspora in addition to cross-appointments in graduate programs in Sociology, Social and Political Thought, and Social Work. Davis specializes in literatures and cultures of the Black Americas and holds cross-appointments in graduate programs in English, Interdisciplinary Studies, and Gender, Feminist and Women’s Studies.
Both James and Davis have recently been appointed to leadership positions at York to assist the University to build a more equitable and inclusive community. In August 2020, James was appointed senior advisor on equity and representation to the University, as part of the Division of Equity, People and Culture. In September 2020, Davis began her term as special advisor on an Anti-Black Racism Strategy, a position developed within the dean’s office in the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies.
Andrea Davis
In order to move forward, both scholars believe we must go back – back to the roots of anti-Black racism and the slavery that began in the Americas in the 1500s.
“We need to think of the world as we’ve come to accept and understand it,” James explains. “We need to reflect on the colonial system, which was developed and supported by capitalism. We need to consider capitalism’s relationship to the enslavement of Africans, displacement of Indigenous peoples, the indentureship of Asians, and the immigration programs by which racialized people, even with governments’ reservations, were allowed to enter Canada.”
While Black slavery was abolished in Canada (in 1838) and in the United States (in 1865), Davis notes that the racism that was born of slavery became deeply entrenched in society. “We’re talking about an institution that was embedded in the foundations of what we now understand as democratic societies. [Racism] was formed out of the framework of social relationships established over centuries of enslavement.”
She adds that while Black people became ‘free,’ the social systems created by slavery ensured they “would not be able to enter into full participatory citizenship, or economic, social and cultural freedom. Society shifted to a different kind of relationship with Black people, but that society still assumed their inferiority. And this is what we’re still seeing in the 21st century.”
“We pride ourselves on social justice at York, but we have to remember we’re not exempt from racism. Our leadership and our entire community need to realize that our role is not just to educate, but to reflect on what we can do better.” – Andrea Davis
The case of George Floyd, a Black man killed in May 2020 during an arrest in Minneapolis after a store clerk alleged Floyd had passed a counterfeit $20 bill, is a case in point.
“Young Black people have been taught by their parents that they should carry themselves in a certain way, and be polite and demonstrate to society that they have value,” Davis explains. “But they’re increasingly saying, ‘That’s untrue. We’re still disproportionately killed by the police.’ George Floyd was polite. He begged for his life. He said ‘please.’ He called the police officers ‘sir.’ And he still died. So now you’re seeing, on the streets, a pushback against this idea that if Black people try hard enough, they’ll be able to participate equally with others.”
Sheila Cote-Meek
But James, Davis and Sheila Cote-Meek, York’s vice-president, equity, people and culture, see an opportunity for positive change – and they believe York University has a special role to play.
James believes York has welcomed Black people and has made progress in increasing academic programs focused on Black issues. “For years, a significant number of Black students have attended York, specially many who are first generation in their families to attend university. One of the attractions to the University had to do with the fact that Black students were able to find other Black students to collaborate with and to gain support.”
He believes more work is needed, however. “While York has had in place some academic programs that appeal to Black students – like Latin American and Caribbean Studies and now the Black Studies Program initiated by Dr. Davis – more can be done, which I think York recognizes.”
James and Davis welcome York’s commitment to increasing the number of Black faculty members. It is expected that this will help to launch courses that focus on the experiences of Black people. James, an esteemed author, has a new book on this topic: Colour Matters (University of Toronto Press, 2021), a collection of his essays that examine various aspects of Blackness.
“York was built on values of social justice and equity. When an institution sets out core values like that, then we need to live them. We need to hear more from Black faculty, students and staff around anti-Black racism that exists on our campus… and we have a responsibility to respond.” – Sheila Cote-Meek
Cote-Meek, a sociologist who is Anishinaabe from the Teme-Augama Anishnabai, feels universities hold the keys to change. “No other kind of organization has what universities have in academic freedom: the ability to explore issues – often difficult ones – and to create space to have open dialogues about issues like anti-Black and anti-Indigenous racism.
“York was built on values of social justice and equity. When an institution sets out core values like that, then we need to live them. We’ve heard and need to hear more from Black faculty, students and staff around anti-Black racism that exists on our campus… and we have a responsibility to respond.”
Davis urges action: “Moments come and go. We have to seize this moment. We need to move ahead on increasing the representation of full-time Black faculty, providing more diverse curricular offerings for our students that centre on the study of Black cultures, knowledge and Black ideas beyond just anti-racism courses.
“We pride ourselves on social justice at York, but we have to remember we’re not exempt from racism. Our leadership and our entire community need to realize that our role is not just to educate, but to reflect on what we can do better.”
The Office of Vice-President Research & Innovation continues to contribute to the intensification efforts to York University to improve and expand initiatives that aim to address anti-Black racism, and further the principles of equity, diversity and inclusion across the entire University, especially in the research, innovation, and knowledge mobilization domains. To support this work, the University has undertaken a series of consultations with students, faculty, instructors, staff and other community leaders at York on anti-Black racism and to identify ways to address systemic barriers within the institution.
To learn more about Research & Innovation at York, follow us at @YUResearch; watch our new animated video, which profiles current research strengths and areas of opportunity, such as Artificial Intelligence and Indigenous futurities; and see the snapshot infographic, a glimpse of the year’s successes.
Paul Fraumeni is an award-winning freelance writer, who has specialized in covering university research for more than 20 years. To learn more, visit his website.
PhD candidate receives award for teaching excellence
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Dr. Shelia Harms, MD, a fourth-year PhD candidate in the Faculty of Education, is the recipient of the prestigious 2020 U21 Health Sciences Group (HSG) Teaching Excellence Award.
The award was established in 2014 by deans of medicine as a way to celebrate and reward exceptional educational scholarship, particularly amongst research intensive universities, across the U21 HSG network. The award also helps to nurture international cooperation, one of U21’s key objectives, by offering faculty from different universities and regions, opportunities to work together on exciting, interdisciplinary projects.
Dr. Sheila Harms
“Questions of learning in academic psychiatry simultaneously require a commitment to a discourse of the mind. It has been through the scholarly work of education that I have found a rich place to encounter thought anew,” says Harms. “This award depends on the possibility for shared educational transactions marked by success and failure alike. For this I am deeply grateful to the many students and educators who have created a generative space for me to engage and explore what it means to have an education in psychiatry. I am honoured to receive this award and the possibilities it opens for ongoing educational transformation.”
Clinically, Harms practices as a child and adolescent psychiatrist at McMaster Children’s Hospital with a focus on general outpatient care. Academically, she is in the role of associate Chair education within the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Neurosciences. She is actively involved in supervising undergraduate and postgraduate learners as well as teaching within the Faculty of Health Sciences. Harms has acted in numerous educational leadership roles within the department, including the program director for postgraduate psychiatry training and has held the role of the inaugural program director for subspecialty training in child and adolescent psychiatry. She is also an active member on the Psychiatry Exam Board for the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada. Harms directs the global mental health initiative in the department which includes leading a long-standing collaboration and novel educational initiative at Mbarara University of Science and Technology (MUST) in Western Uganda, where she also serves on faculty.
Harms is focusing on enhancing educational scholarship activities across the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Neurosciences at McMaster University. As part of these efforts, she is pursuing a PhD in education at York University under the supervision of Distinguished Research Professor and York Research Chair in Pedagogy and Psycho-Social Transformation, Deborah Britzman. Harms’ dissertation is titled “A different kind of education: Notes from a psychiatrist,” and her focus is on critical histories in psychiatry. She is particularly interested in thinking about medical education using psychodynamic concepts as they are applied to learning, in an attempt to understand educational phenomenology that are both relevant and pressing in contemporary medical education. The dissertation’s themes include studies of uncertainty in learning, difficult knowledge, the role of bodies in the study of the mind and the work of encountering colonialism.
“It is my great pleasure to congratulate Dr. Harms on her illustrious award. The field of psychiatric education, as with any education today, must undergo major transformations and this award recognizes Dr. Harms as one of its creative international innovators,” said Britzman. “Dr. Harms entered the PhD program with a four-year SSHRC and a deep interest in problems of psychoanalytic approaches to education. Her dissertation, ‘A different kind of education: Notes from a psychiatrist’ is a model of humanity and generosity. Dr. Harms continues to distinguish herself as a leading scholar, now by opening psychiatric experience with autoethnographic methods with psychoanalytic sensitivity.”
Harms has been recently elected to the American College of Psychiatrists, the elite scientific college dedicated to professional leadership and highest standards of psychiatry through teaching, education, research and clinical practice.
York University community members are playing a key role in a provocative four-part series on the challenges facing public schooling. 
