The second phase of All I’s on Education: Imagination, Integration, Innovation, a year-long project involving researchers in the Faculty of Education at York University and 10 Ontario school boards, will culminate with a research exhibition and a performance June 18 at the Sandra Faire & Ivan Fecan Theatre.
The Voices of Innovative Practitioners research gallery and performance features a pre-show exhibit of research artifacts gathered from the project that will be displayed in the CIBC lobby. It will be followed by a performance involving 30 teachers from the school boards involved in the All I’s on Education project, performing their teaching stories in the theatre at 7pm. Students from York University’s music, drama and theatre education classes in the School of Arts, Media, Performance & Design will support the teachers’ performance through song, choreography, spoken word, verbatim theatre and readers theatre. Tickets are now available and can be reserved online.
The gallery narrates the story of developing the research project and draws from the processes and reflections by the teachers, students and researchers taking part in the project. Some of the artifacts developed include a time machine, mediaographies, stop-time motion documentaries, lesson maps, photographs, sketches and other artwork, interviews and field notes.
All I’s on Education has, since November 2014, involved researchers at York University’s Faculty of Education in an innovative research and professional development project with teachers and students in 10 Ontario school boards. Some 30 teachers and approximately 900 students from across the province are part of the project, which investigates how math, science and arts can be taught in integrative, imaginative ways with the support of technology.
The Ontario school boards involved in All I’s on Education bring representation from the French, English, public and catholic sector. Project participants include students and teachers from the elementary, secondary, urban, suburban and rural schools, as well First Nations, Métis and Inuit students. The project, developed through the Council of Ontario Directors of Education, is funded by the Ontario Ministry of Education.
Over the past few months, Kathleen Gould Lundy, coordinator of Destination Arts in York University’s Faculty of Education and principal investigator for All I’s on Education, and a team of Faculty of Education researchers have spent 40 days working in the Ontario schools involved in the project.
The research team – comprised of Faculty of Education Professors Steve Alsop, Naomi Norquay and Belarie Zatzman, as well as Faculty of Education secondee Marc Husband, PhD candidate Jafar Hussein and Research Assistant Netta Kornberg – visited each school to support the teachers as they planned and implemented integrated inquiry projects in math, science and the arts.
The integrated inquiry projects are connected to the students’ interests, identities and realities, and align with the Ontario Ministry of Education curriculum expectations. Local artists from the many different school communities joined the inquiry projects and, along with the teachers, students and researchers, are collaboratively inventing new approaches to curriculum. Students in the projects are also exploring various ways to represent their learning using artistic media and available technologies.
Students at Madonna Secondary School in the Toronto Catholic District School Board are graphing and then choreographing the effects of individual and collective stigmatization on their personal lives. In Trillium Lakelands District School Board, students are exploring and documenting the ecological and aesthetic significance of the forest that surrounds Archie Stouffer Elementary School in Minden, Ont., and are then creating a series of video postcards that represent their growing awareness.
For more information on the project, see the Nov. 14, 2014, story published in YFile or visit the Faculty of Education website.