Re-Imagining Literacies Assessment
The Research in Renewing Literacies study revealed that assessment is a crucible of change: it may be the greatest challenge to, but also the greatest catalyst for, realizing more equitable, diverse, inclusive, and decolonizing approaches to teaching and learning. The goal of Re-Imagining Literacies Assessment was to mobilize language and literacies research for the purpose of: a) examining issues of power and (in)equity related to language and literacies curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment; b) proposing more equitable, inclusive, and decolonizing approaches through re-imagining, re-thinking, and re-conceptualizing language and literacies learning and assessment; and c) contributing to change in assessment policy and practices in language and literacies education. The RLA project hosted a 4-part Webinar Speaker Series on Undoing Assessment (with Dr. Cathy Burnett), Decolonizing Assessment (with community educators and researchers of Joe A. Ross School in Opaskwayak Cree Nation), Liberating Assessment (with Felicia Rose Chavez), and Righting Assessment (with Dr. Jim Cummins), published a series of six podcast episodes, and produced a series of professional discussion guides for educators, all accessible on the Re-imagining Literacies Assessment website. The project was funded by a SSHRC-funded Connection grant, as well as support from the University of Manitoba Faculty of Education, the University of Manitoba Centre for Human Rights Research, and Brandon University’s Centre for Applied Research and Education in Rural, Remote, and Indigenous Settings.
The Research in Renewing Literacies study revealed that assessment is a crucible of change: it may be the greatest challenge to, but also the greatest catalyst for, realizing more equitable, diverse, inclusive, and decolonizing approaches to teaching and learning. The goal of Re-Imagining Literacies Assessment was to mobilize language and literacies research for the purpose of: a) examining issues of power and (in)equity related to language and literacies curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment; b) proposing more equitable, inclusive, and decolonizing approaches through re-imagining, re-thinking, and re-conceptualizing language and literacies learning and assessment; and c) contributing to change in assessment policy and practices in language and literacies education. The RLA project hosted a 4-part Webinar Speaker Series on Undoing Assessment (with Dr. Cathy Burnett), Decolonizing Assessment (with community educators and researchers of Joe A. Ross School in Opaskwayak Cree Nation), Liberating Assessment (with Felicia Rose Chavez), and Righting Assessment (with Dr. Jim Cummins), published a series of six podcast episodes, and produced a series of professional discussion guides for educators, all accessible on the Re-imagining Literacies Assessment website. The project was funded by a SSHRC-funded Connection grant, as well as support from the University of Manitoba Faculty of Education, the University of Manitoba Centre for Human Rights Research, and Brandon University’s Centre for Applied Research and Education in Rural, Remote, and Indigenous Settings.
Research in Renewing Literacies: A SSHRC Partnership Engage Grant
The Research in Renewing Literacies (RRL) project was an innovative partnership with Manitoba Education and Brandon University designed to study the nature of the relationship between curricular and pedagogical change in English Language Arts. In this project, we embraced a diffractive methodology responsive to the complex, messy, and organic sociomaterial phenomena of literacy curriculum and pedagogy in authentic classrooms and communities. The project generated two publications, a new course, several presentations, and a subsequent knowledge mobilization project on re-imagining literacies assessment.The research study was funded in part by a Partnership Engage Grant from the Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).
The Research in Renewing Literacies (RRL) project was an innovative partnership with Manitoba Education and Brandon University designed to study the nature of the relationship between curricular and pedagogical change in English Language Arts. In this project, we embraced a diffractive methodology responsive to the complex, messy, and organic sociomaterial phenomena of literacy curriculum and pedagogy in authentic classrooms and communities. The project generated two publications, a new course, several presentations, and a subsequent knowledge mobilization project on re-imagining literacies assessment.The research study was funded in part by a Partnership Engage Grant from the Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).
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Writing, Power, Place, & Pedagogy: The Manitoba Writing ProjectThe Manitoba Writing Project (MBWP) is an ongoing, responsive, and emerging site of research, teaching, and professional outreach and partnership committed to more fully realizing the potential of writers and the teaching of writing in Manitoba. The MBWP is a collective that seeks to support educators, students, and communities through providing meaningful opportunities to write, publish, and celebrate writing; connect with communities of writers; critically inquire into our practice as teachers of writing; and mobilize local writing research, curriculum, theory, and practice—provincially, nationally, and internationally. The MBWP is guided in this work by our commitments to anti-racist and anti-oppressive pedagogies and practice in writing curriculum and assessment; to multilingual, multimodal, and multi-forms of writing; to teacher research and inquiry as forms of action, resistance, and knowledge-production.
The MBWP grew from the deep roots of writing pedagogy in Manitoba, highlighted through our "Passions, Pedagogies, & Publics" project, a two-year series of interdisciplinary and inter-institutional public conversations about writing that paired international writing scholars with local writing educators; a one-year research study on the landscape of writing pedagogy in Manitoba; and several workshops and events, including the Writing for Social Justice and Human Rights Forum. These initiatives informed the design of a proposal for our first two-week intensive Summer Writing Institute, Writing for/as Social Justice and Human Rights, held in July 2014. The inaugural SWI was followed a year later by our second SWI in August 2015. We also experimented with a hybrid version (in-person on Saturdays with weekly online sessions) in Fall 2016. As we recognized the significant role of place and land in issues of social (in)justice, we experimented in 2018 by locating much of our SWI at King's Park, a short walk from campus. There, we hosted multiple guest workshops (an Elder, city councillor, entomologist, garden educator, archivists) examining power and (in)justice in our relations with place, land, and the more-than-human. The fourth SWI was postponed in 2020 by the pandemic and held online in 2021. We engaged in place-writing through a walking curriculum from our homes and communities, and in our writing groups with the critical response process. The fifth SWI in 2023 was our "Murals, Monuments, and Maples" edition, as we explored socio-cultural, -political, -racial, -historical, -material, and ecological injustices facilitated through place-walking and place-writing—on campus, in public parks and downtown streets, and in our home and school communities. In 2025, our SWI focused on issues of water and water (in)justice, with research in progress on the work educators are doing in their classrooms and communities. The scholarship emerging from this project has included journal articles (published in Language Arts, Pedagogies: An International Journal, Language & Literacy), book chapters, numerous conference presentations, and workshops, many of which have been co-authored and co-facilitated by SWI educators. Educators in the Summer Writing Institutes have also published their writing in our SWI anthologies, as well as plans from their writing pedagogy projects (K-postsecondary). The MBWP has also been active in supporting Writing G/Rounds, a professional practice inquiry group; Read/Write/Share, a summer reading & writing club for students in Grades 7-9, in partnership with CanU; writing innovation projects in schools; and Write Out, Manitoba! a resource for educators and communities with writing invitations to take writers and writing outdoors. The MBWP is an Associated International Site of the National Writing Project. Multimodal Literacies, Transcultural Identities
My research in writing for/as social justice and human rights is informed by notions of citizenship that situate students’ cultural identities as resources for learning and seek to better understand how we can take a critical stance in understanding the roles of identity, power, and agency in teaching language and literacy in a global, multicultural world. Ongoing work in this area draws on my dissertation, Writing for Cultural Citizenship: Literacy, Identity, and the Teaching of Latino Immigrant Youth, an ethnographic case study of the multimodal writing of six immigrant middle school students in an English as a New Language class. The study explored students' agency in their digital poetry, photo essays, and online writing, as they drew on their transcultural identities to claim their social locations as legitimate positions from which to participate and work for change. The research suggests how literacy classrooms can become sites for immigrant youth to participate in and from, through practices that contribute to creating a more inclusive and equitable society. Articles about the study have been published in Pedagogies: An International Journal; Critical Literacies: Theory and Practices; Literacy; and Journal of Literacy Research.
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Re-envisioning Teacher Education in After-School Spaces
This project explores how teacher candidates develop their understandings about teaching and learning through their participation in an afterschool program for students in Grades 5-10. The afterschool program is a large university-school-community partnership, bringing students from 60 schools to the University of Manitoba campuses each week. The innovative Academy program invites teams of teacher candidates to design and lead their own afterschool programs in areas where they have strong interests (e.g., geocaching, art, musical theatre, hip hop, American Sign Language, science, creative writing, dance, entrepreneurship, role-playing games, movie-making, sewing and textiles). As teacher candidates from across streams (early, middle, and senior years) co-plan, co-teach, and debrief together, the focus is on building a strong sense of community and belonging with the students, and creating a fun environment to learn and grow together. The program affords a unique opportunity to study the pedagogical and epistemological practices and beliefs of teacher candidates through their interactions with participating students and one another. The research utilizes participatory methodologies for reflective inquiry and pedagogical documentation, creating a space and community for teacher inquiry and collaborative research in the B.Ed program. Research related to this project has been published in Literacy Research: Theory, Method, and Practice; Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, and in several book chapters.
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