Research in Renewing Literacies: A SSHRC Partnership Engage Grant
The Research in Renewing Literacies (RRL) project is 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've 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 has generated two publications, a new course, several presentations, and new work is in progress.The research study is 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 is 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've 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 has generated two publications, a new course, several presentations, and new work is in progress.The research study is 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 Project
The Manitoba Writing Project (MBWP) is a multiphase, multi-year initiative that is a site for research, outreach, and professional growth for writing, writers, and teachers of writing in Manitoba. Our priority is to co-create opportunities for supporting leadership and innovation in writing education. The diversity of Manitoba’s urban, rural, and northern K-12 schools and communities provide a rich landscape for the engagement of teachers in issues of equity, access and social justice, as well as opportunities to develop innovative approaches to teaching literacy, particularly place-based, artifactual, and multimodal literacies. In collaboration with Manitoba teachers, our focus is to support the development of educators' own expertise through a model of sustainable, professional education which not only values and builds upon current resources and leadership, but which also engages teachers as researchers in a professional education partnership that brings theory, research and practices into alignment and potentially serves as a locally-contextualized, capacity-building national and international model.
To create spaces for dialogue around writing and the teaching of writing, we organized a two-year series of interdisciplinary and inter-institutional conversations about writing called "Passions, Pedagogies, & Publics," as well as a Writing for Social Justice and Human Rights Forum. The first Summer Writing Institute was offered in July 2014 and again in August 2015. A Fall Institute was held in 2016. Our third Summer Writing Institute, focused on issues of social and eco-justice, place-based writing and place consciousness, was held in July 2018. Our fourth SWI, connecting the largest group of educators in any SWI--across the province and internationally--was held in July 2021 via Zoom. The institute focused on writing pedagogies as related to walking curriculum, writing for pleasure, and decolonizing the curriculum. Scholarship emerging from this project has included journal articles (published in Language Arts, Pedagogies: An International Journal, Language & Literacy), a book chapter, and numerous conference presentations and workshops. The MBWP is affiliated with Writing G/Rounds, a professional practice inquiry group, and Read/Write/Share, a summer reading & writing club for students in Grades 7-9, in partnership with CanU. The MBWP is the first Associated International Site of the National Writing Project in Canada. 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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