Faculty Research Highlights

2023 Faculty Research Highlights

Dr. Susan Barber

In 2023, through an SSHRC grant focused on refugee children with disabilities, I conducted arts-based research to explore how non-English-speaking students might enter the BC curriculum more quickly and process any mental health issues through art. I presented a paper on this for the theme of diversity at the European Conference of Educational Research (ECER) in Scotland; published a chapter, "Teachers Supporting Refugees in Canada During COVID-19: Greater Equity and a Sense of Belonging,” in Education in an Altered World: Pandemic, Crises and Young People Vulnerable to Educational Exclusion (Bloomsbury Academic); and attended TILT's SoTL 101 Teaching & Learning Inquiry workshop.

Dr. Daniel Chang

In 2023, I contributed to the educational technology field by publishing three journal articles (see below). These works centred on developing an educational framework representing how AI fosters self-regulated learning and active learning, and on the effectiveness of asynchronous online modules in enhancing multilingual writers' information literacy skills.

Chang, D. H., Lin, M. P. C., Hajian, S., & Wang, Q. Q. (2023). Educational design principles of using AI chatbot that supports self-regulated learning in education: Goal setting, feedback, and personalization. Sustainability, 15(17), 12921.

Chang, D. H., Lane, J., & Power, H. (2023). A preliminary investigation into the effectiveness of online modules for teaching research and writing skills to multilingual international post-secondary students. BC TEAL Journal, 8(1), 8–28.

Lin, M. P. C., & Chang, D. (2023). CHAT-ACTS: A pedagogical framework for personalized chatbot to enhance active learning and self-regulated learning. Computers and Education: Artificial Intelligence, 5, 100167.

Dr. Pooja Dharamshi

In 2023, Dr. Dharamshi shared findings from a previous SSHRC-funded study via peer-reviewed articles and book chapters, including “A Lifetime of Experience: A Study on the Lives of Teacher Educators” for the International Encyclopedia of Education (4th edition, with Drs. Clare Kosnik and Lydia Menna) and “Exploring the Complexity of Embedding Social Justice into a Pedagogy of Literacy Teacher Education” (with Drs. Clare Kosnik and Lydia Menna) for the edited book Understanding a Pedagogy of Teacher Education: Contexts for Teaching and Learning About Your Educational Practice. Dr. Dharamshi also co-presented two papers at AERA Chicago with doctoral candidate Amrit Cojocaru on their scholarship, studying community-engaged teachers' developing practices and pedagogies.

Dr. Roger Frie

Roger Frie's latest edited book Culture, Politics and Race in the Making of Interpersonal Psychoanalysis (Routledge, 2022) was awarded the 2023 American Board & Academy of Psychoanalysis Book Prize. His new single-authored book Edge of Catastrophe: Erich Fromm, Fascism and the Holocaust is an urgent call for the present moment and will be published by Oxford University Press in July 2024. He is currently the 2023–2024 Visiting Scholar in Sociology at CUNY Graduate Center in New York.

Dr. Joel Heng Hartse

In 2023, I published my student-focused writing textbook TL;DR: A Very Brief Guide to Reading & Writing in University with UBC Press. Also during this busy year, I continued work on the PASS project that looks into how some international EAL students seek private paid academic help, and presented this research at the Canadian Association for Applied Linguistics, the Canadian Association for the Study of Discourse & Writing, the Canadian Symposium on Academic Integrity, the Research with International Students conference (virtually), and BC Academic Integrity Day. Finally, I co-edited the 2023 special issue of the TESL Canada Journal, "Second Language Writing in Canada" with Ismaeil Fazel and James Corcoran and was second author of one of the articles in the issue, "'Grandparents for the next generation': Building on Alister Cumming’s history of L2 writing in Canada."

Dr. Cher Hill

One of my 2023 community-based research projects involved the collaborative creation of a mural at an elementary school. This work began as a response to q̓ícə̓ y̓ Elder Rick Bailey's desire for educative signage about the past, present, and future of Katzie Slough. We took seven classes (grades K–7) out to the Slough and created opportunities for children to care for the land through stream clean-ups or the removal of invasive species. They learned about the Slough precontact and current environmental challenges from Elder Rick and created drawings based on their learning. These renderings were shared with máthxwi artist Carman McKay to inform the creation of a mural of the Slough through time. Through this research project, we disrupted the colonial production of everyday public spaces by inviting traces of the past to “haunt” the present and influence the future. During the reporting period, we presented different stages of this work at two international conferences (Hill, Bailey, & McKay, 2023a; 2023b).

Hill, C, *Bailey, R., & *McKay, C. (2023b). Educating for post-colonial futures: The q̓íc̓əy̓ Slough yesterday, today and tomorrow project. Paper presented at the Australian Association for Research in Education conference. Melbourne, Australia, November 26-30, 2023.

*Bailey R., Hill, C, *Whintors, N. & McTavish, R.  (2023). We are the Salmon Family:Inviting reciprocal and respectful pedagogical encounters with the Land. Paper presented at the Hawaii International Conference on Education. Honolulu, Hawaii, January 3-6, 2023.

Hill, C, & Bailey, R., & McKay, C. (2023a). Disrupting colonized spaces: The q̓íc̓əy̓ Slough yesterday, today and tomorrow project. Paper presented at the Hawaii International Conference on Education. Honolulu, Hawaii, January 3-6, 2023.

Dr. Gillian Judson

In spring 2023, Dr. Judson published Cultivating Imagination in Leadership: Transforming Schools and Communities with Teachers College Press (Gillian Judson and Meaghan Dougherty, co-editors). In the fall, Dr. Judson was awarded an SSHRC Connections Grant for the project “Cultivating Leadership: Leading Toward a Just Future.” This project expands her investigation of imagination’s role in educational leadership by focusing specifically on leadership that supports social and ecological justice. Continuing her research interest in imaginative pedagogies, she was pleased to publish “A Dirty Little Secret: Studying Imagination, Imaginatively, in a Leadership Education Graduate Program” in the Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning.

Dr. Jeannie Kerr

Dr. Kerr has a large research agenda with grants and collaborators in various Canadian locations. Her research primarily focuses on systemic inequalities in educational settings rooted in colonial history and contemporary colonial governance structures. Her scholarship in 2023 centred on funded research projects in various stages of development, including 1) educational opportunity and outcome informing Indigenous, racialized, and newcomer students' experiences in an economically segregated urban neighbourhood rooted in colonial history; 2) co-studying learning experiences of a film series produced by Dr. Amy Parent meant to educate the SFU community from the local nations' perspectives on the campuses that SFU occupies; 3) community-based research in three Northern Manitoba Cree communities in reclaiming Indigenous educational sovereignty in reserve settings; 4) studying the experience of Indigenous students in mandatory Indigenous education courses in teacher education in urban Winnipeg and Thunder Bay; and 5) curriculum revision in BC to support Indigenous educational sovereignty with local Vancouver partners. Dr. Kerr's research is predominantly supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, and she is grateful for the support of SFU for local projects and community-based projects in Manitoba. She was also very busy in 2023 presenting multiple sessions at the American Educational Research Association and the Canadian Society of the Study of Education.

Dr. Lilach Marom 

Dr. Marom is currently designing a longitudinal research project (Small SSHRC Explore) with five BC universities, focusing on the experiences of Punjabi international students transitioning from higher education to the job market. She is in the midst of data collection for a comparative study on the recertification of internationally educated teachers in Canada, Germany, and Iceland (SSHRC IDG).

Dr. Cristiano B. Moura

Dr. Moura was awarded an SSHRC Small Explore Grant to continue his studies on the potential for incorporating the cultural history of science in science education to foster students’ understanding of knowledge-making processes and their relationships with broader sociopolitical issues. This was the theme of two co-authored papers published in 2023 in the journals Science & Education and Cultural Studies of Science Education. Dr. Moura was also invited to the 5th International History, Philosophy and Science Teaching Latin American conference in August, in Porto Alegre, Brazil, to offer a short course on using the history of science in K–12 classrooms. In November, he gave a lecture at Stockholm University while visiting to collaborate with a local research team.

Dr. Inna Stepaniuk

Dr Stepaniuk published an article in collaboration with Drs. Elizabeth Kozleski (Stanford University) and William Proffitt (Montclair State University) in the Journal of Disability Policy Studies, examining disability policy in the context of intersectionality and contemporary injustices. Together with her collaborators, Dr. Stepaniuk argues for “a social disability policy that addresses quality of life, diversity in human nature, and the support systems that all individuals and classes of individuals need to lead fulfilling lives” (p. 219). In addition, Dr. Stepaniuk published a book chapter with her colleague Suman Rath (University of Memphis), offering a framework for policy and practice on moving from colonial engagement to establishing equitable family-school partnerships with culturally and linguistically diverse families of students with disabilities.

Dr. Zuzana Vasko

Looking toward gentler ways of relating to local ecologies, Dr. Vasko created a series of art installations collectively titled “This is Not a Sacrifice.” With this work, she was invited to be part of an exhibition called Lessons from a Living World at the ACT Art Gallery at Maple Ridge’s Arts Centre, with four other BC artists who explore our dependency on local ecosystems. Together with Drs. Heesoon Bai and Cary Campbell, Dr. Vasko also gave a presentation at the North American Association for Environmental Education Conference, titled “New Notions of Sacrifice: Invitations to Communal Response-ability.”

Dr. David Zandvliet

In 2023, I marked the second year of "Infusing Climate Education into the BC Curriculum,” a project funded by the Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions (PICS). This project received $99,000 over three years and will culminate in a revised framework for Environmental Learning endorsed by the Ministry of Education and Child Care. In addition to this project, I received $6,500 from the Academics Without Borders (AWB) program to conduct faculty development workshops in Indonesia. Lastly, I lead the development and implementation of a new field school in Arusha, Tanzania in partnership with the Faculty of Environment, which is part of a new MOU with the Age Khan University in East Africa.

Past Faculty Research Highlights