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Educational Research Units

The Faculty of Education’s educational research units strengthen links between researchers, and address critical issues in the field of education that have regional, national or international impacts.

Counselling and Career Development

This research unit brings together researchers and graduate students interested in counselling and career development. Its goal is to develop and disseminate new theoretical as well as practical knowledge. The issues studied by this unit are numerous and diversified. They can include career education curriculums, life transitions, violence in schools or intervention methods in helping relationships.

Visit the Educational Research Unit in Counselling and Career Development’s website for more details.

Measurement, Evaluation and Assessment Research Unit (MEA)

Marielle Simon (Faculty of Education), Renée Forgette-Giroux (Faculty of Education), Kadriye Ercikan (Faculty of Education, University of British Colombia)

The primary aim of this unit is to increasingly nurture all aspects of research related to the assessment of learner competencies. Research within the unit focuses particularly on assessment issues related to assessment within the classroom environment, to provincial, national, and international large-scale assessment programs, to e-learning, and to overarching methodological and modeling aspects of learning competencies that cut across domain-specific applications.

Multiple literacies: Reading the world, word and self

Diana Masny (Faculty of Education), Francis Bangou (Faculty of Education), Claire Maltais (Faculty of Education), Douglas Fleming (Faculty of Education) and Awad Ibrahim (Faculty of Education)

L’unité a comme objectif d’étudier les littératies et les enjeux sociaux et culturels en milieu minoritaire francophone tant bilingue que multiculturel par l’entremise de projets multidisciplinaires. De nombreuses perspectives sociétales signalent des pistes pour que chacune et chacun se construise une façon d’être dans le monde. L’une de ces perspectives, celle des littératies, présente une solution de rechange qui permet de voir et de lire le monde dans un milieu francophone minoritaire situé dans une société nationale/canadienne et internationale.

Toute personne qui a une appartenance à la communauté de langue française en milieu minoritaire doit profiter d’une éducation en langue française de qualité. Afin d’atteindre cet objectif, il est essentiel de mettre en place les conditions critiques de l’apprentissage de qualité tant pour les adultes que pour les enfants. Ces conditions se réalisent par l’entremise des littératies multiples, soit la littératie personnelles, la littératie communautaire, la littératie scolaire et la littératie critique.

Visit the Educational Research Unit in Multiple Literacies’ website for more details.

A School For All

Phyllis Dalley (Faculté d’éducation), Nathalie Bélanger (Faculté d’éducation), Caroline Andrew (Faculté d’éducation)

L’unité de recherche Une école pour tous s’inscrit dans le courant de la sociologie de l’éducation et de la démocratisation du savoir scolaire. Elle s’interroge sur les droits de tout apprenant face à l’éducation. Bien que l’accès aux établissements éducatifs soit dorénavant acquis, il semble subsister des inégalités sur le plan des expériences scolaires (Dubet & Martuccelli, 1996). En d’autres termes, nous cherchons à comprendre pourquoi et comment certains élèves profitent de leur scolarisation, tandis que d’autres se retrouvent en position marginale.

L’unité s’intéresse aux processus éducatifs et sociaux qui habitent le quotidien de l’école et de la société. Les processus d’inclusion/d’exclusion se déploient à travers les routines scolaires et conventions sociales rarement remises en question. Nous considérons que l’école et la société sont en relations dialogique, l’une influençant l’autre par un mouvement réflexif (Giddens, 1984). Comprendre l’inégalité d’accès au savoir nécessite donc une compréhension des réalités sociales plus larges. Celles-ci peuvent être objectives (démographiques, socio-économiques) ou symboliques (relations de pouvoir, normes sociales, savoirs et identités). Afin d’appréhender cet objet dans toute son ampleur, l’unité Une école pour tous réunie une équipe multidisciplinaire de professeures chercheures, d’assistant/es de recherche et de partenaires du milieu associatif et communautaire.

The Changing Face of Adult and Workplace Learning

Maurice Taylor (Faculty of Education), Claire Duchesne (Faculty of Education), Christina De Simone (Faculty of Education), Swee Goh, (Telfer School of Management), Karen Evans (Unversity of London, Institute of Education), Angus McMurty

The area of Adult and Workplace Learning has been gaining momentum with both academic and professional audiences. In response to increased public attention on this topic, an ERU has been developed to bring together researchers, graduate students and community practitioners. The thrust of the unit is to examine questions that are pivotal to formal and informal learning for a multiplicity of adult learner populations. It is also interested in the socio, economic and political contexts from which adult learning emanates. Forming partnerships with a wide range of scholars and professional associations, a research program has been developed that offers opportunities for networking, the recruitment of graduate students, proposal development for external funding and scholarly dissemination. Aligned with the strategic plan of the Faculty of Education and the University Vision 2010, this ERU encourages dialogue that links theory with practice in adult and workplace learning.

The mission of this Educational Research Unit is to bring together established researchers and graduate students to develop scholarly events and publications in the domain area of adult and workplace learning.

It intends to:

1. Develop a program of research in the area of adult and workplace learning;
2. Bring together graduate students and provide training opportunities for building a solid research foundation in adult and workplace learning;
3. Search for external founding to finance research projects in adult and workplace learning;
4. Disseminate research findings from the projects to professional organizations and community groups who are interested in adult and workplace learning;
5. Initiate leadership on behalf of the Faculty of Education through the various activities related to adult and workplace learning;
6. Develop partnerships in collaboration with professional groups in French and English to further the research agenda in adult and workplace learning.

Visit the Educational Research Unit The Changing Face of Adult and Workplace Learning’s website for more details.

Mathematics

Richard Barwell (Faculty of Education), Barbara Graves (Faculty of Education), Christine Suurtamm (Faculty of Education), Georges Touma (Faculty of Education)

The Mathematics Educational Research Unit brings together a group of internationally active researchers in mathematics education to work on a range of current issues, including:

• problems and problem solving in mathematics
• mathematical modelling
• integration of mathematics and science
• mathematical literacies
• mathematics teacher knowledge and practice
• learning and teaching mathematics in multilingual settings (e.g. ESL, immersion etc.)
• mathematics classroom discourse and interaction
• assessment in mathematics
• design research in mathematics education

Visit the Mathematics Educational Research Unit’s website for more details.