Faculty of Education News Bulletin

Top Stories

• Faculty launches new Five-Year Strategic Plan (2023 – 2027) – Dean Robert Savage is delighted to announce the launch of the Faculty of Education’s new Five-Year Strategic Plan (2023-2027).  The plan, which was ratified in December, sets the vision and direction of the Faculty for the coming years and is the result of the Faculty’s sustained collective activity and core shared social justice values and goals of equity, diversity, inclusion, and decolonization. Learn more

• Congress 2023 – The Faculty of Education’s Congress Working Group is pleased to present four Faculty-led events for Congress 2023. Learn more and register. In addition to these four events, faculty members and graduate students will also be presenting a number of sessions. Learn more

• Call for volunteers for Congress 2023 – We are looking for people who are interested in contributing to making this a great experience for all CSSE attendees.  If you are available to contribute at least 2 conference days (for 4-hour blocks) you could join in on this great experience.
  
  As a volunteer you will:
  
  Contribute to this important conference
  Add to your professional knowledge
  Meet new people from around Canada
  Be eligible to attend CSSE sessions for free
  Get a volunteer T-shirt
  Receive a personalized letter indicating your volunteer contribution to CSSE
  
  To apply to volunteer please click here. For specific questions please email Aisha Patel at: aispat@yorku.ca

• BA Educational Studies students produce educational videos on sustainability – Bachelor of Arts Educational Studies program students on the required practicum capstone course, joined forces with the UNESCO Chair in Reorienting Education towards Sustainability to create educational videos covering current global education themes. Read more

• Get to know our faculty: Rachel Silver – This month’s ‘Get to know our faculty’ profile features assistant professor Rachel Silver whose interdisciplinary research draws insight from critical development studies; refugee and forced migration studies; and gender, feminist and women’s studies. Learn more

• Family creates award to honour a teacher who transformed lives – For Savitri Ahuja, educating others was much more than a personal passion and rewarding career. Over the many decades she practiced in her birth country of India and adopted country of Canada, teaching was a compassionate act of service to humanity, her way to empower others to improve their circumstances and achieve their dreams. Read story

• Homelessness Learning Hub continues improving, lives, training – Four years after its launch, the Homelessness Learning Hub (HLHub) is evolving to continue becoming an essential resource across Canada to the homeless-serving sector. Read more

• York staff, faculty recognised for positive change in accessibility – What does accessibility look like in the classroom? When this question was posed to course director Lorin Schwarz, he answered “inclusion plus access.” Read story

• York UNESCO Chair Newsletter May 2023 – The May 2023 issue of the York UNESCO Chair Newsletter is now available. Read issue

New Publications

• Assistant professor Vidya Shah & co-author Jeewan Chanicka have a new article titled “Brown Identities, Complicities and Complexities: Towards Black-Brown Solidarities” in the Journal of Critical Race Inquiry. Vol. 10 No. 1

• Dean Robert Savage and co-authors Rauno Parrila, Tomohiro Inoue, Kristy Dunn and George Gergiou have a new article titled “Connecting teachers’ language knowledge, perceived ability and instructional practices to Grade 1 students’ literacy outcomes” in the Journal of Reading and Writing.

• Associate professor Qiang Zha and co-authors Wenqin Shen and Chao Liu have a new paper titled “From rejection to acceptance: the institutionalization of adopting university ranking outcomes as policy and strategic tools in China since the 1980s” in Policy Reviews in Higher Education

• Associate professor Qiang Zha and co-authors Shuangmiao Han and Jing Xie have a new article titled “Understanding Chinese Universities’ Strategic Response to the “Double First-class” Policy and the Potential Outcome on Higher Education Diversity: An Exploratory Study” in Studies in Higher Education.

In Case You Missed It…

• On April 18^th the Toronto Catholic District School Board’s Equity, Diversity, Indigenous Education & Community Relations department hosted a virtual panel discussion event with Jean Augustine Chair in Education, Community and Diaspora, Carl James titled “Reimagining Schooling and Learning for Black Students: Where do we go from here?”. Watch video

In the Media

• ‘The optics are terrible’: Toronto police criticized over senior officer’s role as head of internal discipline – Carl James, the Jean Augustine Chair in Education, Community and Diaspora at York University, weighs in on the appointment of a senior officer to lead internal investigations at Toronto Police Services despite a career that includes the on-duty shooting deaths of two Black men. “Unless that culture shifts and different questions, different programs and different practices are taken up … we’re going to have the same reproduction over and over again,” said James. Read article in the March 2 issue of the Toronto Star.

News from the York Community

• York launches new Decolonizing, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Strategy – The DEDI Strategy provides a lens on the University’s past, present and future, allowing it to focus clearly on the efforts and resources needed to drive positive change. Explore the strategy

• Join the May 17 Fireside Chat to learn about York’s DEDI Strategy – Participate in the Fireside Chat on the Decolonizing, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (DEDI) Strategy to learn more about how to engage in DEDI work at York University. Register for the event

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