Awards
2024 CATE Recognition Awards for Theses and Dissertations on Teacher Education
Illuminating Beginning Teachers’ Ways of Being and Thinking to Create Decolonizing and Indigenizing Learning Spaces
Jody defended her dissertation on June 30, 2023, for a PhD in Interdisciplinary Graduate Studies at University of British Columbia Okanagan. She is motivated by respectful, relational collaboration with local Peoples to promote Truth and to support all children and adolescents in facing environmental and social complexities moving forward. Understanding that local (Syilx) Indigenous knowledge and pedagogy is held in language and story, and supports life generativity and renewal, provides the context of Jody’s study. She finds that pre-service teachers possess a strong awareness of their responsibility to de/uncolonize and Indigenize. Her study gives language to beginning teachers’ thought/action processes as they go through a certain transformation. An educator and scholar for 40 years on the lands of the nêhiyawak, Anihšināpēk, Dakota, Lakota, Nakoda, and Métis (Treaty 4); the Syilx Okanagan Nation; and the Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), Úxwumixw (Lil’wat), and St’át’y’emc Nations, Jody understands supporting pre-service teachers in community as vital to the future of Mother Earth.
Emergency Remote Teaching and Digital Technology Usage in K-12 Teacher Practice
Dr. Amber Hartwell (she/her) is a field advisor in the Okanagan School of Education at UBC-Okanagan. Her passions and research interests stem from 19 years of classroom experience in K-12 Canadian contexts, Dr. Hartwell completed her EdD in Learning Sciences focusing on the impact of ERT on digital technology use in K-12 teacher practice from the University of Calgary. Using case study research, Dr. Hartwell collected data from an online questionnaire, semi structured interviews, a document review, and analytic memos. Findings were analyzed, interpreted, and organized using Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT). Her research adds new knowledge about digital technology use in K-12 teacher practice, drivers of digital technology change, and benefits and challenges emerging from ERT during COVID-19. Dr.
Hartwell’s research areas include technology-enhanced learning, digital pedagogy, online learning, and technology and change.
The Use of Digital Technologies by Teachers in Their Pedagogical Practice and the Experiences and Conditions that Enable Their Work: A Case Study
Thiago Hinkel has just completed his PhD in Education with the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Victoria. His research interests include digital literacies and pedagogical hacking in the field of teacher education. Thiago has been an educator for over twenty years, initially as an EAL teacher is his home country of Brazil and more recently as a sessional instructor at UVic. Thiago has benefitted from using computers in his own learning trajectory and is today enthusiastic about exploring creative and critical uses of digital technologies in education.
Supporting Teachers’ Professional Learning through Collaborative Inquiry: A Case Study
Kimberley MacNeil is a Postdoctoral Fellow in Research and Teaching at the University of British Columbia, Faculty of Education. Her interests are centered on enhancing all students’ capacities to feel, and know how to be, successful in the learning opportunities they take up. To further these goals, she became interested in supporting teachers’ learning in their work to empower students as self-regulating learners. Through her graduate studies and dissertation work, she has advanced understanding about how to design and facilitate professional learning that fosters educators’ opportunities to enact agency for their learning, make research-theory to practice connections, and enact adaptive expertise to impact students in their classrooms. Currently, she is partnering with networks of scholars and educators who are similarly interested in empowering student learners.
Evoking A Soundscape: Inquiring Into Musician-Music Teachers’ Narratives
Dr. Anneke Britt McCabe is a Sessional Instructor in Brock University’s Faculty of Education, in St. Catharines, Ontario. Upon graduating, Dr. McCabe’s research on inquiring into and exploring the life-long journey of musician-music teachers, received a dissertation award from Brock University. Over the course of Dr. McCabe’s 21-year teaching career, she has directed choirs, concert bands, and musical groups in a variety of Ontario public elementary schools, in Canada. Anneke appreciates the art of wearing different hats in her field and is currently a Vice Principal in the Upper Grand District School Board. Anneke’s new album: “Evoking A Soundscape” (2023), shares a reflective, musical accompaniment to her thesis, and can be found on all streaming platforms (E.g., iTunes, Spotify, YouTube). This spring she will be presenting her research at a variety of conferences including the 2024 Canadian Society for the Study of Education, ISME 2024, and the 9th International Conference of Narrative Inquiry in Music Education (NIME9).
Re-Imagining Professional Development for Social and Emotional Learning: A Case Study
Dr. Miriam Miller (she, her) is a learner, teacher-educator, researcher, and storyteller, committed to working alongside educators to embed social and emotional learning (SEL) and well-being into their practice. Miriam lives and works on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded lands of the Musqueam, Tsleil-Waututh and Squamish Coast Salish Peoples.
Miriam is an adjunct professor at the University of British Columbia (UBC) and a researcher with UBC’s Social, Emotional, and Educational Development lab. Miriam is a Co-Director of Content and Programming at LiberatED, an organization takes a liberatory approach to SEL that centers racial justice and healing. Miriam is a former senior coach and trainer with the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence at Yale University.
Miriam completed her Doctor of Philosophy at the University of British Columbia. Her research explores the role collaborative inquiry-based professional development plays in teachers implementing SEL practices beyond the conventions of SEL programs.
The Influence of Co-teaching on Marginalized Elementary Students’ Mathematics Performance
Dr. L. R. Ruth Papoff (she/her) is currently the Acting Principal of an elementary school in Calgary, Alberta. Ruth lives, works, and plays on the Treaty 7 region of Southern Alberta. She recently completed her Doctorate of Education with the University of Calgary in the Learning Sciences. Her research interests focus on the field of co-teaching and supporting marginalized students through authentic assessment in mathematics. Ruth achieved her Master of Education from the University of Calgary in leading and teaching in high-poverty schools. She has worked for over 15 years in Education serving inner-city communities, having taught from kindergarten through to grade 12 students. Ruth loves spending time outside on the land with her two active little people. She is passionate about supporting diverse students in inclusive classrooms, student advocacy, and accessing equitable learning opportunities and resources for all learners.
Honouring Wounds and Healing Forward: Teacher Health in Relation to the COVID-19 Pandemic
Lisa M. Taylor, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Health and Physical Education within the Faculty of Health, Community and Education at Mount Royal University. She has instructed undergraduate- and graduate-level courses at several Canadian universities and enjoyed eight years as a physical and health education specialist in Alberta K–12 schools. Lisa recently completed her PhD at the Werklund School of Education, University of Calgary, specializing in the Learning Sciences. Her interpretive research used a complexity thinking lens to explore teachers’ experiences of health in relation to the pandemic. Her findings identify the importance of honoring teachers’ struggles, recognizing the complexity teachers experience regarding health specific to context, and the opportunities possible through health promotion and using a systems approach to better support the health of teachers (in-service and pre-service) moving forward.
Implementing Translanguaging in an English As a Second Language Continuing Education Program: A Multiple Case Study on Teachers’ Perspectives and Challenges
Dr. Wales Wong recently completed her PhD at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto in the Language and Literacies Education program. She began her teaching career as a secondary school teacher in Ontario and then, a decade ago, shifted to working with adults in a continuing education program. The unique demands of the program and the urgent need to support newcomers motivated Wales to seek culturally responsive and inclusive practices that value language learners’ assets. Drawn to the possibilities of translanguaging, her dissertation focuses on how three Ontario ESL teachers engaged in pedagogical practices that support the use of their adult students’ languages in the classroom. Her collaboration with the teacher participants acted as praxis for context-specific professional development, underscoring the effectiveness of researcher-teacher collaboration as part of professional development. Currently, she continues her work on translanguaging pedagogies with plurilingual learners in continuing education programs.
Musicking for Social Change: Music Educators’ Perceptions of Social Justice Education
Justin D. Fraser is an educator, activist, musician, and researcher on Treaty 1 Territory, Winnipeg, Manitoba. Drawing on critical, poststructural, and anti-colonial perspectives, his research interests include (popular) music education, social justice education, and the impacts of neoliberal education reforms on public education. His master’s thesis—recently completed in the Department of Curriculum, Teaching, and Learning at the University of Manitoba—critically examines the ways in which secondary school music educators perceive, conceptualize, and understand social justice education. Fraser’s study demonstrates the need for music educators and researchers to confront the hegemony of colonial musics and musical epistemologies as well as challenge normalized liberal discourses of social justice in pursuit of more inclusive, equitable, and just ways of engaging in music education. Fraser is the recipient of the Canadian Music Educators’ Association Builders Award for Newer Teachers and is a proud public school music educator currently teaching Grade 7-12 Guitar.
How High School Teachers in Victoria, BC Are Implementing British Columbia’s New Assessment Framework in Their Classrooms
Ariel U’Chong Muirhead is a high school teacher and recently defended her Master of Arts thesis in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Victoria. Ariel is passionate about classroom assessment practices, an interest that stems from her unique experience teaching high school English and Science and the discomfort she felt with the dichotomy around how these fields have been traditionally assessed. In response to the implementation of a new standards-based provincial assessment framework in British Columbia as of September 2023, Ariel’s multiple case study research explores how some high school teachers in Victoria, BC had already began making these pedagogical and practical shifts in their classrooms. The experiences, successes, and challenges of the participants are of use not only to educators around the province who are implementing similar changes, but also to school administration, districts, and educational partners who are supporting these teachers. Her research explores the nature of authentic and student-centered assessment and highlights the importance of the alignment of teachers’ assessment philosophies with their classroom assessment practices.
Exploring the Impacts of Media Use in the Classroom and Trauma
Madison Westley is an EdD student in the Mitch and Leslie Frazer Faculty of Education at Ontario Tech University and a research assistant in the Mental Health in the Digital Age Lab. Madison recently completed her MA (Education) thesis at Ontario Tech, in which she explored experiences of trauma and media in the classroom to identify trauma-informed care (TIC) recommendations when using media as a pedagogical tool in K-post-secondary education. Her doctoral research expands upon trauma-informed technology use and looks at a community-based approach to TIC and student wellbeing.
Madison was a secondary school teacher and worked in community-based programming with children, youth and families in various settings before starting her doctoral studies. She also worked in post-secondary as a student success coordinator, where she focused on cultivating students’ leadership skills. Madison is passionate about youth mental health, digital pedagogies, accessible and inclusive online learning, and TIC in education.
Please click on the links below to consult the previous Award winners.
Previous award winners for contributions to research in teacher education:
2016 – Deborah Britzman
2015 – Jean Clandinin
2014 – Peter Grimmett
2013 – not awarded
2012 – Tom Russell – inaugural winner
2024 CATE Recognition Awards for Theses and Dissertations on Teacher Education
Attention graduate student supervisors: Do you have a graduate student conducting research on a topic relevant to teacher education who will have defended their thesis or dissertation between June 1, 2023 and May 31, 2024? If so, please encourage that student to review the linked criteria and APPLY for the CATE Recognition Awards for Theses and Dissertations on Teacher Education. As supervisor, you will be required to submit a letter of recommendation to accompany the student’s application. The supervisors of successful applicants are also invited to briefly discuss the significance of the work and offer congratulations as part of the awards presentation if you are able to attend.
Submissions are due Monday, April 1, 2024. Inquiries and submissions to be sent to CATE Past-President, Cathryn Smith smithc@brandonu.ca
Click here for more information about the Awards for Theses and Dissertations on Teacher Education.
Click here for more information about the Submission form.