Completed Research and Projects
Enacting Learning: An Arts-Informed Inquiry with the Bay Area Artists for Women's Art (BAAWA) (2000-2009, published 2010, Saarbrücken, Germany: Lambert )
Pam Patterson, Associate Scholar
Women are rarely taught to reveal female experiences in art, use women's materials, or apply feminist theory. There is little significant research on how women learn or create learning communities. Arts informed research provides more discerning tools for a complex study of this. This inquiry engages with one educational community: The Bay Area Artists for Women's Art (BAAWA). The inquirer/learner's authorial voice enlivens this discussion with complementary conversations.
These address personal/public assumptions, and feminist and art education research and theories. Grounding this are a literature study, a participant research study as notated performance script, and an exhibition. The relationship and specificity of these modalities reveal women's art learning as curricking as understood from, and applied beyond, BAAWA. This research is multi layered, open, and aesthetic, stressing the particular needs and practices of contemporary North American women artists. It explicates learning in community and articulates innovative research strategies/practices relevant to curriculum/arts researchers and planners, educators, and art practitioners developing an inclusive postmodern art education.
Anti-Globalization and the Global Feminist Movement (2005-2009)
Angela Miles, Associate, Professor, and former Head of the CWSE, Cross-Appointed from Adult Education and Counselling Psychology Department
This SSHRC-funded qualitative longitudinal study examines the perceptions of feminists who are active globally, on the relationship of the global women’s movement to the ‘anti-globalization movement.’ These movements represent the two broadest and most diverse cases of achieved globalized practice emerging in response to both the ravages of triumphant neo-liberal patriarchy and the fresh opportunities for global connection and communication. The relationship between them as multi-sectoral movements will be a crucial factor determining the shape, nature and extent of the new transnational political capacities emerging in this period. This study of feminists’ understanding of the relationship of the anti-globalization movement to the better established, more multi-faceted and visionary global women’s movement addresses this crucial question.
Leadership of Difference: Women in the African Canadian Diaspora
Marilyn Johncilla (PhD., Toronto), CWSE Associate Scholar
Leadership of difference is best regarded as a study that examines and honors African Canadian women in leadership and their use of power and empowerment of indigenous knowledge literacy within the Black grassroots community, organizations and workplaces. Although this study is long overdue, it however claims there is an empowerment relationship to memory, spirituality and indigenous knowledge literacy in the everyday experience of African Canadian women’s leadership. In making sense of indigenous knowledge, it is the resistance, transformative, local, folk and traditional ways of knowing, culturally passed down from one generation to the next. A more extensive understanding of indigenous knowledge takes place within discussions of the paper as it develops. The study’s anti-colonial inclusive theoretical framework envisions resistance of race, gender and class while delegitimizing all too often race-neutral theorizing of leadership.
Educational Campaign to Combat Date and Acquaintance Rape on College and University Campuses
This project was coordinated by CWSE and involved feminist researchers from OISE, Glendon College (York University) and Seneca College. The team developed a set of English- and French-language materials which include pamphlets, booklets, posters, bibliographies, resource lists and training manuals. Copies of the materials are available from CWSE.
A Feminist Critique of Schooling
This SSHRC funded study undertook a critical appraisal of schooling, drawing on the experience and knowledge of female students, teachers and administrators. Focus group methods of interviewing were used. The results are now available in a CWSE monograph, Girls and Schooling: Their Own Critique.
Developing Educational Resources on Sexual Harassment in Elementary Schools
The purpose of this project was to document the incidence of sexual harassment in elementary schools and develop educational resources for educators who want to deal with this problem. It built on work conducted in Ontario secondary schools which resulted in the publication of a ground-breaking report on the effects of sexual harassment on the education of high school girls (Sexual Harassment: We Can Do Something About It!, Staton and Larkin, 1993.) Project staff have developed a kit -- Harassment Hurts: Sex-Role Stereotyping, Sexism and Sexual Harassment for elementary school students which includes a facilitator's guide, classroom activities, print and visual resources as well as a list of additional resources.
Heterosexual Dating Violence: Implications for the Educational Achievement of Female High School Students -- A Pilot Study
The purpose of this project, funded by the MET Transfer Grant, was to document the prevalence of heterosexual dating violence and its impact on the educational achievement of female high school students and to analyze this pilot information to prepare for a future cross-Ontario study to develop materials on dating violence for high schools. Documentation took place using a combination of questionnaires and focus groups with a culturally diverse sample of senior female students from a school in which educators were sensitive to the issue of heterosexual dating violence.The researchers are seeking further funding to expand the project to all Ontario School Boards with a view to developing an educational kit on dating violence.
Pre-Service Education in Gender Equity: Appraising Needs and Identifying Exemplary Practices
This project, funded by the MET Transfer Grant, was designed to assist faculties of education in developing and enhancing their pre-service programs in gender-equitable teaching. The research involved focus group interviews with groups of student teachers as they moved through their theory courses and practice-teaching assignments. The focus groups explored, from the students' perspectives, how gender issues and gender-fair teaching strategies were taken up in teachers' professional training, identifying exemplary practices and highlighting areas of need. For a report on this work see "Where Are the Girls and Women? Pre-Service Education in Gender Equity," Resources for Feminist Research/ Documentation sur la recherche féministe, Vol. 24, No. 3&4, 1997.
Redesigning Professional Education for Gender Equitable Schooling
This two year SSHRC funded project built on and extended the research undertaken for the "Pre-Service Education in Gender Equity" project. It is designed to respecify and refocus women's issues in education as practical issues for pre-service training for teachers by: 1) creating a dialogue between what teachers and students in faculties of education know about the situation; 2) identifying where gains and achievements can be recognized and describing these so that they can be shared across regional barriers; 3) getting a sense of what the present situation is as a basis for evaluating future progress. The approach used in this research involved bringing together groups of students and faculty members in faculties of education in different regions of Canada to engage in focussed discussions of the problems, successes, and possibilities for making changes. The aim of this project was not simply to learn about an existing situation and its regional variations but to formulate policy guidelines which faculties of education could use in redesigning professional education for gender equitable schooling. The report on this work, Gender Equity and the Professional Education of Teachers: a critical review, is available from CWSE.
Women and Professional Education
This SSHRC funded project brought together a cross-Canada interdisciplinary group of scholars. The group explored, collaboratively, the interface between women's access to, experience of, and work in the professions on the one hand, and the structures and cultures of higher education, on the other, as these have changed over time and continue to change today. A collection of essays based on this work, Challenging Professions: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on Women's Professional Work has been published by the University of Toronto Press, Spring 1999. Professions examined include medicine, physics, nursing, teaching, pharmacy, social work, forestry, music composition, religion, missionary work, dietetics, evangelism and accounting. A bibliography, Women and the Professions, is available in the CWSE Publications Series.
Professional Women Historians in Canada
The goal of this SSHRC funded research was to examine the careers and writings of Canadian women historians prior to the new women's history movement which emerged in Canada in the early 1970s. The lives and work of these women -- as academics, archivists, librarians, high school teachers, amateur historians C was documented within the context of their family background and education. This work was also undertaken in the context of a growing literature on the history of women and higher education and women in the professions. Resulting from this research , the book, Creating Historical Memory: English Canadian Women and the Work of History with Beverly Boutilier and Alison Prentice as editors was published by the University of British Columbia Press, Vancouver, in 1997
English Language Training Packages on Violence for Elementary Teachers
These packages have been developed in response to the needs identified by the Ministry of Education for materials that will assist elementary teachers (K-Grade 6) in their efforts to promote students' development of skills and knowledge in the area of violence prevention. The intended outcomes are also designed to support the Violence Against Women and the Violence Free Schools Initiatives.
The design and development of the packages was led by the Centre for Women's Studies in Education in partnership with the Equity Studies Centre of the Toronto District School Board (Toronto Division) and Education Wife Assault.
The packages consist of nine workshops. These are: 1) Introduction 2) Sexism and Other Forms of Discrimination; 3) Sexual Harassment; 4) Working with Boys to End Violence; 5) Media Violence; 6) Child Abuse; 7) Witnessing of Woman Abuse; 8) Conflict Resolution; 9) Creating Safe Schools. Each workshop includes background information pieces, professional development activities and strategies to use when incidents of violence arise, and annotated listings of print and audio-visual resources. The materials can be workshopped in blocks of time ranging from two hours to two days.
An Advisory Group of teachers and educational personnel from across Ontario assisted in the design and evaluation of all materials.
BAITWOrM Network (Biology as if the World Mattered)
This SSHRC funded project exists to promote the goals of conducting teaching and research "as if the world mattered," beginning with the life sciences, defined as including social science. The network consists of academics in the natural and social sciences, women's studies and health professions who are committed to an anti-sexist, anti-racist, reflexive and interdisciplinary "science" which celebrates diversity and emancipatory local initiatives as advocated in the writings of Sandra Harding and Vandan Shiva.
Achieving Curriculum Consistency: The Case of Family Studies in Ontario Schools
This Ministry of Education funded project is designed to learn from practising family studies teachers how they are implementing the new Family Studies curriculum guidelines in their classrooms. It involves interviews with teachers to examine topics such as the difficulties they are encountering, the kinds of support and consultation available to them, and how they are adapting the curriculum objectives to the realities of the classroom.
Costa Rica-Toronto Violence Prevention Project
As part of this ongoing CIDA funded project the Centre, along with The Institute for Women's Studies and Gender Studies (IWSGS), is involved in developing and providing training workshops in gender inclusivity at the post-secondary level. A series of workshops focusing on gender inclusive research and curriculum development, gender sensitive pedagogy, and gender inclusive academic environments, have taken place at the University of Costa Rica in San Jose and consultations continue to be provided via video-conferencing. Additional workshops and consultations took place in 2002 and 2003.
Growing Up Jewish, Female and Canadian: A Longitudinal Study of Girls Aged 10-14
Nora Gold, Associate Researcher at CWSE
In this research, funded by SSHRC, Dr. Nora Gold followed 14 Toronto Jewish girls over a five-year period, starting at age 10 and ending at age 14. This study had two objectives: To explore the everyday experience of growing up Jewish, female and Canadian, and to examine over time Canadian Jewish girls’ encounters with antisemitism and sexism, and how these relate to these girls’ overall well-being. This research took a feminist, qualitative, longitudinal approach, and found that the girls in this study were much more concerned about, and troubled by, antisemitism than by sexism. In the final year of the study, five of these girls were filmed, resulting in the short film, Jewish Girl Power, which can be viewed on Gold’s website (www.noragold.com).