DEAN'S MESSAGE: FEBRUARY 2008

The new year has brought cold weather to Toronto, but heat to local educational politics. The Toronto School District’s decision to start an Africentric school, and the Falconer report on school safety have engaged OISE students and faculty, as well as the public, the media, the school board and the provincial government.

Educational research is germane to the arguments being made on every side, although it provides no clear answers to the burning questions that are being asked. Will an Africentric school improve the achievement of black students? What are the best ways to ensure a safe environment in secondary schools? Despite the fact that scholars have been investigating these questions for years, it is remarkable how little the existing scholarship is invoked in current debates. 

There are a variety of reasons why this might be. We in the academy are not good enough at disseminating our research in digestible chunks. The beliefs and ideologies that lie behind these debates overshadow the factual claims that are made. There is not enough local research, and research from other jurisdictions is discounted as irrelevant. The networks between policy makers, journalists and researchers are not strong enough. Whatever the reasons, we need to improve our impact, and are dedicating some resources to doing so.

OISE is making some concerted efforts to improve the availability of our research knowledge to the broader education community, particularly through our website.  We are increasing the focus on the ‘issues that matter' section of our redesigned site to feature some of the important work we do, with a focus on how it matters to schools and to the broader community.  Ben Levin's CRC team is also developing a number of strategies to improve research communication, including working with some of the very strong efforts already in place in some of our research projects.  I strongly encourage faculty with web pages to make their own work - papers, reports, etc - freely available as well. You will be hearing more on all these fronts in the near future.

Graduate studies remain the best way to discover how exposure to scholarship and debate about new ideas can inform educational practice. Although our posted application dates are past, many of our graduate programs are still accepting applications for 2008/9. More details here.

Sincerely,