Ruth Wells Sandwell
Ph.D. (Simon Fraser University)
Associate Professor
rsandwell@oise.utoronto.ca
(P) 416-978-1216
Teaching and Research Interests
Her teaching and research interests are in Canadian history (of education, rural society and the family) and the teaching of history, and broadly reflect the importance of studies in the humanities in general, and history in particular, to theories and practices of education.
Dr. Sandwell is the Co-Director of The Great Unsolved Mysteries in Canadian History Project, with Dr. John Lutz (University of Victoria) and Dr. Peter Gossage (Concordia University). The site won the 2008 Pierre Berton Award for the best work in Canadian Public History, and the American 2008 MERLOT (Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching) “History Classic” award for the history education.As the Educational Director of that project, she worked with OISE students and faculty, teachers from across the country, and with The Crticial Thinking Consortium, to write and oversee the creation of the many and varied Teachers’ Support materials on the site.
She was founding co-director of The History Education Network/ Histoire et Éducation en Réseau (THEN/HiER) Canada’s first ever national organization whose purpose is to bring together historians, history educators, history teachers and public historians from across the country to improve history education through more research-informed teaching, and more teaching-informed research. This organization, for which Dr. Sandwell is now a member of the Executive Committee, received major SSHRC funding in 2008 to sustain and develop this network over seven years.
More specifically, her interests focus on
More specifically, her interests focus on
- teaching history using primary documents
- developing discipline-based historical thinking in students and student teachers
- understanding changes in the meaning and purposes of history education in Canadian history
- understanding the relationship between family, the educational state, and the Canadian economy in nineteenth and twentieth century Canada
- exploring the growth of liberalism in nineteenth and twentieth century Canada
- and most recently, the social history of fossil fuels: exploring the massive public education campaign and changes in household behaviour that accompanied Canadians’ change from self-supporting energy systems in their homes (mainly wood) to the collectivities and mass consumption of energy from the grid.
Selected Publications:
“History as Experiment: Microhistory and Environmental History,” Alan McEachern and William Turkel, eds., Method and Meaning in Canadian Environmental History (Toronto: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2008).
“Missing Canadians: Reclaiming the A-Liberal Past” Jean-François Constant and Michel Ducharme, eds. Liberalism and Hegemony: Debating the Canadian Liberal Revolution (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, forthcoming 2008).
“The Internal Divide: Historians and their Teaching” in Mordechai Gordon, Thomas V. O’Brien, eds., Bridging Theory and Practice In Teacher Education (Sense Publishers, The Netherlands, 2007), 17-30. [ Volume 12 of Bold Visions in Educational Research, Series Editors Kenneth Tobin, City University of New York, and Joe Kincheloe, McGill University.]
Ruth W. Sandwell, ed. To The Past: History Education, Public Memory and Citizenship Education in Canada, (Toronto, University of Toronto Press: October: 2006).
“Dreaming of the Princess: Love, Subversion, and the Rituals of Empire in British Columbia, 1882,” Colin Coates, ed., Majesty in Canada (Hamilton: Dundurn Press, March 2006).
“Missing Canadians: Reclaiming the A-Liberal Past” Jean-François Constant and Michel Ducharme, eds. Liberalism and Hegemony: Debating the Canadian Liberal Revolution (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, forthcoming 2008).
“The Internal Divide: Historians and their Teaching” in Mordechai Gordon, Thomas V. O’Brien, eds., Bridging Theory and Practice In Teacher Education (Sense Publishers, The Netherlands, 2007), 17-30. [ Volume 12 of Bold Visions in Educational Research, Series Editors Kenneth Tobin, City University of New York, and Joe Kincheloe, McGill University.]
Ruth W. Sandwell, ed. To The Past: History Education, Public Memory and Citizenship Education in Canada, (Toronto, University of Toronto Press: October: 2006).
“Dreaming of the Princess: Love, Subversion, and the Rituals of Empire in British Columbia, 1882,” Colin Coates, ed., Majesty in Canada (Hamilton: Dundurn Press, March 2006).
Professional Background
Ruth W. Sandwell received her BA from Carleton University in English Literature in 1979, and her Masters degree from the University of Victoria in history in 1981. After working for some years as an archivist, public historian and mother, she returned to university in 1991, completing her doctoral thesis, a microhistory of Saltspring Island, British Columbia, at Simon Fraser University in 1998, which was published in 2005 as Contesting Rural Space: Land Policy and the Practices of Settlement, Saltspring Island, British Columbia, 1859-91, Kingston and Montreal,McGill-Queen’s University Press. In 1997, with co-director John Lutz, she launched Who Killed William Robinson? a history education site which was expanded in 2003 into the award winning Great Unsolved Mysteries in Canadian History Project (www.canadianmysteries.ca), a pan-Canadian collaborative project that created twelve on-line archives and educational support materials relating to a particular mystery from Canada’s past. She is Co-director and Educational Director of the project. She was founding co-director of The History Education Network/ Histoire et Éducation en Réseau (THEN/HiER) in 2005, a national organization whose purpose is to bring together historians, history educators, history teachers and public historians from across the country to improve history education through more research-informed teaching, and more teaching-informed research. This organization, for which Dr. Sandwell is now a member of the Executive Commmittee, received major SSHRC funding to sustain and develop this network.
Dr. Sandwell has taught as a historian and history educator at a number of universities, including Simon Fraser University (1995-2001), the University of British Columbia (1999-2000), the University of Edinburgh’s Centre for Canadian Studies (2000), and McGill University (2001-02) before accepting her current position in the History and Philosophy Program, and in the Initial Teacher Education Program in the Department of Theory and Policy Studies in Education at OISE. Her work continues to highlight the importance of the humanities to those trying to understand and work within the field of education.
Dr. Sandwell has taught as a historian and history educator at a number of universities, including Simon Fraser University (1995-2001), the University of British Columbia (1999-2000), the University of Edinburgh’s Centre for Canadian Studies (2000), and McGill University (2001-02) before accepting her current position in the History and Philosophy Program, and in the Initial Teacher Education Program in the Department of Theory and Policy Studies in Education at OISE. Her work continues to highlight the importance of the humanities to those trying to understand and work within the field of education.
Awards
♦ 2008, finalist for the 2008 Book Award of the [American] National Council on Public History for Ruth W. Sandwell, ed. To The Past: History Education, Public Memory and Citizenship Education in Canada (Toronto, University of Toronto Press: 2006) for the best work published about or growing out of public history.
♦ 2008 Canadian National Leader in History Education by the Ontario History and Social Science Teachers’ Association (OHASSTA).
♦ 2008 Pierre Berton award for Canadian Public History for the Great Unsolved Mysteries in Canadian History (with co-directors John Lutz, Peter Gossage, and Ruth Sandwell).
♦ 2008 MERLOT (Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching) “History Classic” award for the history education for the Great Unsolved Mysteries in Canadian History (with co-directors John Lutz, Peter Gossage, and Ruth Sandwell)
♦ 2003 MERLOT International World Wide Web Conference Committee’s History Classic Award for the prototype for the Mysteries Project (co-creators Ruth Sandwell and John Lutz), “Who Killed William Robinson? Race, Justice and Settling the Land”
♦ 2001 NAWeb Award for for the Mysteries Project (co-creators Ruth Sandwell and John Lutz), “Who Killed William Robinson? Race, Justice and Settling the Land”
♦ 2000 Canadian Historical Association Clio Award for British Columbia for R. W. Sandwell, ed., Beyond the City Limits: Rural History in British Columbia, Vancouver: UBC Press, 1999.
For Dr Sandwell's full CV, click here.