We are thrilled to announce the 2021-2022 recipients of the SSHRC Joseph-Armand Bombardier CGS Doctoral Scholarships, the SSHRC CGS Master’s Scholarships, and the Ontario Graduate Scholarships.
PhD CGS D Award Holders
The objective of the Canada Graduate Scholarships – Doctoral (CGS D) program is to promote continued excellence in Canadian research by rewarding and retaining high-calibre doctoral students at Canadian institutions. By providing support for a high-quality research training experience to awardees, the CGS D program strives to foster impacts within and beyond the research environment. Congratulations to Emma Bozek, Jacob DesRochers, Kianna Mau, Nathan Rickey, Elizabeth Sharp, and Adira Winegust,
- Emma Bozek - Prosocial and Antisocial Behaviours in K-2: On Development and the Educational Context - Prosocial (sharing, helping, cooperating) and antisocial (aggression, disruptiveness, riskiness) behaviours emerge early in childhood as a product of both individual factors and environmental factors. Those individual factors include socio-emotional mechanisms, socio-cognitive mechanisms, as well as biological predispositions, while the environmental factors include context, culture, and social factors. This study seeks to explore the child's educational context as it relates to the emergence and presence of both prosocial and antisocial behaviours.
- Jacob DesRochers - Undoing Religious-versus-secular binaries: Mapping Canadian sexuality and health education - While scholars have explored how debates over sexuality and health education occur within school districts, and the intersection of religion and secularism in public school sexuality curricula controversy, this study fills a gap by focusing on how secular-religious binaries are enacted in curriculum used across Canada. The aim is to reduce religious-secular polarization and enhance access to sexual health education.
- Kianna Mau - A scaffolded transition to independence for students with intellectual and developmental disabilities - A peer-driven intervention will be designed by synthesizing the literature across disciplines through a scoping review, thus contributing to evidence-based recommendations. The anticipated intervention program seeks to improve global adaptive skills for youth and adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities while simultaneously tackling stigmatization barriers. Using a collaborative approach in phase one, which will involve school board personnel, teachers, and educational assistants, a protocol will be developed for intervention program implementation in schools. In phase two, collaboration with employers, job centres, and job coaches will lead to such implementation in workplaces. A delayed-start experimental multiple methods design will be used to collect both qualitative and quantitative, pre- and post-test data.
- Nathan Rickey - Constructing a New Theory for Supporting Student Self-Assessment: Profiling Essential Cognitive and Affective Characteristics - My research aims to uncover the cognitive, affective, and social mechanisms whereby student self-assessment activities shape learning. Specifically, my doctoral research aims to identify and characterize underlying differential cognitive and affective processes of high school students engaged in self-assessment activities. Drawing on learning science, I leverage primarily unobtrusive data collection methods to capture self-assessment processes in real time and within authentic classroom contexts. Profiling students’ differential self-assessment processes could form the foundation of a new self-assessment theory, one capable of supporting systematic and tailored approaches to self-assessment in schools.
- Elizabeth Sharp - Title: Understanding kindergarten educators' conceptualization and practices of self-regulation - The purpose of this study is to discover the strategies and practices Ontario's early year educators are using to foster self-regulation skills in their kindergarten classrooms. Ontario's kindergarten program provides a unique opportunity to capture the workings of two distinct professions, early childhood educators and teachers. Through interviews and classroom observations, this study will provide empirical evidence on self-regulation development strategies and articulate the ways educator training influences early years educators' beliefs and self-regulation practices in kindergarten.
- Adira Winegust,- What's in a Name? The Conceptualization of the Mild Intellectual Disability Exceptionality in Ontario - My research explores how different educational stakeholders (such as administrators, special and general education teachers, school psychologists, parents and students) understand and conceptualize the "Mild Intellectual Disability" (MID) exceptionality. MID is a ministry created exceptionality used to capture students who do not fall into a recognized disability category but still require special educational support to succeed in the classroom.
Master's CGS M Holders
The objective of the Canada Graduate Scholarships – Master’s (CGS M) program is to help develop research skills and assist in the training of highly qualified personnel by supporting students who demonstrate a high standard of achievement in undergraduate and early graduate studies. Congratulations to Jayda Conti, Jason Earl, Benjamin Farmer Lacombe, Cheryl Mak, Yi (Jane) Mao, Hussain Raza, Elise Visentin, and Beck Watt.
- Jayda Conti - A settler arts educator navigating what is cultural appropriation and how it can impact the classroom Through an autoethnography grounded by Archibald’s 4R Framework and Indigenous holistic theory, I wish to explore my position as a settler arts educator and preventative strategies to appropriation. Some questions that guide my work are: How do I discuss cultural appropriation in art settings (such as classrooms)? What should settler art educators do when educating youth about Indigenous forms of artmaking? And, how to ensure they are talking a culturally appreciative approach that is not appropriative? By working with Indigenous artists, I will develop an enriched understanding of cultural appropriation and suggested practices when navigating this complexity within the classroom. From these talking circles, I want to share recommended practices of Indigenous forms of artmaking with settler educators in the Timiskaming region. I will document my own experience and learning through artmaking, representing my understanding of cultural appropriation.
- Jason Earl - Gendered Settler Legal Consciousness: Toward Curriculum for Decolonizing Futures Jason’s research focuses on the work of K-12 schooling in addressing ongoing violence of white settler colonialism, specifically the mechanisms of modern colonial gender, sexuality, and cisheteropatriarchy in Indigenous land dispossession. Specifically, this research considers pedagogical possibilities in grade 10 history and citizenship education courses for disrupting settler consciousness of colonial state permeance.
- Benjamin Farmer Lacombe - Applying the Principles of User Experience Design to the Classroom: A New Model for Developing Digital Resources for Inquiry-Based Learning in History - My Master’s research applies the principles of user experience design (UXD) to the teaching of history in Ontario. I have proposed to integrate frameworks from existing bodies of literature in computer science to the development of digital resources intended for the history classroom. This approach will help researchers create pedagogical tools which meaningfully support inquiry-based learning (IBL).
- Cheryl Mak - Assessing the Impacts of STEM Outreach Programs on Females - This research aims to study the impact that science, technology engineering, and math (STEM) outreach programs have on females. Various outreach initiatives aim to close the gap between the number of males and females with who hold STEM degrees in Canada, and this work aims to understand the long-term impact that these programs have on girls. Participants are asked how these outreach initiatives have contributed to their interest, motivation and career aspirations related to STEM.
- Yi (Jane) Mao - Falling Between the Cracks: Compounding Identity Discrimination within Healthcare - Research shows that racialized individuals and transgender and gender non-conforming (TGNC) individuals and can face a unique experience of having two of their identity-related barriers compound when accessing healthcare. However, little research has explored the specific intersection of race, gender identity, and gender expression that can influence a patient’s relationship with their primary care provider (PCP), such as their physician. The purpose of my proposed research is to examine how patients who are both TGNC and racialized navigate their relationship with their PCP.
- Hussain Raza - Unspoken Words Beyond the Numbers: Lived Experiences of Low Socioeconomic Status Post-Secondary Students - Studies examining the effects of low socioeconomic status (SES) on students’ success in many facets of their undergraduate career are a new and developing field. As such, minimal research is available examining the effects of personal lived experiences on the success of students. Additionally, there is even less research looking at these personal values as a mitigating mechanism for hardships that disadvantaged low SES students face. This research study is an attempt to highlight the importance of the qualitative lived experiences of low SES undergraduate students as a coping mechanism to mitigate the stressors that encompass SES disparities. We emphasize the importance of integrating students within the change process to bridge the gap between SES disparities and socioprofessional outcomes (ex. educational attainment, social/occupational standing and mobility, and socioeconomic stability).
- Elise Visentin - Do not follow the yellow brick road: A journey to address the culture of whiteness in teaching through collaborative action research - As the culture of whiteness continues to create inequities in education, there emerges the need for teachers to undergo critical self-reflection to interrupt the status quo and challenge Eurocentrism and white privilege. This critical self-reflection is embedded within the collaborative action research cycle used in this study, wherein a support network of five Grade 7 and Grade 8 teachers in Toronto or the Greater Toronto Area explore how the culture of whiteness is perpetuated via their resources, teaching strategies, as well as pedagogies. This study documents the participants’ journeys as they discuss how to interrupt whiteness with the objective of diminishing the inequities in education. Outlining the impacts of the culture of whiteness on teaching in Ontario is crucial to mitigate the inequities present.
- Beck Watt - Exploring Gender Identity and Gender Expression in Music Education - Public schools across Canada have become increasingly more welcoming and inclusive of gender and sexual minority students. Within music education, however, transgender and/or gender non-conforming (TGNC) students often feel isolated, alienated, and face significant safety concerns. K-12 music teachers generally lack the knowledge and skills necessary for creating spaces where these students are supported and able to thrive. The purpose of my proposed research is to gather data toward an accessible and affirming experience of music education for transgender and/or gender non-conforming students in Canadian public schools.
Ontario Graduate Scholarship (OGS)
The Ontario Graduate Scholarships (OGS) promote excellence in graduate studies at the master's and doctoral levels. OGS awards are merit-based scholarships available to graduate students in all graduate disciplines in Ontario Universities.
- Jodi Basch - An Exploration of Resilience in Post-Secondary Student Leaders - This research examines how authentic undergraduate student leaders cultivate resilience following the transition from high school to university. It aims to understand the processes of cultivating resilience, and focuses on the development and presentation of resilience strategies in student leaders. A four-phase sequential explanatory research method is being employed to explore how student leaders living in Queen’s University Residence and students living off-campus but intended to live on campus if not for COVID-19 draw on their resilience and leadership skills during this transitional period.
- Rebecca Evans - A Phenomenographic Study on a Citizenship Education Program for Young People - The purpose of my study is to investigate participants experiences in the Air Cadets, a federally run citizenship program for young people, and to map out their conceptions of resilience. My research seeks to identify the qualitatively different ways in which participants experience the challenging experiential learning activities. My work will extend research on citizenship education in the public school setting by focusing on a community organization as a facilitator of civic engagement.
- William Horton - Modelling Healthy Masculinity in High-Level Team Sport: Toward an Implicit Athletic Leadership Pedagogy
- Daniel Jones - Game-Based Language Teaching: Exploring the Effectiveness of a Professional Development Program - This program introduces board and card games to high school English Language Learners (ELLs) to support their language learning and game literacy. Next, ELLs teach these games to their non-ELL peers and they play together. Research data related to social capital, socializing, and language learning will be gathered and analyzed. It is hoped that this program will be a model for other interest-based ELL support programs.
- Shuyuan Liu - An exploration of adolescent English language learners’ learning experiences during the COVID-19 Pandemic - This study aims to explore newcomer high school youth’s learning experiences during COVID-19. It investigates both the students’ formal learning experiences that occurs with structured curriculum at school, and their informal learning experiences such as that with peers, community programs, and online activities during the pandemic. These shifting learning environments, coupled with the unique, temporal period of pandemic time, provide both opportunities and challenges that should be considered to further inform the development of sustainable strategies and supports for newcomer youth now and in the future.
- Melissa McLeod - Accountability of English-language Proficiency Testing for Immigrants to Canada - Permanent residency and citizenship applications for Canada include language proficiency requirements. However, research in the context of global migration does not support the idea that language proficiency leads to functionality or success in the host country (Shohamy, 2017). Also, the wide variety of language proficiency test scores that Canada requires may be more about setting a barrier to entry (McNamara & Shohamy, 2008). This study will examine the interpretations and uses that policy makers, settlement agency workers, and applicants associate with the English-language proficiency test requirements within Canada’s immigration system.
- Alexandra Minuk - Family Matters: Factors Associated with the Educational Placement of Students with Autism Spectrum Disorder - The purpose of my research is to identify the factors associated with inclusive and specialized classroom placement decisions for students with autism spectrum disorder, especially as they relate to a student’s family background (e.g., socio-economic status). Without understanding how and why classroom placement committees reach certain decisions, many will miss out on the positive outcomes associated with inclusion in the regular classroom, such as increased levels of independence. The issue is particularly pressing for students from marginalized groups, a disproportionate number of whom access their education in separate, specialized settings.
- Sunaira Tejpar - Examining the Connection between Social-Emotional Factors, Self-Regulation and University Students’ Attitudes toward their Exceptionality - The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship among social-emotional factors (self-compassion and self-concept) and self-regulated learning prior to, during, and after the transition from secondary to post-secondary, and how one’s perception of their exceptionality impacts their use of these factors.
- Emily Teves - Investigating the role of metacognition in the relationship between formative assessment and student motivation in high school science students - Motivation, self regulation, and student exposure to formative assessment, are all factors that have been associated with improved learning and academic achievement. However, few studies link these bodies of literature. As such, this study aims to explore the possible intervening effect of metacognition in the relationship between formative assessment and intrinsic motivation.
- Taylor Wormington - Examining How Teachers Support the Social and Academic Needs of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder in Play-Based Kindergarten Classrooms This research examines how teachers in Ontario navigate the mandated play-based kindergarten curriculum when teaching students with ASD. With little research existing on the experiences of autism in play-based kindergarten, this research identifies how teachers support their students with ASD in a play-based setting in addition to how they teach, plan, and initiate play-based learning for students with ASD. Adding this knowledge to the academic literature will enhance the understanding of play-based learning curriculum and how it supports and aids in the inclusion of students with a diagnosis of ASD in kindergarten.
- Paisley Worthington - Culturally Responsive FASD Screening for Young Canadian Offenders - This research examines how teachers in Ontario navigate the mandated play-based kindergarten curriculum when teaching students with ASD. With little research existing on the experiences of autism in play-based kindergarten, this research identifies how teachers support their students with ASD in a play-based setting in addition to how they teach, plan, and initiate play-based learning for students with ASD. Adding this knowledge to the academic literature will enhance the understanding of play-based learning curriculum and how it supports and aids in the inclusion of students with a diagnosis of ASD in kindergarten.