Faculty of Education

BSc, B.Ed., MA (Toronto), PhD (Cornell University, Ithaca, New York)

Assistant Professor of At-Risk Learners and Student Success

Alana Butler is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Education at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. In 2015, she completed a Ph.D. in Education from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York with a specialization in Learning, Teaching, and Social Policy. She has 15 years of teaching experience in a range of settings that includes preschool, ESL, secondary school, adult literacy, and university. In 2011, she was awarded a doctoral fellowship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Council of Canada for her study of Black student experiences in U.S. and Canadian higher education. From 2015-2016, she was a research collaborator on a SSHRC funded study entitled ‘Can We Talk About Race?’ Confronting Colour-blindness in Early Childhood Education’ at Ryerson University. Her current research agenda focuses on at-risk children and their families in elementary and secondary school settings.

Research Interests

• Equity, diversity, and inclusion policies and practices from k-12 to higher education
• At-risk children/youth and their educational attainment
• ‘Race’, culture, and gender studies in education
• Immigration and settlement studies
• Multicultural education
• Qualitative research methodology