Heather McGregor

BA (Acadia), MA (OISE/University of Toronto), PhD (University of British Columbia)

Assistant Professor of Curriculum Theory

Dr. Heather McGregor is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Education, Queen’s University. Through her research and scholarly activities, she is active in the fields of Arctic and Indigenous education, historical thinking and historical consciousness in history education, and most recently, environmental and climate change education. Whatever her focus, Dr. McGregor maintains a commitment to, and curiosity about, decolonizing approaches to teaching, learning and research. 

Heather was born in Yellowknife, raised in Iqaluit and continues to pursue research in the Canadian Arctic. Her Masters research was published in 2010 as an historical monograph by UBC Press, entitled Inuit Education and Schools in the Eastern Arctic. In 2015, Heather completed her PhD at the University of British Columbia in Curriculum Studies. Her dissertation documented decolonizing initiatives in the Nunavut Department of Education between the years 2000-2013. Heather went on to complete a 2-year Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Faculty of Education at the University of Ottawa, where she conducted an ethnographic and evaluative project with an expedition-based leadership program called Students on Ice, inquiring into its impacts on Inuit and Northern youth. Heather also brings experience writing history curriculum, teaching resources and professional development materials through the Department of Education, Government of Nunavut as well as the Great Unsolved Mysteries in Canadian History project. She has published her SSHRC-funded research at the doctoral and postdoctoral levels in a range of history and education journals, both in Canada and internationally.

In 2021, Dr. McGregor received a SSHRC Insight Development Grant (2021-2023) for her project entitled Social Studies & History Education in the Anthropocene. This project seeks to develop a theoretical framework, pedagogical approaches, lesson plans, and learning outcomes for teaching history in ways that are responsive to environmental crisis and relations with the more-than-human world. Her goal is to grow the project into a Canada-wide network of social studies and history educators who seek to bring an ecological focus into their teaching, and environmental educators who would like to enhance their social studies skillsets. Check out her work on the SSHEAN website.

Listen to Heather talk about her recent research on the podcast FookNConversation.

Other current funded research projects on which she collaborates include: Thinking Historically for Canada’s Future (P.I. Carla Peck, UofA, SSHRC-funded through 2026).

Research Interests 

• Inuit & Indigenous education
• Decolonizing education & research
• Curriculum theory
• Environmental education
• Historical thinking & Historical consciousness

Selected Publications

Articles

• McGregor, H. E. & Higgins, M. (2023). Relations in the alluvial zone: Place and Indigenous knowledges in Michael Marker’s scholarship. Journal of Contemporary Issues in Education, 18(2), 10-23.
• McGregor, H. E., Karn, S., Evans, R. S. & Pind, J. (2022). Piloting historical thinking lessons to address climate change, Canadian Social Studies, 53(1), 1-16.
• McGregor, H. E., Pind, J., & Karn, S. (2021). A ‘wicked problem’: rethinking history education in the Anthropocene. Rethinking History, 25(4), 483-507. DOI: 10.1080/13642529.2021.1992159
• McGregor, H. E. (2021). Becoming Arctic ambassadors: Preparing Inuit youth for leadership on expeditions and beyond. Canadian Journal of Environmental Education, 24(1), 50-67.
• McGregor, H.E. & McGregor, C.A. (2020). Inuit Elder policy guidance for system-wide educational change in Nunavut, 2000-2013. Canadian Journal of Educational Administration & Policy, 193, 128-142.
• McGregor, H.E. & Marker, M. (2018). Reciprocity in decolonizing research methodologies: Relationships and inquiry in Indigenous education. Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 49(3), 318-328.
• McGregor, H.E. (2018). An Arctic encounter with Indigenous and non-Indigenous youth as pedagogy for historical consciousness and decolonizing. Historical Encounters: A journal of historical consciousness, historical cultures, and history education, 5(1), 90-102.
• McGregor, H.E., Madden, B., Higgins, M., & Ostertag, J. (2018). Braiding designs for decolonizing research methodologies: Theory, practice, ethics. Reconceptualizing Educational Research Methodology, 9(2), 1-21.
• McGregor, H.E. & McGregor, C.A. (2017). Behind the scenes of Inuit curriculum development in Nunavut, 2000-2013. Études Inuit Studies, 40(2), 109-131.
• McGregor, H.E. (2017). One classroom, two teachers?: Historical thinking and Indigenous education in Canada. Critical Education, 8(14), 1-18.
• McGregor, H.E. (2015). Listening for more (hi)stories from the Arctic’s dispersed and diverse educational past. Historical Studies in Education, 27(1), 19-39.
• McGregor, H.E. (2014). Exploring ethnohistory and Indigenous scholarship: What is the relevance to educational historians? History of Education [UK], 43(4), 431-449.
• Madden, B. & McGregor, H.E. (2013). Ex(er)cising student voice in pedagogy for decolonizing: Exploring complexities through duoethnography. Review of Education, Pedagogy and Cultural Studies, 35(5), 371-391.
• McGregor, H.E. (2013). Situating Nunavut education with Indigenous education in Canada. Canadian Journal of Education, 36(2), 87-118.
• McGregor, H.E. (2012). Curriculum change in Nunavut: Towards Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit. McGill Journal of Education, 47(3), 285-302.
• McGregor, H.E. (2012). Nunavut’s education act: education, legislation and change in the Arctic. The Northern Review, 36(1), 27-52.

Books

• McGregor, H.E. (2010). Inuit education and schools in the eastern Arctic. Vancouver: UBC Press. 220 pages

Chapters

• Brant-Birioukov, K., Pind, J., Karn, S., & McGregor, H. E. (2023). Towards Indigenous place-based metaphors for environmental history education. In M. Kress-White & K. Horn-Miller, (Eds.), Land as Relation: Teaching and learning through place, people and practices (pp. 259-269). Canadian Scholars’ Press.
• McGregor, H. E. (2023). A school for the Anthropocene: Questions about hospitality in a curriculum of existential threat. In P. P. Trifonas & S. Jagger (Eds.) Handbook of Curriculum Theory, Research and Practice. Springer International Handbooks of Education. Springer.
• McGregor, H. E., Pind, J. & Karn, S. (2022). Listening, witnessing, connecting: Histories and storytelling in the Anthropocene. In A. J. Farrell, C. L. Skyhar & M. Lam (Eds.), Teaching in the Anthropocene (pp. 69-81). Canadian Scholars’ Press.
• McGregor, H.E. (2019). Time chased me down, and I stopped looking away. In C. Coates & G. Wynne (Eds.), The Nature of Canada (334-351). On Point Press.
• McGregor, C.A. & McGregor, H.E. (2017). Teacher education in and for the North: Programs and place in Northwest Territories and Nunavut. In T. Christou (Ed.), Canadian Teacher Education: A Curriculum History (pp. 213-230). Studies in Curriculum Theory Series, Routledge.
• McGregor, H.E. & McGregor, C.A. (2017). When oral history calls on you: Stories from Nunavut. In K. Llewellyn & N. Ng-A-Fook (Eds.), Oral History and Education: Theories, Dilemmas and Practices (pp. 87-105). Palgrave Macmillan US.