PhD student Mohit Dudeja has been selected as the first place winner of the Pradeep Khare Memorial Scholarship, a scholarship awarded to international students from India who demonstrate “exceptional leadership and community involvement, promising career aspirations, outstanding academic achievement, and a desire to continue serving the community after attaining their educational goals.”

Mohit’s doctoral research—tentatively titled Transglobal Queer Identities: Experiences of Indian Queer International Students in Small Canadian Cities—will explore the experiences of queer international research participants, with questions including: How does being queer shape your educational experiences and daily life in a small city in Canada? What support systems are available for you, as a queer international student? How accessible are the support systems to you?

Mohit plans to interview participants to learn whether they feel safe on campus to express their gender and/or sexual identity, and what resources and support systems they might need from their university.

“Ultimately, I want to foster progressive change in the education system,” he says. “Recommendations from my research will add to the emerging body of work on queer concerns in the internationalization of education. I also seek to contribute to the academic conversation on queer inclusion in education, and to provide practical and operational assistance to schools, curriculum developers, and policymakers.”

Mohit has worked with various non-profit organizations in India and is the founder of Mendlife Foundation, a volunteer-based organization dedicated to helping underprivileged youth in Delhi attain a quality education and sustainable livelihood. Mohit has also developed a sustainable system to provide subsidized mental health services to members in marginalized communities. In Thunder Bay, he volunteers with Thunder Bay Counselling on a community youth program called “CHOICES.”

Mohit’s supervisor, Dr. Gerald Walton (Professor, Thunder Bay) notes that “this scholarship is a prestigious and competitive award, and I am elated about Mohit’s success!”

Congratulations, Mohit!

Many students, and particularly traditionally underrepresented students including international students, Indigenous students, and mature students, face challenges as they enter and progress through postsecondary education. These challenges can include poverty, mental health challenges, previous poor performance in education, a lack of academic preparation, and more.

A research team led by Principal Investigator Dr. Meridith Lovell-Johnston (Associate Professor, Orillia) has received a SSHRC Insight Development grant to work toward “humanizing learning” via the development of four microcourses to teach educators how to make courses more accessible and supportive for students who struggle.

The research team includes co-applicants Dr. Joan Chambers (Associate Professor, Thunder Bay) and Dr. Sonia Mastrangelo (Associate Professor, Orillia); collaborators Helen DeWaard, Lucas Johnson, Sabreena MacElheron, and Steven Secord of Lakehead’s Faculty of Education; Kimberly Veneziale from Confederation College; and Wayne Brown from Georgian College.

Meridith explains that the research came about in 2020, when “eCampus Ontario circulated a funding call seeking proposals to develop open access resources in a variety of different areas, including humanizing learning. This call coincided with events in our faculty around the move to completely online learning, due to the COVID-19 pandemic.”

She adds that research supports the fact that moving online by necessity, rather than choice, creates headaches for the average student, but can pose more significant challenges for students who are marginalized or already struggling.

In response to these recognized challenges, and the desire to make learning accessible and supportive for all, the research team will develop four microcourses for postsecondary educators:

1. Defining Humanizing Learning and Principles  

2. Course Design using Humanizing Principles

3. Building Relationships and Empathy using Humanizing Principles

4. Promoting Student-Centered, Responsive Learning through Humanizing Principles

Research participants in the two-year project will include undergraduate and college educators, including professional program educators in the Faculty of Education.

“The direct benefit of our project for participants is to build awareness of humanizing learning and universal design principles for postsecondary educators, thereby advancing their pedagogy; but indirectly, our project will benefit the students who come into university or college and find the institutions unwelcoming, confusing, and even frightening,” Meridith says.

At the conclusion of the project, the microcourses will be hosted on an open access website for a minimum of five years, so that other educators in Ontario, Canada, and across the world can benefit from them.

Pictured below: Principal Investigator Dr. Meridith Lovell-Johnston.

Dr. Leisa Desmoulins (Associate Professor, Orillia) and Dr. Don McCaskill (Professor Emeritus, Trent University) have been awarded an NIB Trust Fund Grant for their research project, titled Infusion of Anishinaabe Cultural Ways of Knowing and Doing into Public School Classrooms. 

Their project involves the development of culturally based Anishinaabe pedagogy and curricula, to be created in partnership with Elders, Knowledge holders, and educators from the Simcoe County District School Board and Beausoleil First Nation.

Leisa explains that “this project connects to TRC Calls to Action 62, 63, 64, specifically to develop culturally grounded curricula and resources, support teacher training needs, and ultimately, to build student capacity for intercultural understanding, empathy, and mutual respect that will foster reconciliation.”

Over the next year, Leisa and Don will work with First Nations partners to explore the underlying features of Anishinaabe pedagogy (ways of knowing and doing), to in turn develop a culturally based curriculum for high school students within the Simcoe County District School Board.

“Based on the research into the broader Anishinaabe culturally based curriculum from the Elders and Knowledge holders, we will work with partners to develop local Anishinaabe geography curricula for secondary students, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous students alike,” Leisa says.

The NIB Trust Fund grants support education programs aimed at healing, reconciliation, and knowledge building, to help First Nations and Métis people, organizations, and communities address the long-lasting impacts of the residential school system.

Pictured below: Dr. Dr. Leisa Desmoulins and Dr. Don McCaskill.

PhD student Claudia Flores Moreno, along with her supervisors Dr. Sonia Mastrangelo and Dr. Meridith Lovell-Johnston (Orillia campus), have authored a research chapter titled “A Self-Regulation Framework to Support the Mental Health and Wellbeing of International Female Graduate Students.”

Maclean’s has included Lakehead University among Canada’s top 20-ranking schools for Education programs in Canada. The annual survey reviewed Education programs’ reputation for quality and research strength, with both areas contributing equally to the final rankings.

Dr. Wayne Melville, Faculty of Education Dean, notes that this ranking is “a testament to the work each of us has been doing within the faculty… including our commitments to each other, our programs, and our students.”

You can view Maclean’s 2023 list of “Canada’s Best Education Programs” here.

Contract Lecturer James (Jimmy) Steele has been appointed to the Board of Directors of the Canadian Association of Second Language Teachers (CASLT).

As noted on the CASLT website, the Association’s goal is to foster and advance professional excellence in language teaching in Canada, “by creating opportunities for professional development, by initiating and disseminating research, and by facilitating the exchange of information and ideas among language educators.”

Jimmy has worked in second language education for nearly 20 years. He has taught secondary Spanish, German, French Immersion, Core French, ESL, and Portuguese over his career in the Toronto District School Board in Toronto. At the Faculty of Education, he is currently course instructor for the “French as a Second Language” course in the Intermediate/Senior division. He also worked for three years as a secondee to York University's Faculty of Education, where he delivered 10 undergraduate and BEd courses in French and English. He continues to facilitate Continuing Education courses for teachers at both Nipissing University and OISE/University of Toronto.

“Professional development is at the heart of lifelong learning for classroom teachers and education workers,” he says. “I truly believe that learning from experts and peers alike has a measurable, meaningful impact on our teaching, programming, and assessment. Because of this, I have been involved with several provincial organizations throughout my teaching career, including ten years with the Ontario Modern Language Teachers’ Association and nine years as president of the Ontario Association of Teachers of German. When the call for interested candidates for the CASLT Board of Directors came out, I was encouraged to apply, and now, as part of the national team, having the chance to support teachers across Canada and help impact policy development in second language teaching is a very special experience.”

Congratulations on this appointment, Jimmy!

Dr. Pauline Sameshima (Professor and Canada Research Chair in Arts Integrated Studies) has received a 2022 Teaching Innovation Award from Lakehead University’s Senate Teaching and Learning Committee.

The Committee highlighted Pauline’s implementation of the “the Slides Strategy,” a teaching technique that “stimulates high levels of engagement in students, allowing them to understand each other’s perspectives well and affording much more creativity and the ability to participate in reading assignments to a greater depth than existing alternatives.”

The Teaching Innovation Award recognizes the development and/or implementation of innovative pedagogical practices and technologies.

For an explanation of “the Slides Strategy,” please see the publication by Pauline Sameshima and Tashya Orasi, “What’s better than the asynchronous discussion post?”

Congratulations, Pauline!

The Lake Superior Living Lab Network's (LSLLN) Climate Action Field School was awarded the 2022 Teaching Innovation Award by the Lakehead University's Senate Teaching and Learning Committee. A number of Education folks were involved with the Field School, including full-time faculty members Dr. Paul Berger, Dr. David Greenwood, and Dr. Connie Russell, adjunct faculty member Dr. Charles Levkoe, PhD student and contract lecturer Devon Lee, MEd student Gavin Shields, and alumni Sue Hamel, Aynsley Klassen, Darrel Makin, and Ledah McKellar.

More information on the field school can be found on the LSLLN website.

Two recently published books, featuring contributions by Faculty of Education members Dr. Michael Hoechsmann, Dr. Ellen Field, Dr. Connie Russell, and Dr. Gerald Walton have won 2022 American Educational Studies Association (AESA) Critics’ Choice Awards.

The three-volume, 125-chapter book, The SAGE Handbook of Critical Pedagogies (S. Steinberg & B. Down, editors) features a chapter by Connie Russell ("Fat Pedagogy and the Disruption of Weight-Based Oppression: Toward the Flourishing of All Bodies") and a chapter by Gerald Walton ("In a Rape Culture, Can Boys Actually Be Boys?"). Michael Hoechsmann edited the 10-chapter section on "Communication and Media." For more information on this book, see this link.

Education for Democracy 2.0: Changing Frames of Media Literacy, co-edited by Dr. Michael Hoechsmann, Gina Thésée (Université du Québec à Montréal), and Paul R. Carr (Université du Québec en Outaouais) has also won an AESA Critics' Choice Award. The book features a chapter by Ellen Field ("Is It All Just Emojis and LOL, or Can Social Media Foster Environmental Literacy and Activism?"). For more information on this book, see this link.