Date & Time

Start: December 13, 2016 04:00 PM

End: December 13, 2016 05:30 PM

Location

Address: 1137 Alumni Ave Engineering, Management and Education Bldg

City: Kelowna

Province: British Columbia

Contact

Name: Centre for Mindful Engagement and Graduate Studies in Education

Email: jill.dickau@ubc.ca

Description

Kim McDonough is a Professor and Canada Research Chair in Applied Linguistics in the Department of Education and the Centre for the Study of Learning and Performance at Concordia University. She previously taught at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Northern Arizona University. Her research interests include interaction and usage-based approaches to second language acquisition, structural priming, and task-based language teaching. She has published empirical research in applied linguistics journals such as Studies in Second Language Acquisition, The Modern Language Journal, Language Learning and TESOL Quarterly. Her book publications include Using priming methods in second language (Routledge, 2008) and Insights from psycholinguistics: Applying priming research to L2 teaching and learning (Benjamins, 2011), both with Pavel Trofimovic, and Second language interactions in diverse educational contexts (Benjamins, 2013) with Alison Mackey. Her current research projects are investigating the role of joint attention in face-to-face communications and the timing of collaboration during L2 writing tasks.

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Catherine Broom, Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Education

The notion of the millennial generation is met with thoughts of narcissism and disengagement. Despite the perception, a study out of UBC’s Okanagan campus, shows that Canadian youth are actively engaged in politics.

In a survey of 157 university students between the ages of 18 and 28, conducted in three provinces, more than 70 per cent believed it was important for people to participate politically, and 88 per cent felt that they could be effective in their actions.

“The survey data was collected during a time of global economic insecurity and concerns over terrorism,” says Catherine Broom, Assist. Prof. in the Faculty of Education. “The study data was collected before, during, and after the 2015 Canadian Federal election and demonstrates how youth, at least the youth surveyed here, engaged with the electoral process and demonstrated their desire for change.”

The survey results indicate that despite popular perception, today’s youth are reactive to political events, like the federal election.

“In a previous study of Canadian youth before the election, they did not identify themselves as having such a high sense of self-efficacy,” says Broom. “It seems that the chance to vote and voting, along with the overwhelming electoral victory of Trudeau, went hand-in-hand with an increased sense of purpose.”

Broom also collaborated with six scholars to conduct surveys of youth in England, Hong Kong, India, Italy, Japan and Mexico. Her results indicate that the most commonly stated reasons for millennials not to get involved in politics was that they did not believe they are being heard, that they felt like their government was corrupt, or that they made conscious decisions not to vote due to their perceptions of the event.

“Canadian youth were well aware of the scandals that arose during Canada’s Conservative governance,” says Broom. “In the case of Prime Minister Trudeau’s campaign, respondents felt connected to him through his use of social media, because of his namesake, and his positive election campaign.”

The survey results also indicate that youth engage with politics through traditional means. Some 88 per cent indicated that they participate through voting, 82 per cent participated by being a good neighbour, and 69 per cent through volunteering. Less significant was direct participation in political events (22 per cent), protesting (14 per cent), or joining a political party, (six per cent).

“It isn’t apathy that stops youth from participating in politics, it’s the thinking that they can’t do anything to make change,” says Broom.  “Youth actively construct their civic mindsets through their backgrounds and active processing of their experiences and contexts.  The youth that participated in the study are aware of what’s going on politically, and they are interested in learning more.”

For more information: visit Youth Civic Engagement in a Globalized World.

Dr. Binfet conducts kindness research in Central Okanagan schools

Why is it important to acknowledge kindness and kind acts? We sat down with kindness expert and UBC Assist. Prof. John-Tyler Binfet on World Kindness Day to discuss his kindness research in schools and how it relates to everyday life.

Q: Dr. Binfet, could you please give us a brief background about the kindness research you’ve conducted?

A: The research I do at UBC explores how children and adolescents think about and enact kindness in schools. Studies of over 2,500 public school students in grades kindergarten to grade 8 reveal that students are show kindness mostly by helping others emotionally and physically. Emotional kindness might be including a student who has been left out whereas physical kindness might be picking up a student’s dropped books in a busy hallway.

Q: What are the implications of studying kindness in schools? Do you think learning how to recognize kindness at a young age is important?

John-Tyler Binfet, Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Education

A:  I see a shift underway in the schools I’m in where teachers and administrators are interested in moving away from anti-bullying initiatives to embrace efforts that promote prosocial behaviour – the kind of behaviour they want to see in students. This shift is due largely to the influence of positive psychology and positive education in classrooms.

Q: There seems to be a growing emphasis on kindness and mental wellbeing in the office and in aspects of every day life. Can you speak to this growing trend and give your thoughts on kindness-related work?

A:  Increasingly adults are held to the same standards we uphold for children and adolescents and there is less tolerance in the workplace for the office bully. If students’ academic achievement is bolstered by them feeling socially and emotionally settled in the classroom, might workplace productivity also be enhanced when employees feel socially and emotionally supported at work?

Q: How can we acknowledge kindness on World Kindness Day, or any other day of the year? What can people do to show kindness to others?

A: World Kindness Day draws ample attention to the need for kindness but our efforts to be prosocial, to show care and concern for others, must extend beyond special event days. I’m a big proponent of intentional kindness – planning kind acts, mentoring young people in planning and being kind, and being intentionally kind to both those we know and to those we don’t yet know! Kindness has a way of bringing people together – it’s a great bridge and the more bridges we build, the better off we’ll all be.

Margaret Macintyre Latta, project director, and Rhonda Draper from School District 23

A UBC researcher, working alongside students and educators, will be conducting a multi-year project aimed at inspiring creative and critical student thinking, thanks to a federal partnership development grant.

Project director Margaret Macintyre Latta, a professor in the Faculty of Education at UBC’s Okanagan campus, received $160,000 in funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.

“This funding will help support a three-year research project that gets inside teaching, and seeks ways to draw students into the depth and complexity of learning across all subject matter,” explains Macintyre Latta. “It will allow all involved to learn from one another, enlarging and deepening understanding of Canadian history.”

Macintyre Latta will collaborate with the Central Okanagan School District, the Okanagan Symphony Orchestra and research expertise from UBC. In year-one, a large-scale arts experience will celebrate Canada’s 150th anniversary in 2017. The arts experience will serve as a medium for increasing awareness of Indigenous histories as well as migrating groups’ histories from all over the world.

In year-two, the project will highlight how creative and critical thinking are important toward fostering learning connections that extend across all disciplines and interests.

During this multi-year project, Macintyre Latta will work with staff and students at École Glenmore Elementary School.

“Our school is very fortunate to be in partnership for the next three years with UBC Okanagan as we transform our pedagogy in a collaborative way with our teachers, university team, parents and students,” says Wendy Briggs, Principal of École Glenmore. “We look forward to the learning opportunities that the SSHRC grant provides.”

This September marks the first year that the redesigned curriculum is being fully implemented in schools for students Kindergarten to Grade 9.

“Critical thinking necessitates learning space and time to raise questions and learn from oneanother, while encouraging students and teachers to consider and create new understandings,” says Macintyre Latta.

Susan Crichton with teachers from Nachingwae Regional Schools in East Africa

A UBC researcher has recently returned from Africa as a continuation of her eight-year project with colleagues at Aga Khan University that encourages teachers and students to think outside the box when it comes to traditional learning techniques.

Susan Crichton, Director of the Faculty of Education and Innovative Learning Centre, spent two weeks last month in Tanzania to observe the effects of the Toolkit for Challenging Contexts: Taking Making into Schools that she, along with colleague Dr. Lilian Vikiru, introduced in 2015 as part of a research grant from the Canada-Africa Research Exchange Grants program. The Maker tool kit is a resource in both English and Kiswahili that encourages design thinking and making —a method of problem-solving that allows teachers and students to approach problems through their human-centred design and exploration.

Educators participating in a Maker Day

“The power of design thinking is that there are basically few problems that cannot be addressed by thinking well,” says Crichton. “It allows students and teachers to find the answers within themselves without having to look for outside support.”

Susan Crichton, Director of the Faculty of Education and the Innovative Learning Centre

According to the State of Education in Africa Report 2015, young people in Africa make up nearly 40 per cent of the working-age population, yet 60 per cent are unemployed.  In the rural areas fewer than 40 per cent of the students continue on to secondary education.  Crichton believes that design thinking is a proactive way to imagine other ways of discovering students’ potential.

“Children have to be given the opportunity to make their learning visible and actively make meaning for themselves in order to be successful,” says Crichton. “For students to engage in active learning, they need things to be active with.  Teachers in challenging contexts are trying to embrace new approaches with limited or no resources or supports.  Introducing making is a way of embracing local, low cost or no cost resources that are readily available and culturally relevant.”

Between 1990 and 2012, the number of children enrolled in primary schools more than doubled in African elementary schools as a result of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals that targeted the reduction of extreme poverty worldwide by 2015 by mandating free K-9 education.

“By giving teachers ways to create resources to help their students to become successful in their learning, you are encouraging students to discover their potential and life chances,” says Crichton.

While in Africa, Crichton worked with colleagues to update and expand the Tool Kit for Challenging Contexts, incorporating work developed by teachers who have been using the tool kit for several years. Crichton also helped to develop a “Maker Space” in Nachingweya Teachers College, a space where teachers can create learning resources for students by drawing on African traditions and resources.