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Can Fairness Truly Coexist with Academic Excellence? Unpacking the Myths of Assessment Accommodations in Higher Education

Juuso Henrik Nieminen, Assistant Professor at the University of Hong Kong and a Banting Fellow at Ontario Tech University, Canada

Date and Time: Thursday, April 4, 2024; 2:00 – 3:00pm
Location: B176 Mackintosh-Corry, Lecture Theatre

Dr. Nieminen’s work examines the prevailing notion that assessment accommodations can unfairly advantage some students, potentially leading to academic dishonesty. Through a detailed policy analysis (Nieminen, J. & Eaton, S., 2023), primarily within the Canadian educational landscape, Dr. Nieminen shed light on how current practices and policies might not fully support the inclusion they aim to provide.  

Article of interest:

About Dr. Juuso Nieminen

Dr Juuso Nieminen (he/him) is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Education, University of Hong Kong, and a Banting Fellow at Ontario Tech University, Canada. He is also an Honorary Research Fellow at Deakin University, Australia and an Adjunct Professor (Docent) at the University of Eastern Finland.

His research concerns the social, cultural and political dimensions of educational assessment. Dr Nieminen has particularly focused on understanding the social effects of assessment on students’ inclusion, belonging and identities. His disciplinary background is in mathematics and technology education. Dr Nieminen’s research has been published in multiple leading journals in the fields of assessment, higher education and mathematics education. Dr Nieminen’s background is in teaching. He holds teacher qualifications in mathematics and technology education (University of Helsinki, Finland) and special education (University of Helsinki, Finland).

Curating difficult knowledges in the classroom: The experiences of racialized educators 

Date and Time: Wednesday, March 27, 2024; 12:30 – 2:30pm
Location: Mackintosh-Corry Hall

Dr. Thashika Pillay

Dr. Thashika Pillay is Assistant Professor in Education Policy in the Faculty of Education, Queen’s University. Thashika completed her PhD in Social Justice and International Education in the Department of Educational Policy Studies at the University of Alberta. Thashika has extensive research and teaching experience in K-12 and higher education in Canada, Australia, and Ethiopia. Thashika’s research program explores questions of social, cultural, economic, political, and epistemic justice in working towards reimagining education for anti-colonial futures with regards to curriculum and policy in formal and informal educational contexts both in Canada and global South contexts.

Paul Akpomuje

Paul Akpomuje is a PhD student in the Faculty of Education, Queen’s University. His research is on visa stories and the poetics of migration as he seeks to explore the migration experiences of African immigrant students in Canada. Prior to and since joining Queen’s University, Paul has maintained a vibrant and robust academic agenda which lie at the intersection of education and learning, migration, Black studies, and social justice. He engages these subjects through a combination of creative, critical, transformative, and transgressive lenses. Paul taught in the Department of Adult Education and Lifelong Learning, Obafemi Awolowo University, Nigeria before moving to Canada.

Mohamed Yusuf

My name is Mohamed Yusuf, I am a current First Year Ph.D. student at the Queen’s Faculty of Education. I am First-Generation, Muslim, Somali scholar, born in Toronto, Canada, and raised in Peterborough, Ontario. I have a background in humanities, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Trent University, and following up with three subsequent degrees in Education at Queen’s University. Staring with my Bachelor of Education in 2019, I graduated under the Primary/Junior teaching cohort, and was able to join two schoolboards (KPRDSB & LDSB) working as an Occasional Elementary Teacher since 2020. In 2021, I continued my graduate education journey, returning to the Queen’s Faculty of Education as a master’s student. During this time, alongside my undergraduate degrees, I took part in varsity athletics, as both an athlete with the varsity men’s rugby teams at Trent and Queen’s, and as a coach with the Queen’s Women’s varsity rugby teams. I recently was successful in defending my master’s thesis which was titled: “Investigating Supports and Barriers Affecting Black Students’ Enrolment and Experiences within Graduate Studies”. My future research interest will continue to look at access to education for Black students, along with the importance of mentorship in Black students’ self-esteem and retention.

Blackness on the in(out)side: Disruptive Pedagogies and Medical Education: A Conversation with Dr. OmiSoore H. Dryden

Guest Speaker: Dr. OmiSoore H. Dryden

Date and Time: Tuesday, March 5, 2024; 4:30 - 6:00pm
Location: School of Medicine Building, Room 132A

Abstract

Healthcare systems suggest that operating within fabrics of objectivity, like “colourblind”/race-neutral frameworks and assessments, are necessary for an equitable environment. However, these are deeply flawed and false logics. Structural barriers alongside healthcare’s recent turn towards EDI simultaneously have kept and keep Blackness and Black people outside of medicine and precariously positioned within it. The classroom is a site for liberation, a place to incite action, where we can explore and learn from our (and medicine’s) “complex journey to here.” In this talk, I reflect on my pedagogical practices which “teach against the [med ed] grain,” challenge the over-reliance on neutrality and claims of “unconscious bias,” and embraces the disruptive outcomes of Black queered femme-inst disciplines.

About Dr. OmiSoore H. Dryden

Dr. OmiSoore H. Dryden (she/her/hers), a Black queer femme and associate professor, is the , Faculty of Medicine; Interim Director of the Black Studies Research Institute (in STEMM) at Dalhousie University, and the co-founder and co-lead of the national organization, The .

Dr. Dryden is an internationally recognized subject matter expert in intersectional Black health, Anti-Racism health equity, and engages in interdisciplinary scholarship and research that focuses on Black LGBTQI communities, blood donation systems in Canada, anti-Black racism in healthcare, medical education, and Black health curricular content development.

Dr. Dryden is Principal Investigator of several publicly funded research projects, including the funded project, Defining and Developing Black Health National learning competencies in Medical and Public Health Education in Canada, funded by CIHR and Black Queer and Trans Determinants of Health (BQTDH): A Mixed Method, Intersectional Approach to Understanding the Health Experiences of Black Queer and Trans Populations in Nova Scotia, funded by Research Nova Scotia.

OmiSoore has published in peer-reviewed journals and book collections and her book, Got Blood to Give: Anti-Black Homophobia in Blood Donation, with Fernwood Publishing will be published Fall 2024, and the co-authored article “Black Health Education Collaborative: the important role of Critical Race Theory in disrupting Anti-Black Racism in Medical Practice and Education” (2022) in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.

Dr. Dryden was a member of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research National (2021-2023), is a current member of the International Collective (hosted at Northwestern University, Chicago), a board member of the , Nova Scotia, and the co-lead (with Dr. Barbara Hamilton-Hinch) of the flagship project, , Healthy Population Institute, at Dalhousie University.

Trauma-Informed Pedagogies and Inclusive Teaching

Guest Speaker: Dr. Mays Imad, Associate Professor, Connecticut College

Date and Time: Thursday, February 29, 2024; 11:00am - 12:30pm
Location: Zoom

Dr. Mays Imad's academic journey began at the University of Michigan–Dearborn, where she pursued philosophy and minored in chemistry. She earned a doctoral degree in cellular & clinical neurobiology, with a minor in biomedical sciences, from Wayne State University School of Medicine in Detroit. After a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Arizona's Department of Neuroscience, she joined Pima Community College (PCC), teaching a variety of biology-related subjects. During her tenure at PCC, she founded their Teaching and Learning Center (TLC).

Currently an associate professor at Connecticut College, Dr. Imad is interested in understanding the social determinants of student wellbeing and success and conducts research on equity pedagogy. Her work reflects a deep commitment to equity and justice in and through education. With fervor, she advocates for institutions to pay close attention to intergenerational trauma and to prioritize healing and wellbeing. She is a Gardner Institute Fellow, AAC&U Senior STEM Fellow, Mind and Life Institute Fellow, and a Research Fellow at the Centre for the Study of the Afterlife of Violence and the Reparative Quest (AVReQ).

Articles:

Imad, M. Transcending Adversity: Trauma-Informed Educational Development. Volume 39, Issue 3: Educational Development in the Time of Crises, Spring 2021

Imad, M. Trauma‐informed Education for Wholeness: Strategies for Faculty & Advisors. New directions for student services 2022, 2022 (177), 39–47.

The Deliberate Doctorate: A Conversation with Leela Viswanathan

Guest Speaker: Dr. Leela Viswanathan, Author The Deliberate Doctorate: A Values-Focused Journey to Your PhD 

Date and Time: Tuesday January 16, 2024; 1:30 – 3:00pm EST  
Location: Robert Sutherland Hall, Room 202  
 
At the time she embarked on her PhD, Dr. Viswanathan had already spent a decade as a community planner and policy analyst. She earned her doctorate in 2007 from York University, and in 2015, obtained tenure as an associate professor at Queen’s University (Kingston, ON). A lifelong learner, Dr. Viswanathan is an accomplished and innovative educator, mentor, and researcher. Currently, the founder and principal of , a planning and advisory firm that supports individuals, organizations, and institutions to change systems and practices through policy, research, and planning, Dr. Viswanathan is also an adjunct associate professor in the Department of Geography and Planning at Queen’s, and Associate Faculty at Royal Roads University. She is a Registered Professional Planner (RPP) in Ontario and was inducted into the College of Fellows of the Canadian Institute of Planners in 2021.

Homo Narrans Through the Looking Glass of Dark Matter

Date and Time: November 9, 3.30-5.30pm  
Location: Humphrey Hall, Auditorium

Guest Speaker: Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein

On the award-winning The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred: In The Disordered Cosmos, Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein shares her love for physics, from the Standard Model of Particle Physics and what lies beyond it, to the physics of melanin in skin, to the latest theories of dark matter—along with a perspective informed by history, politics, and the wisdom of Star Trek. One of the leading physicists of her generation, Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein is also one of fewer than one hundred Black American women to earn a PhD from a department of physics. Her vision of the cosmos is vibrant, buoyantly nontraditional, and grounded in Black and queer feminist lineages. Dr. Prescod-Weinstein urges us to recognize how science, like most fields, is rife with racism, misogyny, and other forms of oppression. She lays out a bold new approach to science and society, beginning with the belief that we all have a fundamental right to know and love the night sky. The Disordered Cosmos dreams into existence a world that allows everyone to experience and understand the wonders of the universe.

Academic Ableism: A Conversation with Jay Dolmage  

Date and Time: Tuesday, October 3, 2023; 1:30 – 3:00pm
Location: Zoom

Jay Dolmage is the Chair of English at the University of Waterloo, and author of three books, Disability Rhetoric, Academic Ableism, and Disabled Upon Arrival. He is also the founding editor of the Canadian Journal of Disability Studies, which is an open-access journal. He is committed to disability rights in his teaching, working to bring together writing, rhetoric and critical pedagogy concerning disability.  

His first book Disability Rhetoric discusses the ways we talk about disability through popular culture such as movies and how disability shapes attitude, values, and social structures. In his second book Academic Ableism, he looks at the relation between higher education and disability. Higher education has been constructed as the opposite of disability and has formed itself to be a place where students work hard and not admit weakness. Academic Ableism pushes the reader to rethink higher education as a place that can accommodate anyone who walks into the classroom and where listening to disabled people and seeing their value makes higher education a radically better place for everyone.

Access the Open Access version of Jay Dolmage’s book (2017)

Kitchen Table Conversations: Truth & Reconciliation with BIPOC Educators

Collaborators: Nasrin Himada, Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Misty Underwood, Office of Indigenous Initiatives, and Yasmine Djerbal, Centre for Teaching and Learning

Date and Time: Monday, September 25, 2023; 3:00 – 5:00pm
Location: Agnes Etherington Art Centre
 
As we approach National Day for Truth and Reconciliation let us take this opportunity to reflect on our individual and collective responsibilities to fulfill the TRC’s recommendations as educators and to support the struggle for Indigenous sovereignty and self-determination. In this event dedicated to Black, Indigenous, and educators of colour, we want to create space for conversations and shared reflections on Indigenous and BPOC solidarities, struggles, and futurities. The kitchen table here acts like, in the words of Juliane Okot Bitek, “the kitchen we grew up in, the heart of the house, the place where all nutrition comes from, both food & story” (2022, 265). It is a space for conversation, and of nourishment of the body and the soul.

Facilitators include Nasrin Himada (Associate Curator of Academic Outreach and Community Engagement, Agnes Etherington Art Centre), Misty Underwood (Program Coordinator, Queen’s Indigenous Pathways), Yasmine Djerbal (Associate Director, Centre for Teaching and Learning).

Quote is from: “States of Being: The Poet & Scholar as a Black, African, & Diasporic Woman”, in Nuances of blackness in the Canadian academy: Teaching, learning, and researching while Black (2022)

Microactions: Moves in Research, Teaching, and Service that can Shift Equity Creeds into Deeds

With Dr. Özlem Sensoy, Faculty of Education, Simon Fraser University

Wednesday, March 29, 2023; 1:00 – 2:30pm, Zoom

Most people would agree that one does not need to become a mechanic in order to drive a car more competently, nor a chef to cook a great meal, nor a tennis pro in order to improve one’s game. Yet while many people “agree with” the core values associated with equity, and “believe in” the importance of anti-racist, anti-hetero/sexist, anti-colonial, anti-ableist action, they are hesitant to themselves engage in equity work. There are a few reasons for this, among them a fear of doing harm to already vulnerable or marginalized peoples; As well, action for equity can be difficult to imagine outside of mental images we have of activist marching in the streets, hanging from trees, or laying down in front of traffic on bridges and highways. These images of macro-actions as well as the sheer magnitude of social injustice can easily make one immobilized in the face of it all. In this talk, Özlem Sensoy will draw on her decades of academic work, teaching, and professional development in equity in educational settings to identify small things – microactions – every faculty member can incorporate into their research, teaching, and service that can result in major moves toward greater equity in our campus work life for ourselves, our colleagues, and our students.  

About Dr. Sensoy

is professor of social justice education in the , the inaugural director of the , an associate member of the , and an affiliated faculty member with the  at Simon Fraser University. Her primary field of research is social justice education. Her research examines the opportunities and barriers inherent in advancing a more equitable society, through social justice education. Dr. Sensoy studies this in two ways: analyzing how inequities are reproduced in social institutions (such as schools, media, policing), and identifying constructive interventions to interrupt these inequities (such as thinking critically about knowledge, pedagogical approaches, and political activism).  Dr. Sensoy teaches courses on social justice education, critical media literacy and popular culture, and anti-oppression theories. Her research has been published in journals including Radical Pedagogy, Harvard Educational Review, Gender & Education, and Race Ethnicity and Education.

 Liberatory Pedagogies and Imaginaries

With Dr. Juliane Okot Bitek, in Black Studies with joint appointment in English and Gender Studies; and Dr. Vanessa Thompson, Black Studies

Monday, March 13, 2023; 11:30am - 12:45pm, Zoom

Dr. Juliane Okot Bitek is a poet and scholar. She teaches in Black Studies and Gender Studies and holds a joint appointment in English. She is the author of (2022), a poetry collection, by Wolsak and Wynn. Her 100 Days, a collection of poetry on how to remember the 1994 Rwanda Genocide, won the 2017 Glenna Luschei Prize for African Poetry and the INDIEFAB Book of the Year (Poetry) Award. It was also nominated for several writing prizes. Juliane’s most recent academic articles and contributions include: “What Choices Between Nightmares: Intersecting Local, Global and Intimate Stories of Pain in Peacebuilding” Peace Building and the Arts (Palgrave/MacMillan, 2020); and “Conversations at the Crossroads: Indigenous and Black Writers Talk”, Ariel: A Review of International English Literature (2020) and “Treachery as Colonial Intent: A Poetic Response” Critical African Studies (2022); and “States of Being: The Poet & Scholar as a Black, African, & Diasporic Woman”, Nuances of Blackness in the Canadian Academy: Teaching, Learning and Researching While Black, edited by Awad Ibrahim et al (U of Toronto Press, 2022). She is an Assistant Professor in the Black Studies Program at Queen’s University, joint appointed in Gender Studies and English.
 
Dr. Vanessa Thompson is an interdisciplinary social scientist cross appointed to Black Studies and Gender Studies at Queen’s University. Her scholarship and teaching explore the relation between state violence, racial capitalism, politics of (un-) breathing, black transnational resistances and abolitionist feminist worldmaking. Grounded in traditions of activist scholarship, anti-colonial theories and black feminist methodologies, she engages with black social movements in and beyond Europe, transnational connections, and relations as well as the many forms of alternatives developed and rehearsed by activist collectives and movements. Vanessa’s publications include her research on black social movements in France and Europe more broadly, Fanonian thought, struggles against policing as a method of racial capitalism, the politics of breathing, black and multi-racial abolitionist struggles, politics and world-making, reproductive justice, and black feminisms in Europe. She is Assistant Professor and Distinguished Professor in Black Studies and Social Justice.  Vanessa organizes with feminist abolitionist collectives in Europe and beyond.

Disability Justice in Higher Education: A Conversation with Jeff Preston

with Dr. Jeff Preston, Assoc. Professor, Disability Studies, King’s University College, Western University

Tuesday, January 24, 2023; 12:00 – 1:00pm; Zoom

is an associate professor of Disability Studies at King's University College at Western University where he teaches classes on disability, popular culture and policy. A long-time , Jeff's work focuses on the intersection of disability, subjectivity, biopower and culture. Jeff's first book, The Fantasy of Disability, was published in 2017 by Routledge.

Human Rights and Social Justice in Law: A Conversation with Sharry Aiken

Thursday, October 20, 2022; 1:30 – 2:30pm EST, Zoom

Sharry Aiken, Faculty of Law, Queen’s University

is a law professor and founding Academic Director of a new Graduate Diploma in Immigration and Citizenship Law. A long-time activist for human rights and social justice, she is a past president of the Canadian Council for Refugees (CCR), and the former co-chair of the Canadian Centre for International Justice. Prof. Aiken currently serves on the board of a refugee serving agency in Toronto and is co-editor of the PKI Global Justice Journal, published here at ��Ӱֱ��. Formative experiences, before coming to ��Ӱֱ��, included a few years working with Canada World Youth facilitating youth exchange programs as well as a year in Sioux Lookout developing a popular education program on legal literacy.

Dr. Clelia Rodriguez: Decolonization in Education and Global Engagement

Thursday, October 20, 2022; 1:30 – 2:30pm EST, Zoom

with Dr. Clelia Rodriguez

Dr. Clelia O. Rodríguez is a global scholar, author, mom and auntie, born and raised in the ancestral lands of the Nawat, the Chorti-Maya and the Lenka Peoples, what is presently El Salvador. She earned her MA and PhD from the University of Toronto. Before holding a Human Rights Traveling Study Abroad Professorship across three continents, United States, Nepal, Jordan, and Chile, she was an Assistant Professor at the University of Ghana. Prior to teaching at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto about Decolonization in Education, Settler Colonialism, Pedagogies of Liberation, Popular Education, Social Action and Anti-Discriminatory based curricula, she was a Gender Academic University Advisor in Bolivia, as part of a partnership between CECI and Global Affairs Canada. Recently, she has collaborated with the University of Fort Hare teaching postgraduate workshops. She is currently developing a gender-based training program in Kenya working along side the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology and Eco Green. She is the founder of , a learning transnational collective bringing together Black, Indigenous and people from the Global Majority to co-create pedagogies of liberation. She is committed to ancestral sustainable pedagogies, decolonizing approaches to learning and teaching beyond the binary, critical race and cultural theories, anti-oppressive transnational cooperation and learning in community. Her work has been published in the , in the in Chile, the , , , , , and the . She recently received the 2022 ACPA Latinx Network Community Advancement Service Award for her support and encouragement towards the needs of Latinx students and professionals in higher education and has been nominated twice for awards in excellence in teaching.

Dr. Eve Tuck: Meaning-Making with Youth and Communities

Wednesday, March 9, 2022, 11:00 - 12:30pm EST, Zoom Webinar

Facilitated by Dr. Eve Tuck, Associate Professor of Critical Race and Indigenous Studies at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), University of Toronto

This presentation engages researching with youth and communities as a set of beliefs about knowledge and knowing, and as an approach that can be built into social science and humanities-based inquiry.