John Ippolito will receive $95,414 for his project Adult Language Learning in a Transnational Context: Towards a Migrant-Centric View of Translingual Agency and Social Integration. This project addresses the policy and programming challenges of language education through a migrant-centric approach. The objective is to articulate evidence-based recommendations for how language learning opportunities can better enable the social integration of adult migrants into a host country. To do so, Ippolito will carry out a comparative analysis of the formal and informal language learning experiences of adult migrants in transit or destination countries in three research sites characterized by an influx of newcomers: 91ŃÇÉ« Region, Ontario, Canada; Erie County, Pennsylvania, United States; and Agrigento, Sicily, Italy.

The potential contribution of the project to the advancement of knowledge is twofold: in an applied sense, it impacts policy and programming by offering evidence-based recommendations for how language learning opportunities can better enable the social integration of adult migrants into a host country; and, in the theoretical domain it enables new understandings at the nexus of migration patterns and language use.

“My project reassesses a longstanding narrative informing government policy and programming around adult language education for migrants, namely, that proficiency in a dominant language is central to social integration. Privileging migrants’ perspectives on the relationship between dominant and minority languages, the aim of the project is to generate recommendations for aligning language-learning opportunities more closely with the experiences and priorities of migrants themselves.”

Gillian Parekh will receive $292,162 for her project Critical Transitions: Identifying key factors shaping students' elementary, secondary, and post-secondary pathways. Her research seeks to explore how students and their families come to understand and pursue different academic pathways from kindergarten to post-secondary education. This project will explore students’ and their families’ interactions with their schools and schooling processes, examining how these interactions shape their pursuit of particular academic opportunities. Complementing both institutional ethnographic and qualitative studies, Parekh’s research team will also conduct trend analyses that map students' academic trajectories, achievement and outcomes from early elementary until post-secondary education. Mapping, qualitative and trend analyses will pay particular attention to points of transition, students' experiences with ability grouping, and their pursuit of secondary and post-secondary programming.

“I’m really excited to launch this research project,” says Parekh. “I believe it will reveal how students’ interactions with schooling can ultimately shape their sense of capacity and determine which educational pathways they pursue. If we have a better understanding of how these pathways are structured for students, we can intervene in ways that foster more equitable academic opportunities and outcomes.”

Results from this analysis will provide clear policy directives in establishing more equitable school structures as well as inform successful pedagogical and programmatic strategies.

Gail Prasad will receive $71,246 for her project Awareness Matters: Fostering Critical Multilingual Language Awareness for All. In this research, Prasad proposes to collaborate with local English and French language schools and school boards in the Greater Toronto Area in order to empirically examine the impact on all students of a pedagogical orientation that conceptualizes linguistic and cultural diversity as being at the heart of learning and developing both academic knowledge and social understanding across the curriculum.

This research will contribute: to advance knowledge of the academic and social effects of fostering critical multilingual language awareness in English and French schools; to examine how educators, policymakers and school boards might benefit from the establishment of a linguistically and culturally expansive and equitable praxis through training adapted to multilingual school contexts; to cultivate openness to diversity on the part of students and teachers in the classroom and schools, particularly in contexts of superdiversity.

“Classrooms today are language-rich,” says Prasad. “Students, families and educators bring a wealth of communicative resources with them to school – and this collaborative research examines creative approaches to leveraging this richness to build all students’ and teachers’ critical multilingual language awareness and to appreciate diversity in its many forms.”

“We have excellent researchers in the Faculty of Education, and I am thrilled to see these studies funded in tight SSHRC competitions,” says Heather Lotherington, Associate Dean of Research at 91ŃÇɫ’s Faculty of Education. “All three studies express social justice and equity goals: Canada Research Chair Gillian Parekh’s and Assistant Professor Gail Prasad’s studies work will directly affect opportunities for children in Toronto schools; Professor Ippolito’s study will assist refugee populations not only to Canada, but also, through associated research partnerships, to the U.S. and southern Italy. I wish them the best conducting these topflight studies in these challenging times, and look forward to following their progress.”

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Connie Mayer will receive $184,311 for her research Literacy Outcomes of Deaf Learners: Updating the Evidence Base. Theresa Shanahan will receive $151,788 to investigate Policy Enactment in Ontario Schools: Teacher Professionalism in Practice. Roopa Desai Trilokekar will receive $155,382 for her comparative study International students are “ideal” immigrants: A critical discourse analysis of study-migration pathways in Canada, Australia and Germany. Qiang Zha will receive $78,993 for his project Diversification and Classification of Chinese Higher Education: An Exploration of State, Market and Institutional Forces.

“I want to congratulate our colleagues Connie, Theresa, Roopa and Qiang on being awarded these research grants,” says Lyndon Martin, Dean of the Faculty of Education. “Their individual projects are stellar examples of the ways in which research in our Faculty is contributing to research excellence and culture at 91ŃÇÉ« U.”

SSHRC Insight Grants empower constructive research in the social sciences and humanities and provide funding for two- to five-year initiatives. In supporting research excellence, the objective is to cultivate a deeper understanding of people, societies and the world.

Mayer notes advents like universal newborn hearing screening, cochlear implants, and advances in hearing aids and similar technologies has dramatically innovated the Deaf and Hard of Hearing (DHH) field—now offering access to language for DHH students through audition.

“The outcomes have really shifted, and this is something we are really just seeing in the past 10 years or so to have an impact,” Mayer says. “What that means educationally is it’s really important to look at who are the kids now doing better, what kinds of support they still need, which kids aren’t doing as well as we would like, and how to better support them.”

Collaborating with the Toronto District School Board (TDSB), working with upwards of 550 DHH students and employing standardized measures of reading and writing, Mayer and her team of researchers are collecting and analyzing up-to-date data of literacy achievement of DHH students in 2018. The results will help with impacting, planning and understanding how to best serve DHH students today.

Most DHH students are now educated in inclusive settings—not in schools for the deaf. “That’s a shift from 30 years ago, which means the ways in which the Ministry of Education has to plan and think about providing the best possible services for these kids has shifted,” Mayer says. “We have to start taking those changes into account and serve DHH students in light of what’s going on in 2018.”

Shanahan notes that despite the last two decades having seen a period of policy hyperactivity in Ontario around education and professional practice, little research has in fact studied how teachers understand, interpret and practice such policies.

“Understanding the working context of teacher professionalism within the complex regulatory regime is critical for transparent self-governance that serves the public interest,” Shanahan says. “This study will contribute to an empirical basis for understanding the working regulatory context of teachers’ professional practice, which will inform public policymaking and professional governance in this area.”

Shanahan’s critical policy sociology study employs policy enactment theory, critical textual analysis of crucial law and policy documents, and includes interviews with educators, school leaders and policy-makers to identify the “official” narrative of teacher “professionalism” in Ontario and to establish the range of regulation around teacher professionalism.

“That involves more than a myriad of laws and policies on paper. And achieving high professionalism involves more than passing more and more laws and policies,” she adds. “It involves the hearts and minds of educators in our classrooms and schools.

“The current legal landscape of education is exceptionally complicated and layered—yet we know very little about how all of it plays out in practice.”

Trilokekar’s four-year comparative study explores the implications of “international students are ideal immigrants” policy discourses, as seen in Canada, Germany and Australia—and particularly analyzes the impact of Canada’s own federal 2014 immigration education policy, intended to double the number of international students (IS) it receives each year by 2022.

“Ontario is very competitive in ensuring it maintains a global reputation and global image of itself,” says Trilokekar. “The Ontario government is definitely interested in hosting more IS and having proactive policy to translate IS into new immigrants.”

Conducting their comparison horizontally, vertically and transversally across Canada’s, Germany’s and Australia’s respective multi-stakeholder perspectives, Trilokekar’s team of five coresearchers and three graduate assistants will explore how federal and state governments, universities, businesses and settlement sector with the greatest IS populations influence this policy. In examining how each country’s unique social, cultural, historical and political contexts impact the policy abroad, one central objective is to better understand how universities become bigger players in immigration.

“I think this provides them a very wide scope of understanding on how policies are taking shape in different places and in different jurisdictions,” Trilokekar adds, “as well as where the gaps are in the policies here in Ontario.”

When Zha interviewed the Head of the Higher Education Department with China’s Ministry of Education—a man overseeing 37 million students in 2,900 universities and colleges in the world’s largest higher education system and second-largest economy—he was pleased to learn it was precisely his research focus of differentiation and diversity of Chinese higher education at the top of the academic’s agenda.

In their respective education system, Zha notes that employers, policymakers, researchers and practitioners currently explore the Chinese model of higher education and its substantial massification. Once offering access to only 10% of the higher education age cohort in the late ‘90s, the Chinese model now provides access to more than 45% today.

“My goal is to bring to Ontario’s attention the differentiation happening in China,” Zha says: “the merits and lessons, the pros and the cons in their practices and in their experiences.”

Currently conducting his study via 15 institutional cases interviewing Chinese policymakers, differentiation researchers and practitioners at the institutional level, Zha analyzes the successes of their research-intensive, regional, applied and private universities, as well as colleges and transnational institutions.

“The significance and impact of this project is the increasing, intensifying relationship for the collaboration between Canadian universities and Chinese universities—happening on a daily basis,” Zha adds. “It’s not just about our understanding how we can welcome more Chinese students; in the long-term, we could develop more meaningful collaborations—including research collaborations.

"It’s becoming more and more based on innovations.”

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“We are extremely delighted and would like to congratulate Jen and Gillian on these awards which are a testament to the strong and vibrant research culture in our Faculty,” said Lyndon Martin, Dean of the Faculty of Education. “Both Jen and Gillian are doing important research that is both relevant and timely.”

Gilbert will receive $198,000 for two projects analyzing the role of consent in sex education curriculum and policy. Between Yes and No: Rethinking Discourses of Consent in Sex Education explores these issues in Ontario high schools and Yes? Discourses of Consent in California’s Sex Education Policy and Practice turns to debates in California. Both projects examine how discourses of affirmative sexual consent including violence, agency and youth, can influence conversations to positively transform sex education policy and practice in Canada and beyond.  The research will help teachers, principals, and staff develop pedagogical strategies that address the reality of sexual violence in young people’s lives by putting the complex scene of sexual decision-making at the centre of sex education.

Among the goals of the project, Gilbert hopes to provide support for teachers and principals working to incorporate lessons about affirmative sexual consent in sex education; develop professional development materials for sex education teachers; and, enrich public conversations about sexual consent, violence and youth cultures.

Parakh will receive $52,711 for her project Transformative action towards equity: Strategic remodeling of special education programming to support students' academic and social development. The project, which is currently underway, examines students’ experiences of belonging and exclusion in school by exploring trends around access to programming and pedagogical approaches employed in classrooms at the Toronto District School Board (TDSB).

Parekh investigated trends and consequences associated with academic streaming and special education. In light of the disparate opportunities afforded to diverse racial, class, ability, and gender identities, and the significant implications regarding academic success, she is now launching two research projects that will track and measure distinct de-streaming initiatives taking place within the TDSB. One project focuses on the inclusion of students in special education across approximately 50 elementary schools, and the other is an initiative aiming to de-stream Grade 9 courses at the secondary level.

“Jen and Gillian’s exciting research projects demonstrate the Faculty of Education’s leading edge on social justice research in contemporary schooling and society,” said Heather Lotherington, Associate Dean Research in the Faculty of Education.

The goal of the SSHRC Insight program is to build knowledge and understanding about people, societies and the world by supporting research excellence in all subject areas eligible for funding from SSHRC. To learn more about the program, please visit the .

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