Growing up in Scarborough, Stephanie Fearon was raised in a community with a rich tradition of Black matriarchal storytelling.

Through oration, folk tales, music, dance and even cooking, mothers have continued to impart cultural knowledge across generations.

It’s no surprise then, that as the inaugural assistant professor of Black thriving and education at 91��ɫ, Fearon wanted to explore the ways Black mothers come together with their children to cultivate leadership and literacy skills within education systems and beyond.

Inspired by her grandmother and grandaunts, who came to Canada from Jamaica in the 1960s with limited access to educational opportunities, Fearon’s research studies how Black mothers use storytelling in community-based literacy programs. 

With an understanding of the barriers these women face in academic research spaces, Fearon was careful to develop a collaborative approach where Black mothers feel valued.

“They’ve complained, lamented, about the extractive nature of the research process,” she says. “And when we look at the histories and the current relationships between researchers in academia and Black communities, it's not positive.”

Fearon centres Black mothers as partners in the research process, grounding her work in respect and co-creation. To honour the cultural significance of storytelling, she uses an arts-informed approach that allows her to reimagine educational research as collaborative and cultural.

Read the full article in the February 6, 2026 issue of Yfile

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Revamping Ontario’s kindergarten curriculum won’t be as easy as ABC.

While the province has pledged to keep play-based learning, talk of getting “back to basics” has gotten experts’ backs up — with visions of four- and five-year-olds overloaded with math and literacy worksheets.

Robert Savage, the dean of the Faculty of Education at 91��ɫ, weighs in on the Ford government reforming kindergarten. Ontario's education minister says play- and inquiry-based learning will remain, but will be paired with more deliberate instruction in math and literacy.  

Read the full article in the

Also published in St. Catharines Standard, TheRecord.com, The Hamilton Spectator, Welland Tribune, Niagara Falls Review, and The Peterborough Examiner.

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Robert Savage, a professor and Dean of the Faculty of Education at 91��ɫ, is one of the contributors on a reading intervention program led by University of Alberta researcher, George Georgiou. The program shows that targeted interventions can help make up for learning loss among students with reading difficulties in light of school disruptions and online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Two 91��ɫ researchers have received research awards from the Government of Canada’s New Frontiers in Research Fund (NFRF) special call for innovative approaches to research in the pandemic context.

Professors Natalia Balyasnikova (Faculty of Education) and Heidi Matthews (Osgoode Hall Law School) are the nominated principal investigators on the funded collaborative projects, which were announced earlier in April.

“During the pandemic, 91��ɫ’s community of researchers have demonstrated creativity and ingenuity in pursuing research and scholarly activity despite many personal and professional challenges,” says Amir Asif, vice-president, research and innovation. “I am delighted to congratulate Heidi Matthews and Natalia Balyasnikova for their successful applications to the New Frontiers in Research Fund’s Special Call on innovative approaches to research in the pandemic context. Both research proposals identify novel methods for conducting community and field-based research and have the potential to transform how future research is undertaken in the fields of education and public policy.”

PhoneMe app: An innovative research approach to community literacy

Balyasnikova is the principal investor on the “PhoneMe app: An innovative research approach to community literacy” project. She will work with co-principal investigator Claire Ahn, assistant professor of education at Queen’s University and co-applicant Kedrick James, associate professor of teaching at the University of British Columbia. They will advance the PhoneMe project, a public digital platform featuring place-based poetry recorded on mobile phones.

Launched in 2017 as a community literacy research initiative and a digital map showcasing diverse site-specific poetic practices, the in-person work on the project was paused in 2019 due to the pandemic. Research activities were shifted online and in 2021, the research team launched a free PhoneMe mobile app that makes poetic data generation a user-driven autonomous process.

The PhoneMe app: An innovative research approach to community literacy project will evaluate the effectiveness of such mobile applications in the research of community connectedness in the time of social isolation and distancing. It will train diverse participant groups in generating multimodal data via the PhoneMe app to express their values related to places and spaces in their communities. The project will address the disruptive effect of COVID-19 on active community-engaged research and explore potential applications of mobile technology in qualitative research.

By creating opportunities for the community to draw on their own literacy practices, record poems in-situ, and share them on an interactive digital map, PhoneMe project addresses issues of self-representation in connection to the community spaces. In its first iteration, the project was carried out through researcher-led workshops and integrating data into an interactive digital map. In its current stage, the PhoneMe app places emphasis on user-generated content. It blurs the researcher/research participant divide and creates a unique inclusive space of digital dialogue and knowledge exchange in times of social isolation.

The project will create inclusive research protocols that deepen community leadership in this process and will effectively transform research into a process of community self-determination. The multimodal, user-generated data could be accessed by interdisciplinary groups researchers and research participants, expanding this research across disciplines.

Community Science and Accountability for Canada’s Colonial Genocide Past and Present

Matthews is the principal investigator on the “Community Science and Accountability for Canada’s Colonial Genocide Past and Present” project, which focuses on the state as perpetrator of colonial genocide.

It brings together a world-class team of legal, social science and policy scholars with Indigenous knowledge keepers and community leaders in the development of a “community science” tool – an interactive colonial genocide database – for documentation, analysis, policy (re)formulation, and education. Matthews will work with co-principal investigator co-principal investigator Yuzhi Joel Ong, assistant professor (School of the Arts, Media, Performance and Design) and director of 91��ɫ’s Sensorium: The Centre for Digital Arts and Technology. There is a broad cohort of researchers from 91��ɫ involved in the project as co-applicants, they are: Faculty of Liberal Arts and Professional Studies (LA&PS) Professor Luann Good Gingrich (School of Social Work) and director of the Global Labour Research Centre, Assistant Professor Ian Stedman (School of Public Policy and Administration, Associate Professor Deborah McGregor (Osgoode Hall Law School and the Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change), Assistant Professor Angele Alook (School of Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies, LA&PS), Associate Professor Elaine Coburn, director of the Centre for Feminist Research, and Associate Professor Jeffery Hewitt (Osgoode Hall Law School). Collaborators on this project are Olivia Franks, research with the Ontario Federation of Indigenous Friendship Centres, and Ioannis Kalpouzos, visiting professor, co-founder and legal action committee member at Harvard University Law School and Global Legal Action Network.

This project aims to develop and test a decolonized research strategy integrating legal and policy analysis with research creation and community science, organized around the pillars of artmaking and accountability. Using crowdsourcing, it will build an interactive database of evidence, legal and policy recommendations, literatures, and artistic expressions of colonial genocide in Canada. The project will cultivate a novel approach to Indigenous-led research through a relational, reflexive and accountable data governance structure and methodology with particular attention to power relations. And finally, it will test how colonial genocide, as an analytic frame, can facilitate accountable truth-telling, highlight potential solidarities, and chart courses of redress.

Article originally published in the April 26, 2022 issue of

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The Faculty of Education is launching a series of talks that will feature leading scholars speaking about their research and scholarship on key publicly relevant issues in education and society. 

The first talk of the series, titled “Making sense of the great reading debate: A guide to the science and practice of helping all children read” will take place on April 27 at 7 p.m. via Zoom and will be delivered by Faculty of Education Dean Rob Savage.  

Savage will consider his own domain on early reading research and teaching. The goal of the talk is to help stakeholders in the community navigate through the complex and sometimes contested space of early reading teaching practices. Savage will review the research on the role of phonics and wider oral and written language in reading acquisition and its implication for practice and policy. A key goal is to dismantle unhelpful dichotomies that have held both research and practice back and to create positions that are “research-driven” but also informed by the complexities of children and classrooms. 

He will also describe two recent research themes exemplifying this needed balance, delivered at scale in Canada and around the world. The talk will be of interest to anyone seeking to learn more about aiding in all children’s early literacy including parents, teachers, administrators and policymakers.  

Savage is particularly interested in preventing early reading and spelling issues, often using technology. A school-based psychologist and classroom teacher by training, he has an interest in making schools effective learning places for all children. He is the author or co-author of more than 100 highly cited peer-reviewed journal and web articles, chapters and reviews, and frequently presents his research at international conferences. 

This free event is open to all members of the 91��ɫ community. for the April 27 event is open.  

Article from the April 21, 2022 issue of

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The Scholars’ Hub events are done in partnership with Vaughan Public Libraries, Markham Public Library and Aurora Public Library, and presented by 91��ɫ Alumni Engagement. Students, alumni and all members of the community are welcome to attend.

Sept. 23 will feature a talk, titled "Back to School Prep: Strategies to Help Your Kids Succeed in Math and Promote Family Literacy," presented by Associate Professor Tina Rapke and Professor Karen Krasny of 91��ɫ's Faculty of Education. The event will be hosted via Zoom and begin at 12 p.m.

Viewers will be introduced to effective strategies for promoting family literacy to support children in their learning as well as preparing them to succeed in math during unprecedented times. They will learn about early predictors of literacy achievement and approaches to literacy and math instruction and gain a greater understanding about how to engage children of all ages in meaningful opportunities for listening, speaking, reading, writing, viewing and representing through daily routines and activities. Krasny will discuss traditional print and digital resources including children's and young adult literature. Rapke will speak about the importance of learners' attitudes towards math and what can be done in the home to support mathematics success.

Rapke is a parent of two elementary school children and teaches teachers how to teach math. She spends much of her time in math classrooms researching and writing about best practices.

Krasny is a past president of the Canadian Association for Curriculum Studies and served on the Board of the Canadian Society for Studies in Education. A longstanding educator, Krasny is a former K to 4 Early Years English Language Arts Provincial Specialist for Manitoba and worked as a K to 12 English and French Language Arts Coordinator for the St. James-Assiniboia School Division and as a teacher for The Winnipeg No. 1 School Division.

For more information, or to register, visit: .

The series will continue on Sept. 30 with a presentation titled "" featuring Professor Bonita Lawrence.

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