What if one of childhood’s messiest experiences could deepen a child’s connection to the natural world?

That question is at the heart of 91ŃÇÉ« PhD student Ayesha Menezes’ doctoral research. Through her work, Menezes explores how mud play helps children see themselves as part of the natural world, fostering care, responsibility and belonging.

Her research comes as many children have fewer opportunities for unstructured outdoor play and engagement with nature. Risk-averse settings and busy urban lifestyles have reduced interaction with the natural world, prompting Menezes to understand how learning might look different if it emerged through children’s relationships with the land, water, weather and natural materials around them.

To explore this idea, Menezes took her research outside the University for Mud Day 2026, an event developed as part of her doctoral work. Held at Evergreen Brick Works children’s garden, the Mud Day invited children and caregivers to explore and create with mud.

Instead of planning structured activities with predetermined outcomes, the event invited children to engage in open-ended play experiences that included a mud kitchen, construction site, gardening, seed bomb making, beading and a collaborative mural. An interactive performance also encouraged participants to explore relationships between the sun, wind, rain and mud.

Read the full article on the July 13, 2026 issue of YFile

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Duran’s connection with the Faculty of Education runs deep, dating back to 1982. "I like to call my interest in completing a PhD this late in my career 'doing poetic justice to myself,'" she says. The Faculty's unparalleled research focus, renowned professors in the Graduate Program, and nurturing environment for intellectual growth made it the perfect choice for her academic aspirations. Moreover, her extensive involvement with the Faculty over the years, in various roles such as an Additional Qualifications (AQ) courses instructor, seconded professor, contract faculty, and program developer and coordinator, further solidified her connection with this academic institution.

Duran’s service as an instructor with 91ŃÇÉ« has been equally diverse and impactful. Over the years, she has played an instrumental role in shaping the educational experiences of countless students. "This 2023/24 academic year, I am returning as a contract faculty instructor with the concurrent program,” she says. “I will teach one of the fall-winter community practicum courses for first-year students and one section of the Inquiries Into Learning course in the winter term."

Her journey as an educator commenced with teaching the Socio-Cultural component of the ESL AQ (now ELL), simultaneously serving as a Multicultural Consultant in the ESL Department of the then-North 91ŃÇÉ« Board of Education. Embracing her association with the Faculty, Marcela was seconded to the institution in 1989-90, actively participating in transformative projects like the Westview Project, which fostered a valuable partnership between 91ŃÇÉ«, the Faculty of Education, and the Jane-Finch community public schools.

However, life's demands led Duran to put her PhD dreams on hold, not once but twice, during the 1980s and 90s when she started her PhD program with the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), U of T. It was only later in her career, during her involvement with the Borderless Higher Education for Refugees (BHER) program with the Faculty, where she taught online courses to refugee students living in the Dadaab and Kakuma refugee camps in Kenya, that she was profoundly transformed as a teacher. Inspired, she decided to shift her research focus to explore the significance of connecting with an extraordinary group of students who happened to be refugees seeking to complete their teaching degrees. Thus, her thesis, titled The Story of a Course, School, First Languages and Home: A Qualitative Discourse Analysis of the Voices of Refugee Students and their Teacher, was born.

"Writing and researching [my thesis] brought back to me the vivid memory of the interpersonal ethical encounters that were possible during the teaching of the course: ED/EDST 2450 Multiculturalism and Multilingualism in Educational Contexts Fall 2018" she says. “It also afforded me the opportunity to reflect again and analyze how much I had learned about my students' lives in refugee camps and the significance for them of first language loss, difficult schooling and deep longing for home.”

Duran hopes her work will serve as a reminder of the importance of advocating for improved educational conditions in refugee camp schools, emphasizing the significance of first language maintenance and the need for deep respect and appreciation of refugees' culture. Her research also aims to stimulate reflection on the persistence of linguistic imperialism, even within well-intentioned humanitarian programs and schools in refugee camps.

Receiving her ED PhD is a crowning achievement in Marcela's career. “I am so thankful for the incredible support, intellectual challenges, and lessons I received from the members of my thesis committee, professors Don Dippo, Aparna Mishra Tarc, and Khaled Barkaoui," Duran says.”It was a joy to learn from them as it also was to take courses with other members of the Graduate Program.

“I have had the luxury and the opportunity to spend some years reflecting, learning and hopefully growing as an educator despite being at the end of my teaching career. Although it may sound cliché, one should never stop learning, and this was a wonderful opportunity.”

Article by Dennis Bayazitov special contributing writer

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Already a month into the school year, and after two years of disrupted learning by COVID-19, students with special education needs have been deeply affected. Individual education plans (IEPs) have become a crucial part of the education system. And the number of students on IEPs is growing across Ontario public schools.

IEPs are created for students who are defined as exceptional, in order to consider their individual needs (whether behavioural, communicative, physical, intellectual) and support their optimal learning potential.

An exceptional student in education refers to a child who has been identified as gifted or as having a disability. Many children who are not identified as exceptional can still have an IEP that is “non-identitified.” This allows them to receive special supports within their educational journeys.

If an IEP is inaccurate, a child’s learning needs will not be met. IEPs are meant to be constructed by a team of professionals in collaboration with parents, as each stakeholder has different information about the child. Parents who have busy schedules may not feel as though they can make a valuable contribution to their child’s education and discussions about an IEP. Or they may lack the awareness of their parental rights when it comes to participating in the IEP process. This means they may be wrongly left out of the conversation.

Read the full article written by 91ŃÇÉ« Faculty of Education Ph.D. Student Tori Trajanovski on .

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Dr. Shelia Harms, MD, a 4th year PhD candidate in the Faculty of Education is the recipient of the prestigious 2020 U21 Health Sciences Group (HSG) Teaching Excellence Award. The Award was established in 2014 by Deans of Medicine as a way to celebrate and reward exceptional educational scholarship, particularly amongst research intensive universities, across the U21 HSG network. The Award also helps to nurture international cooperation, one of U21’s key objectives, by offering faculty from different universities, and regions, to work together on exciting, interdisciplinary projects.

"Questions of learning in academic psychiatry simultaneously require a commitment to a discourse of the mind. It has been through the scholarly work of education that I have found a rich place to encounter thought anew,” says Harms.  “This award depends on the possibility for shared educational transactions marked by success and failure alike. For this I am deeply grateful to the many students and educators who have created a generative space for me to engage and explore what it means to have an education in psychiatry.  I am honored to receive this award and the possibilities it opens for ongoing educational transformation. "

Clinically, Dr. Harms practices as a Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist at McMaster Children’s Hospital with a focus on general outpatient care. Academically, she is in the role of Associate Chair Education within the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Neurosciences. She is actively involved in supervising undergraduate and postgraduate learners as well as teaching within the Faculty of Health Sciences. Dr. Harms has acted in numerous educational leadership roles within the department including the program director for Postgraduate Psychiatry Training and has held the role of the inaugural program director for subspecialty training in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. She is also an active member on the Psychiatry Exam Board for the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada. Dr. Harms directs the global mental health initiative in the department which includes leading a long-standing collaboration and novel educational initiative at Mbarara University of Science and Technology (MUST) in Western Uganda, where she also serves on faculty.

Dr. Harms is focusing on enhancing educational scholarship activities across the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Neurosciences at McMaster University. As part of these efforts, she is pursuing a PhD in education at 91ŃÇÉ« under the supervision of Distinguished Research Professor and 91ŃÇÉ« Research Chair in Pedagogy and Psycho-Social Transformation, Dr. Deborah Britzman. Harms dissertation is titled, “A different kind of education: Notes from a psychiatrist". Her focus is on critical histories in Psychiatry. Dr. Harms is particularly interested in thinking about medical education using psychodynamic concepts as they are applied to learning, in an attempt to understand educational phenomenology that are both relevant and pressing in contemporary medical education. The dissertation’s themes include studies of uncertainty in learning, difficult knowledge, the role of bodies in the study of the mind, and the work of encountering colonialism.

“It is my great pleasure to congratulate Dr. Harms on her illustrious award. The field of psychiatric education, as with any education today, must undergo major transformations and this award recognizes Dr. Harms as one of its creative international innovators,” said Professor Britzman. “Dr. Harms entered the PhD program with a four-year SSHRC and a deep interest in problems of psychoanalytic approaches to education. Her dissertation, “A different kind of education: Notes from a psychiatrist” is a model of humanity and generosity. Dr. Harms continues to distinguish herself as a leading scholar, now by opening psychiatric experience with autoethnographic methods with psychoanalytic sensitivity.”

Finally, Dr. Harms has been recently elected to the American College of Psychiatrists, the elite scientific college dedicated to professional leadership and highest standards of psychiatry through teaching, education, research, and clinical practice.

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