Field: Education

Research

The Use of Online Labelling in Student Learning

One of Dr. Bures’ current research projects explores how to improve online learning through the use of structured online discussion features.  She is examining whether these features help learners improve the quality of their online discourse and their learning when they are required and/or unrequired. Her study also analyses whether students choose to use the features and investigates the usability of these features.

In order to conduct this study, Dr. Bures will use a mixed-method approach.  She will first focus on the pilot testing of the measures and the tools using surveys, content analysis, open-ended interviews and talk-aloud protocols; then, she will look at whether using the features is effective with a series of pre-test control group experiments; and finally she will see how useable the features are from the students’ perspective through multiple-regression techniques, content analyses, and qualitative narrative analyses.

Computer conferencing as a form of learning has become very pervasive; as a result, Dr. Bures believes that we are increasingly obliged to study it carefully from the human science perspective.  Her work will go beyond descriptive research on unstructured conferencing to explore interventions or scaffolds to online learning that promote meaningful dialogue. Dr. Bures hopes to help learners take advantage of the unique characteristics of the online learning environment, supporting them to annotate their messages and reflect upon messages as they compose them.

Assessing Students’ Electronic Portfolios:
Now That we have Them, How Can We Judge Them?

Dr. Bures’ study aims to create credible, authentic assessment measures for teachers to use to assess student-centred learning in the form of students’ electronic portfolios.  She believes that we need to find meaningful efficient scoring rubrics for translating a collection of student prose, reflections, revisions, video and audio material into authentic judgements of what and how students have learned.  Dr. Bures’ research will develop assessment measures in collaboration with teachers integrating e-portfolios into their classrooms and will develop useful mechanisms to support teachers integrating the e-portfolios, helping them conceptualize and implement effective e-portfolios and assessment practices.

In order to gather information, Dr. Bures will be conducting a mixed-method study. This type of study will draw on a socio-cultural methodology and the design experiment approach where classroom innovations are studied in situ and tools are modified in a cyclical refinement process.  It also employs the quasi-experimental pre-test-post-test control group design so that the researchers are able to gather data on classes where electronic portfolios are used and classes where they are not used.

In Quebec, more than 20 percent of primary-school students have to repeat a grade before going to secondary school and 70 percent of those drop out of high school.  Students often complain that what they learn in school is not relevant.  Dr. Bures feels that electronic portfolios may help address the lack of engagement in school contributing to a high drop-out rate.  She believes that portfolios provide students with some choices about what to include and how to organize them, and a more naturalistic approach to assessment than standardized tests, which could encourage students to stay in school by engaging their interests or their ‘flow.’  Electronic portfolios can also be used to judge skills relevant to the types of activities students engage in outside of the classroom, such as problem-solving skills, and even their ability to self regulate.

This study will contribute to both practice and theory, the former by supporting teachers in effectively integrating and assessing electronic portfolios, the latter by helping validate and decreasing our attention rate by making schooling appear more relevant and engaging.

Research

Lisa Taylor’s range of research projects explore theoretical, ethical and practical directions in inclusive models of education which build on cultural and linguistic diversity as a resource for pluralist, globally engaged societies. Grounded in feminist, antiracist, postcolonial and cultural studies, in psychoanalytic and post-reconceptualization curriculum theorizing, her more recent research explores the psychic, ethical and pedagogical dynamics of pedagogies that seek to learn from historical memory, representations of violence, genocide and injustice, and that mobilize affective and aesthetic engagement in learning for social change:

2011-   Principal Investigator, Bishop’s Senate Research Committee Research Grant, 2011-2012 ($8999): From Consultation to Collaboration, from Guest Speaker to Expert Stakeholder: Community-centred participatory action research into collaborative curriculum development regarding the 1994 Rwandan Genocide against the Tutsis.

The bridge to the future: Re-envisioning teacher education through theatre in Rwanda

• Principal Investigator, Bishop’s Senate Research Committee Research Grant, 2009-2010 ($6999)
• A qualitative case study of ‘theatre for development’ and critical pedagogy training to engage preservice secondary teachers in multimodal memory work (e.g. photo journals), dialogic deliberation and re-envisioning educators’ role in re-building a resilient, pluralist, peaceful civic culture in a fragile post-conflict society.

Literacy on the Move: Building Multiliteracies and Critical Citizenship Through Culturally Inclusive Literature Curriculum

• Principal Investigator, Bishop’s Senate Research Committee Research Grant, 2008-2009 ($5657)
• A qualitative action research case study of a unique grade 11 English course (Black Canadian Literature) analyzing students’ development of multiple literacies, ‘critical language awareness’, identity expression and critical civic competencies through a culturally affirming curriculum of African diasporic literary and multimodal expressive forms. Output: The report will contribute to a forthcoming critical Canadian Reader in Afrocentric education (Dei & Lawson)

Multicultural Literacy in Canada

• Co-Investigator, SSHRC Multiculturalism Strategic Joint Initiative (Principal Investigator, Michael Hoechsmann, McGill University), “Multicultural Literacy: a national survey of Canadian youth”, 2004-2005 ($35,940)
• Co-Investigator, SSHRC Multiculturalism Strategic Joint Initiative (Principal Investigator, Michael Hoechsmann, McGill University), “Multicultural Literacy: Exploring the Rural, Urban and Rurban”  SSHRC Multiculturalism Strategic Joint Initiative, 2006-2007 ($36,364)
• A national survey (1000 grade 10 and 11 students; 10 urban, rural and ‘rurban’ boards; 5 provinces) taking stock of multicultural education in the 21st Century context of youth’s multiple, intersecting multi-media spheres of learning. Correlating demographic, survey-based and school-based data allowed for textured analysis of students’ in- and out-of-school learning vis-à-vis globally relevant curriculum. Output: An innovative research instrument measuring what young people know about the struggles and the intellectual, social, political and cultural contributions of racialized peoples globally and nationally and where they learned it (school, media, family and community)

From literacy to multiliteracies: designing learning environments for knowledge generation within the new economy

• Co-Applicant (Principal Investigators: Margaret Early, UBC and Jim Cummins, OISE/UT), SSHRC Initiative for the New Economy, 2002-2005 ($760 000)
• The national research alliance analyzed over 50 critical case studies in 4 school boards documenting and extending current literacy and pedagogy practices to maximize educational development for all in the globalized digital new economy. The Alliance produced an integrated Literacy Framework for the New Economy (curriculum, assessment, and policy recommendations; http://www.multiliteracies.ca); Output (Taylor): Taylor, Bernhard, Garg, Cummins, 2008, Journal of Early Childhood Literacy; Taylor, 2008, Canadian Modern Language Review.

Multicultural Literacy in Spain’s emerging pluralist society

• Principal Investigator, Bishop’s Senate Research Committee Research Grant, 2006-2008 ($6 700)
• This quantitative pilot study adapted a research tool to measure the ‘multicultural literacy’ of a broad sampling of Spanish youth with the intention of producing a stratified composite of what young people are learning and assimilating in the context of the emerging diversification of Spanish society and institutional promotion of intercultural education. Output: Taylor, 200.

Negotiating Linguistic, Cultural and Ethnoracial Difference: Learning Experiences of Minoritized New Quebeckers

• Principal Investigator, Bishop’s Senate Research Committee Research Grant, 2005-2007 ($4 100)
• This qualitative study investigated the learning experiences of immigrant students who attend or have attended schools in Sherbrooke, bringing critical race and postcolonial theory and critical sociolinguistics to examining these within the context of provincial discourses of ethnic and linguistic national identity as these are articulated in institutional policy and practice.

Developing  Multicultural Competencies: A Framework for Curriculum Development and Implementation in integration with the Québec Education Plan

• Principal Investigator, Bishop’s Senate Research Committee Research Grant, 2004-2005 ($2 900)
• This qualitative pilot study investigated the development and implementation of an original multicultural curriculum framework by Bishop’s students teaching in socially diverse, urban and rural schools. This framework represents a vital expansion of the Quebec Education Plan (2003) in response to the dramatic diversification of Quebec society.

Publications

Refereed Publications:

Taylor, L. K. & Zine, J. (Eds.). (2014). Muslim Women, Transnational Feminism and the Ethics of Pedagogy: Contested Imaginaries in post-9/11 Cultural Practice. Routledge.

Taylor, L. K. (2014). From empathy to estrangement, from enlightenment to implication: A pedagogical framework for (re)reading literary desire against the ‘slow acculturation of Imperialism.’ In L. K. Taylor & J. Zine (Eds.), Muslim Women, Transnational Feminism and the Ethics of Pedagogy: Contested Imaginaries in post-9/11 Cultural Practice. Routledge.

Taylor, L. K. (forthcoming). Inheritance as Intimate, Implicated Publics: Building practices of response and remembrance amongst future teachers. R.I. Simon: A pedagogy of public possibility; Special Journal issue of Canadian Social Studies.

Taylor, L. K. (forthcoming). No language is neutral: Afrocentrism, multiliteracies and joining polyphonic community in a Black Canadian Literature course. In E. Lawson & G. J. S. Dei (eds.), African-centred Schooling: A critical reader. Toronto: Between the Lines.

Taylor, L. K. (forthcoming). The Force of Fantasy: Re-reading Pre-Service Student Response to a Pedagogy of Unsettling Colonial Optimism. Special Issue on Social Affect. Cultural Studies.

Taylor, L. K. Collaboration. Going Public. Available February 1, 2014.

Taylor, L. K. (2014). Contra el corriente: Navigando la marea afectiva en la educación para la justicia social y mundial. Rizomo Freireana, Xàtiva, Spain: Instituto Paulo Freire. Available from http://www.rizoma-freireano.org/index.php/a-contracorriente-navegar-el-flujo-y-el-reflujo-de-los-afectos-sociales-en-la-educacion-para-la-justicia-global–lisa-k-taylor-bishops-university-canada.

Taylor, L. K., Rwigema, M. J., & Sollange, U. (2014). The Ethics of learning from Rwandan survivor communities: The politics of knowledge production and shared authority within community-school collaboration in genocide and critical global citizenship education. In S. High & Concordia University Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling (Eds.), Beyond Testimony and Trauma: Oral History in the Aftermath of Mass Violence. Vancouver: UBC Press.

Taylor, L. K. (2013). Against the Tide: Working with and against the affective flows of resistance in Social and Global Justice Learning. Critical Literacy: Theories and Practices, 7, 2, pp. 58-68. Available from http://www.criticalliteracyjournal.org.

Taylor, L. K. & Hoechsmann, M. (2012). Why Multicultural Literacy? Multicultural Education Inside  and Outside of Schools. In H. K. Wright, M. Singh & R. Race (Eds.), (2012). Precarious international multicultural education: Hegemony, dissent and rising alternatives (Chap. 17; pp. 315-332). Sense Publishers. .

Taylor, L. K., Rwigema, M. J. & Umwali, S. S. (2012). What you see depends where you stand: Critical anticolonial perspectives on Genocide Education addressing the Rwandan Genocide. In P. P. Trifonas & B. Wright. (Eds.), Critical Peace Education: Difficult dialogues (Chap. 8; pp. 115-134). New York: Springer.

Taylor, L. K. & Zine, J. (2012). Contested imaginaries: Reading Muslim women and Muslim women reading back: Transnational feminist reading practices, pedagogy and ethical concerns. In L. Tepperman & A. Kalyta (Eds.), Reading Sociology: Canadian Perspectives, Second Edition. Toronto: Oxford University Press.

Taylor, L. K. (2011). Feeling in Crisis: Vicissitudes of Response in Experiments with Global Justice Education. Journal of the Canadian Association for Curriculum Studies, 9, 1, pp. 6-65.

Taylor, L. K. (2011). Global Justice Education as a pedagogy of loss: Interrupting Frames of War. In H. Smits & R. Naqvi, (Eds.), Thinking about and enacting curriculum in Times of War (Chap 8; pp. 139-156). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

Taylor, L. K. (2011). Beyond Paternalism: Global Education with Preservice Teachers as a Practice of Implication. In V. Andreotti & L.M.T.M. de Souza (Eds.), Postcolonial perspectives on global citizenship education (177-199). Routledge.

Taylor, L. K. & Hoechsmann, M. (2011). Beyond Intellectual Insularity: Multicultural Literacy as a Measure of Respect. Canadian Journal of Education, 34, 2, June. Available from http://www.cje-rce.ca.

Taylor, L. K. & Hoechsmann, M. (2011). ¿Por qué la alfabetización multicultural? La educación cultural dentro y fuera del ámbito escolar. Special Issue on Democracy and Education of Postconvencionales.

Andreotti, V., Jefferess, D., Pashby, K., Rowe, C., Tarc, P. & Taylor, L.K. (2010). Difference and Conflict in Global Citizenship in Higher Education in Canada. International Journal on Development Education and Global Learning.

Taylor, L. K. & Boutilier, K. (2010). I walk Bathurst Street until it come like home’: Studying Black Canadian Literature and Critical Citizenship in the English Classroom. Special Issue: Anti-racism education: Missing in action (Ed. Charles C. Smith), Our Schools/Ourselves, 19:3, pp. 353-365.

Taylor, L. K. (2010). Multimodal archeologies of storied formation as palimpsestal inquiry. In C.  Mitchell & T. Wilson (Eds.), Memory and pedagogy: Productive remembering in changing times. New York: Routledge.

Taylor, L. K., Bernhard, J., Garg, S. & Cummins, J. (2008). Building on Students’ Family-Based Cultural and Linguistic Capital through a Multiliteracies Curriculum. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 8, 3, pp. 269-295.

Taylor, L. K. (2008). Of mother tongues and other tongues: The stakes of linguistically inclusive pedagogy in minority contexts. Special Issue: Multilingual Literacies. Canadian Modern Language Review, 64, 5, pp. 89-123.

Taylor, L. K. (2008). Transcreation, Transformance and the fertility of Difference: Reading ESL students’ negotiations of language difference through the lens of translation. In P. Trifonas (Ed.), Worlds of difference: Rethinking the ethics of global education for the 21st century (pp. 103-136). Boulder: Paradigm.

Taylor, L. K. (2008). From critical literacy to recursive embodied affective relations of knowing: Reading literature Through Other Eyes. Critical Literacy: Theories and Practices, Vol. 1, Issue 2. pp. 58-73, available from http://www.criticalliteracyjournal.org.

Taylor, L. K. (2008). Beyond ‘open-mindedness’: Cultivating critical, reflexive approaches to democratic dialogue. In P. R. Carr & D. E. Lund (Eds.), Doing democracy: Striving for political literacy and Social Justice (Chap 8; pp. 159-176). New York: Peter Lang.

Burwell, C., Davis, H. E. & Taylor, L. K. (2008). Reading Nafisi in the West: Feminist Reading Practices and Ethical Concerns. TOPIA A Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies, Special Issue: Islam  and Cultural Politics, 19, pp. 63-84.

Taylor, L. K. (2008). Normalizar la diversidad, diversificar lo normal: Modelos canadienses de educación inclusiva en contextos de alta diversidad etnolingüística (Normalizing Diversity, Diversifying ‘Normal’: Canadian models of inclusive education in ethnolinguistically diverse settings). Conference Proceedings, 5th Symposium on Language, Education and Immigration, Instituto de Ciencias de la Educación de la Universidad de Girona, Girona, Spain.

Taylor, L. K. (2007). Developing critical affective imagination: Building feminist anti-colonial embodied reading practices through Reader Response. Critical Literacy: Theories and Practices, 1, 2, pp. 58-73.

Zine, J, Taylor, L. K. & Davis, H. D. (Guest Editors). (2007). CONTESTED IMAGINARIES / Reading Muslim Women and Muslim Women Reading Back: Transnational Feminist Reading Practices, Pedagogy and Ethical Concerns, Special Issue of Intercultural Education, 18, 4.

Zine, J, Taylor, L. K. & Davis, H. D. (2007). Editorial Introduction. Reading Muslim Women and Muslim Women Reading Back: Transnational Feminist Reading Practices, Pedagogy and Ethical Concerns, Special Issue of Intercultural Education, 18, 4, pp. 271-280.

Taylor, L. K. (2007). Reading desire: From empathy to estrangement, from enlightenment to implication. Intercultural Education, 18, 4, pp. 297-316.

Zine, J, Taylor, L. K. & Davis, H. D. (2007). Interview with Zarqa Nawaz. Reading Muslim Women and Muslim Women Reading Back: Transnational Feminist Reading Practices, Pedagogy and Ethical Concerns, Special Issue of Intercultural Education, 18, 4.

Taylor, L. K., Davis, H. D. & Zine, J. (2007). Interview with Jamelie Hassan. Reading Muslim Women And Muslim Women Reading Back: Transnational Feminist Reading Practices, Pedagogy and Ethical Concerns, Special Issue of Intercultural Education, 18, 4.

Davis, H. D., Zine, J. & Taylor, L. K. (2007). Interview with Mohja Kahf. Reading Muslim Women and Muslim Women Reading Back: Transnational Feminist Reading Practices, Pedagogy and Ethical Concerns, Special Issue of Intercultural Education, 18, 4.

Taylor, L. K. (2007). Taking Diversity Seriously through Multiliteracies Pedagogy. Proceedings of International Conference on Intercultural Education, Teacher Training and School Practice.  National University of Distance Education. Madrid, Spain.

Taylor, L. K. (2006-2007). Glocal rural: Home in the world and the worlding of home. Journal of Eastern Townships Studies, 29-30, pp. 19-26.

Taylor, L. K. (2006). Cultural Translation and the Double Movement of Difference in learning  ‘English as a Second Identity’. Critical Inquiry in Language Studies, 3, 2, 101-130.

Taylor, L. K. (2006). Wrestling with Race: Implications of Integrative Antiracism Education for Immigrant ESL Youth. TESOL Quarterly, 40, 3, 519-544.

Taylor, L. K. (2004). Creating a Community of Difference: Understanding Gender and Race in a high school ESL Anti-discrimination Camp. In B. Norton & A. Pavlenko (Eds.), Gender and TESOL (pp. 95-110). TESOL Publications.

Taylor, L. K. (2004). Terms of Engagement: Cultural Translation and the Dream of Educational Inclusion. In A. Ibrahim (Ed.), Special Issue: Thinking Critically, Choosing Politically: Anti-racism and/or Multiculturalism Education, Inquiry: Critical Thinking Across the Discipline, 22, 2, pp. 33-44.

Taylor, L. K. (2002). Indians Shooting Indians: ‘Imaging back’ and Re/membering Communities in a Polyvalent Postcolonial Text. Trans/forms: insurgent voices in education, pp. 37-54.

Taylor, L. K. (2001). More Perils of Talking About Culture: Constructs of ‘Race’ and Culture Circulating in Multicultural Educational Discourses. Trans/forms: insurgent voices in education (5), pp. 81-7.

Taylor, L. K. (1997). `Canadian Culture’, Cultural Difference and ESL Pedagogy. TESL Canada Journal 15,  1, pp. 70-6.