Developmental Standard Term Certificate
by Jack Miller
Research geared towards developing credentials for First Nations language teachers. Focus is primarily on linguistics, with an average of five to six area students involved. Certificate will be issued by the British Columbia College of Teachers, and implementation will hopefully begin in Fall 2008.
Extension of Doctoral Work
by Jack Miller
Interest in developing methods of assessing language proficiencies. Partnership developed with Chief Atahm School: a Secwepemc immersion school. Research currently focusing on kindergarten to grade three speaking ability, with the goal to develop a test on fluency of language. It is hopeful that a prototype will be ready by 2010.
Peer Conflict in Secondary Schools
by Jane Powell and Dave MacLennan
Research developed from interest in peer conflict, and looking at how role taking may effect how peers relate to each other. Study involves exploring conflict within grade eleven literary texts such as Lord of the Flies, and Macbeth. Study also involves having grade eleven students peer teach to grade nine students. Research is still currently in progress.
Finger Calculation Method
by Kim Calder
Interventions for children at-risk or who are special needs learners has been a long-time interest of mine. I am currently conducting a research project to examine the efficacy of a finger calculation method to assist in the learning of a basic math concepts. This project is a controlled study and will focus on the primary and intermediate grade levels. A second component of this project is to examine the use of on-line technology for teacher professional development.
Predictors of Student Success
by Kim Calder
I continue to conduct a project to examine B.Ed. and Special Ed. program admission procedures, student demographics, and grading practices. One focus of the project is to quantify predictors of student success (both academically and in practicum). As well, I have been creating a 'student profile' by collecting data on such dimensions as hours/wk of part-time work and family demands. Analysis is descriptive and analytical (correlation and regression). The final results will assist in future program developing, adaptations to current programs, and promotion.
Education, learning, and Social justice in ancient Hebrew literature
by Dave Gulley
A major interest has been the area of curriculum design and it was my privilege to lead the team that developed the Intermediate Program for schools in BC. The program still forms the basis of curriculum in grades 4 to 10 in our province.
A new research interest is the study of education, learning and social justice in the literature of the ancient Hebrew people especially the period 800 B.C.E. to 100 C.E.
Reading and Jingles
by Patrick Walton
To study the use of songs to teach reading, three years my research team and I created and recorded 16 original children’s songs, added body movements to accompany the songs, piloted the songs with Kindergarten children, and developed follow-up activities. I conducted two research projects with control groups, one in each of the last two years, with a total of 143 Kindergarten children. The findings were that songs are effective tools to teach key prereading skills (phoneme awareness, letter-sounds, rhyming) and word reading. In the year 2 project, 80% of the children were able to read words presented in a list without context, and most of these children could also read words not presented in the teaching materials or songs. One of the readers was a high functioning autistic child. These findings were presented at the American Education Research Association conference in Montreal in April 2005 and have been submitted for publication.
Over the last year, I worked with Aboriginal musicians to develop an original children's song CD and Teacher's Guide to teach reading to young Aborignal children.
Discourses on Death: British Columbia's Regions Address Timely and Untimely Mortality
by Diane Purvey
| Death is a field of experience that has been largely neglected by Canadian historians. No one would argue, however, that public responses to mortality have not changed since 1900. While elements of public grieving remain constant, what is remarkable is the extent to which mourning and discourses about death were transformed in the Twentieth Century. Grief counseling in schools and the workplace, to take but one example, has become a legitimate career (and a public expectation) over the last twenty years; how that happened has not been explored by social historians and its implications are not fully understood.
Social Work and Attitudes Towards Domestic Violence in Canada, 1945 - 1960
by Diane Purvey
This study examines social workers' attitudes towards intra-familial violence, specifically husband's violence against their wives and the blaming of women for provoking men to spousal violence, as revealed in dissertation literature emanating from the University of Toronto and McGill University Master of Social Work and Master of Arts degree programs from 1945 to 1960.
|