Images of Identity: Self and Other in School Textbooks of the Palestinian Authority

On June 1, 2011, EDST presented Dr. Samira Alayan speaking on “Images of Identity: Self and Other in School Textbooks of the Palestinian Authority.” The study analyzes representations of self and “Other” in ministry-approved history textbooks for secondary level in Palestine. Samira Alayan holds a PhD in the sociology of education from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and is a research fellow at the Georg Eckert Institute for International Textbook Research, Braunschweig, Germany. Her research focuses on education in the Middle East in conflict and post-conflict settings.

If you want to learn more about the topic, read the abstract (.pdf) and the event poster.

Guest speaker: “Globalization and Educational policies"

The Department of Educational Studies was pleased to present a talk by visiting guest speaker, Professor Abdeljalil Akkari of the University of Geneva, Switzerland where he is an associate professor in the Department of Education. Professor Akkari’s talk, “Globalization and Educational policies: The challenge of diversity,” explored two-tiered educational systems emerging from educational policies. His main research interests now focus on teacher education and reforms of educational systems in a comparative perspective. The talk was arranged by Dr. André Mazawi of EDST.

A detailed description of the event is on our website.

Killam Teaching Prize awarded

EDST Professor André Mazawi was awarded the Killam Teaching prize last week at UBC’s convocation ceremonies.

Pictured below (L–R) are Dr. Michelle Stack, Dr. Deirdre Kelly, Dr. André Mazawi, Dr. Claudia Ruitenberg, Dr. Garnet Grosjean, and Dr. Shauna Butterwick.

Global tourism can harm communities

Research by EDST Professor Jo-Anne Dillabough was featured in UBC Reports, vol. 5 no. 3. Heather Amos wrote an article about Professor Dillabough’s research on how tourism impacts local communities:

“Dillabough studies the global tourist industry, where tourism develops from outside of a country and investors, such as a large North American hotel chains, can gain financial success with little benefit for the people who live there. This work emerged out of some earlier research on male youth subcultures, which Dillabough made into a book, Lost Youth Culture in the Global City: Class, Culture and the Urban Imaginary.

Today, she looks at how the global tourist industry has changed the dynamic of local communities in Morocco and what this means for the young boys growing up in the area.”

Read the entire article on the UBC Reports website.

UBC Reports is a monthly electronic and print publication produced by UBC Public Affairs.

Journalists and academics as public educators

Michelle Stack, EDST professor, writes about journalism and academe in an article for “Academic Matters” magazine. In the article, “Journalists and academics as public educators,” Dr. Stack argues that journalism and academe have much in common, both being networks of knowledge that facilitate the noisy, messy process of democratic conversation.

The full text of the article is available online.

Academic Matters is Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associates’ (OCUFA) journal of higher education, published two times a year in print and on the web.

AERA Awards

Dr. Anish Sayani, sessional instructor at EDST, was selected for two awards at the American Education Research Association (AERA) Conference 2011. The awards committee selected his dissertation for the Robert Kottkamp Outstanding Dissertation Award for his "narrative-ethnographic study of the lived experiences of marginalized high school students" which they called a "ground breaking" and "significant" study. The award was announced at AERA on April 8th.

Dr. Sayani was also selected for the Divison A AERA Outstanding Dissertation Award for his dissertation, Pathologies and complicities: High school and the identities of disaffected South Asian "Brown boys." This award was announced at AERA on April 10th.

Dr. Blye Frank presents research at EDST

The recently appointed Dean of the Faculty of Education, Dr. Blye Frank, visited the Department of Educational Studies on April 19, 2011 to present his recent research into models of masculinity, and to meet EDST faculty and staff. Many EDST members listened to the talk, which focused on masculinity and health, then shared refreshments and conversations with Dr. Frank.

Dr. Blye Frank has been appointed as Dean of the Faculty of Education at UBC for a five-year term, effective April 1, 2011. Dr. Frank is an experienced educator and administrator who brings a strong commitment to excellence in research, teaching and academic leadership. He has an active research career and is currently conducting research in the areas of men, masculinities, and health. Dr. Frank served as principal investigator in the Exemplary Schools Project, a federally funded study on successful schools in Canada. He has held major research grants from the Social Science Humanities Research Council of Canada for research in the area of masculinity and schooling. He has been involved in several international projects in Tanzania, Turkey, Pakistan and currently with a World Bank funded project in medical education reform in Kazakhstan. Frequently invited to present papers and keynote addresses to academic and professional conferences at the local, provincial, national and international level, Dr. Frank has appeared as an expert witness on human rights issues and has served on a number of local and national boards.