茄子直播

OISE's Janette Pelletier, Eunice Jang and Shelley Stagg Peterson are researching children's language and writing development

Partnerships-based research wins $6.4 million to tackle social, educational challenges

Exploring how children learn, how caregiving works

Two 茄子直播 research projects are receiving $2.8 million each from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) to work with partners to tackle pressing social, economic and cultural problems, and five researchers have won smaller awards to begin developing new partnerships.

SSHRC鈥檚 partnership grants program supports formal partnerships between academic researchers and external partners to advance knowledge and understanding on questions of intellectual, social, economic and cultural significance.

Professor Shelley Stagg Peterson of the Department of Curriculum, Teaching, and Learning at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) is leading a project entitled, 鈥淎ssisting and supporting children鈥檚 oral language and writing development through play in classrooms, daycares and homes in northern communities.鈥

The project aims to bridge the gap between aboriginal and non-aboriginal children鈥檚 literacy and to strengthen and sustain research and teaching capacity in northern Canadian communities. Based on the ideas that children learn best through play and that teaching and assessment of both children and educators should be culturally and linguistically appropriate, team members will develop and evaluate a play-based assessment and instructional framework.

鈥淲e鈥檙e going to be in four settings in the north with very different populations,鈥 said Stagg Peterson, who will be working with co-investigators Janette Pelletier and Eunice Jang of OISE. 鈥淲e hope to develop a tool that will be useful to teachers, parents and other caregivers in specific contexts, yet can be used around the world.鈥

The project grew out of Stagg Peterson鈥檚 belief in the importance of writing for literacy and her past research with Kindergarten and Grade 1 teachers in northern Ontario.

鈥淭hese teachers were telling me that students coming into their classes didn鈥檛 have the vocabulary and the familiarly with oral language they felt was foundational to being successful in literacy.鈥

Project partners include aboriginal organizations, other universities, northern school boards and learning associations.

鈥淚鈥檝e been humbled by the incredible commitment of our partners,鈥 said Stagg Peterson, who noted that several of them traveled for three days to attend an important interview in the application process. 鈥淭his project isn鈥檛 just ours. It鈥檚 been shaped by work we鈥檝e already done with our partners.鈥

Professor Ito Peng of sociology is the director of a project called 鈥淕ender, migration and the work of care: Comparative perspectives.鈥

Her team, which includes 茄子直播 co-investigators Monica Boyd of sociology, Cynthia Cranford of sociology at UTM and Rachel Silvey of geography, will investigate the changing meanings of care鈥攐f children, elders and the disabled.

鈥淭he issue of care,鈥 said Peng, 鈥渋s a huge global concern today not only for wealthy countries in the global north, where demand for care seems to grow continuously, but also for developing countries in the global south, because demand for care in the global north is creating a powerful incentive for women to migrate to work as care workers.鈥

These 鈥渃are chains鈥 are increasingly globalized, carrying women from low and middle income countries to immigrant-receiving countries like Canada to work as caregivers. The result is 鈥渃are deficits鈥 in caregivers鈥 countries of origin and increasing social inequality in receiving countries.

The project will examine how this realignment of care is influencing migration and how migration in turn is influencing social welfare and care.

Fifteen institutional partners include the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada, Citizenship and Immigration Canada, Service Employee International Union 鈥 Local 1 and UN agencies.

鈥淚 hope this project will give us a new understanding of how care and care work are changing, how we are all interconnected globally through care, and how government policies can shape how care is provided and the pattern of care migration,鈥 said Peng.

鈥淐ongratulations to Professors Stagg Peterson and Peng, and to their partner researchers and organizations,鈥 said Professor Paul Young, 茄子直播鈥檚 vice-president, research and innovation. 鈥淚t is through collaborative research like this that universities can help identify and target genuine social problems鈥攁nd begin to solve them.鈥

Young went on to note that the SSHRC partnerships program is relatively new.

鈥淭his is the second year grants have been made, and 茄子直播 was fortunate to have three funded last year. Together with this year鈥檚 successful applicants, we have five collaborative projects underway that are helping ask and answer questions critical to our collective welfare.鈥

In addition to the two partnership grants, 茄子直播 had five projects funded by SSHRC鈥檚 partnership development grants program. These smaller awards, which range from $60,000 to $200,000, allow researchers to foster, design and test new partnerships. The winners are:

Mark Cheetham of the Department of Art, 鈥淐anadian art commons for history of art education and training.鈥
Elizabeth Dhuey of the Department of Management at UTSC, 鈥淐umulative impact of community and education interventions on the well-being of urban children and youth.鈥
Sara Grimes, Faculty of Information, 鈥淐hildren鈥檚 do-it-yourself media: mapping trends, policy, implications and best practices around children鈥檚 increased participation in creative cultural production online.鈥 
Yoon Jung Kang, Centre for French and Linguistics, UTSC, A corpora-based study of Korean dialects: Microvariation and language universals.鈥
Cara Krmpotich, Faculty of Information, 鈥淢emory, meaning-making and collections.鈥

The grants were announced May 31 by Gary Goodyear, Canada鈥檚 minister of state for science and technology, in a speech at the 2013 Congress of the Social Sciences and Humanities, in Victoria, B.C.

Jenny Hall is a writer with the Office of the Vice-President, Research and Innovation

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