Workshops

Accepted Workshops

Workshop 1: Bringing us together

Scope: The Canadian International Conference on Education is attended by educators from nearly a hundred countries who have more dialects and they have home countries. As educators, we all have one goal that is to improve the quality of education. However, as we work arduous, we can make a difference. Our advancement lies in our ability to we learn to communicate. English is the language used by most of the educators in their research. Therefore, it is imperative that we master it. The English language is a very complex and difficult one with an understanding. Attendees will toward the goal of helping students of all languages to master standardized tests. Words... have so much meaning and yet so simple. For example, a book is pages of written words yet if one wishes to travel one might book a flight. Two very different meanings yet the same word. Come and let’s brain-storm on words.

Organiser: Barba Aldis Patton, University of Houston-Victoria, USA

Workshop 2: Embracing the Needs of First Nation Children Through the Voices of First Nation Early Childhood Educators 

Scope: The 49 Nishnawbe Aski Nation First Nation (NAN) communities include some 9,000 school aged children, of which approximately 3,000 are between 0 to 12 years of age. Over the last decade this demographic has increased significantly straining the education systems of First Nations and when combined with the socio-cultural, socio-economic, socio-health issues results in what one study determined that, “93 percent of (NAN) children of Ontario’s far north lag at least two grades behind in school.” In part, overcoming this gap will require innovations at all levels of education which will in turn, necessitate in-service educators acquire new skill-sets. For almost a decade Oshki-Wenjack has offered an Early Childhood Education Program that has accredited numerous Indigenous Early Childhood Educators (IECE), many currently employed in a First Nation context in the territory. Concerned with their ongoing professional development the 2017 graduating IECE class and alumni came together in a Needs Assessment, sponsored by Oshki-Wenjack, that resulted in a comprehensive vision of their PD needs. Based on the result of that Needs Assessment, Oshki-Wenjack developed a two-institute PD strategy and a related summative research study.

Objectives and Motivation:
The two-institute PD strategy included:
- Institute 1 brought together 28 IECEs from 17 communities to establish a knowledge baseline in a wide array of specific subject areas related to community education innovation, funded through Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada’s New Paths for Education.
- Institute 2 brought together 16 senior IECEs managers from the same communities and was designed to increase the leadership skills necessary to address the cultural, linguistic, and land-based education needs of the 0 to 12-year-old demographic and to enhance the innovation skills and the early childhood education centres in those communities.

The body of research literature the focuses on IECE in Canada is extraordinarily limited, this is further compounded by a lack of literature associated to the in-service professional development of IECEs working in a First Nation context. And yet the lack of school success of First Nation children is almost a universal Canadian reality in a population where one-third of First Nation people are 14 years-of-age or younger. To overcome this research shortfall Oshki-Wenjack has combined the professional development strategy mentioned above with a two-part research strategy. The first-part of the research strategy is formative and reveals the impact of the two Institutes from the perspective of the IECE participants.  The second part of the research is summative and looks to reveal the impact of both Institutes from the perspective of a random sample of First Nations early childhood centres and their staff.

Organisers: Kim Falcigno and Lori Huston
Oshki-Pimache-O-Win: The Wenjack Education Institute, Canada