I am an Associate Professor in the Curriculum Studies and Educational Studies fields, with a cross-appointment to the Department of History in Queen’s University’s Faculty of Arts and Science. I began my professional teaching career as an elementary school teacher in Scarborough with the Toronto District School Board. Following a circuitous path, which included teaching at the Primary, Junior, Intermediate, and Senior Divisions (Continuing Education), I returned to the academy to pursue doctoral studies in history of education.
My teaching in the Faculty of Education at Queen’s extends to several disciplines; in particular, I concentrate on history of education, philosophy of education, social studies, and the theory and practice of history.
My research, which spans several fields – history, philosophy, curriculum, and teacher education – is tied together by two questions: a) What is an education for?, and b) How might we imagine an education individual? These questions are bound by historical and contemporary, context and complexities.
I am the founding editor of Antistasis: An Open Education Journal, a publication, which is rooted in the vision of education as a public good. I continue to serve as an editor of the bi-annual journal, which is based out of the Faculty of Education at the University of New Brunswick. With Christopher DeLuca, I serve as co-editor of the Canadian Journal of Education and am past editor of the Journal of the Canadian Association for Curriculum Studies. Further, I serve as the Past President of the Canadian Association for Foundations in Education and a member of the Canadian Society for Studies in Education Board of Directors.
I have four recent book publications, which are representative of my diverse creative and scholarly interests. The first book, titled Progressive Education (University of Toronto Press, 2012) is historical non-fiction and winner of the Canadian History of Education Association’s Founders’ Prize for best book in history, 2012-2014. The second is a book of verse titled an overbearing i (Hidden Brook Press, 2013). The third, a collection of essays co-edited with Shawn Bullock, is titled Foundations of Education: A Canadian Perspective (Canadian Association for Teacher Education, 2013). The fourth book is a history textbook written along with Stan Hallman-Chong, Rachel Collishaw, and Charlene Hendricks for Ontario’s newly-revised Grade 7 curriculum (Nelson, 2015).