Congratulations to Dr. Guofang Li and her team, Drs. Jim Anderson, Jan Hare, and Marianne McTavish, on successfully organizing and hosting the Supporting Teachers to Work with Supporting Teachers to Work With Culturally, Linguistically, and Racially Diverse Students, Families, and Communities: A Two-Day International Symposium at UBC on May 30 and 31, 2019. Dean Blye Frank, LLED Department Head, Dr. Anthony Pare, and Director of ITEP, Dr. Jan Hare, were in attendance to open the symposium.
Professor Nicholas Ng-A-Fook gave a keynote talk, Superdiversity, Equity, and Responsibilities of Teachers and Teacher Educators, followed by four interactive sessions that tackled four important topics: Emerging Priorities and Knowledge Gaps in Refugee Education and Teacher Learning; Truth, Reconciliation, and Indigenous Teacher Education; Superdiversity, School, Home, Community Relations and Teacher Practice; Superdiversity and Emergent Approaches to Teacher Education. During the two days, attendees shared their experiences, insights, and questions during the roundtable breakout sessions immediately followed the panel presentations. The symposium closed with a plenary from Professor Hetty Roessingh on Teaching in the Age of Accountability: Instructional Decision Making of/for and as Learning for Diverse Learners.
This symposium convened 18 esteemed scholars from both Canada and the U.S. who specialized in teacher education for diverse learners. Nearly 200 researchers, graduate students, teacher candidates, in-service teachers and administrators from local school districts, and local community members engaged in the two-day thought-provoking talks and vibrant discussions. This event was supported by funding from the SSHRC Connection Grants, RITS funding from LLED, the Research Infrastructure Support Service Program (RISS) of Office of Research in Education, Faculty of Education, and the Indigenous Teacher Education Program (ITEP), Office of Teacher Education (TEO), and Guofang Li’s Canada Research Chair’s Office.
