UAlberta Education faculty and alumni have been affected by the global coronavirus pandemic just like everyone else. Some have taken time while adapting to the new realities of remote education, self-isolation and social distancing to offer expert advice on coping with these abrupt changes to how we live, learn and work. Here’s a round-up of their recent appearances on various UAlberta media.

“Identity is relational, always evolving, always political, and shaped by colonial relations of power,” says Brooke Madden, a Secondary Education and Aboriginal Teacher Education Program professor.

The Teaching and Research Awards ceremony scheduled for March 26 has been postponed. And though a global pandemic might have kept us from gathering, nothing can keep us from celebrating the faculty, sessionals and graduate students honoured with teaching and research awards in the Faculty of Education this year.

Congratulations to the following award and grant recipients, who are exemplary of the teaching and research excellence that have made the UAlberta Faculty of Education one of the top faculties of education in Canada and the world.

According to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) of Canada’s Calls to Action, post-secondary institutions have an important role to play in Indigenous knowledge recovery and mobilization, both as a site of research and in preparing future educators to integrate Indigenous knowledge and teaching methods in their classrooms and curricula.

Compiling a display of educational resources about an historic genocide proved to be a learning experience in more ways than one for the University of Alberta librarian who drew on the expertise of researchers from campus and across the continent to obtain the materials.

I began my master’s of library and information studies (MLIS) journey with all the invigorating excitement of a new semester but without the crisp fall air of Edmonton’s River Valley or the clusters of bustling students. Rather, in September 2017, I sat down at my desk in my quiet home office with a mug of tea and popped open my laptop.

The fall semester is in full swing at the Faculty of Education, and we’re pleased to have our full complement of undergraduate and graduate students, both on campus and online, engaging in the teaching and learning interactions and research innovations that have distinguished us for more than 75 years.

Ali Shiri and his research team spent four years getting to know the Inuvialuit Settlement Region (ISR) of the far northwestern Arctic in order to help create a digital library platform that reflected residents’ information needs and respected the cultural heritage information the library was intended to preserve.

The JP Das Centre on Developmental and Learning Disabilities hosted its inaugural conference on September 23 at Esther Starkman School in Edmonton. The event provided a unique opportunity for more than 400 local teachers to meet the researchers behind the best practices in teaching reading—and for researchers to hear how their work is informing classroom teaching in elementary and junior high schools.

Tiffany Prete, an adjunct professor in the Department of Educational Policy Studies, has a number of reasons for pursuing research on the history of residential schools in her home community, the Blood Reserve in southern Alberta. Some of those reasons are related to contributing to the body of research by Indigenous scholars. Some of those reasons are personal.