Ellis, Jason

Associate Professor;

Editor, Historical Studies in Education/Revue d’histoire de l’éducation

604–822–9190

j.ellis@ubc.ca

Office: Ponderosa Commons 3081

About

Research Interests

History of Education, Policy

Research Supervision Interests

Bio

I research and teach about the history of education and about K-12 policy. Broad themes in my work are schooling and educational equity and how people successfully use public education to serve their needs.

My first book is the award-winning A Class by Themselves?: The Origins of Special Education in Toronto and Beyond (University of Toronto Press, 2019). The book is about contradictory school reforms that contributed to the founding of the very first public school special education classes in the 1910s and the legacies these classes have left for us today.

My current work is on suburban schooling and housing in post-war Canada. This research was supported by a prestigious National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation postdoctoral fellowship (2017). My book manuscript in progress, No Two Better Opportunities, is about the post-Second World War suburban generation’s mutually reinforcing investments in housing and schooling and the unequal distribution of these investments’ benefits.

My other research touches on topics in the history of British Columbia education, from school spending, to school choice, to racism in school systems and classrooms.

I have published academic articles in journals such as The Canadian Historical Review, Canadian Journal of Education, Journal of Canadian Studies, Teachers College Record, History of Education Quarterly, and Disability & Society.

For general audiences, I have published opinion pieces on aspects of British Columbia education in The Globe and Mail, Vancouver Sun, Victoria Times-Colonist, and the Kelowna Daily Courier.

Using the educational past as my unique point of departure, all of my research, my teaching, and my service to the public and to public education, is meant to increase British Columbians’ understanding of how their schools work today – and how they can work better tomorrow.

Research and Education

Education

York University, 2012, PhD, History

York University, 2005, MA, History

OISE-University of Toronto, 2012, BEd, Intermediate/Senior

Queen’s University, 2004, BAH, History and French Studies

Qualifications

British Columbia Professional Certificate of Qualification (British Columbia teaching certificate). British Columbia Ministry of Education.

Ontario Certified Teacher. Ontario College of Teachers.

Awards

2020. Honourable mention, Disability History Association Outstanding Book Award (for A Class By Themselves)

2019. The Canadian Association of Foundations of Education (CAFE) Publication Award for single or dual-authored Book (for A Class By Themselves)

2019. Canadian Historical Association Journal Prize

2017. National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation Postdoctoral fellow.

2012. Cathy James Memorial Dissertation Prize. Canadian History of Education Association.

Major Research Grants (selected)

From Opportunity to Inequality: A History of Inner-Suburban Schools in Canada, 1945-present

April, 2020 – March, 2025 (extended due to Covid-19).

SSHRC Insight Grant ($104,963)

Selected Publications

Book:

Jason Ellis. A Class by Themselves: The Origins of Special Education in Toronto and Beyond. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2019. 364 pp.

Peer reviewed articles and essays:

Jason Ellis. “Prevailing Practices: Discipline in Canadian Schools, 1920-1970.” Education & Law Journal 33, no. 1 (May 2024): 45-72.

Jason Ellis. “Schooling in Western Canada 1879-1923: An Anti-racist Interpretation.” Journal of Canadian Studies 56, no. 3 (November 2022): 410-436.

Jason Ellis. “A Short History of K-12 Public Education Spending in British Columbia, 1970-2020.” Canadian Journal of Educational Administration and Policy 196 (2021): 102-23.

Jason Ellis. “Public School Taxes and the Remaking of Suburban Space and History: Etobicoke, 1945-54.” Journal of the Canadian Historical Association 30, no. 2 (2019): 1-36.

Jason Ellis and Ee-Seul Yoon. “From Alternative Schools to School Choice in the Vancouver School District, 1960s to the Neoliberal Present.” Canadian Journal of Educational Administration and Policy 188 (2019): 86-103.

Jason Ellis. “Exceptional Educators: Canada’s First Special Education Teachers, 1910-45,” Historical Studies in Education/Revue d’histoire de l’éducation 30, no. 2 (Fall 2018): 47-77

Jason Ellis. “Early Educational Exclusion: ‘Idiotic’ and ‘Imbecilic’ Children, Their Families, and the Toronto Public School System, 1914-1950,” Canadian Historical Review 98, no. 3 (Fall 2017): 483-504.

Jason Ellis. “Brains Unlimited: Giftedness and Gifted Education in Canada before Sputnik (1957),” Canadian Journal of Education/Revue canadienne de l’éducation 40, no. 2 (2017): 1-26.

Jason Ellis and Paul Axelrod. “Continuity and Change in Special Education Policy Development in Toronto Public Schools, 1945 to the present,” Teachers College Record 118, no. 2 (February 2016): 1-42.

Jason Ellis. “‘All Methods–and wedded to none’: The deaf education methods debate and progressive educational reform in Toronto, Canada, 1922-1945,” Paedagogica Historica 50, no. 3 (2014): 371-389.

Karen Yoshida, Fady Shanouda, and Jason Ellis. “An Education and Negotiation of Differences: The ‘Schooling’ Experiences of English-speaking Canadian Children Growing Up with Polio during the 1940s and 1950s.” Disability & Society, 29, no. 3 (March 2014): 345-358.

Jason Ellis. “‘Inequalities of children in original endowment’: How Intelligence Testing Transformed Early Special Education in a North American City School System.” History of Education Quarterly 53, no. 4 (November 2013): 401-429.

Jason Ellis. “The History of Education As ‘Active History’: A Cautionary Tale?” ActiveHistory.ca (24 September 2012).

Other publications (selected):

Jason Ellis. “When it comes to drag queen storytime in schools, Ontario should look to its long history of compromise.” Globe & Mail, 21 August 2023.

Jason Ellis. “Reducing class sizes during COVID-19 easier said than done.” Vancouver Sun, 13 August 2020.

Jason Ellis, Lindsay Gibson, and Mallory Davies. “Learning from ‘Cecil Rhodes School’ and Vancouver’s imperfect past.” Vancouver Sun, 2 January, 2020.

Jason Ellis. “A long history of bargaining class size and composition.” Kelowna Daily Courier, 10 September, 2019.

Jason Ellis. “Back to school for Fleming, NDP.” Victoria Times-Colonist, 26 August, 2018.

Jason Ellis. “Special Education,” Living Eugenics Archives of Western Canada website. Eugenicsarchive.ca (24 October 2014). http://eugenicsarchive.ca/discover/encyclopedia/535eee5c7095aa000000025d

EDST Activity

Students Supervised

Ph.D. in Educational Studies

(in progress.) Committee member. Y. Ronen.
(in progress.) Supervisor. J. Anderson. “Higher Education ‘beyond Hope’: A Political History of Institution-Building in British Columbia’s Hinterland.” (UBC Entrance scholarship recipient.)
(2020.) Co-supervisor (w/ Dr. A. Metcalfe). D. McCartney. “From ‘friendly relations’ to Differential Fees: A History of International Student Policy in Canada Since World War II.” (SSHRC doctoral award recipient, 12 month award; Canadian Foundations of Education (CAFE) E. Lisa Panayotidis Dissertation Award in the Foundations of Education, 2021.)
(2017.) Committee member. B. Cowin. “Public Policy and the Structural Development of Post-secondary Education in British Columbia, Canada, 1960 – 2015.” (SSHRC doctoral award recipient, 24 month award.)

Ed.D. in Educational Leadership and Policy

(in progress.) Supervisor. M. LeBlanc. “?New Syntax. Digital Technology and the Changing Culture of Education, 1980 to 2020.”
(2019.) Supervisor. R. Sikkes. “Holding On While Letting Go: Education, Politics, and Yukon Public Schools, 1960-2003.”

M.A. in Educational Studies

(in progress.) Supervisor. R. Dirnfeld.
(2020.) Supervisor. M. Davies. “‘We Educate Wayward Girls Here’: Educational Policy Regarding Teen Mothers in Vancouver, 1950-2019.”

M.Ed. in Society, Culture, and Politics in Education (SCPE)

(in progress). M. Osborne.
(in progress). T. Agha.
(in progress). J. Koonar.
(in progress). Y. Feng.
(in progress). S. Pattar.
(2023.) C. Chevreau.
(2023.) M. Jakac-Sinclair.
(2022.) S. Broderick-Hale.
(2022.) S. Wu.
(2021.) E. Olson.
(2021.) H. Komlodi.
(2020.) T. Jacod.
(2020.) L. Zhang.
(2018.) J. Trapier.
(2018.) Y. Keles.
(2018.) C. Keirn.
(2017.) O. Ramprashad.
(2017.) T. Feitosa de Britto.
(2015.) E. Collins.
(2015.) S. Wilkinson.

Ph.D. in another department

(2021.) Committee member. K. Gemmell. “‘No longer missionary’: The Sisters of Saint Ann and Vancouver’s Catholic Public Schools in the Long 1960s” (EDCP.) (SSHRC doctoral award recipient, 48-month award.)

M.A. in another department

(2014.) Committee member. K. Gemmell. (EDCP.) “The Impact of Progressive Education on Catholic Schools in the Archdiocese of Vancouver, 1924-1960.” (SSHRC Joseph-Armand Bombardier CGS, MA award recipient; winner of Canadian Association of Foundations of Education (CAFE) outstanding MA thesis award.)