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

Professor Ellis researches and teaches about the history of education and K-12 policy. Broad themes in his work are schooling and educational equity and how people successfully use public education to serve their needs.

His first book, the award-winning A Class by Themselves?: The Origins of Special Education in Toronto and Beyond (University of Toronto Press, 2019, print; 2026, audiobook), is about contradictory school reforms that contributed to the founding of the first public school special education classes in the 1910s and the legacies these classes have left for us today.

His current 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 those benefits.

His 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.

Professor Ellis has published academic articles in journals such as The Canadian Historical Review, Teachers College Record, History of Education Quarterly, and Disability & Society.

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

He has also served as an expert witness in education litigation.

With one foot in the past, all of Professor Ellis’s research and teaching 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)

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

Canadian Historical Association Journal Prize

National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow

Major Research Grants (selected)

From Opportunity to Inequality: A History of Inner-Suburban Schools in Canada, 1945-present. April, 2020 – March, 2026.

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. Print. 364 pp.

Jason Ellis. Read by Adam Grant Warren. A Class by Themselves: The Origins of Special Education in Toronto and Beyond. Toronto. University of Toronto Press, 2026. Audiobook.

Selected 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.

Selected other publications:

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.

EDST Activity

Students Supervised

Ph.D. in Educational Studies

(in progress.) Committee member. K. Manning.
(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

(2025.) Supervisor. M. LeBlanc. “Recoding the Classroom: Teachers, Technology, and Educational Culture in British Columbia, 1966 to 1986.”
(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. T. Kaur.
(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) (selected students, with M.Ed. graduating paper titles)

(2025.) Advisor. J. Sidhu. “More Than Just the Komagata Maru: Towards Curricular Inclusion of Panjabi-Sikh Histories in British Columbia.”
(2024.) Advisor. S. Pattar. “Equity Unchained: Leveling Up Anti-Racist Policies in Lower Mainland Schools.”
(2023.) Advisor. C. Chevreau. “An Impression of Inclusion: Problematizing the British Columbia Ministry of Education’s Inclusion Policies (2000–2017).”
(2022.) Advisor. S. Broderick-Hale. “Making Thrifty Ontarians.”
(2022.) Advisor. S. Wu. “The Educational Policies Commission in the United States: Democratic Ideas in Children’s Education during the Second World War.”
(2020.) Advisor. T. Jacod. “Power in Numbers: Data Analytics, Education, and the Neoliberal Subject.”

M.Ed. in Higher Education (HIED) (with M.Ed. graduating paper titles)

(2025.) Advisor. G. Vallée. “Quantifying Teaching in Health Professions Education: Insights from Teaching Assignment Practices in Pharmaceutical Sciences.”

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.)