Congratulations to Catalina Parra on a Successful Oral Defence (M.A. Thesis)
Please join us in congratulating Catalina Parra who successfully defended her M.A. Thesis on December 9 of 2025.
Title:
A Conversation Between South and North: Latin American Decolonial Theory and Indigenous Theory
Abstract:
This Master’s thesis explores Latin American decolonial theory and Indigenous theory from the North to illuminate pathways for the practice of equity, diversity, inclusion, and decolonization (EDI-D). In this study, I examine four key concepts: coloniality of being and praxis (from Latin American decolonial thinkers Maldonado-Torres, Dussel, and Gutiérrez) alongside cognitive imperialism and stories (from Mi’kmaw scholar Marie Battiste OC and Stó:lō scholar Jo-Ann Archibald Q’um Q’um Xiiem OC). The study is guided by philosophy of liberation, philosophy of education, and Indigenous theory.
Through this exploration, I argue that Latin American decolonial theory provides a robust critique of colonial systems and offers widely applicable tools for imagining alternatives. However, it lacks the land-based grounding that Indigenous thought offers. Indigenous frameworks, by contrast, are rooted in particular nations and territories, emerging from specific lands, languages, and cultural protocols. Their rigor and precision provide powerful tools for transformation; however, their specificity also entails that these knowledges cannot always be generalized beyond their own contexts. Therefore, these two bodies of knowledge can complement each other in dialogue yet must not be perceived as interchangeable.
By weaving these perspectives in what Arapaho scholar, Michael Marker, calls the “alluvial space”, this thesis identifies opportunities for collaboration while maintaining respectful distance. I conclude that we are being called to go beyond the system and that doing so may require nurturing new intelligences and new ways of engaging in human-human, human-nature, and human-cosmos relationships. This might allow us to access the necessary tools to address the multilayered crises of modern education and society at large as we continue the intergenerational journey of decolonizing our future.
Ultimately, I conclude that both traditions when held together in dialogue and distinction provide a strong foundation for transformative EDI-D practice, one that acknowledges the wounds of coloniality, centers the land and its peoples, and envisions liberatory futures grounded in relationship, land, and spirit.
Supervisory Committee:
Dr. Sam Rocha
Dr. Joaquin Munoz
Dr. Dustin Louie
Congratulations Catalina!
Michael LeBlanc – Successful Oral Defence (EdD Dissertation)
Please join us in congratulating Michael LeBlanc who successfully defended his EdD Dissertation on November 18 of 2025.
Title:
By the Bootstraps: Teachers, Grassroots Computing, and Educational Culture in British Columbia, 1966 to 1986
Abstract:
This dissertation is a history of computer culture in British Columbia’s (BC) education system from 1966 to 1986, a period of teacher-led, grassroots computer adoption, integration, and interpretation. As cultural artifacts, computers were more than instruments—they were symbols that held meaning for people. I first discuss what they meant in the context of the 1960s computer counterculture, where computers were interpreted as a transformative force leading to personal empowerment. This ethos sparked various computer-based cultural initiatives in the San Francisco Bay Area, including the People’s Computer Company and Community Memory, an early social network. Beliefs in accessible and convivial technologies transferred to Vancouver, BC, where activists formed a computing organization called INFACT and their own Community Memory system. By the late 1970s, INFACT members were involved in the early computer hobbyist movement, promoting microcomputers as devices for everyone to access, understand, and control.
Some BC teachers were also hobbyists, and computers held a similar significance for them. Just like members of the countercultural computing movement, teachers were immersed in the social, political, and cultural currents of the Sixties. As teachers increasingly adopted a social justice orientation and progressive pedagogy, they viewed computers as a means to achieve both social and professional change. Computers would support their transformation into facilitators and curricular leaders, and lay the foundation for greater social equity. Rather than opposing computers in the classroom, as other scholars suggest in an American context, teachers led computer adoption and innovation in BC. Computers represented an opportunity to reshape the philosophy, practice, and business of education.
This progressive, teacher-led culture of computing began with William Goddard in 1966, who encouraged “computers for the whole school,” and continued through the Instructional Uses of Microcomputers Pilot Project in 1980; it concluded with the Provincial Advisory Committee on Computers in 1986. This cultural history of educational computing in BC draws on a variety of primary sources, including archival documents and reports, contemporary newsletters and magazines, newspaper articles, conference recordings, and oral interviews. It is a history rooted in teacher agency and local reinterpretations of global ideas about education, technology, and power.
Supervisory Committee:
Dr. Jason Ellis
Dr. Alison Taylor
Dr. Robert Brain
We are thankful for the Examining Committee’s contribution and expertise.
Dr. Ian Milligan, University of Waterloo, External Examiner
Dr. Arthur (Skip) Ray, History, University Examiner
Dr. Leslie Paris, History, University Examiner
Dr. Marina Milner-Bolotin, Chair of Examination Committee
Congratulations Michael!
Arushi Goswami – Successful Defence (M.A. Thesis)
Congratulations to Arushi Goswami on successfully defending her M.A. Thesis on November 27, 2025.
Thesis title:
Deconstructing the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) Framework and The Happiness Curriculum in the Context of Educational Neoliberalism and Emotional Governance
Examining Committee:
Dr. Lindsay Gibson (EDCP), External Examiner
Dr. Taylor Webb (EDST), Committee Member
Dr. Mona Gleason (EDST), Research Supervisor
Abstract:
This thesis examines Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) through a comparative analysis of the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL, 2020) framework and Delhi’s Happiness Curriculum (HC, 2019). It addresses two research questions: What implicit values and assumptions about emotions are embedded within the CASEL and Happiness Curriculum frameworks, and how does the Happiness Curriculum in India adapt, resist, or reproduce CASEL’s approach to social emotional learning? and How does SEL function as a tool of emotional governance by using governmentality to shape students into self-regulating individuals in ways that align with broader socio-economic systems? Using Fairclough’s three-dimensional Critical Discourse Analysis together with a Foucauldian lens of governmentality, the study begins with an within-document description and keyword analysis for each framework, moves to cross-document comparison to identify convergences and adaptations, and then explains the findings. The findings indicate that by centering competencies like self-awareness, self-management, and “learning outcomes,” both frameworks organize emotions as skills to be optimized, individualize responsibility for improvement, and translate well-being into measurable performance targets. Read through governmentality, these patterns normalize self-monitoring and position well-being alongside achievement and readiness, shaping students as self-regulating individuals. Across both frameworks, the discourse privileges “positive” feelings such as calmness, happiness, and gratitude, with limited recognition of discomfort, anger, or grief as part of learning and social life. The thesis concludes by outlining implications for practice and design: broaden the emotional repertoire recognized in SEL frameworks, reduce the reliance on learning outcomes as proxies for emotional growth, and support participatory, context-grounded approaches that attend to well-being and collective flourishing within and beyond school.
Well done, Arushi!
