A special interest group of Canadian Society for the Study of Education
Executive Committee
We’re pleased to introduce the Executive Committee, who began their terms following the June 2024 CAREC AGM:
Presidents:
Nicole Land (nland@torontomu.ca)
and Emily Ashton (emily.ashton@uregina.ca)
Vice Presidents:
Alex Berry and
Nancy van Groll
Past President:
Iris Berger
Secretary-Treasurer:
Laurel Donison and Lisa Johnston
Communications Director:
Tatiana Zakharova-Goodman
Graduate Student Representatives:
Negar Khodarahmi, Kwang Dae (Mitsy) Chung, and Wei Mao
Members at Large:
Alexandra Paquette (French Representative), Jessica Prioletta, Allison Tucker, and Harini Rajagopal
​Emily Ashton is an Assistant Professor of Early Childhood Education in the Faculty of Education at the University of New Brunswick, which occupies unsurrendered and unceded Wolastoqey lands. She situates her work within the interdisciplinary field of childhood studies, drawing on speculative fiction, Black studies, environmental humanities, and critical feminist theory to explore children, childhoods, and futurities. Her recent publications include Anthropocene Childhoods: Speculative Fiction, Racialization, and Climate Crisis , an open-access book in the Feminist Thought in Childhood Research series, and a co-edited special issue of Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies titled “Object Lessons: Educational Encounters With the Nonhuman.”
Nancy van Groll is involved in the field of early childhood studies as an early childhood educator, instructor, researcher, community organizer and advocate. Through her connections and experiences, she has developed a familiarity with the intricate tensions, strengths and areas of concern that characterize the landscape of ECEC systems in Canada. Nancy’s research interests include taking up post-humanist and feminist theory in early childhoods and attending to ethical matters of concern in settler colonial contexts. Her graduate thesis focused on child-place relationships in the context of an outdoor, forest-based preschool program. Throughout the research process, she experimented with the processes of pedagogical narration as research method and methodology. Nancy serves as the British Columbia Director on the Board of the Canadian Association for Young Children (CAYC), and on the Executive of Canadian Association for Research in Early Childhood (CAREC). Through her work with children, families, communities and colleagues, she has generated a personal pedagogical philosophy that is oriented within a deep appreciation and responsiveness to place. She takes to heart the Calls to Action articulated within the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Final Report, viewing critical place-conscious pedagogies as essential pathways toward the decolonization of early childhood contexts and curriculum.
Laurel Donison is an MA graduate at UBC in the Masters of Early Childhood Program. She moved from Toronto Ontario to Vancouver to take this program. She lived in Toronto for most of her life so she was happy to move to British Columbia to experience new things and continue her journey learning about children. She has a diploma in ECE, a Bachelor Degree in Early Childhood Leadership which she took at Sheridan College in Brampton and a Bachelor of Education degree from Lakehead University in Orillia Ontario. Laurel has worked in Child Care for 6 years and began working part time in the UBC child care centers on campus where she continues her journey working as an early childhood educator. She has had many wonderful learning experiences and enjoys learning from the children and meeting new families. Each child she meets is different and teaches her something important. Laurel enjoys working with such a diverse group of people which has been possible because of the places she has worked in Toronto and Vancouver where many different cultures are. Her main interests are children’s rights, outdoor play and including children in research. As she completes her thesis she hopes to discover different methods that will allow children to express themselves in different ways and allow their voices to be heard within her research.
Negar Khodarahmi is currently pursuing a PhD in Human Development, Learning and Culture at UBC. As an extension of her Master’s thesis, her doctoral research continues to explore the experiences of trauma in early childhood and how to support these young learners in the classroom. Her own research with early childhood educators (ECEs) revealed that this sentiment is supported and trauma-informed practice (TIP) is widely perceived as an important support tier in the early classroom. The primary purpose of her research is to further explore ECEs understanding of TIP and whether it is an effective practice to be implemented in early childhood settings. A secondary purpose is to explore how young students who are trauma-exposed and their families experience TIP and other existing supports. The final purpose is to identify ways whether the rise of TIP popularity has had a positive impact on early learning classrooms.
Wei Mao is a PhD candidate at Concordia University, nearing the completion of her dissertation. Passionate about the intersection of language development and parental involvement, her work focuses on the crucial role of parent support in fostering children's bi- and multilingual acquisition. Her current research delves into parents' experiences with and perspectives on certain language stimulation strategies, exploring how these approaches can effectively nurture children's multilingual abilities. By working closely with immigrant families, she aspires to refine and enhance language support strategies—ensuring they are not only effective but also enjoyable and sustainable for both parents and children. Through her research, she hopes to bridge the gap between research recommendation and real-world application, empowering families to cultivate rich, multilingual environments for their children.
Alexandra Paquette holds a Masters Degree in ECE at UQAM under the supervision of Nathalie Bigras and Joanne Lehrer. Her project interest is how pedagogical advisors support their team of educators in the use of pedagogical documentation inspired by Reggio Emilia. She has been coordinating the Équipe de recherche Qualité des contextes éducatifs de la petite enfance since 2015. By the very nature of this function, she contributes to the deployment of a multitude of research, communications and publications activities. She was also coordinator for a pan Canadian project : Sketching narratives of movement towards comprehensive and competent early childhood educational systems across Canada (https://ecenarratives.opened.ca/) Prior to join the executive committee, she was a student member of CAREC.
Allison Tucker is an Assistant Professor at the department of Teacher Education, Curriculum and Leadership at St. Francis Xavier University. Dr. Allison Tucker began her teaching career in education in 1994. Having lived, taught, and studied in British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario, and Newfoundland and Labrador she finally landed in Nova Scotia to join St. FX in 2021. She completed a BA from Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador, BEd from the University of Calgary, MEd from the University of Victoria, and PhD from Nipissing University. Allison’s research interests are in early learning (specifically Reggio Emilia inspired practice), teacher identity, and using narrative inquiry and appreciative inquiry to support educational change.
Nicole Land is an assistant professor in the School of Early Childhood Studies at Toronto Metropolitan University. Her research focuses on children’s relations with fats, muscles, and movement through crafting post-developmental pedagogies that take seriously how bodies are implicated in complex common worlds.
Alex Berry is an Assistant Professor at the University of Calgary’s Werklund School of Education. Her research engages with the arts and research-creation toward anti-colonial early childhood pedagogies that respond to times of ecological crises. Alex is interested in feminist postqualitative methodologies for experimenting with the complexities of 21st century childhoods and for creating pedagogies alongside educators that answer to social and climate injustices.
Iris Bergeris Assistant Professor of Teaching at the University of British Columbia. Dr. Iris Berger has been involved in the field of early childhood education as a classroom teacher, researcher, community organizer, policy consultant, and university lecturer since the mid 1990s. Her passion for early childhood education as a distinct and ever-engaging realm of/for research-pedagogy began when she worked with two, three and four-year-olds in the model classrooms at the UBC Child Study Centre under the auspices of the Faculty of Education. At the centre of her professional and academic inquiry lies the abiding notion that matters pertaining to education and childhood are entangled with question of ethics and politics. To this end, Dr. Berger has developed a special interest in rethinking leadership in early childhood education and in making the complexity of the pedagogical relations in the early years visible through practices such as pedagogical documentation.
Lisa Johnston is a passionate Registered Early Childhood Educator (RECE) and activist. She has been working in early childhood since 2000. She holds a Master of Arts focused in Early Childhood Studies from Toronto Metropolitan University and is currently a PhD student in the Faculty of Education at York University.
Tatiana Zakharova-Goodman (she/her) is an atelierista and ECCE instructor at Capilano University’s Faculty of Education, Health & Human Development. She is a PhD candidate, completing her doctoral project at the Faculty of Education at Western University under the supervision of Dr. Veronica Pacini-Ketchabaw. A white woman settler, she is currently living and working on the unceded ancestral lands of the sÉ™lilwÉ™taɬ, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw, and xÊ·mÉ™θkÊ·É™yÌ“É™m peoples. Tatiana thinks with feminist material-attuned practices, attending to how inequalities often overlap one another and actively working to oppose the injustices and respond to the concerns of the 21st century. As a member of the Common Worlds Research Collective, she works to co-create possibilities of living with others, humans and more-than-humans, in more harmonious ways. Her work attends to ordinary everyday movements with young children and others, including materials.
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Kwang Dae (Mitsy) Chung is an artist, researcher, and early childhood educator. She is a PhD candidate in Curriculum Studies at the Faculty of Education, University of Western Ontario, Canada. She completed her MA in Art Education at the University of British Columbia. During that time, she received the Penny Gouldstone Prize for Art Education (UBC). Canada’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and an Ontario Graduate Scholarship have funded her doctoral research, Examining the Notion of Bodies and Being Different in an Early Childhood Art Space. Her master’s thesis Early Childhood Educators’ Dialogical Engagement in an Artmaking Space received the CAREC Research Award at the master’s level. Mitsy has been an early childhood art educator for nearly twenty years, creating early childhood education curriculum through young children’s art encounters. As a researcher, her focus is on young children’s drawings, the pedagogy of listening, embodiment, and relationalities.
Jessica Prioletta (she/her) is an Assistant Professor in the School of Education at Bishop’s University. Her research engages with critical feminist theories and critical childhood studies to examine how gender inequalities and gender violence propagate at the intersections of childhood and early education. Jessica also investigates critical sexuality education as transformative practice in kindergarten education. Jessica has been involved with CAREC since 2018 when she served as Graduate Student Representative on the Executive Committee. She is currently serving on the Executive Committee as Member-at-Large.
Harini Rajagopal is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Education, Language & Literacy Education at the University of British Columbia. She is a listener of stories and enjoys working on collaborative and creative pedagogical designs. She is grateful to live and work on the traditional, unceded, ancestral territories of the hÉ™nÌ“qÌ“É™minÌ“É™mÌ“ speaking xÊ·mÉ™θkÊ·É™yÌ“É™m people. Rooted in antiracist perspectives, her work focuses on collaborating with children and teachers to mindfully include diverse communicative repertoires (especially multiple languages, photography, arts, playfulness) into mainstream classrooms, while paying attention to the realities of class, cultural, and systemic inequities. Harini engages with a feminist ethic of care, relationships and process, decolonizing and reflexive methodologies, and uses participant-friendly methods that value multiliterate practices as resources for all students’ learning, and for designing caring justice-oriented pedagogies.