The research interests outlined below reflect areas where UGDSB seeks to deepen understanding and strengthen practice, particularly in ways that support historically marginalized students, advance culturally responsive pedagogy, and enhance student engagement, learning, and well-being.

Ensuring Equity of Access and Outcomes:

Strengthening Family and Community Partnerships

• Identifying effective strategies to engage families and communities from historically marginalized groups in support of student learning and well-being.

Improving Outcomes for Marginalized Students

• Assessing the effectiveness of strategies, tools, and programs designed to improve achievement, engagement, and attendance for students from historically marginalized communities.

Professional Learning for Inclusive Practice

• Investigating professional learning approaches for educators and administrators that foster inclusive and culturally responsive learning environments.

Supporting Indigenous Students in Urban Contexts

• Examining supports that enhance the well-being and achievement of Indigenous students in urban school settings.

The Impact of Discipline on Student Success

• Studying how suspensions, expulsions, and exclusions affect student achievement, well-being, and engagement, with a focus on marginalized students.

Inspiring a Lifelong Love of Learning:

Digital Tools, AI, and Student Engagement

• Investigating how digital platforms, online programs, and artificial intelligence (AI) in literacy and mathematics influence student motivation, engagement, and achievement.

Assessment for, as, and of Learning

• Evaluating assessment practices that promote student engagement and achievement, with a focus on strategies that support students from historically marginalized communities.

Foundational Education and Student Achievement:

The Impact of Tiered Interventions

• Examining how varying approaches to Tier 2 and Tier 3 supports influence student learning outcomes, motivation, and engagement.

Indigenous Ways of Knowing in Mathematics

• Exploring how integrating Indigenous pedagogies into mathematics supports students’ understanding and application of concepts in patterning and algebra.

Championing Health and Well-Being:

School Climate and Leadership

• Exploring the role of school climate in shaping student learning and well-being, and identifying leadership practices that create safe, inclusive, and positive learning environments.

For information on Research and Program Evaluation, please click here.