Commitment to EDID

Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Decolonization

CSSE and EDID

Equity, diversity, inclusion, and decolonization have long been central to many CSSE members’ research, teaching, service, and personal work. Several groups within CSSE were founded with the explicit purpose of advancing equity in and across scholarly communities, including CASIE (Canadian Association for the Study of Indigenous Education), CASWE (Canadian Association for the Study of Women and Education), QSEC (Queer Studies in Education and Culture), and RÉÉFMM (Regroupement pour l’étude de l’éducation francophone en milieu minoritaire). Fundamentally, the purpose of CSSE is to serve as a scholarly society where all educators – including professors, students, researchers, and practitioners – can gather and share their work in diverse ways. CSSE is the major national voice for those who create educational knowledge, prepare teachers and educational leaders, and apply research in schools, classrooms, institutions, and communities across Canada.

Yet, as many of our members know all too well, efforts toward equity, diversity, inclusion, and decolonization are not complete, nor are they universally successful in ensuring CSSE is a safe, equitable, ethical community where all members feel welcomed, included, and supported in their scholarship. This work requires explicit commitment, specific action, and ongoing attention. Achieving equity, diversity, inclusion, and decolonization is not a “one and done.” Instead, if CSSE is to achieve these goals – and continue them – then as a scholarly society we must take action, address barriers, and navigate complex intersecting issues in ways that meaningfully support our members and the communities we serve.

While equity, diversity, inclusion, and decolonization have long been central to the scholarship of many CSSE members, several salient events have sparked further attention and action which bear mentioning: (1) During the 2019 conference, a Black graduate student was harassed and racially profiled by another conference delegate. A detailed account of this unacceptable incident is available on the Black Canadian Studies Association (BCSA) website. (2) The COVID-19 pandemic led to the cancellation of CSSE 2020 and two years of online gatherings, introducing new barriers and throwing into sharp relief other barriers that had long affected education and society, including CSSE. (3) In 2021, the Federation published Igniting Change, a report and call to action chaired by Dr. Malinda Smith with contributions from a wide-ranging group of scholars, including longstanding CSSE member Dr. Marie Battiste. A full copy of the Igniting Change report is available on the Federation website.

Drawing on the Igniting Change report, CSSE understands the terms Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Decolonization to refer to:

  • Equity – Equity is concerned with justice and fairness. Equity is a state of being, a process, and a condition that is rooted in fundamental human rights, and, therefore, is not reliant on individual choice or voluntarism. Equity requires proactively identifying and combatting discriminatory ideas, attitudes, behaviours, as well as systems, policies, processes, and practices that lead to disadvantage. It is concerned with a legal and ethical commitment to doing what is right and necessary to achieve such a state through proactive measures to identify root causes, and design interventions to remove obstacles to fair opportunities and experiences.
  • Diversity – Diversity is a characteristic of human societies that has been used in multiple ways across the postsecondary education sector. It includes the whole range of human, cultural, and societal differences among populations across Canada. Diversity encompasses identity difference, and the representation of students, staff, faculty, administrators, and senior leadership in the academy. Social diversity also includes the protected grounds under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Aboriginal and Treaty rights, and human rights legislation, such as race/ethnicity, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, and disability. Diversity is also used to differentiate types of knowledge production, educational institutions and units within institutions, such as faculties, schools, departments, programs, and institutes. Diversity also encompasses the nature and content of curricula, research, teaching, service and engagement
  • Inclusion – Inclusion entails interconnected actions to dismantle barriers that impede participation, engagement, representation, and empowerment of members of diverse social identities and from various backgrounds. Inclusion means that we design our educational and cultural spaces from the beginning so that they can be used fully by all peoples and all communities. Inclusion foregrounds the social and institutional relations of power and privilege, drawing necessary attention to who gets a seat and voice at the decision-making tables, and who is empowered by institutional processes, policies, systems, and structures.
  • Decolonization – The principles, processes, and practices of decolonization are fundamental to a more equitable, diverse, enlightened, and inclusive social sciences and humanities community in Canada. Decolonization is a necessary and ongoing process of unlearning, uncovering, and transforming legacies of colonialism, as well as utilizing the educational and knowledge systems available to relearn and rebuild the social, cultural, and linguistic foundations that were lost, or eroded through colonialism. Decolonization also requires making space, balancing, generating, and enabling diverse knowledge systems to thrive in the academy as well as in and through educational and knowledge transmitting places for Indigenous Peoples, the formerly colonized or continuing colonized nations, peoples, and cultural knowledge systems.

For more on the Federation’s Igniting Change report, we encourage you to visit the links below:

Read the Igniting Change Report
Read the Executive Summary

Mapping CSSE's efforts with EDID

In Spring 2022, the CSSE Board invited members to step forward to serve on an ad hoc committee for equity, diversity, inclusion, and decolonization. The goal of the committee was to provide guidance to the Board, directly from members with interest or expertise in these areas. The Board wondered: how might we (CSSE, as a society/community of scholars) decide how to proceed in this work? What principles might the Board look to in discussing these possibilities? The committee met multiple times to discuss these and other questions, culminating in a report that was presented to the Board in November 2022.

The committee’s report included several guiding principles, explicitly rooted in the Igniting Change report and the Charter, as well as a detailed list of recommended action items for CSSE. Like the Igniting Change report, some of these recommendations are aimed ‘at’ CSSE (i.e., what can CSSE do in its own work to advance equity, diversity, inclusion, and decolonization), some recommendations focus on ‘advocating up’ (i.e., what can CSSE do to advocate for change to the Federation, faculties of education, and other institutions), and some recommendations focus on ‘advocating down’ (i.e., what can CSSE do to support, advocate, and guide for change among constituent groups and individual members).

The Board discussed the committee’s report at their November 2022 meeting and agreed with the committee’s call for immediate and ongoing action. To support that goal, we have created this document: a visual mapping of each of the committee’s recommendations, their progress, and notes for discussion. The document is intentionally modeled after Beyond 94, a website curated by the CBC that similarly tracks the progress toward the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s 94 Calls to Action. Importantly, we have tried to avoid language like tracking, monitoring, measuring, auditing, ensuring, or policing. We recognize that these words sometimes convey added surety (is the work actually happening?), but we also appreciate how certain paradigms use and abuse compliance measures in education. We also recognize that the vast majority of the work done by CSSE members, including the work done by every voting Board member and the vast majority of executive members and committees, is volunteer work. Much of the labour done to advance these goals is unpaid labour, done by members attempting to advance these goals and create a positive scholarly community. That does not remove the need for meaningful change, but it does shape how CSSE supports and advocates for that change.

This work will and must continue if CSSE is to succeed in creating scholarly spaces where all educators can gather and share their work in diverse ways. The document itself is not the work, nor do we intend it to serve as a performative checklist. Rather, it is meant to serve as a living document mapping CSSE’s progress in this work, which we hope will help to both visualize and articulate the work that is being done, as well as the challenges that remain. We welcome any member (or prospective member) who is willing to offer insights, questions, suggestions, concerns, or possible paths forward.

See CSSE's Recommendations Tracker

CSSE Advisory Council on EDID

The CSSE Advisory Council provides direction on action and initiatives related to equity, diversity, inclusion, and decolonization (EDID). This Council is independent of the Board, acting as a permanent body to both provide direction and maintain the Board’s attention to actions needed to uphold the principles of EDID. The purpose of this Council is to work towards generating new ideas and understandings of issues related to EDID and CSSE, as well as addressing the specific and broad issues raised by the ad hoc committee and the Igniting Change Report of the Advisory Committee on EDID.

Advisory Council Terms of Engagement

Current Advisory Council Members

Asma Ahmed

Dr. Asma Ahmed is the Academic Chair and Assistant Professor at Niagara University’s Faculty of Education in Ontario. She currently serves in the Senate at Niagara University. Asma is the co-founder of the Journal of Social Justice in Education, the first of its kind in North America.

Jonathan Anuik, Co-Chair

Dr. Jonathan Anuik is an Associate Professor in Educational Studies at the University of Alberta.

Wenefé Balbalin

Wenefé Capili Balbalin is a Part Time Professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Ottawa. Her research critically examines issues of equity, diversity, and inclusion in teacher education, drawing on narrative inquiry and asset-based theoretical frameworks to inform transformative pedagogical practices.

Manu Sharma, Co-Chair

Dr. Manu Sharma is an Associate Professor at Thompson Rivers University in the Faculty of Education and Social Work. She is the Founder and President of the Canadian Association for Social Justice Education (CASJE).

Gabrielle Weasel Head

TBC

CSSE EDID Reports and Town Hall Presentations

As part of the Terms of Engagement, the CSSE Advisory Council on EDID provides an Annual Report to the CSSE Board of Directors at the time of annual conference. See the most recent reports below:

June 2024

The CSSE Advisory Council on EDID has hosted several Town Hall sessions at the annual conference to provoke discussion, provide an update on the EDID work done-to-date by CSSE, and highlight areas of future change. See more on the outcomes of those presentations below:

2024 Town Hall

2023 Town Hall

Important Topics of Interest

Land Acknowledgements

Respectful Conversations

EDID Funding Initiatives

The Federation’s EDID Initiatives Fund is an annual competition that provides up to $3,000 in matching funds to support scholarly associations. The applications usually open in January and September of each year. Watch for the email announcement via CSSE’s newsletter!

Previous Funded Projects

Erasure Poetry as Pedagogical Praxis: Exploring De/colonization with Undergraduate International Students in Canada — Hare and Chhabra, Fall 2024

  • This initiative explored decolonial education praxis through erasure poetry with international undergraduate students. Recognizing the enduring impacts of colonization in Canada and the need for deeper integration of Indigenous knowledge into higher education, this initiative utilized an arts-based approach to foster understanding and engagement with de/colonization.

    The participants explored their own roles in decolonization and reconciliation as newcomers to Canada by creating and sharing erasure poems—a form of poetry that uncovers new meanings by selectively obscuring portions of a source text.

    The objectives were twofold: to enhance students’ engagement with de/colonization through creative work and to inform future pedagogical practices at UCW. This praxis provided a novel approach for educators to capture and reflect on complex experiences related to de/colonization in teaching and learning, and especially acknowledging that international students bring experiences of de/colonization from other global contexts.

    This initiative also addressed how decolonial praxis can reshape students’ perspectives on their roles in de/colonization and identified possibilities for incorporating such pedagogies into curricula. Through this work, we challenge dominant narratives, support varied perspectives on the possibilities of de/colonization, and offer insights for integrating decolonial methods into higher education.