UBC’s Faculty of Education, one of the world’s leading education faculties, has served the local, national, and international education community through leadership in research, teaching, service and advocacy for more than 60 years. As the largest Faculty of Education in British Columbia, it plays a critical and influential role in the advancement of education in the province, shaping and participating in education’s possibilities and potential as a social good.
Today, the Faculty of Education creates conditions for transformative teaching, innovative learning, and leading-edge research guided by the highest standards of scholarship and the principles of collaboration, social justice, inclusion and equity. Offering undergraduate and graduate programs, as well as professional development opportunities, the Faculty of Education enrolls thousands of students each year on two campuses and ranks 10th in the world, according to QS World University Rankings (2021).
UBC’s Faculty of Education prepares more than 45% of the elementary and the majority of secondary educators in British Columbia, and a significant proportion of British Columbia’s school counsellors, administrators, special education professionals, and school psychologists. With more than 57,000 alum located in 100 countries, the UBC Faculty of Education truly is a global entity.
The Faculty of Education is home to four departments (Curriculum and Pedagogy, Educational and Counselling Psychology, and Special Education, Educational Studies, and Language and Literacy Education) and two schools (the School of Kinesiology and the Okanagan School of Education).
We provide outstanding research facilities for faculty and graduate students that promote leading-edge research. Our Education Library is a specialized resource with access to all of UBC’s research and special collections, including the X̱wi7x̱wa Library with materials produced by Indigenous organizations, tribal councils, schools, researchers and publishers.
The Faculty’s Education Research and Learning Commons at Ponderosa Commons features technology-enhanced teaching and learning spaces and also informal learning spaces. A number of faculty manage their own research labs, situated throughout campus.
Many of our PhD students have been selected as UBC Public Scholars and have received other honours.
https://ivet.educ.ubc.ca/Notable strengths are in literacy education and multilingualism; struggling and marginalized youth; Indigenous education, decolonization, and research; transformational program and curriculum design and inclusive pedagogies for schools, community organizations and higher education; sexual orientation and gender-identity inclusive education; social-emotional learning and well-being; autism; exercise physiology, socio-cultural aspects of health; neuromechanical studies; and multidisciplinary research in diversity, health, early childhood education, and digital media. The School of Kinesiology ranks 1st in Canada and 4th in the world by QS World University Rankings (2021).
UBC’s Faculty of Education is the national leader in the number of education graduate student fellowships received from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC). Additionally, the Faculty of Education is home to six Canada Research Chairs, one CIHR chair and nine donor-funded research chairs and professorships.
| Name | Academic Unit(s) | Research Interests |
|---|---|---|
| Vanwynsberghe, Robert | Department of Educational Studies | Citizenship and democracy, Social justice, Sustainability; Sustainability; Environmental Education; Theory and Method |
| Vertinsky, Patricia | School of Kinesiology | social and cultural history of the body, gender relations, health, sport and exercise, social history of women and health, social/cultural aspects of sport and physical activity, health education, promotion and policy, Social and cultural history of sport and physical activity, gender, race, aging and disability, modern olympics |
| Walker, Judith | Department of Educational Studies | Adult and continuing education, and community education; Sociology of education; Educational policy; Adult education; Higher Education; policy studies; Health Professions Education |
| Wang, Fei | Department of Educational Studies | Educational administration, management and leadership; Educational policy; Specialized studies in education; Educational administration and leadership in K-12 setting; Leadership; the role of the school principals; social justice and diversity; comparative policy studies; Education and Training Management; Ideology and Social Policy; Social Contract and Social Justice; Offshore school and its leadership; educators' health and wellbeing |
| Warburton, Darren | School of Kinesiology | cardiovascular physiology, clinical exercise rehabilitation, interactive video games, , Sport cardiology and clinical exercise rehabilitation, elite athletic performance, childhood health, treatments for patients with chronic disease, cardiac rehabilitation |
| Webb, P. Taylor | Department of Educational Studies | Education systems; Philosophy; Education governance, policy, and politics; Michel Foucault; Gilles Deleuze; Neoliberalism; Governmentality; Micropolitics; Biopolitics; Subjectivity; Artificial Intelligence |
| Weber, Barbara | Department of Educational & Counselling Psychology, and Special Education | Embodiment and Public Space; ethics; Multiculturalism; Multiculturalism and Recognition; Phenomenology and Hermeneutics; Philosophy for Children; Social justice |
| Wernicke, Meike | Department of Language & Literacy Education | Specialized studies in education; Intercultural Education; Language Planning and Policy; Multi-/Plurilingualism; Second Language Education (French); teacher education |
| Wilson, Brian | School of Kinesiology | Cultural studies and sociology with focus on media, consumer culture, youth, social inequality, social movements, the environment, qualitative methods, and sport and leisure studies |
| Wright, Handel | Department of Educational Studies | Educational policy; Specialized studies in education; (post)multiculturalism and multicultural education; Africana studies; Critical Race Theory; Cultural Studies; Educational Approaches; identity, citizenship and belonging; postcolonialism and decolonization; Transcultural Studies; Youth Studies; anti-racism |
| Wright, David | School of Kinesiology | How exercise modulates adipose tissue, liver and skeletal muscle metabolism, impact of exercise, nutrition and pharmaceutical interventions on fat tissue |
| Wu, Amery | Department of Educational & Counselling Psychology, and Special Education | Development of new psychometric methods (e.g. reliability of complex assessment designs, validation methods using structural equation modeling or item response theory); methodology for group comparison in item responses (e.g. detection of differential option functioning in multiple choice tests); understanding response processes; large-scale educational assessment and English Language assessment |
| Yoon, Liv | School of Kinesiology | Social sciences; climate change; Social inequities; health; Climate and Environmental justice |
| Zappa, Sandra | Department of Language & Literacy Education | ESL, TESOL, LOTE and sign language curriculum, pedagogy and didactics; English for academic purposes; content and language integrated learning (CLIL) / content-based instruction (CBI); multilingual student experiences in higher education; inclusive teaching and learning in higher education; (interdisciplinary) collaboration between subject area and language area instructors; EAP pedagogies; genre-based pedagogies; Systemic Functional Linguistics for EAP; second language socialization theory; social network theory / individual networks of practice; qualitative research design; critical perspectives in language teaching and learning |
| Zebehazy, Kim | Department of Educational & Counselling Psychology, and Special Education | Assessment, Instructional Strategies, Problem Solving, Visual Impairment |
| Zumbo, Bruno | Department of Educational & Counselling Psychology, and Special Education | Psychological methodology design and analysis, and psychometrics; Statistical theory and modeling; Educational assessment and evaluation; Psychometrics and Test Theory; Mathematical sciences of measurement; Latent Variable and Mixed Models, Item Response Theory, Factor Analysis; Validity Theory and Validation; Multivariate Analysis |
This is an incomplete sample of recent publications in chronological order by UBC faculty members with a primary appointment in the Faculty of Education.
| Year | Citation | Program |
|---|---|---|
| 2024 | Dr. Trainor explored elite athlete well-being. Her research demonstrates the critical role of sport culture and the high-performance environment in comprising athlete well-being. After interviewing Olympic and Paralympic athletes, she identified eight sport-specific components that make up athlete well-being, which can help support elite athletes. | Doctor of Philosophy in Kinesiology (PhD) |
| 2024 | Dr. Gist explored how high school teachers who teach online build positive relationships with their students. This research informs both policy and practice by providing schools and teachers a deeper understanding of the factors that help, hinder or are needed for supportive student-teacher relationships online. | Doctor of Philosophy in Human Development, Learning, and Culture (PhD) |
| 2024 | Dr. Sauve explored the experiences that early-career teachers had with social and emotional learning (SEL) as they completed their teacher preparation programs in Oregon. Her research contributes to the limited understanding of the degree to which teachers receive preparation in SEL as they complete their teacher preparation programs in the U.S. | Doctor of Philosophy in Human Development, Learning, and Culture (PhD) |
| 2024 | Dr. Cho explored the transformative learning process among the 'Education Beyond Borders' members in Canada and Kenya in their collaboration. Her research helps to understand how the educators from the Global North and South navigated the issues of power and privilege in the postcolonial setting and adds to the conversation of decolonizing pedagogy. | Doctor of Education in Educational Leadership and Policy (EdD) |
| 2024 | Dr. Skinner examined inter-professional collaborative practices of education professionals when the focus of collaboration was to include students with extensive support needs in a general education science unit. Her research illustrates how multi-disciplinary collaboration can promote equitable access to education for students with disabilities. | Doctor of Philosophy in Special Education (PhD) |
| 2024 | Dr. Morales looked into the views and experiences of young Colombian adults concerning violence on social media. His research underscores the pivotal role of digital platforms in shaping our relationship with violence, emphasizing education as a valuable strategy for promoting and sustaining cultures of peace. | Doctor of Philosophy in Language and Literacy Education (PhD) |
| 2024 | Dr. Dean illustrated how participation in adaptive skateboarding and wheelchair motocross may offer health benefits and social benefits to physically disabled people and illuminated how larger social, cultural, political, economic, and structural forces may influence disabled riders' participation in different sporting spaces. | Doctor of Philosophy in Kinesiology (PhD) |
| 2024 | Dr. Isherwood's work considers how the exploration of LGBTQI2S+ artworks can cultivate queer aesthetic sensibilities that help educators rethink normative assumptions of gender and sexuality. Their dissertation provides practical, arts-based methods that educators can adopt now to create supportive and inclusive learning environments for all students. | Doctor of Philosophy in Curriculum Studies (PhD) |
| 2024 | Dr. Hamilton explored how Grade 10 students drew on spatial frameworks to analyze young adult literature and creatively reimagine their movements and engagements across home, school, and public spaces. Her findings open up possibilities for critical and civic-oriented literature education research and pedagogy. | Doctor of Philosophy in Language and Literacy Education (PhD) |
| 2024 | Dr. Horst employed innovative digital arts-based methods to inquire into the futures literacies of a group of teacher candidates. Her study found that futures literacies pedagogy can provide teacher candidates with creative outlets to express their extant feelings and narratives about the future in generative ways that enable new possibilities to emerge. | Doctor of Philosophy in Language and Literacy Education (PhD) |