Laurier expert alert: International Education Week

Nov. 11, 2020
For Immediate Release

Waterloo – International Education Week is celebrated worldwide every third week of November to highlight the importance of international education and support international engagement efforts.

Laurier’s Faculty of Education offers a Bachelor of Arts in International Education Studies, the first of its kind in Canada, for students interested in teaching in international schools or pursuing educational work in other fields. Through a combination of courses from a variety of faculties and departments, including Education, Global Studies, and Languages and Literatures, students cultivate intercultural competencies, build global awareness and learn teaching philosophies and approaches specifically for international settings.

The following professors are available to speak about topics related to international education. Avis Beek, Ardavan Eizadirad and Steve Sider are all professors teaching in the International Education Studies program.

Avis Beek, assistant professor in the Faculty of Education, is an expert in education for international mindedness, international and comparative education, and STEM education in global contexts. Prior to joining Laurier, she was an educator in Bahrain, Malaysia, Japan and the Czech Republic. Contact: abeek@wlu.ca

Ardavan Eizadirad, assistant professor in the Faculty of Education, is an expert on equity, diversity and inclusion in education. He has written and taught about inclusion and decolonization in education in Canada and abroad. He is the author of Decolonizing Educational Assessment: Ontario Elementary Students and the EQAO, International Experience in a Non-Western Country, Teacher Habitus, and Level of Inclusion in the Classroom, published in the International Journal of Teaching and Education, and co-editor of Equity as Praxis in Early Childhood Education and Care (forthcoming 2021) and International Handbook of Anti-Discriminatory Education (forthcoming 2021 or 2022). Contact: aeizadirad@wlu.ca

Alexandra Gottardo is a professor in the Department of Psychology. Her research focuses on oral and written language development in individuals, including reading development among learners who speak English as a second language and a variety of first languages, such as Spanish, Arabic, Farsi and Chinese. She has researched reading comprehension and vocabulary acquisition with children from preschool to high school and with undergraduate university students. She collaborates with her PhD student Portia Padilla in studying multilingual learners in the Philippines. In August, Gottardo and Professor Eileen Wood helped bring an interactive literacy program to children in remote communities in Kenya. Without computers or the internet, these children had been out of school since the pandemic forced schools to operate virtually. Contact: agottardo@wlu.ca

Steve Sider, associate professor in the Faculty of Education and coordinator of the International Education Studies program, is an expert in school leadership and special education, as well as comparative and international education. He is currently studying how school principals support students with special education needs in Canada, as well as inclusive education practices in both Canada and Ghana. For the past few years, he has also been involved in the Educator and Leadership Institute, designed to build the teaching and leadership capacity in schools in Haiti. Read more about his research. Contact: ssider@wlu.ca