People | LEAP

Claire Alkouatli

I am a Master’s student in Human Development, Learning and Culture with a concentration on Social and Emotional Learning. My research involves a examining a developmental approach to Islamic learning—understanding how children develop and teaching strategies that enhance development across domains. I am currently investigating how a sociocultural developmental framework might meet the objectives of Islamic education by studying how the teaching strategies of Muslim teachers are informed by both understandings of human development as well as Islamic principles. I am interested in the pedagogical overlap between sociocultural theory and teaching methods rooted in an Islamic worldview, including Prophetic pedagogies.

Negar Amini

I am a Masters student in Human Development, Learning and Culture with a concentration on Social Emotional Learning. My educational and professional background in Developmental and Educational Psychology over the years have allowed me to look at cognitive and affective development in children in relation to emotional perspective taking. More recently, my work experience at an NGO in Iran with youth in the disadvantaged population as an educational consultant has sparked a new interest in my research: to study the cultural foundation of identity construction in adolescents placed at risk with particular attention to relationships in diverse learning contexts. My aspiration is to further expand and disentangle the intricacy that exists amongst concepts like social emotional learning, self-regulation, and resiliency throughout my graduate work.

Kristen Goessling

I am a PhD candidate in Human Development, Learning and Culture at UBC. My professional background in community mental health and social services has greatly influenced the ways in which I conceptualize and design research. Central to my research is the understanding that youth are active cultural producers in relation to the specific social practices and systems in which they are embedded. My work utilizes collaborative and visual research methods that seek to amplify youth voice and perspective. My doctoral research explores the ways in which youth actively co-construct meanings in and through social relationships and social practices. Specifically, I am interested in how art and creative practices enable youth to reflect upon and imagine their past, present, and future experiences in new and different ways.

Christine Klerian

I am a first year Master’s student in Human Development, Learning, and Culture at UBC. My background includes educational journalism for children and several years as a classroom teacher–grades K to 12–in developing countries.For my research, I am concerned with how socioeconomic status and health are interrelated determinants of the quality of education that children achieve. I believe that poor health has a strong impact on children’s learning potential, as does their need to work from an early age if their family’s condition requires them to. I am also interested in social emotional learning (SEL) to help educators and parents teach children for life, with the ultimate goal of reducing the inequities between people.

Bruce Moghtader

I am a second year Master’s student in the Department of Educational and Counselling Psychology and Special Education. My research interest focuses on ethics in education and ways of broadening the definition of learning. I study the formation of educational practices in relation to sociocultural values, asking to what extent children/students contribute to education. I explore the intersections of critical theory and a strengths-based educational approach to persons and contexts. Working within this frame, I am interested in learning about subjectivity, speaking of one’s experience, and how specific school practices, such as Philosophy for Children, enable learning from experience. Speaking and listening are enabling practices through which we feel, imagine, think, learn and create together.

Louai Rahal

I am a Masters student in Human Development, Learning and Culture. My area of interest is the discourses used in media and in verbal interactions within educational contexts.In my research, I analyze the versions of reality that are constructed through media messages and through verbal interactions and the way these versions of reality position subjects. In my current research project, I am analyzing Seventeen magazine and looking at how the discourses in Seventeen construct the category of the “female body.” The main emphasis of the analysis is on how the “female body,” as constructed in Seventeen, naturalizes or challenges dominant types of femininity and dominant forms of embodiment, as well as how it further stigmatizes or defends the types of femininity and forms of embodiment that are pathologized in the social structure.

Renira Vellos

I am a PhD Candidate in the HDLC program at UBC. My areas of interest include early school leaving, youth in alternative education contexts, re-engagement, educational leadership and administration, and educational policy. Key to my research interests are how conceptions of social actors in education, like students and administrators, are constructed through discourses that position people differently within the educational system. I hope that my intellectual undertakings may provide insight and recommendations about how prevalent discourses at the policy level of education position students in ways that are reflected in whether students leave school, re-engage, and complete their high school diploma. My work may also provide insight into how legislation and policy can reflect discourses that are at odds with the educational philosophy of school administrators.My work with LEAP has allowed me to examine dropout rates in the United States and Australia, and how these are often assumed to be associated with issues of “individual choice,” rather than reflecting wider social and systemic conditions. Tracing the social and discursive practices of youth and adults in both informal and alternative learning environments has allowed me to gain some insight into how these practices can expose issues from outside of the learning environments, and position youths as “students at-risk.” I have also been involved in evaluating pre-service teachers’ perceptions of their needs prior to completing the teacher education program and entering into the classroom as teachers.