Food For Fines

Posted on November 15, 2017 by Navroop Gill

Next week, from November 20th-24th, we will waive $2 of library fines in exchange for a non-perishable food item (maximum $20 waived). Don’t have any fines? You can still donate!

The most needed items include: baby food, canned fruits, canned fish, plain beans (no
sauce), canned vegetables, juice boxes, salad dressings and condiments.

Where:  OISE Library Circulation Desk

When: Monday Nov 20-Friday Nov 24 during library opening hours

We are able to waive fines from the following libraries:

  • Earth Sciences
  • East Asian
  • Engineering & Computer Science
  • Caven (Knox)
  • Chemistry
  • Dentistry
  • Gerstein
  • Graham (Trinity)
  • Inforum
  • Innis
  • Laidlaw (UC)
  • Law
  • Math
  • Music
  • OISE
  • Robarts
  • Rotman
  • St Augustine’s
  • UTM
  • UTSC

Food items will be donated to the U of T Food and Clothing Bank.

The U of T Food and Clothing Bank operates year round and is open to all University of Toronto students. Register for the service by bringing in a print-out of your current timetable from ROSI and your TCard. Visit the Food and Clothing Bank on Fridays between 12–3 pm at the U of T Multi-Faith Centre, 569 Spadina (between Willcocks and College). Please bring your own bags.

http://uoft.me/familiesinneed

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OISE Lobby Display: Research Methods in Education

Posted on November 10, 2017 by Emily Kim

The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education is Canada’s largest and most research-intensive faculty of education. To assist students with their diverse research projects, the OISE Library is dedicating a display to reference sources for research. Whether you are looking for material on foundations for research, research ethics, or blending qualitative and quantitative research methods, this display provides many excellent examples and approaches to research methods.

Foundations for Research edited by Kathleen deMarrais and Stephen D. Lapan
Foundations for Research Methods of Inquiry in Education and the Social Sciences was designed by deMarrais and Lapan to provide students and new researchers an overview of research methodologies and understandings for these approaches. This book focuses on the following topics: research ethics, the intertwined relationship of theory and research design, systematic examination of ways to design and implement high-quality research, specific methods for implementing research, and pedagogical strategies. Students may find the last chapter of the book to be helpful as it provides a discussion of the methods of data collection, interpretation, and representation based on concepts and issues within specific research methodology.

Research Methods for Education by Peter Newby
This student-friendly book guides students through research methods with exercises, examples, and comparative international material. Unique to this book, Newby has written a guide for people who may be new to research and are not confident with numbers. This textbook walks students through understanding the context for their research, understanding the research process, and putting their research design together. Another key feature of this book is that it provides a mixed method approach, which simply does not prioritize quantitative or qualitative methods. Newby designed the text to help students produce good, valid and valuable research by including many international examples and cases specifically from education.

Blending Qualitative and Quantitative Research Methods in Theses and Dissertations by R. Murray Thomas
Thomas has written a volume designed as a guide for graduate students who wish to understand the characteristics of a wide variety of qualitative and quantitative research methods. Thomas provides his own insight for conditions under which a particular research method is most appropriate. The text also includes twenty different ways that qualitative and quantitative methods can be blended in writing thesis or dissertation proposals. This book presents an excellent overview of qualitative and quantitative research methods.


Key Ideas in Educational Research by David Scott and Marlene Morrison
Key Ideas in Educational Research is a comprehensive guide consisting of 120 concise essays and major ideas in the field of educational research methodology. These ideas range from positivism, ethnomethodology, and postmodernism, to philosophical concepts such as realism and induction. The book also looks into educational research strategies such as case studies, experiments, surveys, and ethnography. In addition, Scott and Morrison also examine educational research instruments such as questionnaires, interviews, and observations. The book is intended to be a resource for readers and researchers interested in understanding research methodology in the field of education.

Qualitative Journeys edited by Victor Minichello and Jeffrey A. Kottler
Qualitative Journeys: Student and Mentor Experiences With Research is comprised of stories from students’ experiences conducting qualitative research projects. These stories reveal the obstacles, joys, and discoveries that take place during a qualitative research journey. The authors believe that by studying examples of research done by students, readers will learn real-life experiences of other students. The textbook unpacks some of the central themes derived from all qualitative journeys, including concepts, locating and understanding voices in narrative inquiry, radical reflexivity, and more.

For more resources, please visit the Lobby Display, located on the OISE ground floor lobby.

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Treaty Education and Geography

Posted on November 7, 2017 by Skye Soobramanie

For the month of November, the OISE Library has put together a display on the subject of Treaty Education and Geography. November 6 – 11 is Treaty Recognition Week and November is Indigenous Education Month. The display contains books and other materials from our Stacks, Children’s Literature and Curriculum Resources collections. Treaty agreements between Indigenous peoples and the Canadian government have had a long and complicated history that connects with various contemporary issues, such as Reconciliation. The materials within this display can help you make connections to these issues for your students and assist you in bringing more Indigenous perspectives on these topics into the classroom.

For background and other contextual information on treaties and treaty making look towards these Stacks materials on display. Maurice Switzer’s Nation to Nation: A Resource Guide on Treaties in Ontario is a great starting place to learn about the history and timeline of First Nations treaties in Ontario from their beginnings to the present day. It provides readers with a well-rounded understanding of the significance of treaties and treaty making. Furthermore, Robert J. Talbot’s Negotiating the Numbered Treaties: An Intellectual and Political Biography of Alexander Morris provides information about the difficulties of negotiating treaties with different political interests at odds with one another. Alexander Morris was Lieutenant-Governor of Manitoba and the North West Territories in the 1870s, and was the main negotiator of many of the numbered treaties in the prairies. Other sources include Thunder in My Soul: A Mohawk Woman Speaks, Pathway to Self-determination Canadian Indians and the Canadian State, and Indigenous Writes: A Guide to First Nations, Métis & Inuit Issues in Canada, which all discuss issues of treaty rights and oppression from an Indigenous perspective.

For teaching materials that will help you incorporate these topics into your lessons look towards these Curriculum Resource materials. The We Are All Treaty People kit is a great classroom resource for students grade 1-8 that contains a teaching guide, lesson plans, and activities sheets to help students navigate their understanding of treaty relationships. The Aboriginal Statistics Program kit is also useful for helping students learn about the geography and its relationship with Indigenous people in Ontario. It contains statistics wheels, a 2016 Census of Population pamphlet, an Aboriginal Peoples: Fact sheet for Ontario and more. The materials within this kit are in both French and English. Other useful Curriculum Resources include the textbooks Aboriginal Beliefs, Values, and Aspirations, Aboriginal Peoples in Canada, and Aboriginal History: A Reader, which all have chapters discussing treaty issues.

The display also includes some AV materials that emphasize Indigenous voices on these issues. Colonization Road, narrated by Ryan McMahon, discusses the issues of the colonization of Indigenous peoples in Ontario by looking at different street names, and raises questions about Reconciliation with Indigenous peoples and the process of “decolonization.” Other video recordings like Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance, Sewatokwa’tshera’t: The Dish With One Spoon, Dion of the Kehewin, and Reconquering the Conquest: Quebec all discuss how different Indigenous groups across Canada have dealt with their treaty relationships with the Government of Canada, their fight for Indigenous land rights, and the movement towards Reconciliation. These materials allow students to hear and learn about treaties from the Indigenous people navigating these issues personally.

Another useful online source for information on treaty education and geography is the First Story Toronto Blog. First Story Toronto is an initiative that has, according to their website, “engaged in researching and preserving the Indigenous history of Toronto with the goal of building awareness of and pride in the long Indigenous presence and contributions to the city.” Their free online and mobile app “First Story” is an especially great tool for student learning as it maps the Indigenous heritage and community of Toronto with archival photos, documents, audio and video clips. This can make classroom learning more interactive and interesting for students of all ages.

All of these materials can be found in the glass display case on the ground floor of the OISE Library. Do not hesitate to ask circulation or reference desk staff for assistance, as all of these materials are available to be checked out!

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Featured Activity Kit – Animal Track Rubbing Plates

Posted on November 7, 2017 by Lynda Yao

Roylco’s Animal Track Rubbing Plates are great tools to help learn about animals and their tracks. The activity kit contains 16 thin rectangular plastic plates of three various colours (blue, red, and yellow). On each of the plates, there are embossed patterns of one particular animal and the animal’s tracks. The plates feature 16 different kinds of woodland and domestic animals, including: deer, weasel, beaver, bobcat, rabbit, opossum, otter, mountain lion, squirrel, skunk, raccoon, duck, turkey, timber wolf, dog, and cat. The activity kit also contains an information sheet containing a concise set of instructions to use, and interesting facts about each animal in both English and French.

In order to use the Animal Track Rubbing Plates, first secure a rubbing plate down on a flat surface using tape or other removable adhesive. Second, lay a sheet of white or coloured paper over the secured plate. Third, using a pencil, pencil crayon, crayon, or chalk, rub over the paper covering the plate until the shape and details of the tracks’ patterning becomes apparent. Aside from using the previously mentioned method, there are also other ways to use the rubbing plates in order to get different results! Try the finger painting method by covering the entire surface of the plate with paint, then press a sheet of paper over the top and pull it off. There are many ways to use and interact with the rubbing plates. Patterns created can be used for arts and crafts purposes, or as prompts to create illustrations and artworks.

The rubbing plates not only act as a tool to learn about animal tracks, it also helps to cultivate interests in animal behaviour and habitats. The activity kit can be used for all those ages 5 and above, and are great resources for teachers and educators to use in the classroom!

The Animal Track Rubbing Plates are currently on display on the main floor of the library near the service desk.

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Going to School During the World Wars

Posted on November 6, 2017 by Cassidy Foxcroft

Most of us remember learning about World War I and World War II in school on Remembrance Day. Have you ever wondered how schools were affected during the war? The Ontario Historical Education Collection at the OISE Library has a small collection of pamphlets, periodicals, school regulations, and other materials published during the World Wars that lend some insight into what it was like to be a student at this time in history.

The Ministry of Education in Ontario responded to the disruption of schooling caused by the outbreak of war in 1914 by issuing special school regulations for wartime: The War and the Schools. These special regulations were updated annually and addressed, among other things, the problem presented by young men enlisting prior to completing their schooling. Pupils who enlisted were exempted from their end-of-year examinations, were permitted to write these examinations early, or were permitted to enroll in summer sessions with all related fees covered by the government.

Enlistment had an impact on the schooling of pupils who remained in Canada as well – many of their teachers, for example, left to serve overseas. Pupils could also elect to work in the Farm Service: in response to the loss of labour on farms due to enlistment, boys and girls in Ontario schools could volunteer to work on an Ontario farm for a period of three or more months. As with pupils who enlisted to serve in the military, pupils who engaged in the Farm Service were exempted from examinations or were permitted to take their end-of-year examinations early.

The special regulations during these years also detailed what was to be taught about the war in classrooms during these years. The material covered included the remote and immediate causes of the war as well as the events of the War itself. These regulations also required at least one question about the War be added to the end-of-year examinations in History. The precise material taught in classes was tailored to the students’ grade level and maturity. For example, it was recommended in 1915 that public school teachers use a periodical called The Children’s Story of the War which provided background information and contained detailed narratives explaining the events of the War. Teachers were also advised to supplement lessons about the war with suitable newspaper clippings and to arrange class visits to training grounds and aircraft exhibitions.

Other resources were also made available to teachers, to facilitate the task of teaching about the war. Books discussing the War began to appear soon after war broke out, and were placed on lists of recommended books issued by the Department of Education. Publications directed toward teachers, such as The School magazine, included detailed descriptions of events of the War as well as information about initiatives to support the war effort such as War Savings Stamps. Other publications served as propaganda for the War, such as Empire Day programming in 1918, which featured descriptions of wartime events.

Many of this publications continued in the years immediately following the War. In 1919, for example, The Great War in Verse and Prose was published. Still other materials would be published honouring those who fought in the War, such as The Roll of Honour of the Ontario Teachers who Served in the Great War, 1914-1918.

World War II resulted in many similar documents. Special regulations were implemented for schools, curriculum guidelines for teaching about the War were published for teachers’ use, and in 1941 the Farm Service was resurrected due to labour shortages. World War II came with additional concerns as well – although Canada did not anticipate many air raids, air raid precautions were nonetheless implemented for schools. Pamphlets and booklets supporting the war effort were also heavily present in schools during World War II. Empire Day, for example, featured the war every year (as well as in 1946, in celebration of the Allies’ victory). Booklets describing key events and and outlining the ways in which Ontario schools were supporting the troops were also published to be distributed to pupils.

A selection of items will be on display in the glass table on the ground floor of the OISE Library through the month of November.

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