The public is invited to attend the launch of a documentary video and the opening of a photography exhibition about UPEI’s Master of Education in Leadership in Learning program in Nunavut.
 
The event takes place on Friday, December 4, at 4 p.m., in the Alex H. MacKinnon Auditorium and Schurman Market Square, Don and Marion McDougall Hall.
 
During a special Convocation in Iqaluit on July 1, 2009, 21 Inuit educational leaders from across Nunavut graduated with Master of Education Leadership in Learning degrees from UPEI—the first graduate degree program to be offered in Nunavut. Most of the graduates were mature students already working as leaders in their communities. Participants studied part-time over three years through face-to-face courses in Iqaluit and Rankin Inlet combined with online learning.
 
The program balanced western and Inuit knowledge of education and educational leadership. It was developed and delivered through a unique partnership between the University of Prince Edward Island, Nunavut Department of Education, Nunavut Arctic College, and St. Francis Xavier University.
 
The graduates’ learning is recorded in a documentary video, Lighting the Qulliq: The First Master of Education Program in Nunavut, produced by well-known Canadian filmmaker and director Mark Sandiford. Aspects of their lives as educational leaders are documented through photographs taken by renowned photographer Carlos Reyes-Manzo.
 
Fiona Walton and Sandy MacAuley, both members of the UPEI Faculty of Education, and Nunia Qanatsiaq, a graduate of the program, will discuss research conducted in the MEd program and speak about the complexities of engaging in ethically based, reciprocally negotiated research within the MEd in Nunavut.
 
Sandiford will launch the documentary video, and Qanatsiaq will open the exhibition.
 
This event is hosted by the UPEI Centre for Education Research. For information, please contact Christine Gordon-Manley at (902) 566-6784 or cgmanley@upei.ca

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This notice originally appeared as a media release put out by Integrated Communications, UPEI.

Contact Person: Anna MacDonald
Department: Media Relations and Communications, Integrated Communications
Phone: (902) 566-6786
Email: amacdonald@upei.ca

The United Nations recognized play as a specific right that children hold in addition to, and separate from, a child's right to education, leisure, and recreation. Research shows that play provides children with important learning and critical developmental opportunities that set a course for future learning (Krentz, 2008).

Read more here.

CER Member and Canada Research Chair in Child/Youth Cultures and Tranistions, Kate Tilleczek, is featured on the Office of Research and Development's Blog. You can read it here.

On July 1st, twenty-one students graduated from UPEI with a Masters in Education. What made this convocation extra special and unique is that it took place in Iqaluit and not on Prince Edward Island.

The Master of Education in Leadership and Learning is the first graduate degree program to be offered in Nunavut. (Source: UPEI)

While the MEd was granted from UPEI, the curriculum itself, a nice blend of both western and Inuit educational philsophy and practice, is actually the product of a partnership between UPEI, the Nunavut Department of Education, Nunavut Artctic College, and St. Francis Xavier University.

Members of UPEI Faculty of Education, including Dr. Fiona Walton (pictured above), who was instrumental in implementing this program, attended the convocation, along with UPEI President Wade MacLauchlan.

President MacLauchlan spoke highly of the Nunavut MEd program: This is a great achievement for UPEI and our Faculty of Education, in combination with the community in Nunavut, to offer this remarkable program. (Source: UPEI)

This MEd program is not only a celebration of higher education, but a promise of future development and leadership. As reporter Elizabeth Church stated in Saturday's Globe and Mail: [The program] marks a milestone for the people of Nunavut as they fashion a school system and produce leaders for their community. It also comes as many, notably Governor-General Michaelle Jean, are championing higher education for the Far North, including the need for a university of its own. (Source: Globe and Mail, July 4, 2009)

June 22, 2009

Our new Canada Research Chair, Kate Tilleczek, is currently on the National Advisory Committee of the Canadian Mental Health Commission's Evergreen Project for a Framework for Child and Youth Mental Health in Canada. Since Canada does not have a national strategy for child and youth mental health, and since the World Health Organization (WHO) has called for "a national address of child and youth mental health concerns," the work of this committee has important national significance. Canada needs a national framework to support health decisions that tend to be made nationally, despite whatever provincial supports are put in place.

This framework, called Evergreen, will "compliment and may provide child and youth context to the Mental Health Strategy for Canada currently being developed by the MHCC" (Mental Health Commission of Canada). Funding for Evergreen has come from MHCC and the IWK Children's Health Centre.

Evergreen comprises over 100 worldwide experts from various aspects of child and youth mental health, as well as parents and youth who have been directly affected by mental health issues. Evergreen representatives also plan on soliciting opinions and information from the general public.

A statement from the framework committee reads as follows:

We have called the project Evergreen to evoke the image of an ever-evolving framework that can be updated to remain relevant to the changing needs of Canadians. We hope that Evergreen's process will be self-sustaining and that within 3 to 5 years of completion, the framework will be reengaged by interested parties, this time to incorporate new research, new evidence, and new perspectives on child and youth mental health. We hope that this process will then continue in 3 to 5 year cycles into the foreseeable future. Thus this process will be "evergreen."

Full story and source: Kutcher, S.&A. McLuckie. "Evergreen: Towards a Child and Youth Mental Health Framework for Canada." Journal of the Canadian Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. 18(2): May 2009. Online.