Administration at the Intersections of Gender
Posted on: Nov 25, 2022
Join Intersections of Gender (IG) in an intersectional analysis with Drs. Samira ElAtia and Elissa Corsi about women in educational leadership roles in Alberta on December 2, 2022, at 12:15 p.m. to 1 p.m. online through Eventbrite.
The percentage of women in leadership roles, as defined by both Leadership and Superintendents Quality Standards (LQS and SLQS) of Alberta Education, declines as the level of leadership increases.
The Alberta Teachers Association (ATA) has never had a woman as its Executive Secretary, and a mere 13 per cent of school superintendents are women. Yet, The Alberta Teachers’ Retirement Fund reported that in 2017, 76 per cent of the teaching population was female.
Research at the intersection of gender highlights various factors that come to play for women in leadership: family life, caretaking, socio-cultural roles and perceptions, age, race, ethnicity, education and economics.
Through a SSHRC Partnership Development Grant held between the University of Alberta, the Alberta Teachers’ Association, and the College of Alberta School Superintendents, Dr. Samira ElAtia (UAlberta) and Dr. Elissa Corsi (Alberta Teachers’ Association) aim to delve into understanding the intersections of gender in educational leadership by reaching out to school divisions across the province.
They ask questions like: What are the beliefs and perceptions of school leaders regarding the role and effect of family leaves on entry and progression in educational leadership? What are the beliefs of school leaders, including both strengths and challenges, regarding the role of unpaid labour on the entry and progression in educational leadership? How are the intersectionalities of gender with race, ethnicity, age, education and family status reflected in school leadership in Alberta?
Hosted by Dr. Teresa Anne Fowler, Assistant Professor of Education at Concordia University of Edmonton.
Dr. Samira ElAtia (she/her) is Professor and the Associate Dean – Research and Graduate Studies at the bilingual Faculté Saint-Jean at the University of Alberta. She specializes in the evaluation of competencies and language assessment. Her research interests are around language assessment, socio-linguistic bias in assessment, as well as issues of fairness in assessment, especially in bilingual contexts. She is past president of the Canadian Association of Language Assessment. Currently, she is PI and Co-PI on two SSHRC funded projects on educational leadership. She holds a PhD from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and an MA from Illinois State University.
Dr. Elissa Corsi (she/her) is an Executive Staff Officer in the Alberta Teachers’ Association’s (ATA) Government Services program area. She worked as a teacher and administrator in Alberta schools, both in English and French Immersion, before joining the ATA. She is an adjunct professor at the University of Alberta, Campus Saint-Jean in Educational Leadership and School Administration.
Dr. Teresa Anne Fowler (she/her) is an Assistant Professor of Education at Concordia University of Edmonton. Her research area lies within critical white masculinities and she has been engaged in hockey culture research – recently she presented findings from a joint study on girls and women in sport to the House of Commons Standing Committee on the Status of Women, and she is currently working with a men’s ice hockey team to break the culture of silence by opening up a dialogical space within the team. Her research takes a bricolage approach using theories from Bourdieu, Freire, and gender theorists to understand how white patriarchal power reproduces in society and her research methods are dialogical and arts-based using photography. Teresa also works within environmental science education and is currently co-editing a special issue with the Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences.