About Us
Address issues of inequity (social, economic, and political) for historically marginalized, and racialized youth and communities through the promotion of high expectations and individual student need.
In the context of COVID-19, it is important that educators, teacher candidates, and students address and acknowledge the difficulties and limitations of our current contexts and work to build healthy educational practices.
Engage deeply with teacher identity as a means to understand the decision-making process. Development of praxis that ensures families and communities and all of the cultural richness of the school are drawn upon in taking up curriculum
Prioritize and provide learning for teacher candidates to build professionally appropriate relationships built on care and compassion as a model for learning. Ensuring students understand their potentials and possibilities rather than enacting an educator's deficit thinking.
Utilizing Digital citizenship as something an ever-emerging form of curriculum where the personal and historical intersect. Asking why it matters to urban schools in Ottawa in the context of Covid 19
Acknowledge and address oppression in the curriculum and classroom such as racism, sexism, colonialism, classism, and ableism, and root practice in the continuous learning and unlearning of such concepts
UCC Team Lead
Linda Radford
Linda Radford has been co-leading the Faculty of Education’s Urban Communities Cohort since 2015. Her certification as a teacher comes from Nova Scotia, where she did both her B.Ed (St. Mary’s) and MA in English (Dalhousie). After over ten years of teaching from the primary to secondary and college level in Nova Scotia and Ontario, she returned to graduate studies at the University of Ottawa to do her PhD in Education focusing on pedagogies of reading as a means of learning and unlearning by considering one’s own prejudices and attachments to certain ideas.
Specializing in anti oppressive practices, Dr. Radford supports teacher candidates to design inclusive and dynamic learning environments. She has extensive experience in curriculum design (K-12) that takes an interdisciplinary, integrative approach and aims to open a range of entry points for learners, especially in regards to students exploring their own issues of living. She brings theory to practice in her work with teacher candidates in her core courses PED 3141, 4141, 3150, 3151 and 4177. In 2015, Dr. Radford’s work was recognized by a Faculty of Education teaching award.
In partnership with educational leaders in the field, Dr. Radford supports teacher candidates to participate in critical social action projects that target equity and youth mobilization projects in school communities. As a volunteer, Dr. Radford supports a number of community initiatives such as Hillcrest Antiracist Community council, Mamawi Together, the Equity Knowledge Network and Project of Heart. Alongside her work in education, Dr. Radford is busy keeping up with her four children and the adventures of everyday life.