Life Stories in Education Working Group

The Life Stories in Education Working Group seeks to educate youth, teachers and the broader community about human rights, genocide, war and displacement through life stories. The group will explore the impact life stories can have on the intellectual and ethical development of learners and educators in a variety of formal and informal contexts.

This video presents clips of interviews conducted by the Education Working Group with teachers and students active in Holocaust and genocide education in Montreal. More specifically, those who have worked with survivors of war, genocide or other human rights violations in their classrooms and/or other educational settings.Through these interviews, we begin to understand the role of survivor testimonials in various educational contexts and the realities facing teachers when they try to incorporate them into the curriculum. See more on CitizenShift

The Life Stories in Education Working Group will design and develop pedagogical and instructional material and activities, provide a digital memory bank by inviting online submissions of Montrealers’ stories of war and displacement, and encourage people to share their stories within educational settings. In so doing, the group will explore ways to ensure that the stories will be given back to the communities and the greater public through means of digital media and online community space. How might students work with stories? How do community storytellers share communal stories within educational settings? In what ways might these life stories enrich the Quebec high school curriculum by integrating these stories into teacher training and ongoing professional development?

Our Projects

The cornerstone of the Education Working Group's research plan is to provide support towards the development of pedagogical materials, based on project-wide consultation and collaborations. The Education Working Group will encourage all project members to think about the educational applications of their research. Curriculum and educational resources will be developped for Quebec secondary schools.

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Literature Review on Genocide Pedagogies and Curricula 1980 to Present prepared by Liz Airton.doc	687.5 KB

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Life Story Interviewing: Survivor Testimony in Holocaust, Genocide and Human Rights Education
A research initiative is being led by Steven High of the Concordia History Department to examine the educational role of survivor testimonials in three educational contexts: human rights education, community groups and school classrooms. This initiative will make use of a combination of sources including: textual records related to past educational activities of the Montreal Holocaust Memorial Centre (MHMC), the International Centre for Human Rights Education-EQUITAS, Montreal school boards, and others; existing interviews conducted by the MHMC; and 20 new life story interviews with survivors and other educators in the Montreal area.

Academic Publication
Research results will be shared with scholars and diverse publics through a panel organized at the Cultural Studies Association of Canada conference to be held at McGill in the fall of 2009 and other conferences, as well as through journal publications.

Conference Organizing
An international colloquium will be organized on “Teaching Genocide”.

Curriculum Development
Curriculum development is being conducted through courses taught at the McGill University Faculty of Education by Bronwen Low and by Emmanuelle Sonntag from the Montreal Holocaust Memorial Centre (MHMC). Workshops will be held during Holocaust Education Week, as well as during International Day for Life Stories. As a culmination of this process, Summer Institutes will be organized, geared towards secondary school teachers and human rights educators, emphasizing practical outcomes and intercultural learning.

Literature Review on Genocide Pedagogies and Curricula: 1980-Present,
by Liz Airton, July – December, 2009

Working Group Info

Contact the Life Stories in Education Working Group

News

New Seminar: ORAL HISTORY AND PERFORMANCE
Students enrolled in these two-semester seminar-studio courses will explore the creative intersection between oral history, new media and performing arts.
Regard sur le Chili: A New Blog on an Inspiring Project!
"Regard sur le Chili" has a new blog where you can learn about a group of students from École internationale de Montréal and their project on Chile under Pinochet.
Teaching award for St. George High School's “Life in the Open Prison" project
Megan Webster and her students at St. George’s High School have been awarded the 2009 Martha Ross Teaching Award by the Oral History Association (USA) for their project “Life in the Open Prison.”

Community Partners

Equitas - International Centre for Human Rights Education has forty years of experience in the development and delivery of human rights education programming in Canada and around the world. Its participatory education and training programs help people become more effective human rights monitors, advocates, and educators. The content of its programmes centre on the knowledge, skills, values, attitudes and behaviours required for individuals to understand, assert, and defend their human rights as well as to respect the rights of others. Its director of education, Vincenza Nazzari, a co-applicant, is a key member of the project team – serving on the coordinating committee and as co-leader of this working group. EQUITAS will contribute in a variety of ways including the hosting of a summer institute in human rights education (for teachers) in years 4 and 5. For more information visit www.equitas.org

RECIT/LEARNing Communities is a leading educational resource network in Quebec. This non-profit educational foundation supports and promotes pedagogical collaboration and innovation through the use of information technology and modeling of best practice. The LEARNing Communities’ mission is to support and promote pedagogical collaboration and innovation in the community of learners in the primary and secondary schools of Quebec. Its director, Bev White, is a co-applicant in the CURA application. Because this partner has direct ties with many of the classrooms of Montreal through its consultants, and can reach teachers through its publishing arm, it provides the project with some reach into the province’s classrooms. As a result, this partnership will assist the project in developing a working relationship with the English- and French-language school boards and in developing material that is suitable to the Quebec curriculum. For more information visit www.learnquebec.ca

Centre for the Study of Learning and Performance (CSLP) is a provincial centre for excellence in Quebec in the application of information and communication technologies to teaching and learning. The Centre will participate in the development of educational materials and provide additional research infrastructure for project activities. For more information visit doe.concordia.ca/cslp

National Film Board of Canada (NFB) operates CITIZENShift which is described on its web site as “an interactive platform where you can explore social issues through: film, photography, articles, blogs and podcasts”. The NFB has agreed to work with us to develop a web-based database of life story interviews to be housed on the Concordia server. As stated in another section, the partnership with the NFB will provide us with web-based software that is already developed. It will also greatly increase the public visibility of the project. For more information visit citizen.nfb.ca/blogs/category/citizenshift