Officers

SIG CHAIR 2015-2017

Berte van Wky, PhD

bwyk@sun.ac.za

Dr. Berte van Wyk, Stellenbosch University, South Africa 

Bio: My involvement with the SIG for the last couple of years made me acutely aware of the international nature and diverse backgrounds of the membership. This poses a particular challenge to popularize the SIG as a home for people not only from African and Caribbean descent within AERA, but for all those who associate themselves with the elevation of humanity. To this end I shall strive to build the SIG and to continue the efforts to foster closer ties with other SIGS. In terms of the AERA sessions there is room to reflect on how the AERA theme can be given further credence by organizing panels that highlight the research of the membership. Here one can draw on special themes, which constitute critical discourses in the countries of the membership. An option to be explored is how to ensure that the SIG functions outside of the AERA meeting. I’m sure there are conferences or opportunities where the SIG membership can participate and showcase their research. Members must be continuously reminded to provide information on their activities for the SIG website so as to keep everybody updated on their achievements. I function best within an African sense of communalism, and will foreground this approach to the executive and the wider membership.

SIG CO-CHAIR 2015-2017

Sylvia Maureen Henry, PhD

sylvia.henry@cavehill.uwi.edu

Dr. Sylvia Mareen Henry J.P. University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus, Barbados

Bio: Dr. Sylvia Henry is the Instructional Development Specialist, University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus, Barbados. She has achieved over thirty years’ experience in the areas of classroom practice as a qualified teacher and literacy diagnostician in Barbados and the USA; educational administration; curriculum planning; policy and implementation; and faculty development. Her current role includes the providing of leadership in the development and demonstration of appropriate teaching/learning materials; advising on quality assurance matters that relate to teaching and learning; guiding the process of course and program design; and coordinating faculty development activities on the campus including the Postgraduate Certificate in University Teaching and Learning program for faculty. Additionally, this role entails collaborating with local, regional and international partners in higher education regarding policy and research in areas which relate to teaching and learning and quality assurance.Dr. Henry has served as CARICOM and Commonwealth of Learning focal points on education and has accumulated many networking resources, which could be beneficial to the CASE SIG as it strengthens the vital link across the Caribbean Diaspora. Dr. Henry has conceptualized the “Research Circle” which provides a cross-campus forum for scholars to present and discuss research and for new researchers to be mentored into research. Another initiative has been the Research Supervisor Development Training Course. This course prepares graduate research supervisors as well as offers a forum for student researchers. Empirical evidence from these initiatives can benefit the CASE SIG as it continues to advance its research agenda.

Michelle G. Knight, PhD

mk700@tc.columbia.edu

Dr. Michelle G. Knight, Teachers College, Columbia University

Bio: Michelle G. Knight is an associate professor in the Department of Curriculum and Teaching at Teachers College, Columbia University where she teaches courses, including but not limited to, urban education, culturally responsive grounded research for immigrants of color, qualitative research methodologies, and critical perspectives on secondary education. Dr. Knight’s research is broadly focused on issues of education equity within the intersection of race/ethnicity and gender for college readiness and access of Black and Latina/o youth, the strengths and assets of African immigrant youth and young adults, and urban teacher education. Her scholarship on African immigrants’ educational experience and civic contributions to America has recently received support from an American Educational Research Service Project Award, and several grants from Teachers College, Columbia University. Dr. Knight values civic engagement and community outreach evident in her co-research with a community based organization, Sauti Yetu Center for African Women and Girls, which allows graduate students to learn how to conduct more ethical and culturally responsive research with varied African immigrant populations. Dr. Knight is the current CASE SIG Program Co-Chair and has also served as a 2002 Section 4 Co-Chair, Division G, Social Contexts of Educational Policy, Politics and Praxis AERA. Dr. Knight was responsible for the various tasks necessary to plan and complete the reviews of the AERA proposals for the Annual Meeting. In sum, Dr. Knight seeks to bring her multiple strengths an experiences as a researcher and conference organizer to the position of Sig Program Co-Chair to assist the Program Chair.

PROGRAM CO-CHAIR 2015-2017

Anica G. Bowe, PhD

bowe@oakland.edu

Dr. Anica G. Bowe, Oakland University, Michigan

Bio: Anica G Bowe is a Visiting Assistant Professor at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan. She earned a Ph.D. in Education Psychology with a focus in Quantitative Methods in Education. Her interests are in evaluation practices for school-based initiatives, instrument development, quantitative research methods and design, and education development within the Caribbean. She has been a member of AERA since 2009 and the CASE SIG since 2012. She is a native of The Bahamas, and is keen towards collaborating with scholars, educators, and evaluators within the Caribbean region and beyond to support the growth and development of education systems there. Her research has been published (or accepted for publication) in Evaluation & Program Planning and Urban Education, among others.

WEBMASTER 2015-2017

Erica Bass-Flimmons, Doctoral Student

ebass3@student.gsu.edu

Erica Bass Flimmons, Doctoral Student, Georgia State University

Bio: Erica Bass-Flimmons is a 3rd year doctoral student in the Learning Technologies Division at Georgia State University. Her research interest includes studying mobile devices in developing countries with a focus on public health education. While receiving her Master’s degree, Erica studied at the Durban University of Technology located in South Africa to research Indigenous Technologies (2011). During the first year of her doctoral studies, Erica visited Ghana while researching the Mobile Maternal Health Project with a local NGO (2014). After her initial visit, she decided to continue her research focus on mobile message design for mobile technology in developing countries. As a doctoral student, Erica has served as a graduate research assistant to the Learning Technologies Department, and the communicating officer for the Technology-Ask Project which consists of coordinating face to face and online workshops with faculty members and workshop facilitators. Currently, she is the graduate project coordinator for the online foreign language-tutoring project, a graduate research assistant to the Dean of International Partnerships, and serves as the current president for the graduate Instructional Technology organization.

 SIG SECRETARY TREASURER 2014-2016

Dr Martin T. Hall, PhD, CPsychol

[email protected]

Dr Martin T. Hall, PhD, CPsychol, I am a Chartered Member of the British Psychological Society (BPS) (Division of Educational and Child Psychology) and a member of the American Psychological Association (APA) (Division 15 - Educational Psychology). I am Lecturer in Educational Psychology at Charles Sturt University in Australia. My research interests include cognitive and sociological variables that affect academic achievement in both online and face-to-face environments. My doctoral dissertation investigated socioeconomic status, academic self-concept, attitudes toward school, academic motivation, learning strategies and past performance as predictors of future performance. I am a mixed methodologist and adopt a pragmatic approach to research questions and research contexts. Currently I am evaluating a social services model which provides access to needed services to students and families from schools in NSW, Australia.

SIG NEWSLETTER EDITOR

Dolapo Adeniji-Neil

 [email protected]

Dr. Dolapo Adeniji-Neil, Associate Professor of Education at the Ruth S. Ammon School of Education, Adelphi University, Garden City, New York, U.S.A.

She is a teacher educator, her research interests and work include Sociological and cultural implications influencing individual and group educational opportunities in the U.S and internationally; Class and gender influences in K-12 and higher education settings; Immigrants education; Indigenous education and  Multiculturalism.

SIG EX-OFFICIO 2015-2017

Cheryl McLean, Ph.D.

[email protected]

Dr. Cheryl McLean, Assistant Professor of Language and Literacy Education at Rutgers University, New Jersey.

Research and Teaching Interests:

As researcher and teacher educator, Dr. McLean uses critical pedagogy and postcolonial theory as lenses through which to address a range of sociocultural issues connected to adolescent literacy learning and teaching. More specifically, her research focuses on three strands (1) academic experiences, (2) digital and multimodal literacies, and (3) culture, identity and academic performance of immigrant learners from the Caribbean.

SIG EX-OFFICIO 2015-2016

Janice Fournillier, Ph.D.

[email protected]

Dr. Janice Fournillier, Associate Professor, Research, Measurement and Statistics, Georgia State University.

Janice B Fournillier is a tenure track associate professor in the Research Measurement and Statistics unit of the Educational Policy Studies department at Georgia State University. Her PhD is in Educational Psychology with a concentration in Research, Evaluation and Measurement.  She also holds a certificate in Interdisciplinary Qualitative Research Methodologies from the University of Georgia, Athens.  Prior to migrating to the USA Janice taught in the Trinidad and Tobago’s educational system for 28 years. It is in Trinidad and Tobago that she completed her undergrad and postgraduate studies in education earning a MA (Ed.) in Curriculum and Instruction at the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine.She also worked for ten years with the Caribbean Examination Council as an examiner in English Literature. She has been involved as a methodologist and evaluator in major grants from the National Science Foundation, the Georgia Department of Human Services, and the Georgia Department of Education. Her major research interests are: the application and translation of qualitative research methodologies, program evaluation, teacher education, and teaching and learning in non-school contexts like Trinidad and Tobago’s Carnival mas’ camps where she did her dissertation work.  For more information see  http://education.gsu.edu/jfournillier/index.html