Dr. Geraldine Balzer is an Associate Professor of Curriculum Studies and Acting Department Head of Curriculum Studies in the College of Education at the University of Saskatchewan. Her focus is on in decolonizing pedagogies and transformative education
The Department of Curriculum Studies teaches the subject pedagogy classes in the undergraduate teacher education program at the University of Saskatchewan. Completion of this program gives graduates eligibility for a professional teaching license in the province of Saskatchewan and beyond. The Department also offers an extensive graduate program with the ability to complete a Master of Education in Curriculum Studies or Educational Technology and Design as well as a cross-departmental Doctor of Philosophy.
Dr. Balzer’s experiences teaching Inuit students led to her interest in decolonizing pedagogies and transformative education. Her teaching focuses on ways of disrupting the hegemony of standard English and embracing the diversity of English within our world, incorporating Aboriginal and postcolonial literature into secondary classrooms, and preparing teachers to be advocates of social justice.
Her research focuses on decolonization and social justice. She works with teachers to explore the use of diverse literary texts and literary theory in order to engage students in critical thinking about societal issues. She recently completed a four-year, multi-site research study focused on the development of a social justice pedagogy through the introduction of postcolonial literature in Canadian classrooms. The results of this research project are found in Encountering Pedagogies of Discomfort in Practice: Teaching to Social Justice using Post-Colonial Texts. Dr. Balzer was the lead editor of this text.
Dr. Balzer also studies International Experiential Education/Service Learning and its impact on Canadian participants and host communities in Central America. She has been the principal investigator on three research projects funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
Giving Indigenous communities a voice and decolonizing pedagogies
A central focus of this research is to ensure that Indigenous host communities in the Global South have a voice in the development and implementation of these programs. Reciprocity is central to developing research that is not an extractive industry but is co-owned by the researchers and the communities.
The current research project is based on community-engaged research and attempts to actively engage in the co-creation of knowledge through a partnership with locally hired research partners. These researchers, members of the local Indigenous group, have been instrumental in the development of the questions and data collection in the local language. Data analysis occurs within this research community.
Dr. Balzer currently serves as the chair of the University of Saskatchewan Faculty Association and has been involved in professional association work throughout her teaching and university career. She believes that the best working environments are those where fairness is central to employee and employer relationships.
