Doctoral Project
My research has evolved where in the doctoral program in Social Justice Education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, I began to examine the intersectional role of Black mothers and focus more specifically on Black students. The theoretical frameworks I use are Black and African feminisms, informed by anti-colonial and decolonial theory, anti-racist education, and Indigenous knowledges. My doctoral research is also informed by the findings I determined as a Research Consultant for the Peel District School Board’s (PDSB) We Rise Together report. In this research project, I interviewed over 100 Black male secondary school students and wrote a report which still informs the PDSB’s approach to race, racism, and anti-racist education. Overwhelmingly, focus group interviewees would state that their mothers are their primary, and in some cases only, source of support. This reminded me of my own experiences navigating white supremacy in the K-12 education system where my mother’s advocacy against anti-Black racism helped me, and other community members, to succeed. My current research examines the role of what I call a Black mothering approach, engaging in advocacy, survival parenting and forms of resistance for Black student learners all while navigating their own intersectional subject-positions. In my doctoral studies, I successfully interviewed over 30 Black mothers in the Jane-Finch community using a Participatory Action-Research (PAR) method informed by decolonial and Black feminist methodologies. My findings confirm that Black mothers not only fight for the education and schooling of their children, but that they use a community-oriented rather than an individualistic approach to Black students’ academic outcomes all while facing racism, sexism, and in many cases classism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, and other forms of oppression in their own personal and professional experiences. I have since partnered with a local community Jane-Finch community organization, the Firgrove Learning and Innovation Community Centre to continue community-based research and outreach through a ‘Parent Education navigation project’ to continue the action research component of the project through a $92, 400 grant from the Ontario Trillium Foundation and have also been recognized as a Graduate Research Fellow for the School of Cities at the University of Toronto to facilitate the action-research component of the study.
School of Cities 2020 Fellow
https://www.schoolofcities.utoronto.ca/events/virtual-research-festival-session-8#janelle-brady
https://www.schoolofcities.utoronto.ca/care-in-community/lessons-in-giving-back
Researcher for Centre for Integrative Anti-Racism Studies
https://www.buzzsprout.com/1327386
Ghana Education Conference host
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvdpi-afTWh6QGZvMzMM-CA
Incoming Managing Editor and co-collaborator of the CIARS Journal of Integrative Anti-Racism Studies
Researcher for the SSHRC-funded ‘Supporting Refugee Students in Canada’ project
Report http://citiesofmigration.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Supporting-Refugee-Students-in-Canada-Full-Research-Report-1.pdf
Learn more here: https://espminetwork.com/new-report-supporting-refugee-students-in-canada-building-on-what-we-have-learned-in-the-past-20-years/
Webinar here on ‘Teaching and Learning Resources’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8Ja3kXFyEE&feature=youtu.be
Policy Brief: https://espminetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Supporting-Refugee-Students-in-Canada-Policy-Brief.pdf
What works Monograph: https://espminetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/What-Works-Monograph_Supporting-Refugee-Students-in-Canadian-Classrooms_Oct.-2017.pdf