Areas of Special Interests and Accomplishments
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- First nations' art, culture, and pedagogy
- In-service arts teacher education, art production and art pedagogy
- Development of a/r/tography as a research methodology and as a form of pedagogy
Current Funded Research
Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada
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Partnership Development Grants
2019-2022 - Growing Innovation in Rural Sites of Learning (Leyton Schnellert, Principal Investigator; D. Butler, G.Giles, K. Sanford, M. Latta, P. Fisher, S. Davids - Co-Investigators; R. Irwin, A.Priest, W. Carr, L. Kanevsky - Collaborators.
2018-2021 - Mapping A/r/tography: Transnational storytelling across historical and cultural routes of significance (Rita L. Irwin, Principal Investigator; Jun Hu, Koichi Kasahara, Alexandra Lasczik, Ricardo Marins, Joaquin Roldan, Anita Sinner, Valerie Triggs - Co-investigators; 11 collaborators + 9 partners
Insight Grants
2016-2019 - O Canada! Reimagining Canadian Identity: A Cosmopolitan Approach to Teaching and Learning (Rita L. Irwin, Principal Investigator; George Belliveau, Peter Gouzouasis, Carl Leggo, William F. Pinar, and Ching-Chiu Lin, Co-Investigators)
2016-2019 - The Transversality Hub: Towards a new mode of learning for community arts practice (Ching-Chiu Lin, Principal Investigator; Rita L. Irwin, Anita Sinner, Peter Grimmett, J. Wicks, Co-Investigators)
University of British Columbia
Faculty of Education Research Infrastructure Support (RISS Funding)
2017-2020 -Mapping A/r/tography: Transnational storytelling across historical and cultural routes of significance (Rita L. Irwin)
2018-2019 -Three Research Conferences in 2019 (Rita L. Irwin and George Belliveau)
Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (Spain)
Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad (Spain)
2017-2019 - Metodos Artisticos y Visuales de Investigacion, innovacion educative e (Ricardo Marin Viadel & Joaquin Roldan Ramirez, Principal Investigators; Canada (R. Irwin & A. Sinner), Spain (14), Brazi (1), Greece (1), Honduras (2), and El Salvador (1)
Past Funded Research
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Grants
2016-2018 - Re-storying Canadian History: The Interdependence of Creative and Critical Thinking (Margaret Mcintyre Latta, Principal
Investigator; R. L. Irwin, M. Tamez, K. Ragoonaden, and M. Butterfield, Co-Investigators)
2015-2018 - A Pedagogical Turn to Art as Research: A comparative international study of art education (Anita Sinner, Principal Investigator; Rita L. Irwin, Co-Investigator; Jeff Adams, Timo Jokela, Joaquin Roldan & Ricardo Marin Viadel (Co-Investigators) with Erin Manning, Glen Coutts, Geraldine Burke, Jill Smith (Collaborators))
2014-2017 - Pedagogical Assemblage: Building and sustaining capacity through mentoring programs in BC (Rita L. Irwin, Principal Investigator; Linda Farr Darlling, Shawna Faber, Co-Investigators; with BCTF, BC Superintendents, and Ministry of Education)
2013-2017 - Teachers' Stories: Living, learning and teaching in Dadaab refugee camp (Cynthia Nicol, Principal Investigator; Rita L. Irwin, Samson Nashon, Karen Meyeter, and George Belliveau and others, Co-Investigators)
2013-2016 - What Matters Most: The effects of music making on adolescents in the 21st century (Peter Gouzouasis, Principal Investigator; Scott Goble, Martin Guhn, Karen Lee, and Rita L. Irwin, Co-Investigators)
2008-2013 - Becoming Pedagogical through A/r/tography in Teacher Education(Rita L. Irwin, Principal Investigator; George Belliveau, Carl Leggo, Peter Gouzouasis, Kit Grauer & Donal O Donoghue, Co-investigators & Stephanie Springgay, Collaborator).
The purpose of this study is to investigate how a/r/tography is uniquely situated to enact, develop and problematize becoming pedagogical in a teacher education program. A/r/tography is a hybrid form of practice-based action research within education and the arts. Drawing upon the professional practices of educators and artists, this proposal asserts that educators and artists who use a/r/tographywithin a teacher education context will be engaged in inquiry that uses their artistic and pedagogical sensibilities and capabilities in ongoing, disciplined, community-engaged, dialogic forms of research. Pursuing an ongoing state of becoming pedagogical requires a commitment to learning, inquiry, curiosity and the courage to change.
Although recent research espouses the benefits of an inquiry orientation in teacher education, most of this work is situated within class cohorts or single subject area studies, in a finite period of time. This study purposefully grapples with drama, English (poetry), music and visual arts, across elementary and secondary teacher education, as teacher candidates learn to learn how to inquire through disciplinary and interdisciplinary frames of mind. Moreover, given the community of inquiry among a/r/tographers at the University of British Columbia, learning from one year to the next will also be documented, thus providing a case study of a reform effort over three years.
More specifically, while working with secondary drama, English, and visual arts education classes, and elementary music and visual arts education classes at the University of British Columbia, we plan to study how teacher educators and teacher candidates conceptualize a/r/tography as an artistic, research, and teaching practice. The three guiding research questions within this conceptualization are:
What critical role can a/r/tography play in reconceptualizing teacher education?
How does a/r/tography promote learning to learn in teacher education?
In what ways can a/r/tography engage teacher candidates with the complexities of becoming pedagogical?
We live in a creative knowledge based economy in which intellectually rigorous consumers and creators are needed to make strong connections within and across ways of knowing. This economy will dominate our society during the twenty-first century. Education is the foundation for ensuring our society can rise to the challenge of creating robust learning communities that stimulate strong intellectual connections, which in turn help students make well-informed, critical, and creative judgments. In order to prepare teacher candidates for preparing students for a creative knowledge based economy requires a new approach to teacher education. This study engages teacher candidates with a new approach to learning to learn as they adopt a disposition for becoming pedagogical. This research has the potential to advance knowledge in arts teacher education while profoundly influencing the next generation of high school graduates. The impact of adopting an arts and education practice based approach to inquiry will enhance the creative and intellectual lives of individuals, and therefore could ultimately impact the creative knowledge based economy.
2004-2008 - The “City of Richgate:” Research and Creation into Community-Engaged Arts Practices(Rita L. Irwin, Principal Investigator; Ruth Beer, Kit Grauer & Gu Xiong, Co-investigators & Stephanie Springgay, Collaborator).
This research-creation grant used community-engaged arts practices to explore issues of identity, place, displacement, community and the changing nature of geography within the City of Richmond. The aim of the Richgate project was to document the City of Richmond by recording visually and orally the stories and images of its immigrant families and thereby come to understand what it means to ‘feel at home.’ As the artist-educators involved in this project, we initiated several community-engaged arts projects working from the premise that the arts are powerful forces for rearranging and re-engaging patterns of community through public art as public pedagogy. Working as public intellectuals, we interacted with the community collecting personal stories, photographs and family artefacts of ‘home’ and ‘away.’ With the families we produced research/creation works of arts in the form of large installations of gates, banners, bus shelters, as well as side-by-side images and archival reflections. In a final installation, situated at different places in Richmond, viewers were encouraged to trace the rhizomatic pathways formed by the various installations. Rather than seeing the City of Richmond as having a centre, or Richgate, it became the City of Richgates, with a multiplicity of centres, identities, and landscapes situated within the storied evocations of those who call Richmond home. Community-engaged art projects, such as the City of Richgate, become sites for walking among places of learning with invitations for questioning, greater understanding, and sharing. The implications of this work suggest that a/r/tographic cartography opens up rhizomatic pathways for public pedagogy. Research/creation projects can be powerful public pedagogy projects.
2004-2008 - Investigating Curriculum Integration, the Arts and Diverse Learning Environments (Rita L. Irwin, Principal Investigator; Carl Leggo, Peter Gouzouasis, & Kit Grauer, Co-Investigators).
In this study we wanted to investigate the beliefs and practices of arts-based teachers within several different learning environments in an effort to better understand how teachers conceptualize arts integration, and how they teach the arts as a discipline and as a tool for integration. By compiling detailed descriptions and interpretations of teachers’ practices as they attempted to address disciplinary and interdisciplinary ways of knowing, we came to understand how this group of teachers created rich intellectual connections through arts curriculum endeavours. Most compelling to us, was the role a/r/tography played in setting up the conditions for making these rich intellectual connections. From one perspective, a/r/tography was seen as a research activity, a form of living inquiry whereby teachers and university educators engaged in ideas of mutual interest based upon classroom activities. From another perspective, the classroom teachers who explicitly engaged their secondary students or implicitly engaged their elementary students saw a/r/tography as a pedagogical strategy. And from yet another perspective, everyone involved recognized the need to access the arts for learning, creating, and performing. Knowing that all three forms of knowing are valued, that is, knowing through the arts, research and education, became the focus for stretching, refining, and pushing learning past comfortable horizons. In essence, a/r/tography became an unanticipated integrative strategy not only for teacher learning, but also for student learning. More importantly, and perhaps surprisingly, teachers did not teach together, rather they learned together. In the past, much emphasis has been placed on team teaching as a method of interdisciplinary studies. In this study, teachers gravitated to community-engaged learning as a pedagogical strategy for their own interdisciplinary learning. For them, learning to inquire as researchers and as artists was liberating yet challenging. It forced them to rethink what they were doing in their teaching practices and in their artistic practices, and as a result, they were more able to provide opportunities for students to have similar experiences. The implications of this study question how we conceptualize our approaches to interdisciplinary and how we provide professional development for practising teachers. It also raises questions for how we educate prospective teachers.
2000-2004 - Learning through the Arts: Artists, Researchers and Teachers Collaborating for Change (Rita L. Irwin, Principal Investigator; Kit Grauer, Co-investigator).
This SSHRC study examined teachers and artist’s perceptions, beliefs and practices toward the arts, education and arts education while they were implementing the Learning through the Arts (LTTA) program. Throughout the study we were sensitized to disjunctures between and among the conceptualizations of art, teaching, child development, assessment, and integration held by teachers, artists, curriculum specialists, and the sponsoring organization. We came to recognize that what was generally perceived as an integration of the arts within other subjects (particularly language, social studies, science and mathematics) might be better characterized as holistic learning. Rather than learning in and through the arts, the underlying emphasis was on reorienting instruction toward the broad needs of the learner, or in other words, the intellectual, emotional, physical and spiritual aspects of being human. Teachers, artists, and learners responded with enthusiasm to the change of activities presented to them, for each activity represented an invitation to experience the world in ways the regular curriculum did not permit. The arts, in the broadest sense of the word, offered a vehicle for intervention, a shifting of consciousness, an opportunity to consider other ways of knowing our world. However, the arts content being presented often lacked integrity and/or pedagogical expertise. When teachers and artists were asked to reflect upon the program they often spoke about the impact of the program offering heightened participation, self-esteem building, better school attendance, and excitement for learning, while less attention was given to the impact of the arts on student knowledge construction. The implications of this study raise questions around professional development for teachers and artists, but more importantly, around how we might strengthen integrative practices within the schools so that strong, robust connections are made within and between subjects.
1997-2000 - A Collaborative International Comparative Study of Controversial Issues Facing Aboriginal Artist/Educators (Principal Investigator: Rita L. Irwin; Co-investigator, Tony Rogers). National Art Education Association (1997-1998). A Collaborative International Comparative Study of Controversial Issues Facing Aboriginal Artist/Educators (Principal Investigator: Rita L. Irwin; Co-investigator, Tony Rogers).
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In this SSHRC study we worked with contemporary indigenous artists from Canada and Australia who met through video-conferencing to discuss controversial issues facing them in their art production (NAEA grant funded additional video-conferencing). Since each artist saw himself/herself as a cultural educator, their issues inevitably had an influence on formal and informal educative practices. There were some surprising outcomes in this research.
Aboriginal peoples from Canada and Australia, as well as many other countries, are actively reclaiming their cultural traditions. As a result, many Aboriginal artists are facing contradictions between tradition and innovation, and in so doing, are reconciling conflicting beliefs, values and lifestyles. As the artists face these conflicts, they embrace reconstruction. Each of our artists were taken from their families as children but returned to their cultural roots as adults. Their return is not simply a return to the past. Instead, reconciliation between the past and present was created with the hope of transforming or reconstructing a future. In essence, through these artists, art is portrayed as a healing force not only for each person, but also between peoples of the world.
The most surprising, but rewarding outcome of this research was the organization and implementation of an international indigenous art exhibition, Four Circles/Soaring Visions launched at the Tandanya National Aboriginal Art Institute in February 1998. As part of the research, we were able to document the collaborative processes of the artists, curators, programmers, and researchers, working together through video-conferencing and on site as they created a collaborative installation piece. The exhibition itself was widely received, with five Australian galleries exhibiting the work before it returned to Canada in the fall of 1999 and traveled to another five galleries in Western Canada.
1993-1996 - Principal Investigator, The Effects of Colonization on the Art and Craft of Aboriginal Cultures in Canada and Australia (Principal Investigator: Rita L. Irwin; Co-investigators: Ruby Slipperjack Farrell and Tony Rogers). Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada and the Taiwanese Government (1996-1997). The Effects of Colonization on the Art and Craft of Aboriginal Cultures (Principal Investigator: Rita L. Irwin; Co-investigator: Tony Rogers).
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In this SSHRC study, we worked closely with indigenous communities in Canada and Australia (Ruby Farrell was from Thunder Bay, Ontario; Tony Rogers was from Adelaide, Australia). In each case, we worked with community members to design and conduct oral histories of elders, artists, and other community members, in an effort to record cultural memories and stories. We were especially interested in understanding the effects of colonization on notions of art and craft. The results varied from community to community and have been detailed in various publications. The results of this first study were further supported in another research study with Aboriginal peoples in Taiwan. My collaborators in this research were Dr. Tony Rogers (University of South Australia) and Dr. Yuh Yao Wan (National Changhua University of Education, Taiwan). Again, for each site, differences existed, but an overarching understanding gained from this research is that the notion of art is better conceived of as “cultural performance” because it is understood through cultural memory and cultural translation. Cultural memory is the need to return to the oral histories and stories passed on from generation to generation, while cultural translation is the need for all of us to involve ourselves in dialogue with others, in an effort to understand one another. Although we will never completely understand one another, we need to participate in the act of dialogue if we are to translate our cultures for one another. The implications for this work also point to the hegemony of “art” within art education.
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As visual culture has become the focus, art as a concept is being further problematized. This has created wide spread debate in the field of art education as we attempt to guide the field into the next century. Should art education curriculum be replaced, or supplemented, with visual culture curricula? This SSHRC grant would suggest ‘yes.’
UBC Vice President Research and International: Catalyzing a Research Cluster
2017-2018 -Catalyzing Research in Disability Arts, Culture & Public Pedagogy: A/r/tographies for Access by Youth with Disabilities (Leslie Roman, Principal Investigator; Wingspan Collective including but not limited to R. Irwin, V. Andreotti, D O’Donoghue, T, Stainton, K. Johnston, J. Beaudry, M. Rader, T Jarus, G. Fallon, S. Cardwell + international advisors)
2016 - Social Mobilization on Climate Change Using Digital Tools (Stephen Sheppard, Principal Investigator; Rita L. Irwin + others, Collaborators)
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UBC Equity Enhancement Fund
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2016-2017 - Cultivating Creative Communities: Student Teachers and Dadaab Refugee Camp, Kenya (Rita L. Irwin & Kimberly Baker, Principal Investigators)
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UBC Hampton Research Funds
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2018 - Mapping A/r/tography: Transnational storytelling across historical and cultural routes of significance (Rita L. Irwin)
2012-2013 - Developing a Knowledge Creation and Research Mobilization Partnership for Studying Teacher Learning within a Refugee Camp (Cynthia Nicol, Principal Investigator; Rita L. Irwin, Karen Meyeter, Samson Nashon, Co-Investigators)
2004-2006 - Arts-based Research in Education: Contentious Compromise or Creative Collaboration? (Carl Leggo, Principal Investigator; Peter Gouzouasis, Kit Grauer, & Rita L. Irwin, Co-Investigators).
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This project had two phases. The first systematically identified, described, and documented the practice of arts-based educational research that has taken place in the Faculty of Education at UBC over the last decade. A review of the work produced in the Faculty has been published in the Canadian Journal of Education. The second phase emphasized a unique reporting of the results through collaboratively created exhibitions, installations and performances of musical, verbal and visual texts interrogating the methodological, epistemological and ontological practices of arts-based educational research. Furthermore, we planned an edited book addressing methodological issues of a/r/tography. This book, Being with A/r/tography, was published in 2008 (Springgay, Irwin, Leggo and Gouzouasis as editors). This research project was essential to provide the basis for the development of all forms of arts-based educational research at UBC, but especially a/r/tography. The field not only needs an anthology of studies but a rigourous interrogation of its research and artistic methodological claims. In doing so, UBC artist-scholars are at the forefront of defining the merits, qualities and methods of creative scholarship while providing leadership for future researchers.
2000-2001 - The School Yard as a Sustainable Community Resource; (Susan Herrington: Principal Investigator; Rita L. Irwin Co-applicant).
This project included the design, implementation and adjudication of entries to the 13-acres acres international design competition. Designers from 32 countries explored the schoolyard park as a site for interpretation, free play, ecological awareness, and experiential learning. The book, Schoolyard Park (by Susan Herrington), documents the results of this competition. Schoolyard Park includes the original design competition package, the jury process, the winners, as well as examples of proposal ideas from more than fifty other entrants. The 13-acres international design competition challenged designers to explore the schoolyard as a site for ecological rejuvenation, expression and education. The competition was for the design of a combined park and schoolyard site as a place for "site knowledge", exploration, play, and learning for children, teachers, and the surrounding community. Here, the complexities of park landscape, educational programming, poetics, and ecological design came together in a powerful way to provide inspiration for creative propositions in the future.
UBC Teaching and Learning Enhancement Funds
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2010-2011 - Principal Investigator, Programmatic and Curricular Integration: Digital Pedagogies for the new teacher education program (with A. Scholefield, J. Yamamoto, S. Alexander, M. Shephard, M. Filipenko, T. Sork)
2009-2010 - Principal Investigator, Developing Word Press for On-line Pedagogy, Curricular Innovation and Cross-campus Implementation #2 (with A. Scholefield, J. Yamamoto, S. Alexander, K. Fleming, C. Paul, T. Sork)
2008-2009 - Principal Investigator, Developing WordPress for on-line Pedagogy, Curricular Innovation and Cross-campus Implementation, (with Scholefield, Yamamoto, Gaskell, Lamberson)
2007-2008 - Internationalization at home (phase II): Expanding and assessing the development of global citizenship through co-curricular and community partnerships; Principal Investigators: Morton & Cheung; with Co-investigators: Harlap, Hyson, Mubanga. & Global Student Speakers Bureau Executive Team UBC
2007-2008 - Principal Investigator, Supporting student e-portfolio creation in the Teacher Education Program (with J. Gaskell, S. Alexander, J. Yamamoto, S. Wood)
2006-2007 - Internationalization at Home: Infusing Global Citizenship into Service Learning and Co-Curricular Partnerships; Principal Investigators: Cheung & Morton; with Co-investigators: Harlap, Hyson, Mubanga. & Global Student Speakers Bureau Executive Team UBCzz
SPARC Funding to Support Partnership Development Grant Preparations
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2013 - The New Teacher Mentoring Project (Rita L. Irwin, Principal Investigator)
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UBC Provost’s Office
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2009-2010 - Principal Investigator, TA Training Program, (with A. Scholefield)
University Investment Funds
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2008-2010 - Principal Investigator, Bachelor of Education Renewal Project (with Craig, Fenwick, Hymel, Sumara & Williams)
UBC: Humanities and Social Sciences Travel Grants
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2004 - 7th InSEA European Regional Congress (Istanbul and Cappadocia Turkey)
1999 - International travel to InSEA World Congress in Brisbane, Australia, September 1999
1997 - International travel to InSEA European Regional Congress in Glasgow, Scotland, July ‘97
1995 - International travel to InSEA Southeast Asian Regional Congress in Taichung, Taiwan, November ‘95
UBC: Humanities and Social Sciences Research
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2014 - Becoming Socially Engaged
1997-1998 - Quiltmaking for Consciousness Raising
1994-1995 - First Nations Women's Stories of Making Art
Royal Conservatory of Music
1999-2003 - Learning through the Arts: A National Assessment. (Principal Investigators: Rena Upitis and Kathryn Smithrim; Co-investigators/collaborators: Rita L. Irwin and Kit Grauer).
Rena Upitis and Kathryn Smithrim held a SSHRC grant (2000-2003) to study the effects of the Learning through the Arts program on academic achievement. To further support their study, the Royal Conservatory of Music also funded the project. This study had a national focus and was quantitatively oriented and was able to make some causal claims. The Learning through the Arts program had a modest, but statistically significant, positive effect on the math tests dealing with computation and estimation. Equally important was the fact that this difference did not occur until three years of programming had taken place.
Perhaps the most important finding in the Learning through the Arts studies was that involvement in the arts did not come at the expense of achievement in mathematics, reading and writing. Instead, the arts offered students opportunities to be fully engaged in learning. By engagement we mean being completely involved as a whole person: the physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual. It is this commitment—the physical, emotional, intellectual and social commitment—which emerged again and again in written and oral reports of the LTTA experience by students, teachers, administrators, parents, and artists.
Kit Grauer and I included the national study as a small part of our SSHRC study and sought additional funding through our Faculty to support the hiring of part-time graduate research assistants.
Faculty of Education Internal Grants
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2017-2018 - HSS Seed Grant - Performing the Possible: Learning from ‘Shameless’ Professional Artists with Disabilities and/or Deafness(Leslie Roman, Principal Investigator: Samuel Rocha, Jonas-Sebastien Beaudry, Rita Irwin - Co-Investigators)
2013-2014 - Radicant Art Teacher Education: 2nd International Artistic Research conference, with Natalie LeBlanc and Adrienne Boulton-Funke
2013 - Engaging Stories, with Karen Meyeter, Samson Nashon, Cynthia Nicol (Department of Curriculum & Pedagogy Strategic Initiative Fund)
2001 - Learning through the Arts, with Kit Grauer
National Art Education Association (United States)
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1997-1998 - Principal Investigator, Feminist Leadership in Art Education: A Case Study of a Fine Arts Supervisor
Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada and the Taiwanese Government
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1996-1997 - Principal Investigator, Art in Aboriginal Cultures in Taiwan
Pacific Cultural Foundation
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1996-1997 - Principal Investigator, Art in Aboriginal Cultures in Taiwan (with Taiwanese co-investigator Yuh-Yao Wan; Australian co-investigator Tony Rogers)
International Council for Canadian Studies
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1996-1997 - Principal Investigator, Controversies Facing Aboriginal Artists in Canada and Australia, with Australian co-investigator Tony Rogers
1994-1995 - Principal Investigator, The Effects of Colonization on the Art and Craft of Aboriginal Cultures in Canada and Australia, with co-investigator Ruby Farrell
Invited Visiting Researcher Grants
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2016 - Southern Cross University, Bilinga, Queensland, Australia; Visiting Scholar Program
2015 - TUBITAK (Turkish Research Council); Visiting Professor to Anadolu Universitesi (7 weeks)
2015 - Consortium of Brazilian Universities: Mackenzie, UNICAMP, UNESPAR, UFSM & Brasilia; Visiting Professor
1995 - University of South Australia; Principal Investigator, Australian and Canadian Aboriginal Art
1992 - University of South Australia; Principal Investigator, Australian and Canadian Aboriginal Art
Faculty of Education and Ministry of Education Partnership in Research
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1994-1995 - Principal Investigator, Feminist Considerations Toward Art Teaching and Art Production: A Collaborative Action Research Project (with Nancy Crawford, Rosa Mastri, Aileen Neale, Helen Robertson, Wendy Stephenson)
UBC-Humanities and Social Sciences New Faculty Research Grant
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1992-1993 - Principal Investigator, Australian and Canadian Aboriginal Art
Northern Scientific Training Program
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1992 - Principal Investigator, Native Teaching Styles (with Ruby Farrell)
Regional Research Fund
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1991 - Principal Investigator, Women Mentoring Women at Lakehead University
Lakehead University Internal SSHRC
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1988 - Principal Investigator, The Status of Fine Arts Education in Alberta Schools
Fine Arts Council of the Alberta Teachers' Association
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1988 - Principal Investigator, The Status of Fine Arts Education in Alberta Schools
Research Contracts
Canada International Development Agency
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2013-2018 - Principal Investigator: Wenona Giles, York University;" Building primary/secondary teaching capacities in the Dadaab refugee camps and locally in Dadaab, Kenya by increasing access to higher education" (Nashon, Irwin & Sork, UBC + team from York, Moir University, Kenyatta University, Windle Trust, and WUSC.
Ministry of Education
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2013-2016 - Investigators: Davies, Irwin, NTMP Committee,"The New Teacher Mentoring Project" (with UBC, BCTF, BCSSA)
2012-2013 - Investigators: Irwin, Ellis, Schofield, "The New Teacher Mentoring Project: Pilot Project" (with UBC, BCTF, BCSSA)
Canada Council
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1998-1999 - Principal Investigator, Programming and Operations Assistance (with Richmond Art Gallery)
1998-1999 - Principal Investigator, "Embracing the Visionaries" Curatorial Residency (with Richmond Art Gallery and Museum)
Department of Foreign Affairs & International Trade
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1997-1998 - Principal Investigator, "Four Circles/Soaring Visions" Exhibition (with Richmond Art Gallery)
* For more information about these research projects, please contact Professor Rita Irwin.