Starting Grade 9 is a pivotal moment for many students and fostering a sense of belonging can play a key role in future success.
That's why two StFX Faculty of Education professors, Dr. Jennifer Mitton and Dr. Allison Tucker, have teamed together on a research project with New Glasgow, NS high school, North Nova Education Centre (NNEC), under the leadership of principal Lia Lewis.
StFX Faculty of Education professors Dr. Allison Tucker (left) and Dr. Jennifer Mitton (right), have received SSHRC research funding and have teamed together on a project with New Glasgow, NS high school, North Nova Education Centre, under the leadership of principal Lia Lewis, to look at fostering school belonging through play-based pedagogies.
Dr. Mitton and Dr. Tucked have received a $22,616 Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) Partnership Engage Grant for "Fostering school belonging through play-based pedagogies at North Nova Education Centre." The partnership will seek to find solutions to a pressing local problem: school belonging among Grade 9 students when they arrive new to the school.
"We are thrilled to be able to work closely with teachers and students at North Nova Education Centre. This is when educational research can make a real difference to people in schools," says Dr. Mitton.
North Nova Education Centre principal Lia Lewis.
The role teachers play in fostering belonging and enhancing student relationships within the school is important, she says. Using play-based pedagogies as a cultivator of school belonging is full of possibility as adolescents are afforded opportunities of individual, and collaborative, meaning-making in response to learning through play.
The researchers say they are focusing on play as knowledge of its impacts on adolescents is limited and is a phenomenon generally located in early elementary research. Little is known about the ways teachers employ play-based pedagogies to encourage learning engagement amongst older students, and in all subjects.
They hope the study will create opportunities for teachers to think about the infusion of play into their classroom in ways that foster engagement and belonging amongst their Grade 9 students.
Cultivating a sense of belonging amongst adolescents is a local and global issue in schools, says Dr. Tucker.
Aggravating this problem most recently has been several happenings: responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, including a long period of online learning; disruptions caused by local and regional natural disasters such as Hurricane Fiona in 2022, wildfires and floods in 2023, Snowmageddon' in 2024; and specific to North Nova, the 2020 closure of Northern Pulp, a major regional employer.
"Further, when established in 2003, NNEC consolidated populations from several communities, and for many adolescents starting Grade 9 is where they meet others for the first time who have different backgrounds than them. In this context, NNEC wants to rethink its approach with Grade 9 students and create pathways towards belonging that will root adolescents' schooling experiences and academic engagement," Ms. Lewis says.
Together, the researchers have four objectives. They want to identify ways in which Grade 9 students experience school belonging; to document Grade 9 teachers' play-based pedagogies; as well as student responses to play-based pedagogies; and to articulate a shared understanding of pedagogical practices, inclusive of teachers and students, that reflect actions to enhance school belonging amongst its Grade 9 community.
This is not the first time the researchers have teamed together. Dr. Mitton and Ms. Lewis met in 2017 and based on shared interests in adolescent literacies, they conducted a study at NNEC in 2018 focused on exploring authentic literacy instruction from the perspectives of high school students who identify as experiencing struggles with literacy and who experience poverty. Following this study, they collaborated on a second that engaged learners experiencing poverty in Grades 9-11 in a series of workshops focused on their understanding of their strengths as learners. The study used participatory literacy practices and disseminated results to teachers at North Nova in a series of professional learning workshops. They collaborated on a third study on career readiness in 2020, but the study was disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
