Seminar: Educational Inclusion: Theory and Practices from a Canadian Perspective

Educational Inclusion: Theory and Practices from a Canadian Perspective

Professor Michael Corbett
Professor Emeritus
Acadia University, Canada
 

June 17, 2025 (Tuesday)
14:30 – 16:00
Room 401-402, Meng Wah Complex, HKU
Chair: Professor Dan Wang
 

Abstract:
In this presentation I will discuss the history of the development of educational inclusion discourses in the North American context and that way that these discourses have reflected historically situated political and theoretical debates within the academy and in civil society. The emergence of equity discourse and diverse and expanding “equity-seeking” or “equity-deserving” groups has challenged public schooling to continuously reconfigure its core mission. In the current North American social and political climate, rurality has emerged as a distinct, yet complicated equity category. I conclude by analyzing this complexity through an examining contemporary educational and social policy challenges in the dynamic landscape of the Atlantic coastal region of eastern Canada.
 

About the speaker:
Michael Corbett is Professor Emeritus in the School of Education at Acadia University.  His research interrogates contemporary and historical conceptions of the rural, and particularly, the ways in which these conceptions have inflected discourses around education policy, research methodologies, curriculum, pedagogy and the perceptions of schooling. Corbett’s work has included theoretical analysis of space and place in relation to conceptions of rurality, studies of rural outmigration in Atlantic Canada, literacies in rural contexts, studies of small schools, and work relating to the practice of qualitative research methodologies. Corbett worked directly in Canadian public schools as an educator for nearly 20 years and began his career in the early 1980s teaching in rural, coastal, and Indigenous communities. From 2002 to 2023 Corbett worked as an academic at Acadia University in Nova Scotia, Canada and at the University of Tasmania in Australia (2015-2018) producing more than 200 scholarly publications. In addition to his Canadian research and teaching, Professor Corbett has also worked in China, Taiwan, Sweden, Norway, Finland, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. His most recent book publication is an edited collection entitled Lived Experience and Educational Research Methodology: Reflections on the PhD Journey published by Information Age Press in 2025.

~ All are welcome ~