Committee Members

Dr. Yamina Bouchamma, Université Laval
Dr. Wendy Poole, University of British Columbia
Dr. William Smale, Trent University
Dr. Paul Newton (Chair), University of Alberta
2009 Submissions (for work completed by December 2008)

Review Process

Each fall, a call for submissions is made on the CASEA Listserv and the Awards section of the CASEA website is updated. This year, the deadline for submissions was February 1st. Each submission was accompanied by a letter of nomination. Hardcopies of the letters and theses were sent to the Award Committee Chair. The Chair established a review committee, ensuring diversity with respect to previous experience with the committee, geography, gender, career stage, methodological orientation, etc. A copy of each submission was sent to each reviewer. After each submission was reviewed, the reviewers completed an evaluation template. Near the end of April, the Chair collected all reviews and submissions, compiled the results, consulted with the committee, and made a recommendation to the committee. The recipient and other nominators were contacted and provided with feedback about the decision. The entire review process took approximately 3 months. I would like to take this opportunity to publicly thank Dr. Yamina Bouchama, Dr. Wendy Poole, and Dr. William Smale for their thoughtful and diligent work on this committee.

2009 Award Winner

This year’s Margaret Haughey Master’s Award is given to Ms. Lisa Wright. The title of her MEd thesis is Reflective Practice and the Principalship. This work was nominated by Dr. Rosemary Foster in the Faculty of Education at the University of Alberta.

Ms. Wright completed a phenomenological study focusing on principals’ understandings of reflective practice as a professional development approach and the conditions that support and constrain reflection as a form of professional learning. The conclusions suggest that reflective practice is central to enhancing the moral, professional, and political autonomy of principals as they attempt to improve the quality of educational opportunities for all students. One reviewer commented,
The topic is highly relevant and significant to the field of educational leadership. It addresses the issue of continuing professional development for school administrators, particularly the role of reflective practice in professional development. I was intrigued by Ms. Wright’s discussion about intersections between principal identity and education reform. She poses important questions for research in this area. These, by themselves, are important contributions to educational leadership studies.

Ms. Lisa Wright is an experienced teacher and administrator currently employed by the Edmonton Pubic School Division. She has taught a variety of undergraduate and graduate courses in the Department of Educational Policy Studies at the University of Alberta where she is currently a Ph.D. candidate working with Dr. Rosemary Foster.

Final Comments and Recommendations

There were fewer submissions this year than the committee had anticipated. I would invite feedback about how the process might be improved so that more of our colleagues would consider nominating the work of their students.

This year, I sent each committee member a hard copy of each submission. The department of Educational Policy Studies at the University of Alberta paid for the copying of the submissions and for the courier. Because of the low number of submissions, this seemed to be a reasonable option. In any event, it definitely streamlined the adjudication process. I would like to recommend that this practice be continued. Some discussion about the cost of copying might be in order, particularly if the number of submissions increases.

As in previous years, there were questions raised with respect to how to appropriately adjudicate theses and graduating papers in the same competition. I believe that, as an association, we ought to provide some direction to the committee on how to judge the merits of documents that have different purposes, scope, and processes involved in their creation. We received very good examples of both types of document, but the peculiarities of each type of document make them difficult to adjudicate.

Respectfully submitted,

Paul Newton, University of Alberta