USask professor teaching the study of education as a reckoning with colonialism

Caldwell obtained a Bachelor of Arts with honours in psychology from USask in 1990, a master’s degree in theology from St. Andrew’s College in 1995, and a Master of Arts (2002) and PhD (2008) in Sociology and Equity Studies in Education from Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) at the University of Toronto.

She was appointed assistant professor of teaching in the Department of Educational Foundations in the College of Education this past August.

“My position in this new faculty stream of professors of teaching is a great opportunity to bring together critical questions and experiences I carry as an educator myself into the study and practice of teacher education, and to teaching graduate studies in education,” Caldwell said.

Caldwell’s own formation as an anti-racist educator and her consciousness of how colonialism and whiteness operate in her life were very much impacted by her work as a program co-ordinator with the Alberta Youth Animation Project on Southern Africa (AYAPSA) in the late 1990s. She led anti-racism education, youth leadership training, and solidarity work with Canadian young people in response to the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa.

"I was working with educators in schools and community organizations to support Albertan youth to learn the histories of anti-racist struggle in southern Africa, and to make connections with settler colonialism, racism, and their lives in Canada,” she said. “As I worked with young people putting their own lives and histories in a broader perspective, as a white person born in Saskatchewan, I was doing the same myself.”

Caldwell pursued her graduate studies at OISE, drawing on anti-racist, anti-colonial theories and cultural studies to examine stories about Saskatchewan as a place both as lived, and as imagined.  

Working with Dr. Sherene Razack (PhD) as supervisor for both her master’s thesis and doctoral dissertation, Caldwell’s research deepened her understandings and convictions about what it means to reckon with colonialism and whiteness, especially as perpetuated through stories of Saskatchewan’s past and future.

“The Saskatchewan Centennial coincided with my PhD work,” she said. “It was an opportunity to witness settler narratives and claims to space ‘writ large’.”

Her study of centennial events set a trajectory of teaching, scholarship, and community life oriented toward the many existing and possible practices of resistance to racism and to all forms of colonial oppression.

Caldwell returned to Saskatchewan in 2008 to work as an instructor at USask and St. Andrew’s College. She was promoted to full-time professorship at St. Andrew’s in 2015. Building on her doctoral research, Caldwell and her colleagues Dr. Carrianne Leung (PhD) and Dr. Darryl Leroux (PhD), co-edited Critical Inquiries: A Reader in Studies of Canada (published by Fernwood in 2013).

Caldwell points to a wide range of critical scholars and mentors who have shaped her studies of colonialism and anti-racist education, noting among them many current and former faculty in the Department of Educational Foundations. Having taught for many years as a sessional lecturer in the department, she has a deep appreciation for the vital contributions to Indigenous, anti-racist, queer, feminist, land-based, and decolonizing work in educational studies that have been developed and led by Educational Foundations faculty and graduate students.

“What keeps me drawn to anti-oppressive education and to studies of education has a lot to do with who I end up connecting with and the efforts of those who have been teaching and organizing for generations,” Caldwell said. “In the face of the deep structures of colonialism and imperialism that are so present, there have always been different movements for freedom, and groups of people coming to understand and share ways to live better together.”

Bringing her sociological perspective and her practices as an educator who learns from and with creative anti-oppressive community leaders, scholars, and teachers herself, Caldwell encourages students of education to practice co-operative learning.

Caldwell often reminds teacher candidates that they are never alone in the work of anti-racism and anti-oppressive education, as students or as teachers. She in turn is encouraged by how they collaborate to discover and ask deeper questions about themselves, about schools and society, and the possibilities and responsibility in educational work.

“I always really focus on how to support questioning and ways for people to work together on knowledge,” she said. “Something I want to develop even more are new strategies and supports for peer-to-peer engagement and the practice of sharing questions and talking together as anti-oppressive education.”

Caldwell is energized about joining the faculty of the College of Education and sharing in the ongoing curriculum and program work, as she continues to deepen her own teaching and studies of education.

“Having taught into the program as a sessional lecturer, a real shift coming into this faculty position is the opportunity for me to see and shape courses, and teaching, within the larger picture of a program,” she said. “The conversations I have with other faculty in the department about specific courses and the program as a whole always, of course, involve talking about the broader histories, communities, and futures of education.”

Just as Caldwell encourages and supports her students to keep an eye on collective outcomes in their learning about anti-oppressive education, she values and seeks a collective spirit in all aspects of her academic work and community life. At the core of that practice is recognizing that, as with relating to stories about Saskatchewan’s past and future, working with understandings of education, teacher training, schools, and teaching in the past and future necessarily involves naming and resisting racism and colonialism.

Caldwell is grateful to be teaching and learning with colleagues and students who are committed to anti-racism and anti-colonialism as foundational, whether that is in classrooms or in everyday life together.

“It’s just essential to be critical, and not just teach it but practice it,” Caldwell reflects. “I have to be reminded and alert to this all the time.”