Kurt Clausen
Chair
Professor

Dr. Kurt Clausen

Biography

Dr. Clausen has served at Nipissing University for about 20 years and has seen the institution change a great deal over this time. In his stay, he has taught courses in the B.Ed. program (Curriculum Design, Assessment and Evaluation, Classroom Management), in the M.Ed. program (History of Education, Understanding Education, Organizational Theory), and most recently in the Ph.D. program (Critical Conversations in Educational Theory). He has twice taken on the duty of Chair of Graduate Studies (2002-05; 2017-19), has acted as a senator, off and on, for a dozen years, and sat on numerous academic committees. He is the past-president of the Canadian Association of Foundations of Education and the founder of the Canadian Association of Action Research in Education. Passionate about graduate higher education, he has supervised numerous theses, sat on many supervisory committees and acted as external examiner on many occasions.

Positions

Chair, Graduate Studies in Education
Faculty of Education and Professional Studies - Schulich School of Education
Full-time Faculty
Faculty of Education and Professional Studies - Schulich School of Education
Chair, Graduate Studies in Education
Graduate Studies - Master of Education
Chair, Graduate Studies in Education
Graduate Studies - PhD in Education (Educational Sustainability)

Education

BA, Concordia University
MA, Concordia University
PhD, University of Ottawa
Graduate Diploma in Education, McGill University

Teaching Areas

Undergraduate Programs

  • Consecutive Education

Graduate Studies

  • Master of Education
  • PhD in Education (Educational Sustainability)

Research

Research Interests

  • History of Canadian Education
  • Curriculum Policy
  • Organizational Design
  • Educational Leadership
  • Teacher Education
  • Action Research

Current Research Projects / Labs

  • The Use of Action Research in Teacher Education and Graduate Programs with Dr. Glenda Black (Funded by an Institutional Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada – SSHRC, 2019)
  • Far from Normal:  A Comparative Historical Study of Teacher Education with Dr. Lynn Lemisko, University of Saskatchewan (Funded by a SSHRC Insight Development Grant, 2017)
  • Rebels in Charge:  Ontario’s Educational Revolution, 1959-1973 (Funded by a SSHRC Insight Grant, 2013)
  • The Light in the Sky:  The Creation and Legacy of the Hall-Dennis Report (Funded by a SSHRC Standard Research Grant, 2009)

Collaborations / Affiliations

  • Dr. Clausen has been the Editor-in-Chief of The Canadian Journal of Action Research since 2001 (funded by EBSCO since 2014; by SSHRC Aid to Scholarly Journals Grant since 2019).
Accolades and Achievements
  • Herbert T. Coutts Distinguished Service Award (2020), Canadian Society for the Study of Education
  • Research Achievement Award (2020), Nipissing University
  • ARNA Eduardo Flores Leadership Award (2019), The Action Research Network of the Americas
  • Society of Professors of Education Outstanding Book Award (2017), For Provoking Curriculum Studies: Strong Poetry and the Arts of the Possible.
  • Distinguished Service Award (2015), The Canadian Association of Foundations of Education

Publications

Edited Books

Clausen, K., & Black, G. L. (Eds.). (2020). The future of action research in education: A Canadian perspective. McGill-Queen’s University Press.

Selected Peer-Reviewed Book Chapters

Clausen, K., Frost, L., & Black, G.L. (in Press) From design to implementation: A five-year assessment at Nipissing University. In J. Kitchen & D. Petrarca (Eds.), Initial teacher education in Ontario: The four-semester teacher education programs after five years (pp. x-x). Ottawa, ON: Canadian Association for Teacher Education.

Van Nuland, S., Clausen, K. & Petrarca, D. (In Press) The (Re)Shaping and (Re)Constructing of Teacher Education in Ontario, Canada. In J. Madalińska-Michalak, M. Assunção Flores, E. Ling Low & S. Van Nuland (eds.). Recruiting and Educating the Best Teachers - Policy, Professionalism and Pedagogy. New York, NY/Berlin: Springer.

Lemisko, L. & Clausen, K. (2017) Born of cooperation? Teacher Education Curriculum in Saskatchewan, 1905- 1975. In T. Christou (ed.) The Curriculum History of Canadian Teacher Education. Toronto: Oxford University Press.

Lemisko, L. & Clausen, K. (2017) The ‘National Dream’ to Cultural Mosaic: State Sponsored History in Canadian Education. In N. Wouters & B. Bevernage (eds). State-Sponsored History after 1945. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave MacMillan Ltd.

Clausen, K. (2016) Action Research in the Canadian Context. In L. Rowell, C.D. Bruce, J.M. Shosh & M. Reil (eds.) International Handbook of Action Research. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave MacMillan Ltd.

Clausen, K. (2016) From Vigour to Rigour: Tensionality and Ontario’s Unbalanced Curriculum, 1963 – 2013. In A. Ibrahim, N. Ng-A-Fook & G. Reis (eds.) Provoking Curriculum Studies: Strong Poetry and the Arts of the Possible. Oxford: Routledge. Pp 213-226

Clausen, K. (2015) Five Chapters in T. Horton & L. Lemisko (eds). Educator to Educator: Unpacking and Repacking Generative Concepts in Social Studies. Rotterdam, the Netherlands: Sense Publishing. “A Case for Appeal”; “Ancient Social Justice in a Modern Reality”; “Studying Democracy as an Endangered Species”; “A Uniform Adherence to Diversity”; “The Tight-Fitting Suit of Multiculturalism”.

Clausen, K. (2015) Three Chapters in D. Mandzuk & S. Hasinoff (eds.) Case Studies in Educational Foundations: Canadian Perspectives. Toronto, ON: Oxford University Press. “No place for God here”; “Your school library, more or less”; “Corporate takeover”.

Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles

Lemisko, L., Porter, G. & Clausen, K. (In Press). Community and Teacher Education, Convergence or Divergence? Saskatoon and the Saskatoon Normal School, 1930 -1950. Alberta Journal of Educational Research.

Horton, T. & Clausen, K. (2015) Extending the History Curriculum : Exploring World War II Europe’s Victors, Vanquished, and Occupied through Film. The History Teacher. 41(2): 321-338.

Clausen, K. & Easton, A. (2015) The Religious Factor in Ontario’s Educational Policy Making: The Hall-Dennis Report, 1965-1968. Religion & Education. 42(1): 81-98.

Clausen, K. (2014) Educational Reform in Ontario: The Importance of Pleasant Avenue School, 1962–1975. Historical Studies in Education. 26(1): 67-88.

Clausen, K. (2012) Ontario’s Plowden Report: British influence on the Canadian Education System in the 1960s. History of Education 42(2): 204-221.

Horton, T., Lemisko, L. & Clausen, K. (2011) Citizenship and sexuality: Exploring diverse sexualities in selected curriculum documents. The International Journal of Diversity in Organisations, Communities and Nations. 10(4): 193-206.

Clausen, K. & Drake, S. (2010) Interdisciplinary Practices in Ontario: Past & present. In special journal issue Yves Lenoir & Julie Thompson Klein (eds.) Issues in Integrative Studies. Issue 28.

Clausen, K. (2010) Alternative Education versus the Common Will. Journal of Thought. 45(3 & 4): 95-111. 

Clausen, K. (2010) Professional Development and the Needs of the Smaller Rural School. The Journal of Rural Education Policy and Practice. 2(1).