Lissa D'Amour
Affiliations
Adjunct Assistant Professor
Werklund School of Education, Specialization, Curriculum and Learning
Contact information
Background
Credentials
AB Permanent Professional Teaching Certificate, 1981
ON Teaching Certificate, 2021
Educational Background
PhD Curriculum Studies, University of British Columbia, 2013
MEd University of Lethbridge, 2008
BEd University of Lethbridge, 1979
BSc Honours Kinesiology, University of Waterloo, 1977
Biography
Having retired, December 31, 2017, from a five-year appointment with the Werklund School of Education, I can fairly say that I have hardly strayed far from scholarship interests. I am thankful to have been able to continue my involvement with Werklund – albeit from afar, in my home in Cobourg on Lake Ontario – as Adjunct Assistant Professor for Curriculum and Learning. My scholarship leading up to present independent study followed from 15 years of working with prospective and practicing teachers and, before that, 25 years in a variety of everyday teaching contexts with learners from pre-kindergarten through Grade 12.
Research
Areas of Research
My research at Werklund began with a two-year directorship of the Math Minds study into early years learning. Subsequently, as part of the Partner Research School Initiative, I partnered with middle school mathematics teachers in an ethnographic study of how teachers' uniquely storied identities synergize with school culture to shape classroom practice.
Approaching retirement and troubled by dire worldly circumstances – of societies increasingly divided, diminishing planetary resources, and rising levels of anxiety and depression in learners – my scholarship turned to how we might better understand teaching and learning in ways to promote human wellness and collective wisdom.
The publication in December 2019 of Relational psychoanalysis at the heart of teaching and learning: How and why it matters was a personal benchmark for me and set the context for future inquiry. In this work, I investigate the practical implications of understanding cognition as embodied, life forms as non-linear (complex) systems, and early relationships as central to the development of capacity, trust, and meaning in learning – where capacity affirms "I can know," trust says "I am open to knowing," and meaning asserts "I care to know."
I anchored these principles to a schematic representation to help us think about bodies, behaviour, emotions/motivation, and cognition in fully integrated ways. The model is continuous with theories of learning to the present, consistent with the breadth of research literature on the nature of human development, and relevant across life systems from unicellular organisms to socially evolved collectives. The point of the effort was to forward a rethinking of inclusive schooling practice from fundamental principles up.
Addendum: In the aftermath of my radical-for-me relocation to Cobourg Ontario and having gotten to the other side of home renovations and pandemic emergencies, I emerge somehow more settled. Over the last few years, thanks especially to online affiliations with international organizations, I have been growing my understanding of affective neuroscience, neuropsychoanalysis, and ultimately the neuroscience of consciousness, belief, and meaning. The implications for teaching and learning have reinvigorated my enthusiasm for writing and speaking projects that bring this cutting edge transdisciplinary research into schooling conversations. It really is a paradigm-shifting moment.
- Curriculum studies
- Neuropsychoanalysis
- Relational psychoanalytic theory
- Biological and cultural theories of learning and teaching
- Complexity studies and education
- Mathematics education
Awards
- Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship – 3 year doctoral award , Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. 2009
- Graduate Scholarship – Masters, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. 2003
Publications
- Relational psychoanalysis at the heart of teaching and learning: How and why it matters. D'Amour, L. UK: Routledge. (2019)
- Identities of exceptionality The giving and making of selves in the eye of expectaion's storm. D'Amour, L. & Markides, J. In Lyle, E. R. (Ed.), At the intersection of selves and subject: Exploring the curricular landscape of identity. Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Sense Publishing. 133-142. (2017)
- Spatial knowing, doing, and being. In The Spatial Reasoning Study Group [SRSG]. Thom, J.S., D’Amour, L., Preciado-Babb, A.P., & Davis, B. Spatial reasoning in the early years: Principles, assertions and speculations. UK: Routledge. 63-82. (2015)
- Being well with mathematics-for-teaching (M4T): It’s about knowing. D’Amour, L., Kahn, S., Davis, B., & Metz, M. In Preciado-Babb, A.P., Solares Rojas, A., & Francis, K. (Eds.), What, how and why: An International conversation on mathematics teacher learning. Mexico, Mexico: Universidad Pedagó National. 23-42. (2014)
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