Kathryn Hibbert

Dr. Kathryn Hibbert, PhD

Distinguished University Professor - Curriculum Studies and Studies in Applied Linguistics

PhD (University of Western Ontario)

Dr. Kathryn Hibbert, PhD

Distinguished University Professor - Curriculum Studies and Studies in Applied Linguistics

PhD (University of Western Ontario)

I grew up in rural Ontario and attended a small, two-room schoolhouse in the first grade. My siblings and I were the first generation in our family to attend post-secondary education. However, our education at home, I have come to learn, was quite unique. 

In the mid 1970s, after the fall of Saigon at the end of the Vietnam War, my parents, along with two other couples in our community, made a decision that has profoundly altered many lives, my own included. Aware of the mass exodus of people from Vietnam (often referred to as 'boat people' at the time) they sponsored a family of refugees to aid in their resettlement.  Our 'family' included a young married couple, their friend, a cousin and a young nephew.  The youngest, only 8 years old at the time, had been tossed on the boat at the last minute by his desperate parents.  He quickly became my new little brother, and I was thrilled at the chance to 'play teacher’ again.  In my life up to that point, I had experienced little in the way of visible diversity so there was much to learn about this new family.  We were challenged, for example, in our rural little corner of the world, to provide the quantities of fresh fish, seafood and rice that would bring them some of the comforts of a home that they had fled.  We knew nothing of their culture, and very little of the conflict that brought them to Canada outside of media reports.   

In true Freireian fashion however, as I began to teach my new brother and his family how to read and write 'the word', once we shared a language, they taught me a great deal more about 'reading the world'.  As we were eventually able to share stories, I came to better understand how foreign and inadequate my little library of books was to them.  The stories that our adopted family were eventually able to tell detailed the powerful, political and often tragic experiences that they had endured in their young lifetimes.  I continue to process the lessons learned from them to this date. 

As I moved into my professional teaching life in the early 1980s, the system I entered appeared starkly disconnected from the increasing social, cultural, ethnic or gender diversity we were meeting in the classroom.  I could see it and feel it, but at the time, didn't really understand how to address it.  It seemed that my job was to ensure that assimilation occurred.  I don't know that I could articulate at the time what bothered me about the way our schools dealt with our immigrant students.  I know that many of our culturally and linguistically diverse students ended up in special needs classrooms and I know that we had virtually no meaningful resources to teach with.  I could not help thinking about how my very bright little Vietnamese brother must have felt about school.

I began teaching in the early 1980s, for the Kent County Board of Education (later Lambton Kent District School Board). As one of 2.5 teachers hired that year in a board with shrinking enrolment, I had the opportunity to experience teaching in many different settings: French, self-contained classroom as a special education teacher, learning resource teacher in the inclusive model, "regular" classroom teacher (JK-8) and as program staff with responsibility for the Gifted portfolio (Elementary and Secondary). 

Many years ago, I received the dual diagnosis of "Giftedness and Learning Disabled". Both sides simply indicate learning differences. Understanding them has helped guide compensatory strategies I have long developed to address what I knew implicitly long before they were formally identified. They are differences on both ends of the spectrum we think of as 'normal' although they receive very different responses and resources. 

When I entered the university setting in 2000, my doctoral studies focused on learning in the 'new' virtual learning environment. That led to a number of interdisciplinary contracts which allowed me to work in contexts outside of the traditional school setting and led to an interest in professions' education. After working on a project with Heart and Stroke Canada, I was cross-appointed to the Department of Medical Imagining (formerly Radiology & Nuclear Medicine) and began a Centre for Education in Medical Imaging. 

The need for pedagogical knowledge and practice and educational approaches to research is growing. As a Centre Researcher at the Centre for Education Research and Innovation (CERI) at the Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry, I have had an opportunity to work with a thriving group of scientists who bring disciplinary and methodological diversity to our work together. 

I have had the pleasure of working with professional organizations such as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna, Austria for more than 10 years. This collaboration led to a multi-year project following the Fukushima Nuclear Accident in Japan. I work with the very brave first medical responders. Together we have redesigned the curriculum through a social practice lens (Science Technology Society).

Within the education setting, my interest in virtual learning, and the way we engaged with students from around the world led me to the field of multiliteracies (New London Group, Cope and Kalantzis). Communication systems are continuing to change. As we engage in discussions that have to cross cultures, languages disruptive technologies, we must look carefully at how literacies - as they are constructed in many different ways - enable or constrain our ability to participate fully in our lives. 

In 2016, I became the founding Director of the Interdisciplinary Centre for Research in Curriculum as a Social Practice. The Centre values the input from all stakeholders as curriculum-makers. It offers us a way to think about how to consider the capacity of our Faculty of Education to build an engaging social infrastructure that allows us to work in meaningful ways with our local community, broader society and international partners. Learning is at the heart of what we do.

In 2018, I became the Associate Dean of Teacher Education and turned my attention to developing programmatic research in our TE program, redesigning in ways that respond to our students, calls for change in the literature, and changes in society’s need for education to be more connected to community.

My experience in 2019-2021 as Acting Dean allowed me to appreciate and critically interrogate the systemic structures in our institutional settings and the ways they may support or hinder individuals' or groups' abilities to do their work. 

Kathy Hibbert, PhD.
Professor and Associate Dean,
Faculty of Education

Contact: khibbert@uwo.ca

1137 Western Rd., London, ON N6G 1G7
519-661-2111