Dear CSSE delegates,

It is my pleasure to welcome you to the annual conference of the Canadian Society for the Study of Education, held in conjunction with the Congress for the Humanities and Social Sciences at Ryerson University. CSSE formally acknowledges that Ryerson University and the City of Toronto are located in Dish with One Spoon Territory. The Dish with One Spoon is a treaty between the Anishinaabe, Mississaugas, and Haudenosaunee that bound them to share the territory and protect the land. Subsequent Indigenous Nations and Peoples, Europeans and all newcomers have been invited into this treaty in the spirit of peace, friendship and respect. I invite you to use this acknowledgment in all of your conference sessions, as a reminder that our conference is taking place on Indigenous lands.

I would also like to note that, because of the current uncertainties around the U.S. travel ban, not all CSSE delegates were able to travel to the conference. The CSSE Board of Directors respectfully requests that session chairs take the time to read aloud the titles of papers and the names of authors who have been excluded from our conference because of the U.S. Executive Order.

This year’s conference is an exciting one. A theme that runs through many sessions is reconciliation and addressing the Calls to Action through our scholarship, teaching, service, and advocacy work, resonating with the Congress theme of “The Next 150: On Indigenous Lands.” I invite you to browse through the program to take in the breadth of scholarly work happening in CSSE and showcased during our conference. Please take particular note of our special events, including the CSSE plenary address featuring anthropologist Wade Davis, the ACDE-CSSE reception, the CJE’s 40th anniversary panel, the CSSE AGM, the CSSE Spotlight Sessions, and the numerous association-level special events.

The CSSE Board of Directors joins me in extending sincere thanks to our local representatives Marni Binder and Susan Jagger, and their colleagues at Ryerson University, who have worked tirelessly for over a year to manage the on-the-ground logistics of running a conference for almost 1000 people. We also thank the Program Planning Committee, whose work began in September 2016. Creating a conference program requires judgement, diplomacy, and many, many hours of behind-the-scenes planning and organizing. Finally, I would like to acknowledge the hard work of Michael Holden, who created the conference program (and dealt with about a million change requests), Katy Ellsworth for conference-related communications and media outreach work, and Tim Howard, for holding the reins through the entire process.

The CSSE Board of Directors wishes you an excellent conference experience and a memorable stay in Toronto. We hope that all conference delegates will adopt the Dish with One Spoon values of peace, friendship, and respect in all conference interactions.

Until,

Nicholas Ng-A-Fook
President, CSSE

It is with open arms that we welcome you to Toronto, and to Ryerson University! The theme of this year’s Congress is The Next 150 Years on Indigenous Lands and we recognize that our university community meets on the traditional territory of the Haudenosaunee, and most recently, the Mississaugas of the New Credit First Nation.

We are delighted to be hosting CSSE 2017 at Ryerson University and facilitating the dialogues and discourses that conceptualize, critique, and contribute to educational theory, practice, and research in Canada. Equity, diversity, and inclusion are foundational at Ryerson and these are inherently taken up in the scholarly and practical explorations undertaken by the educational scholars gathering at this year’s conference.

We were guided by the generous support of both CSSE and Ryerson University. Thank you to Tim Howard, Mike Holden, Katy Ellsworth, and Nicholas Ng-A-Fook for their unwavering support and patience with our countless emails, questions, and clarifications. We would also like to thank Congress organizers at Ryerson University for their logistical support. We recognize the hard work of Meghan Hayward and Giselle Mohan, our volunteer coordinators, and all of the volunteers from across our schools and faculties at Ryerson and other universities.

We hope that you have a great conference and a wonderful time here in Toronto!