EYE Developer Featured on Cover of Local Paper

Monday February 25, 2013 The Daily Gleaner and The Telegraph Journal featured the EYE, a tool developed by Dr. Doug Willms and colleagues at CRISP, as their cover story. The EYE assessment tool is used as an early detection method to identify students who experience difficulty in various developmental areas.

Read the full article here

CRISP Student Presents at CRDCN National Conference 2012



CRISP PhD student, Justine C. Gibbings, presented her paper entitled "Repeated Unemployment in the Household and Child Vulnerability in Receptive Vocabulary Achievement: Evidence from the NLSCY" at the Canadian Research Data Centre Network national conference in October 2012. This well attended conference was hosted by the Research Data Centre at the University of New Brunswick (UNB), and offered a venue for students and academic researchers across Canada to present their data-driven research papers. Many of the presentations were recorded and made available online to view at www.rdc-cdr.ca. You can access Justine's presentation directly here.

CRISP GIS Programmer and Data Analyst Teaches Workshop at CRDCN National Conference 2012



A Visualizing Data workshop was presented at the CRDCN National Conference on October 22, 2012 by Teresa Tang, GIS Programmer and Data Analyst for CRISP, Donna Dossman, Microdata Division of Statistics Canada and Ian Williams, Senior Intelligence Analyst at the Toronto Police Service Intelligence Division and professor at Ryerson University. The workshop explored general work flow, design principles, types of visualization, as well as technical and administrative limitations to visualization tools (mapping in particular).

Photo credit: Sarah Fortin, CRDCN

Active Healthy Kids Canada Report Card

The 2012 Active Healthy Kids Canada Report Card on Physical Activity for Children and Youth was released with Canadians receiving a poor grade on physical activity. The report released by Active Healthy Kids Canada, ParticipACTION and the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario Research Institute - Healthy Active Living and Obesity Research Group (HALO) zeros in on the reasons behind this decrease in physical activity among youth.

To find out more about this report please visit: www.activehealthykids.ca

CRISP and UNB Host IAE

CRISP and UNB were delighted to host the International Academy of Education (IAE) biennial meeting this spring in Victoria, British Columbia, April 18-21, 2012. The IAE is a not-for-profit scientific association that promotes educational research, its dissemination and the implementation of its implications. International delegates presented their findings on learning and education philosophies to Fellows, government representatives and several local school officials invited to attend the presentations. At the conclusion of this event Dr. Willms, Director of CRISP, was honored by being nominated President Elect of the Academy. This four-day event was generously co-sponsored by KSI Research International.

International Academy of Education: www.iaoed.org

Presentation from Visiting Scholar

On October 12, 2011, the Canadian Research Institute for Social Policy (CRISP) was pleased to have Indonesian visiting scholar, Septimar Prihatini present her proposal for dissertation entitled "Madrasah Aliyah Performance Appraisal Model". This presentation was held in the seminar room at the CRISP office in Keirstead Hall at the University of New Brunswick and followed by a multicultural luncheon in honor of the event.

On January 19-20, 2011, the Atlantic Networks for Prevention Research (ANPR) and the Canadian Research Institute for Social Policy (CRISP) teamed up to offer a two-day workshop on the use of large-scale databases to inform social science research. This workshop, held in Prince Edward Island, was offered to students and postdoctoral fellows of the ANPR to collaborate and work directly with Dr. J. Douglas Willms in the development of their own quantitative research projects. Participants from Dalhousie University, University of Prince Edward Island and University of New Brunswick attended.

CRISP's Director awarded Canada Research Chair in Literacy and Human Development

Dr. Jon Douglas Willms, the director of UNB's Canadian Research Institute for Social Policy (CRISP), and a professor with the Faculty of Education, has been awarded a CRC Tier 1 Chair in Literacy and Human Development.

Dr. Willms is working to develop and implement a school-based assessment and intervention program for increasing the reading skills of children, particularly in schools with a high concentration of vulnerable children.

The award is tenable for seven years and is renewable. UNB will receive $200,000 in CRC funding for each of the seven years of the Chair term. Dr. Willms has also been approved by the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) for $65,000 in infrastructure funding to support the UNB-CRISP Literacy Assessment Laboratory.

Click here to read the new publication by Douglas Willms titled "Pre-schoolers Benefit from New Skills Assessments". The article highlights the Early Years Evaluation-Direct Assessment, a skills based pre-school assessment developed by Willms and colleagues that evaluates aspects of early child development in four developmental domains. This work is featured in this month's special theme issue of the Canadian Education Associations Education Canada focusing on "concepts and practices that disrupt or nudge aside conventional concepts and practices, because they raise the quality of the learning experience" (George Pearson, guest editor, pg.3). For more information on the Early Years Evaluation contact: info@ksiresearch.com

Link: http://www.unb.ca/crisp/pdf/514159_Willms.Education+Canada+2009.pdf

Click here for the October newsletter from the Comprehensive School Health Research Team at UPEI: CSHR Newsletter OCT 2009

Position Vacancy - Dean, Faculty of Education, UNB
Nominations and applications are invited for the position of Dean of the Faculty of Education with the University of New Brunswick's Fredericton Campus effective July 1, 2010. See details: http://www.unb.ca/crisp/pdf/454437_Advertisement_Final.doc

On May 26-27, 2009, the Atlantic Network for Prevention Research (ANPR) and the Canadian Research Institute for Social Policy (CRISP) teamed up to offer a two-day workshop on the use of large-scale databases to improve our understanding of health impacts of social and physical environments in communities, workplaces, and schools. This workshop was offered to students and postdoctoral fellows of the ANPR to collaborate and work directly with Dr. J. Douglas Willms and Dr. Lucia Tramonte in the development of their own quantitative research projects.

CEA releases the first National Report of the What did you do in school today? initiative
Through What did you do in school today?, CEA, in partnership with the Canadian Council on Learning and school districts across Canada, are bringing life to the idea of student engagement in the classroom, and exploring its powerful relationship with adolescent learning, student achievement, and effective teaching.

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Willms Elected to National Academy of Education - May 2009

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We are pleased to inform you that a new policy brief entitled 'Value-Added Models in Education' by J. Douglas Willms is now available.

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Congratulations to CRISP GIS analyst and data manager, Teresa Tang, on her recently published article in the Revue Internationale de Geomatique.

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On Thursday, October 30th, as part of CIHR's Cafe Scientifique knowledge translation initiative, Dr.'s Nicole Letourneau and Doug Willms presented "Children and Young Families: Our Greatest Resource" at The Grand Hall in the Bank of Nova Scotia Building in Saint John. Their presentation focused on healthy child development as a primary concern to New Brunswick's families. The evening included a lively discussion by those in attendance with an emphasis on moving from measurement to action to ensure New Brunswick makes sound investments in its greatest resource. The event was organized and moderated by Jane Breckenridge, Director, Research Services Regional Health Authority B, Saint John Zone.

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On behalf of Doug Willms, and the staff and faculty at CRISP, best wishes to our 2008 graduates: Richard Chan (Masters GGE), Bradley Corbett (PhD - Education), Melanie Doucet (Masters Interdisciplinary), Sandy Kitchen (MA - Sociology).

Justine Gibbings has been awarded an Atlantic Rural Centre PhD Fellowship for a two year period commencing October 2007. Her research examines change and stability in family SES during a child's early childhood and its association with health outcomes for mothers and children in rural areas.

Letourneau named to Canada's Top 40 Under 40TM

Nicole Letourneau, a nursing professor and research fellow at the Canadian Research Institute for Social Policy at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton, has been named to Canada's Top 40 Under 40TM list for 2007.
Dr. Letourneau was selected from over 1,600 nominees by an independent advisory board, comprised of 27 business leaders from across Canada. Honourees were chosen on five key criteria including: vision and leadership; innovation and achievement; impact; community involvement and contribution; and strategy for growth.
Dr. Letourneau holds the Canada Research Chair in healthy child development at UNB. She develops and tests interventions that support vulnerable children, mothers with postpartum depression, and mother and infants who are exposed to domestic violence.
For more information on Dr. Letourneau's research program, visit: http://www.unbf.ca/nursing/child/
Congratulations Nicole!

CRISP is pleased to announce the release of the report: Literacy, Numeracy and Problem-Solving Skills of Canadian Youth, authored by J. Douglas Willms and Barry Watson as part of the HRSDC Learning Research series. This study uses data from the Adult Literacy and Life-skills Survey to examine the literacy skills of Canadian youth aged 16 to 25. It looks closely at the factors that explain literacy skills of high school age (16-19) youth compared with those of post secondary education age (20-25), and the extent to which literacy skills and the factors explaining them vary among the provinces. The findings suggest that the success of provinces in attaining high levels of youth literacy depends a great deal on the skill levels of males. The research also emphasizes the need to better understand when and why children fall off track in their early literacy development.

UNB-CRISP is pleased to announce the release of the Policy Brief ' The Case for Universal French Instruction' by Dr. J. Douglas Willms Click here to view

CRISP post doctoral fellow, Dana Wilson and director Douglas Willms have received two years of funding from the Atlantic Lottery Corporation (ALC) to begin research focusing on youth gambling as a public health issue. With the ALC's support they will examine Statistics Canada's Canadian Community Health Survey (CCHS) dataset to explore the influence of individual and local factors on youth gambling in Canada and the Atlantic Provinces specifically.

New publication: CRISP researchers Joan Beswick, Elizabeth Sloat, and Douglas Willms have recently published Four Educational Myths that Stymie Social Justice, in The Educational Forum , v. 72 (2), 2008. Please contact crisp@unb.ca to request a PDF.

Professor Douglas Willms, Director of UNB-CRISP, recently delivered the George Kneller Lecture for the Comparative and International Education Society conference in New York. Willms's presentation, 'Raising and Levelling the Learning Bar: International Perspectives' was attended by over 250 participants. The lecture uses data from several sources to describe the role that inclusive school polices can have on student learning. The lecture will soon be available via podcast.

CRISP student Melanie Doucet has co-authored a policy paper with Dr J Ruggeri on government expenditures on health care. Click to view publication or Click here to view Abstract.

Using Early Literacy Monitoring to Prevent Reading Failure - Children need to become capable and confident readers by the end of second grade. Dr's Sloat, Beswick, and Willms describe a means of keeping close tabs on children's development in this crucial skill. Click Here to read about their latest published work in Phi Delta Kappan (March 2007).

CRISP is very pleased to publicize the release of the report: "Learning Divides: Ten Policy Questions about the Performance and Equity of Schools and Schooling Systems" authored by Douglas Willms as part of the UIS series of working papers. This publication highlights some of the main obstacles and opportunities facing policymakers in efforts to improve the quality and equity of national education systems.

Douglas Willms, Professor and Director of the Canadian Research Institute for Social Policy at the University of New Brunswick (UNB), has been elected to become a Fellow of the International Academy of Education (IAE). The IAE is dedicated to strengthening the contributions of research, solving critical educational problems throughout the world, and providing better communication among policy makers, researchers and practitioners. Dr. Willms is known internationally for his research in the areas of youth literacy, children's health, the accountability of schooling systems, and the assessment of national education reforms. He is also recognized for his efforts in training new investigators in the analysis of complex multilevel data. The school evaluation systems developed by Willms and his colleagues for assessing early childhood outcomes and adolescents' engagement in school are used widely in New Brunswick and across Canada. The seat of the IAE, which was founded in 1986, is at the Royal Academy of Science, Literature and Arts in Brussels, Belgium. Willms be inducted into the Academy at its General Assembly in Mexico City on September 30. The Academy currently includes 38 scholars world-wide. Willms will be the first Canadian Fellow.

Results from the 2005 CIHR New Investigator Award competition are in and our own Nicole Letourneau has been offered this prestigious award for her work on supporting mother-infant relationships affected by intimate partner violence - congratulations Nicole!

"When children at risk receive the support necessary to develop literacy skills early in their school career, they close the gap with more advantaged peers" - see Joan Beswick and Liz Sloat's recent publication in Education Canada. Click here to view the pdf