Toohey Research Program

Abstract

Kelleen Toohey earned her PhD in Curriculum and Applied Linguistics at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (University of Toronto) in 1982. Her masters and doctoral studies were conducted with Cree-speaking school students learning English in Alberta and Ontario, for which she used anthropological research methods like participant observation and video analysis. Her more recent work has concerned the learning of English by immigrant children, and has employed a sociocultural theoretical frame, and insights and concepts from new materialism. With colleagues, she developed a free app called Scribjab that permits users to write, read, illustrate, narrate and comment on multilingual stories. Working with English language learners using the app and with others using iPads to construct videos, she is interested in how children learn languages and literacies and how digital technologies might support such learning.