Dalene Swanson
Simon Fraser University
Burnaby, B.C.

Dalene M. Swanson is a postdoctoral scholar at Simon Fraser University working with Kieran Egan of the Imaginative Education Research Group. She completed her Ph.D. in Curriculum Studies and Mathematics Education at the University of British Columbia. Her doctoral work is a critical exploration of the construction of disadvantage in school mathematics in social context. For her dissertation, Voices in the Silence: Narratives of disadvantage, social context and school mathematics in post-apartheid South Africa, she was awarded the 2006 Illinois Distinguished Qualitative Dissertation Award; the 2006 American Educational Research Association Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award, Curriculum Studies Division; the 2005 Canadian Association of Curriculum Studies Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award; and the Ted T. Aoki Prize for the most Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation in Curriculum Studies.

Dalene’s research interests span curriculum studies; mathematics education; teacher education; critical pedagogy; cultural studies; indigeneity; sociology of education; interdisciplinarity; arts-based approaches to teaching, learning and inquiry; narrative and poetic inquiry; innovative approaches to qualitative research; performativity; and social justice. In her teaching, Dalene focuses on the integration of the arts into mathematics and other curricular subjects, while affording her work a strong critical, anti-oppressive and democratic focus. She embraces alternative methodologies and performativity towards decolonizing practices in research, teaching and learning.

Dalene was born and educated in South Africa. She auditioned for and was accepted into the National School of the Arts in Johannesburg specializing in Classical Ballet and Flamenco dance, where she graduated from school. She also became accomplished in contemporary dance, tap, modern, classical Greek, and folk and (inter)national dance. She completed a Licentiate in Speech and Drama from Trinity College, London, and her Advanced Exam in Classical Ballet through the Royal Academy of Dance, London. She went on to a B.Sc. in Mathematics and further degrees in Education, including a Master’s at the University of Cape Town. She taught secondary school mathematics, drama and dance, in South Africa and Canada, for more than twelve years, and over the last several years she has been teaching and researching at The University of British Columbia and Simon Fraser University. Dalene is a poet, a dramatist and also used to dance professionally. She also enjoys writing narrative. She has a wonderful husband, daughter, and cat that she lives with in Vancouver.

 

For what I have experienced and understood, … I answer with my life.

                                                                                              Mikhail Bakhtin