Steve Anderson
I served as co-Director (with Dr. Sarfaroz Niyozov) and then as Director of the Comparative, International and Development Education Centre and Program from January 2013 to January 2018, the year of my retirement from OISE/UT. During my years as Director of CIDEC I worked as a team with Dr. Carly Manion, with administrative assistant and CIDE Program Liaison Ms. Joanne Bacon, and with various configurations of the CIDEC student association. I earned my Doctorate from OISE in 1989 through the former Department of Sociology in Education (now Social Justice and Equity in Education), and spent my entire 30 year career as a professor at the University of Toronto with the former Faculty of Education (FEUT) and OISE. My area of specialization was School Improvement policy and practice at the school, school district, provincial and state levels, with a particular focus on leadership and on instructional practice. My International work as a researcher and consultant began in 1993. I was part of a team of FEUT/OISE faculty that collaborated in the creation and early implementation of the Aga Khan University Institute for Educational Development in Pakistan from 1993 and 2006. I made at least a dozen trips to Pakistan to collaborate in teaching, faculty development and research. That association branched out into recurring collaborations with the Aga Khan Foundation (AKF) as a school improvement researcher and consultant in support of multiple AKF school improvement projects in East Africa (Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda) beginning in 1994 and extending throughout the rest of my career, including my time as CIDEC Director. The last major AKF supported research project was an evaluation of teacher and head teacher professional development networks developed and supported by the Aga Khan Academy Professional Development Center in Mombasa, Kenya. CIDEC faculty members Carly Manion and Mary Drinkwater collaborated with me on that project. My International work extended to collaboration in school Improvement research and consulting in Latin America (Chile, Peru, Uruguay, Colombia, Paraguay), no doubt facilitated by my own fluency in Spanish. I led formal leadership development and research partnerships in Chile with Fundación Chile (2009-2014) and with one of Chile’s national leadership development entities based at the PontÃficaUniversidad Católica de Valapariso (2015-2018). The latter partnership was officially with CIDEC while I was Director. CIDEC faculty member Dr. Joe Flessa collaborated extensively in that work. Numerous CIDEC and OISE faculty participated in different areas of that work, particularly in the delivery of six two week professional development seminars for cohorts of Chilean principals in collaboration with Fundacion Chile and with OISE’s Department of Continuing Education. Locally, we initiated a number of ongoing CIDEC/CIDE activities. One was the system for video-taping and archiving CIDEC seminars. A second was the creation of a study group of students and faculty concerned with education in Latin America, GELO (Grupo de Estudio Latinoamericano-OISE). While the annual CIDE Program student conference did not begin while I was Director, it certainly flourished, largely through the leadership of Dr. Carly Manion. I retired in July 2018, having passed the responsibilites of the Director of CIDEC/CIDE to Dr. Kathy Bickmore in January of that year. I continued collaborating in school improvement research in Chile for the following two years, and was contracted to develop and deliver two statewide leadership development programs in Ohio by the University of Cincinnati Systems Development and Implementation Center from 2021-2023. I retired fully from professional activities in education in 2023 and have since devoted my time to personal interests in music, art and family. My experience as Director of CIDEC/CIDE remains a significant positive phase of my career at OISE University of Toronto.
