Invitation to Participate in a Research Study: East and Southeast Asian Canadian Experiences in Ontario Education

Dear Ontario Teachers and Administrators,

Please support an inclusive Ontario curriculum by completing the survey administered by the CPAC Institute. This survey aims to gauge the extent to which East & Southeast Asian Canadian experiences are included in the Ontario curriculum for Grades 7-12 and identify resources needed for inclusive education.

The survey is intended for all Grades 7-12 teachers (including teacher assistants, preservice, substitute, and all other educators who had/have experience of teaching Grades 7-12), school administrators, and school board senior staff.

As you are surely aware, the past three years during the COVID-19 pandemic have been a sobering reminder that anti-Asian hate and other forms of racism and discrimination continue to plague the Canadian society. Data from Statistics Canada suggested a 301 percent surge in police-reported hate crimes targeting East and Southeast Asian Canadians from 2019 to 2020, and another 16 percent increase from 2020 to 2021.

As recommended by the East and Southeast Asian communities and education scholars, having an inclusive curriculum in our schools plays an essential role in combatting the ignorance that leads to these recurrent surges in anti-Asian racism.

Your participation is extremely valuable in helping understand educators’ perspectives and concerns, identify barriers to implementing an inclusive curriculum, and explore the needed resources and support for curriculum development and delivery that promote equity, diversity, and inclusion.

Your responses are completely anonymous, and only researchers involved in the study will have access to the data collected.

This project has been reviewed and approved by the Community Research Ethics Board. If you feel you have not been treated according to the descriptions in our information, or your rights as a participant in research have been violated during the course of this project, you may contact the Chair, Community Research Ethics Board, at: Community Research Ethics Office (Canada) Corp. c/o Centre for Community Based Research, 190 Westmount Road North, Waterloo ON N2L 3G5; Email: creo@communitybasedresearch.ca Telephone: 1-888-411- 2736.

For more information about your rights as a research participant, including the contact information for the ethics office that reviewed the project, click here to download a PDF of the Letter of Information.

The survey takes about 10 minutes to complete. It can be accessed at: 

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/CIStudy2023, or by scanning the following QR code:

We would also appreciate it very much if you could consider participating in Phase II of the study – sharing your further insights in a 45-minute confidential interview. As a token of appreciation, you will receive a modest honorarium in the form of a $20 electronic Amazon gift card upon the completion of the interview. To schedule an interview or to learn more about this research project, please contact Dr. Kate Zhang at kate.zhang@cpac-canada.ca.

We are very grateful for your participation and support.