Anna Kirova
Biographic Data
| ID | 95648 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Anna Kirova |
| GIVEN NAMES | Anna |
| FAMILY NAME | Kirova |
| SIGNATURE | KIROVA A |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Alberta |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0376-1353 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 23 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 44 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 22 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2003 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Resisting the Dehumanization of Refugees
Ajer at 70: Looking Back, Looking Forward
Volume 70, Number 1 marks a significant milestone in the existence of the Alberta Journal of Educational Research (AJER)-its 70 th anniversary.During its 70-year history, AJER has faced and overcome challenges, has evolved, and has served as an outstanding vehicle for scholarly research dissemination.When the Alberta Journal of Educational Research came into being, "the vision for educational research in Canada was fresh and exciting" (Hersom, 19…
Creating community learning for empowerment groups: An innovative model for participatory research partnerships with refugee communities
Empowering communities to respond to humanitarian crises is one of the core principles of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees. In response to large numbers of refugees resettling in Canada from Syria as they fled its civil war, a community-based research partnership was initiated to examine the psychosocial needs and adaptation processes of Syrian individuals and families. In this article, we introduce Community Learning for Empowerme…
Education reforms for inclusion? Interrogating policy-practice disjunctions in early childhood education in Bulgaria
This article examines how early childhood educators, as policy implementers, perceive reforms in Bulgaria’s education system that occurred between 2008 and 2018. Both Roma and non-Roma educators participated in this project that compares perceptions of Bulgarian teachers in public schools and Roma educators in informal educational settings operated by NGOs and religious institutions. Applying intersectionality as a framework, the study draws from…
Cultural Brokering with Syrian Refugee Families with Young Children: An Exploration of Challenges and Best Practices in Psychosocial Adaptation
Peer scaffolding techniques and approaches in preschool children’s multiliteracy practices with iPads
This article presents findings from a 4-month qualitative intrinsic case study that examined 25 preschool children’s early multiliteracy experiences and technology uses within the context of their homes and classroom. First, to find out about the different forms of technology and literacy practices the children participated in within their homes and classroom, we surveyed 13 parents and the two classroom teachers. Next, we conducted regular in-cl…
Constructing Roma students as ethnic ‘others’ through orientalist discourses in Bulgarian schools
This article uses the case of Bulgarian, predominantly Roma, schools to illustrate the long history of stereotypes about Roma people dating back to modernity’s discursive binary oppositions of ‘civilized’ vs. ‘barbarians.’ The data from a longitudinal study with 12 Bulgarian educators showed the modes by which Roma as the Other is created in the school context as a universal cognitive category, internalized in social and individual identities tha…
Otherness in Pedagogical Theory and Practice: The Case of Roma
This paper addresses the topic of the inclusion of Roma children in education in Europe through an examination of theory and practice in relation to the issues of Otherness and foreignness. Roma children entering school encounter a vastly different world from their home culture, with different expectations for teaching and learning, for relationships among learners, and with teachers. We address the question of whether the knowledge of these cont…
Introduction: Policy, Inclusion, and Education Rights of Roma Children: Challenges and Successes in the EU and North America
Gauging Social Integration among Canadian Muslims: A Sense of Belonging in an Age of Anxiety
While the subject of "Muslim integration" has received extensive scholarly attention, especially in the Western European context, there has been little study of the subject in Canada. Canada has a long history of welcoming immigrants who make up 20 percent of the population. Yet, Canada has not fully escaped the debates and anxieties related to the accommodation of Muslim immigrants and the integration of those populations. In particular, these a…
Culturally Responsive Assessment Practices: Examples from an Intercultural Multilingual Early Learning Program for Newcomer Children
Situated in an intercultural multilingual early learning program for newcomer children in Canada, this article describes emerging practice-based approaches to culturally responsive assessment. It explores practices that identify family and child-specific strengths and needs, and includes the perspectives of parents, educators and cultural brokers, who provide insights into key cultural practices and expectations. Within these approaches, assessme…
Judith K. Bernhard, Stand Together or Fall Apart: Professionals Working with Immigrant Families
Examining Bonding and Bridging Activities in the Context of a Common Spaces Approach to Integration
Cet article porte sur les relations dans les activités qui favorisent l'affectif et le relationnel pour les groupes d'immigrés et de non-immigrés identifiés par le dossier analytique de l'Enquête sur la diversité ethnique (EDE 2002) sur lequel il s'appuie, et sur les variables sélectionnées pour mesurer leur intégration par la création d'espaces communs. À partir du modèle d'Ager et Strang (2004, 2008), nous avons posé l'hypothèse que ces deux ac…
Classroom Challenges in Developing an Intercultural Early Learning Program for Refugee Children
The project described here was aimed at piloting an intercultural, multilingual, early learning program that was genuinely responsive to the circumstances and early learning needs of preschool refugee children and parents from three ethnocultural communities—Somali, Sudanese, and Kurdish—in a large city in Western Canada. We discuss the unique challenges faced by the classroom team consisting of a first-language facilitator for each of the three …
Children's Representations of Cultural Scripts in Play: Facilitating Transition From Home to Preschool in an Intercultural Early Learning Program for Refugee Children
This article focuses on the role of play as a cultural activity in refugee children's transition from home to preschool. The “culture-free” view of play as a means for development of a “universal” child was challenged and an alternative view presented of play as a culturally leading activity in the development of a culturally situated child based on the work of Vygotsky and Leont'ev. That view framed a community-initiated project that aimed at pr…
Critical and Emerging Discourses in Multicultural Education Literature: A Review
This article has three objectives. First, it examines critical discourses in the academic literature on multicultural education that point to the major conceptual flaws in multicultural education theory that led to practices that have achieved effects opposite to the intent of the Canadian Multiculturalism Act. Second, it identifies some of the suggestions being made in the context of the "post-multiculturalism" discourse on how to overcome these…
Introduction: Multiculturalism Discourses in Canada
Introduction:Multiculturalism Discourses in Canada Joseph Garcea (bio), Anna Kirova (bio), and Lloyd Wong (bio) Context and Focus The management of ethnocultural diversity is a major governance function in most countries in the world today, and Canada is no exception. In most of these countries various approaches to diversity management have been highly scrutinized and debated in the media and in the academic literature. One of the approaches tha…
Fotonovela as a Research Tool in Image-Based Participatory Research with Immigrant Children
In this article the authors explore the effect of word-image relationships on the collection of data and the reporting of research results for a study involving the development of a series of fotonovelas with immigrant children in an inner-city school. The central question explored in this article is Can experiences such as producing visual narratives in the form of fotonovelas stimulate multiple expressions of voice and position and bring awaren…
Critical Issues in Conducting Research With Immigrant Children
In this article, we explore critical issues in research with immigrant and refugee children. In particular, we examine the implications of various critiques of research methodologies, the ethical implications of researching children in the light of the United Nations (UN; 1989 United Nations. 1989. Convention on the rights of the child, Geneva, , Switzerland: Author. [Google Scholar]) Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the new approach to…
A Game-Playing Approach to Interviewing Children About Loneliness: Negotiating Meaning, Distributing Power, and Establishing Trust
The new paradigm of studying childhood that has emerged in the past 15 years has significant implications for rethinking research with children. This article examines some methodological and ethical issues related to the role and responsibility of a researcher in the process of designing, structuring, and conducting research on childhood experiences and the role of children in such research. The main conceptual points are illustrated through exam…
Ensemble Research: A Means for Immigrant Children to Explore Peer Relationships Through Fotonovela
This work began with a question about the challenges of nonverbal communication across cultures for both immigrant children in Canadian schools and a community of researchers. The question led to the gathering of an ensemble of researchers that included both adults and children. This article represents that collaborative group’s approach to a research innovation focusing on the fotonovela as both a research tool and a product of the research proc…
Changing Forces in Post-Communist Eastern Europe: Education in Transition. E. Polyzoi, M. Fullan, & J. Anchan
This volume is a collection of case studies that provide an in-depth analysis of the sudden and dramatic educational changes that followed the political, economic, and large-scale societal changes caused by the collapse of the Communist regimes in the early 1990s.Changes in education in five post-Soviet countries-Russia, the Czech Republic, Romania, Hungary, and East Germany-reveal that the removal of a rigid, highly centralized, and controlled i…
Accessing Children's Experiences of Loneliness through Conversations
In research on childhood loneliness, the predominant questions have been, What is children's conception of loneliness? and How can it be measured? The question of how to approach children to talk about their subjective experiences of loneliness has not been adequately addressed. This article proposes a game-playing approach for initiating conversations with children about their experiences of loneliness. Excerpts from an audiotaped game-playing s…
Gauging Social Integration among Canadian Muslims: A Sense of Belonging in an Age of Anxiety
While the subject of "Muslim integration" has received extensive scholarly attention, especially in the Western European context, there has been little study of the subject in Canada. Canada has a long history of welcoming immigrants who make up 20 percent of the population. Yet, Canada has not fully escaped the debates and anxieties related to the accommodation of Muslim immigrants and the integration of those populations. In particular, these a…
Children's Representations of Cultural Scripts in Play: Facilitating Transition From Home to Preschool in an Intercultural Early Learning Program for Refugee Children
This article focuses on the role of play as a cultural activity in refugee children's transition from home to preschool. The “culture-free” view of play as a means for development of a “universal” child was challenged and an alternative view presented of play as a culturally leading activity in the development of a culturally situated child based on the work of Vygotsky and Leont'ev. That view framed a community-initiated project that aimed at pr…
Fotonovela as a Research Tool in Image-Based Participatory Research with Immigrant Children
In this article the authors explore the effect of word-image relationships on the collection of data and the reporting of research results for a study involving the development of a series of fotonovelas with immigrant children in an inner-city school. The central question explored in this article is Can experiences such as producing visual narratives in the form of fotonovelas stimulate multiple expressions of voice and position and bring awaren…
Constructing Roma students as ethnic ‘others’ through orientalist discourses in Bulgarian schools
This article uses the case of Bulgarian, predominantly Roma, schools to illustrate the long history of stereotypes about Roma people dating back to modernity’s discursive binary oppositions of ‘civilized’ vs. ‘barbarians.’ The data from a longitudinal study with 12 Bulgarian educators showed the modes by which Roma as the Other is created in the school context as a universal cognitive category, internalized in social and individual identities tha…
Examining Bonding and Bridging Activities in the Context of a Common Spaces Approach to Integration
Cet article porte sur les relations dans les activités qui favorisent l'affectif et le relationnel pour les groupes d'immigrés et de non-immigrés identifiés par le dossier analytique de l'Enquête sur la diversité ethnique (EDE 2002) sur lequel il s'appuie, et sur les variables sélectionnées pour mesurer leur intégration par la création d'espaces communs. À partir du modèle d'Ager et Strang (2004, 2008), nous avons posé l'hypothèse que ces deux ac…
Introduction: Multiculturalism Discourses in Canada
Introduction:Multiculturalism Discourses in Canada Joseph Garcea (bio), Anna Kirova (bio), and Lloyd Wong (bio) Context and Focus The management of ethnocultural diversity is a major governance function in most countries in the world today, and Canada is no exception. In most of these countries various approaches to diversity management have been highly scrutinized and debated in the media and in the academic literature. One of the approaches tha…
Accessing Children's Experiences of Loneliness through Conversations
In research on childhood loneliness, the predominant questions have been, What is children's conception of loneliness? and How can it be measured? The question of how to approach children to talk about their subjective experiences of loneliness has not been adequately addressed. This article proposes a game-playing approach for initiating conversations with children about their experiences of loneliness. Excerpts from an audiotaped game-playing s…
Cultural Brokering with Syrian Refugee Families with Young Children: An Exploration of Challenges and Best Practices in Psychosocial Adaptation
Ensemble Research: A Means for Immigrant Children to Explore Peer Relationships Through Fotonovela
This work began with a question about the challenges of nonverbal communication across cultures for both immigrant children in Canadian schools and a community of researchers. The question led to the gathering of an ensemble of researchers that included both adults and children. This article represents that collaborative group’s approach to a research innovation focusing on the fotonovela as both a research tool and a product of the research proc…
Peer scaffolding techniques and approaches in preschool children’s multiliteracy practices with iPads
This article presents findings from a 4-month qualitative intrinsic case study that examined 25 preschool children’s early multiliteracy experiences and technology uses within the context of their homes and classroom. First, to find out about the different forms of technology and literacy practices the children participated in within their homes and classroom, we surveyed 13 parents and the two classroom teachers. Next, we conducted regular in-cl…
Introduction: Policy, Inclusion, and Education Rights of Roma Children: Challenges and Successes in the EU and North America
Critical Issues in Conducting Research With Immigrant Children
In this article, we explore critical issues in research with immigrant and refugee children. In particular, we examine the implications of various critiques of research methodologies, the ethical implications of researching children in the light of the United Nations (UN; 1989 United Nations. 1989. Convention on the rights of the child, Geneva, , Switzerland: Author. [Google Scholar]) Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the new approach to…
A Game-Playing Approach to Interviewing Children About Loneliness: Negotiating Meaning, Distributing Power, and Establishing Trust
The new paradigm of studying childhood that has emerged in the past 15 years has significant implications for rethinking research with children. This article examines some methodological and ethical issues related to the role and responsibility of a researcher in the process of designing, structuring, and conducting research on childhood experiences and the role of children in such research. The main conceptual points are illustrated through exam…
Accessing Children's Experiences of Loneliness through Conversations
In research on childhood loneliness, the predominant questions have been, What is children's conception of loneliness? and How can it be measured? The question of how to approach children to talk about their subjective experiences of loneliness has not been adequately addressed. This article proposes a game-playing approach for initiating conversations with children about their experiences of loneliness. Excerpts from an audiotaped game-playing s…
Changing Forces in Post-Communist Eastern Europe: Education in Transition. E. Polyzoi, M. Fullan, & J. Anchan
This volume is a collection of case studies that provide an in-depth analysis of the sudden and dramatic educational changes that followed the political, economic, and large-scale societal changes caused by the collapse of the Communist regimes in the early 1990s.Changes in education in five post-Soviet countries-Russia, the Czech Republic, Romania, Hungary, and East Germany-reveal that the removal of a rigid, highly centralized, and controlled i…
A Game-Playing Approach to Interviewing Children About Loneliness: Negotiating Meaning, Distributing Power, and Establishing Trust
The new paradigm of studying childhood that has emerged in the past 15 years has significant implications for rethinking research with children. This article examines some methodological and ethical issues related to the role and responsibility of a researcher in the process of designing, structuring, and conducting research on childhood experiences and the role of children in such research. The main conceptual points are illustrated through exam…
Ensemble Research: A Means for Immigrant Children to Explore Peer Relationships Through Fotonovela
This work began with a question about the challenges of nonverbal communication across cultures for both immigrant children in Canadian schools and a community of researchers. The question led to the gathering of an ensemble of researchers that included both adults and children. This article represents that collaborative group’s approach to a research innovation focusing on the fotonovela as both a research tool and a product of the research proc…
Critical Issues in Conducting Research With Immigrant Children
In this article, we explore critical issues in research with immigrant and refugee children. In particular, we examine the implications of various critiques of research methodologies, the ethical implications of researching children in the light of the United Nations (UN; 1989 United Nations. 1989. Convention on the rights of the child, Geneva, , Switzerland: Author. [Google Scholar]) Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the new approach to…
Critical and Emerging Discourses in Multicultural Education Literature: A Review
This article has three objectives. First, it examines critical discourses in the academic literature on multicultural education that point to the major conceptual flaws in multicultural education theory that led to practices that have achieved effects opposite to the intent of the Canadian Multiculturalism Act. Second, it identifies some of the suggestions being made in the context of the "post-multiculturalism" discourse on how to overcome these…
Introduction: Multiculturalism Discourses in Canada
Introduction:Multiculturalism Discourses in Canada Joseph Garcea (bio), Anna Kirova (bio), and Lloyd Wong (bio) Context and Focus The management of ethnocultural diversity is a major governance function in most countries in the world today, and Canada is no exception. In most of these countries various approaches to diversity management have been highly scrutinized and debated in the media and in the academic literature. One of the approaches tha…
Fotonovela as a Research Tool in Image-Based Participatory Research with Immigrant Children
In this article the authors explore the effect of word-image relationships on the collection of data and the reporting of research results for a study involving the development of a series of fotonovelas with immigrant children in an inner-city school. The central question explored in this article is Can experiences such as producing visual narratives in the form of fotonovelas stimulate multiple expressions of voice and position and bring awaren…
Children's Representations of Cultural Scripts in Play: Facilitating Transition From Home to Preschool in an Intercultural Early Learning Program for Refugee Children
This article focuses on the role of play as a cultural activity in refugee children's transition from home to preschool. The “culture-free” view of play as a means for development of a “universal” child was challenged and an alternative view presented of play as a culturally leading activity in the development of a culturally situated child based on the work of Vygotsky and Leont'ev. That view framed a community-initiated project that aimed at pr…
Classroom Challenges in Developing an Intercultural Early Learning Program for Refugee Children
The project described here was aimed at piloting an intercultural, multilingual, early learning program that was genuinely responsive to the circumstances and early learning needs of preschool refugee children and parents from three ethnocultural communities—Somali, Sudanese, and Kurdish—in a large city in Western Canada. We discuss the unique challenges faced by the classroom team consisting of a first-language facilitator for each of the three …
Culturally Responsive Assessment Practices: Examples from an Intercultural Multilingual Early Learning Program for Newcomer Children
Situated in an intercultural multilingual early learning program for newcomer children in Canada, this article describes emerging practice-based approaches to culturally responsive assessment. It explores practices that identify family and child-specific strengths and needs, and includes the perspectives of parents, educators and cultural brokers, who provide insights into key cultural practices and expectations. Within these approaches, assessme…
Judith K. Bernhard, Stand Together or Fall Apart: Professionals Working with Immigrant Families
Examining Bonding and Bridging Activities in the Context of a Common Spaces Approach to Integration
Cet article porte sur les relations dans les activités qui favorisent l'affectif et le relationnel pour les groupes d'immigrés et de non-immigrés identifiés par le dossier analytique de l'Enquête sur la diversité ethnique (EDE 2002) sur lequel il s'appuie, et sur les variables sélectionnées pour mesurer leur intégration par la création d'espaces communs. À partir du modèle d'Ager et Strang (2004, 2008), nous avons posé l'hypothèse que ces deux ac…
Otherness in Pedagogical Theory and Practice: The Case of Roma
This paper addresses the topic of the inclusion of Roma children in education in Europe through an examination of theory and practice in relation to the issues of Otherness and foreignness. Roma children entering school encounter a vastly different world from their home culture, with different expectations for teaching and learning, for relationships among learners, and with teachers. We address the question of whether the knowledge of these cont…
Introduction: Policy, Inclusion, and Education Rights of Roma Children: Challenges and Successes in the EU and North America
Gauging Social Integration among Canadian Muslims: A Sense of Belonging in an Age of Anxiety
While the subject of "Muslim integration" has received extensive scholarly attention, especially in the Western European context, there has been little study of the subject in Canada. Canada has a long history of welcoming immigrants who make up 20 percent of the population. Yet, Canada has not fully escaped the debates and anxieties related to the accommodation of Muslim immigrants and the integration of those populations. In particular, these a…
Peer scaffolding techniques and approaches in preschool children’s multiliteracy practices with iPads
This article presents findings from a 4-month qualitative intrinsic case study that examined 25 preschool children’s early multiliteracy experiences and technology uses within the context of their homes and classroom. First, to find out about the different forms of technology and literacy practices the children participated in within their homes and classroom, we surveyed 13 parents and the two classroom teachers. Next, we conducted regular in-cl…
Constructing Roma students as ethnic ‘others’ through orientalist discourses in Bulgarian schools
This article uses the case of Bulgarian, predominantly Roma, schools to illustrate the long history of stereotypes about Roma people dating back to modernity’s discursive binary oppositions of ‘civilized’ vs. ‘barbarians.’ The data from a longitudinal study with 12 Bulgarian educators showed the modes by which Roma as the Other is created in the school context as a universal cognitive category, internalized in social and individual identities tha…
Cultural Brokering with Syrian Refugee Families with Young Children: An Exploration of Challenges and Best Practices in Psychosocial Adaptation
Education reforms for inclusion? Interrogating policy-practice disjunctions in early childhood education in Bulgaria
This article examines how early childhood educators, as policy implementers, perceive reforms in Bulgaria’s education system that occurred between 2008 and 2018. Both Roma and non-Roma educators participated in this project that compares perceptions of Bulgarian teachers in public schools and Roma educators in informal educational settings operated by NGOs and religious institutions. Applying intersectionality as a framework, the study draws from…
Creating community learning for empowerment groups: An innovative model for participatory research partnerships with refugee communities
Empowering communities to respond to humanitarian crises is one of the core principles of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees. In response to large numbers of refugees resettling in Canada from Syria as they fled its civil war, a community-based research partnership was initiated to examine the psychosocial needs and adaptation processes of Syrian individuals and families. In this article, we introduce Community Learning for Empowerme…
Resisting the Dehumanization of Refugees
Ajer at 70: Looking Back, Looking Forward
Volume 70, Number 1 marks a significant milestone in the existence of the Alberta Journal of Educational Research (AJER)-its 70 th anniversary.During its 70-year history, AJER has faced and overcome challenges, has evolved, and has served as an outstanding vehicle for scholarly research dissemination.When the Alberta Journal of Educational Research came into being, "the vision for educational research in Canada was fresh and exciting" (Hersom, 19…
Sociology (18 works) · Psychology (15 works) · Political science (14 works) · Pedagogy (10 works) · Social Psychology (8 works) · Gender Studies (6 works) · Law (6 works) · Mathematics education (6 works) · Refugee (6 works) · Children's Rights and Participation (5 works)