Marie Josée Berger - Dean, Faculty of Education
Biography:
Marie Josée Berger is Dean of the Faculty of Education and a professor at the University of Ottawa. A specialist in reading, she has worked in the fields of teaching, learning assessment and professional development, particularly in minority community environments. She played an important role in Ontario’s elementary and high school curriculum reform. Her contribution included drafting reports regarding the development of francization and advanced French programs, as well as training teachers to help implement the reform.
Her most recent research examines “the portfolio,” language skills and early intervention in reading. With the Ministry of Education, Berger developed the frame of reference for reading that made it possible to train reading specialists for minority community environments. She also developed the early intervention kits for reading published by the Centre franco-ontarien de ressources pédagogiques. Berger’s expertise in measurement and assessment were highly effective in the creation of the Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO). She later contributed to a variety of studies for this organization.
She worked as a diagnostician on the reading improvement project and contributed to a team helping poor-performance schools activate more effective reading strategies. She helped draft the report, Littératie pour tous en 2005 (Universal Literacy in 2005), which became an implementation tool for promoting inclusion in schools.
Berger currently works with research teams on pedagogical and assessment practices in literacy and numeracy, Diversité culturelle et littératies multiples – Cultural Diversity and Multiple Literacies. She is also part of the Ontario Minister of Education’s Permanent Working Group.
