Builds on guiding theoretical and practice frameworks (including child rights, child and family welfare, child health, child protection, etc.) used currently, both nationally and by the international community in order to shape interventions to address the challenges that exist for children and youth, with a specific focus on protecting children working with families and communities. Deconstructs colonialist practices, Eurocentric perspectives, using anti-oppression frameworks and Indigenous ways of knowing. Encourages understanding of the community and cultural systems of support for children and families that exist in many ways parallel to the more formal systems of support. Guides students to explore and navigate important tensions (such as the tension between immediate and long-term care; universal and local values; autonomy and safety) through critical reflection and discourse and questions who frames the problem and what impact this has on children, youth, and families.
Having developed a solid theoretical foundation of child wellbeing (inclusive of child and family welfare and child protection), explores the programmatic implications of guiding theories. Guides students to assess existing systems at the national and community level, with a lens to examine the impact on children’s wellbeing. This situates the child within broader ecological systems. Uses this deconstruction as a way to explore what reforming child protection systems might look like across different levels and contexts. Participates in critical discourse across multiple case studies.
Provides students the opportunity to understand and explore how to contribute to positive change in support of child wellbeing in a contextually appropriate and sustainable way for children, youth, families, communities, and nations. Facilitates engaged action-oriented change with children, youth, families, communities, and nations by drawing on leadership skills, systems mapping, and identifying levers of change. Considers different methodologies for research, monitoring, evaluation, learning, as well as programming skills (evidence, data, and decision-making); participatory, creative and play based approaches to engaging children and youth in navigating their way to wellbeing; and change and reform promoting approaches (problem-driven iterative adaptation and similar approaches, fostering institutional changes).
Focuses on the intellectual foundations of the field through an interdisciplinary examination of the challenges of human security. Approaches the study of human security from the perspectives of economic security, food security, health security, environmental security, personal security, community security, and political security. Employs broad concept of peacebuilding to designate social transformation that offers greater hope of long-term, sustainable peace. Seeks to illuminate basic theories and concepts through regular reference to concrete cases.
Examines the foundations and mechanisms of international law as they apply to issues of human security and peacebuilding, with a specific focus on how the theory and practice of this law converge in the actual operations of the United Nations and other global institutions. It also focuses on the role of courts and their jurisdiction as they relate to conflict resolution, deterrence, enforcement, trans-nationality and trans-boundary issues, especially with reference to human rights, international crimes and threats to human security and peacebuilding, with relation to these institutions. The emphasis throughout the course is on the dynamic interaction of theory and practice between law and institutions.
A skills-oriented course emphasizing methods and tools used in development planning and in crisis response, including the design and management of interventions (such as programs or campaigns), ethical considerations, conflict mapping, negotiation, and mediation. Explores the relationship between the theoretical and the practical aspects of field activities, and introduces students to relevant theory of political systems in the context of conflict, development theory, and has a strong emphasis on evidence-based planning and assessment.
Introduces students to the distinctions between multi and interdisciplinary conceptions of justice and transdisciplinary studies of justice. Traces the origins of transdisciplinary studies and examines the integration of natural and social sciences toward the development of holistic approaches to problems in justice. Provides a critique of current discipline-based approaches to the study of justice-related problems through the development of transdisciplinary models of justice within a democratic context.
Identifies and applies theoretical and practical foundations for the identification of problems in justice studies and their solutions. Emphasizes the collaborative nature of knowledge generation and the growing interdependence among disciplines for the resolution of complex justice-related problems. Introduces individuals’ role as a bricoleur —a person who uses all available material—in the search for justice.
Examines the concept of justice from non-western, Indigenous perspectives and the development of indigenous perspectives for realizing justice. Includes an historical account of the treatment of Indigenous people, governmental interventions and social movements aimed at improving justice for Indigenous people. Refers to national and international agendas for resolution of long standing issues identified by the Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People.