Dr. Michelle Pidgeon

Director of CSELP
Professor, Faculty of Education, Simon Fraser University

Editor, Canadian Journal of Higher Education / La revue canadienne enseignement supérieur

Dr. Michelle Pidgeon is the director of CSELP, and an associate professor in the Faculty of Education at SFU. Dr. Pidgeon's work spans the fields of K-12 education, post-secondary education, student affairs & services, and Aboriginal education. Her work aims to make stronger connections between research, theory, policy, and practice in higher education. Dr. Pidgeon's current research agenda uses an Indigenous wholistic framework to investigate universities and colleges' accountability and responsibility to Indigenous peoples in Canada and internationally. Her research moves away from the common convention of attributing failure to the student by focusing on how post-secondary institutions can become more successful places for Aboriginal peoples through Indigenity. A central tenant of Dr. Pidgeon's work is that success is defined and articulated through an Indigenous wholistic framework. She uses an Indigenous research process grounded in the 4Rs of respect, relationships, relevance, and reciprocity to guide her research projects from the generation of ideas to the sharing of results with the communities involved. Dr. Pidgeon also teaches in the educational leadership graduate programs, the Professional Development Program (PDP) and undergraduate programs in the Faculty of Education at SFU.

Dr. Pidgeon can be reached at michelle_pidgeon@sfu.ca.