About The Project
In 2018, Chris Bruckert (Department of Criminology, University of Ottawa) and Darcy Santor (School of Psychology, University of Ottawa) initiated the Harassment and Violence Against Educators Project. The goal of this project is to investigate and shed light on the workplace harassment and violence experienced by educators and support staff working in Ontario’s elementary and secondary schools
To date, the Violence and Harassment Against Educators Project has:
Surveyed over 1,500 elementary school teachers
Surveyed over 3,000 education sector workers
Conducted individual and focus group interviews with over 100 education workers
Shared findings through reports and publications
Presented at various union-lead events throughout Ontario, and
Launched a new survey in the fall of 2023!
Swipe to learn more about what education sector
workers say about workplace violence.
Recent Work
In Harm's Way:
The Epidemic of Violence Against
Education Sector Workers in Ontario
“With all the cutbacks it gets harder and harder to do our job.
More for less is not a good thing in education.
I feel we are just fire extinguishers going from one incident to the next.”
The Team
Dr. Chris Bruckert is a professor of criminology at the University of Ottawa. The author of Gendered violence in Canada: An intersectional approach (2018), Chris has been actively involved in teaching about and mobilizing against gendered violence for over twenty-five years.
Dr. Darcy A. Santor is a professor of psychology at the University of Ottawa and a practicing clinical psychologist. He has a long-standing interest in mental health in young people and in school-based mental health.
Darby Mallory is a PhD student at the University of Ottawa. She holds a Master of Arts in Women and Gender Studies from Carleton. Her doctoral work will focus on workplace violence against educational assistants in Ontario.
Hanya Ismail is a PhD student in Clinical Psychology at the University of Ottawa. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Psychology from Concordia University. Her doctoral research will focus on the role of administrators responding to issues of harassment and violence against educators in Ontario.
Dr. Julie Chami has been a public school educator for over a decade. She completed her PhD in Education Policy at the University of Toronto. Her research interests include school choice, social policy, and emergency education.