Close Up
Democracy as the best policy in education
Sue Winton, who joined the Graduate School of Education faculty this fall, says she’s come to believe that every decision you make is a policy decision. Photo: NANCY J. PARISI
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“I didn’t think about how policies touched me or how I was involved in the creation, re-creation or interpretation of it when I was a teacher. Now I see everything that way.”
Ever since her days as a youthful camp counselor and Sunday school teacher, Sue Winton wanted to be in education. Her career path subsequently led to teaching elementary school in three countries and at universities in Canada before becoming an assistant professor in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy in UB’s Graduate School of Education last fall after spending the previous year here in a visiting role.
“People were great to work with and there were lots of opportunities and interest in the kinds of things that I’m interested in. I felt like I fit in,” she says.
Winton has immersed herself in teaching and research in the effects of educational policy on democracy.
“Very early on, I was interested in issues around equity, equality and injustice,” she says. “I had been a teacher so I knew how policies have implications for students, teachers, families and communities.”
Winton studied local, state or provincial, national and international influences on policy and how they affect students in regard to equity and diversity. “I’ve come to believe that every decision you make is a policy decision. I didn’t think about how policies touched me or how I was involved in the creation, re-creation or interpretation of it when I was a teacher. Now I see everything that way. There are many different things to study at many different levels.”
Winton’s research aims to understand how policy both supports and undermines democracy in education. Her areas of study include character education (attempts to teach character through an emphasis on universal values), safe schools policy, how new media may affect policy engagement and comparative policy analysis.
She is studying school districts in New York and Ontario to understand what influences their policies and how they play out. “What I believe about policy now is that everything is related,” she says. “At the same time, democracy in my mind is who gets to participate in policy decisions and in what way. How does policy change happen and how can citizens become either more engaged or more influential, depending on the situation, in policy decisions on various levels.”
Winton has worked with People for Education, an independent, community-based organization in Ontario, hosting community dialogues around policy issues in education and exploring the impact for participants who become involved in these policy dialogues. She also uses the notion of dialogue in her teaching, now gaining added educational insights from Tanzanian and Korean students. “Beyond the U.S. and Canada comparison, these students are bringing two more countries into the conversation. It’s absolutely enriching for everybody,” she says.
Winton has found a conducive research environment here, citing a number of people at UB who have done much cross-border work in teaching and research. “I kind of expected it to be more isolated, but I feel connected,” she observes. “Everyone is very supportive about maintaining my research connections in Canada and at the same time introducing me to people and making it possible for me to become involved in American research.”
Born in New York City, Winton moved to Toronto with her family when she was 2. After graduating from Queen's University in Toronto, she taught fifth grade for three years in Monterrey, Mexico, including English as a second language. “It was not a multicultural city, so I really stood out as different in the sense that I was not Mexican and didn’t speak Spanish as my first language,” she recalls. “The idea of a single woman living away from her family in Mexico was unusual for that particular place, but I was warmly embraced by the families of the students who I taught.”
Winton later taught fourth and fifth grades in Cincinnati and in Toronto, subsequently earning master’s and doctoral degrees in education administration from the University of Toronto. Her expertise in policy analysis and evaluation developed from her work at Ontario’s Ministry of Education and with the Canadian Council on Learning. Prior to joining UB, she taught at three universities in Toronto.
Winton commutes to UB from her home along Lake Ontario in Toronto, which she shares with her husband ,Rob, an executive for the Canadian Football League, and their children: Nicholas, 7, and five-year-old twins Adam and Danny.
“It’s hard to be so close to issues around education and have children in school. I feel sometimes that I wish I could stop thinking critically,” says Winton, although she quickly adds that she would like all students to have the kind of quality public education that her sons have.
Winton juggles her commute well and credits very supportive family and friends on both sides of the border “who enable me to do the things that I hope to do as a professional, as a parent and as a person.”
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