MEET
Dr. Ardavan Eizadirad
“Equality is sameness. Equity is fairness. Doing the work of equity requires intentionality coupled with emotional labour, self-care, and self-loving.”
Dr. Ardavan Eizadirad
BIO
Dr. Ardavan Eizadirad
Dr. Ardavan Eizadirad is currently an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Education at Wilfrid Laurier University. He completed his PhD from the Department of Curriculum, Teaching, and Learning at University of Toronto (2018).
His research interests include equity, diversity, and inclusion particularly standardized testing, systems of accountability, community engagement, violence prevention and intervention, anti-oppressive practices, critical pedagogy, social justice education, resistance, subversion, and decolonization.
PhD Thesis
Education Quality and Accountability Office
Assessment as Stereotyping: Experiences of Racialized Children and Parents with the Grade 3 EQAO Standardized Testing Preparation and Administration in Ontario.
Coming Soon March 2025!
Activist Leadership for Inclusive Schools
Activist Leadership for Inclusive Schools explores courageous methods for educational leadership and principalship in Canada to move beyond additive discourses of diversity to dismantling systems of oppression for thriving schools and communities.
Handbook of Anti-Discriminatory Education
Enacting Anti-Racist and Activist Pedagogies in Teacher Education is a timely edited collection that examines the complexities, challenges, spaces of resistance, and possibilities when faculty—specifically Black, Indigenous, and racialized faculty—advocate and implement anti racism approaches and pedagogies in Canadian teacher education programs.
Coming Soon August 2025!
Decolonizing Educational Assessment
Author
Decolonizing Educational Assessment: Ontario Elementary Students and the EQAO
BOOK REVIEW
“In this book, Eizadirad illustrates how, across international contexts, high-stakes testing and the systems of accountability built around them consistently serve to not only control teaching and learning, but also as a tool of colonization, racism, and white supremacy that undermines the education of minoritized students.” (Wayne Au, Professor of Educational Studies, University of Washington Bothell, USA)
“Systemic change must begin at the grassroots level with emancipation of the mind, revolution within the heart, and sacrifice and resiliency in solidarity with communities in the face of adversity.”
Dr. Ardavan Eizadirad
Dr. Ardavan Eizadirad
Quotes
“The paradox of “the hood” is that you see good and evil in the same frame: loving community and institutional abandonment simultaneously.”
“In the hood many hearts have turned into stones as a survival mechanism. Through communities of love and resistance we can penetrate the stones, heal, hope, and create new possibilities and alternatives for sustainable change.”
Profiles
About Me
FUN FACTS About Dr. Eizadirad
FAVOURITE COLOUR – Red
FAVOURITE MOVIES – Scarface, The Matrix, and Shawshank Redemption
FAVOURITE MUSIC – Hip Hop, Reggae, and Soca
FAVOURITE FOOD – Chicken Wings and Kebabs
FAVOURITE SNACK – Baba Ganoush and Flavoured Popcorn
FAVOURITE HOBBIES – Reading, Poetry, Politics, World Issues
FAVOURITE BOOK – Pedagogy of Oppressed by Paulo Freire and The Art of Loving by Erich Fromm