Work

Dr. Zuhra Abawi is an assistant professor of education and coordinator of the Masters of Educational Leadership program at Niagara University. Prior to her faculty appointment, she was an elementary teacher.

Dr. Abawi authored ‘The Effectiveness of Educational Policy for Bias Free Hiring: Critical Insights to Enhance Diversity in the Canadian Teacher Workforce (2021), and co-editor of Equity as Praxis in Early Childhood Education and Care (2021). Dr. Abawi completed her doctorate in social justice education from the University of Toronto in 2018. Her work focuses on how discourses of race, equity and identity are negotiated, mediated and socialized in education. Her research seeks to re-centre the voices of racialized and Indigenous children, families and educators, by problematizing whiteness and Eurocentric practices and processes of knowledge production, curricula, and discourses embedded in educational institutions from an antiracist and critical race framework.

Dr. Abawi is particularly interested in teacher hiring practices and how educational leaders make hiring decisions and their implications. Dr. Abawi advocates for increased diversity in educational leadership and teaching positions in order to make educational outcomes more equitable for communities that have been historically and currently marginalized by education systems.