Biography of Barbara McNeil

Dr. Barbara McNeil is a dynamic and engaging speaker and scholar who has presented papers at a variety of venues across Canada and the world. Dr. McNeil is an Assistant Professor in Language and Literacy in the Faculty of Education at the University of Regina (Saskatchewan, Canada). She completed her Bachelor of Arts and Master's of Library Science degrees at the University of Toronto, a Bachelor of Education at Brock University, and her doctoral studies at the University of Regina. Dr. McNeil's doctoral research explored teachers' perspectives on transience and literacy in urban community schools in Saskatchewan. Prior to joining the Faculty of Education, Dr. McNeil worked as a teacher-librarian in elementary and secondary schools, as a library consultant, and as a French immersion teacher. Her interest in global education, led to a three year teaching experience in Botswana, and training teachers in the eastern Caribbean nation of Dominica.

Recently, she offered a workshop at Dance and the Child (DaCi) international conference in Kingston, Jamaica (August 2009) and presented a paper at the 38th conference of the International Association of School Librarianship (IASL) in Italy (September 2009). Dr. McNeil received considerable expressions of appreciation after her presentation at the 2008 IASL conference in Berkeley, California and thereafter was invited to present to teacher-librarians in Victoria, British Columbia in October 2008. In November 2008 she offered two "hit" sessions at the conference of Saskatchewan Teachers of English Language Arts (STELA). In January 2009 Dr. McNeil was a speaker at the Ontario Library Association's Super Conference in Toronto. Her paper was entitled: Enhancing Engagement: Aboriginal, African-Canadian, and Asian-Canadian Boys and Reading. She spoke on a similar topic at the Canadian Library Association's annual conference in Montreal in May 2009.

Dr. McNeil's research interests include a continued focus on student transience and literacy, school librarianship, library service to rural areas and under-served communities, children's literature, teaching English as an Additional Language, social justice in education, and media literacy. She is also very interested in international teacher education and literacy development in the developing countries of Africa, the Caribbean, and Central America. Currently, Dr. McNeil is part of a family literacy research project with Dr. Vianne Timmons, President of the University of Regina. Along with Dr. Paul Clarke of the University of Regina, a high school principal, and a group of striving, male secondary school readers and writers, she has just completed a research project on leadership for literacy and social justice.

When not focusing on matters relating to public and school libraries, Dr McNeil can be found encouraging and working with youth to use literature, the spoken word, music, art, dance, and research to tell their unique stories and to work for social transformation. Dr. McNeil is the author of Transience and literacy: The perspectives of teachers and is currently working on a book about school libraries and social justice.