Rodrigue Landry (Former Director, 2002-2012)

Rodrique Landry (Ph.D., University of Wisconsin) taught Educational Psychology at the Faculté des sciences de l’éducation (Faculty of Educational Sciences) at the Université de Moncton from 1975 to 2002. He was director of the Département d’éducation special (Department of Special Education) from 1979 to 1982 and was a guest researcher at the Institut d'études et de recherches interethniques et interculturelles, in Nice, during 1982 - 1983. He founded the Centre de recherche et de développement en éducation (CRDE - Centre for Research and Development in Education) at the Université de Moncton, which he directed from 1989 to 1991. He was dean of the Faculté des sciences de l’éducation from July 1992 to June 2002 and chaired the Association francophone des doyens, doyennes, directeurs et directrices d'éducation du Canada (AFDEC) from 1995 to 1997. While he was dean, he coordinated the implementation of a doctorate degree in Education at the Université de Moncton, whose overall theme is education in minority language communities. With his research colleagues, he is particularly interested in the ethnolinguistic vitality of minorities and has carried out research on Francophone minorities in each Canadian province as well as in the United States, namely in Maine and Louisiana. Other studies have dealt with the psycholinguistic development of young Anglophones in Quebec and elsewhere in Canada. He also conducted a study on high-school youths from Burkina Faso, analysing the effects that contact with the French language had on how they maintained their own African mother tongue. A grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada led him to study the factors of self-determination in the struggle to maintain the French language and a Francophone identity within a minority setting. His research publications and reports, of which there are over a hundred, are related to ethnolinguistic vitality, education in minority environments, bilingualism, and school learning. A sought-after speaker, he has acted as consultant for many governmental and non-governmental organizations and served as resource expert in many cases or proceedings regarding school management demands by Francophones throughout Canada. He still offers doctoral-level courses in Education at the Université de Moncton. In collaboratin with his colleague Serge Rousselle, he wrote a book entitled Éducation et droits collectifs : Au-delà de l'article 23 de la Charte, which was awarded the Prix France-Acadie in 2003.

 He carries out research on education in a minority setting, on early childhood, self-determination of linguistic behaviours, and the ethnolinguistic vitality in communities.