Skip to main content
COVID-19 information and screening Learn how we’re keeping our campus community safe, healthy and engaged during our gradual return to campus.
Note: The university’s mandatory vaccine directive is now in effect. Learn more about vaccine requirements.
Ontario Tech acknowledges the lands and people of the Mississaugas of Scugog Island First Nation.

We are thankful to be welcome on these lands in friendship. The lands we are situated on are covered by the Williams Treaties and are the traditional territory of the Mississaugas, a branch of the greater Anishinaabeg Nation, including Algonquin, Ojibway, Odawa and Pottawatomi. These lands remain home to many Indigenous nations and peoples.

We acknowledge this land out of respect for the Indigenous nations who have cared for Turtle Island, also called North America, from before the arrival of settler peoples until this day. Most importantly, we acknowledge that the history of these lands has been tainted by poor treatment and a lack of friendship with the First Nations who call them home.

This history is something we are all affected by because we are all treaty people in Canada. We all have a shared history to reflect on, and each of us is affected by this history in different ways. Our past defines our present, but if we move forward as friends and allies, then it does not have to define our future.

Learn more about Indigenous Education and Cultural Services

Allyson Eamer
PhD

Associate Professor

Associate Dean

Faculty of Education

Contact information

Education Building - Room 521
Downtown Oshawa
11 Simcoe Street North
Oshawa, ON

905.721.8668 ext. 3821

allyson.eamer@ontariotechu.ca

Dr. Allyson Eamer: Digital literacy and online language learning

Dr. Allyson Eamer's research interests include synchronous online language learning; language acquisition and identity negotiation; immersion education; ethnolinguistic vitality; and mother tongue education. She is also interested in how digital literacy supports self-directed learning, how cyber colonialism impacts distance education through the dominance of English on the web, and how corporate outsourcing has changed English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teaching.

Bio

Dr. Eamer, joined Ontario Tech University in 2008, after teaching English as a Second Language and core French for nearly 20 years. She earned her doctorate in Applied Linguistics from York University, her Master of Education in Applied Psychology at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto (U of T), her Bachelor of Education at York University, and her Bachelor of Psychology from U of T.

Linguistic diversity is one of Canada’s greatest and most undervalued assets, according to linguistic expert Allyson Eamer, PhD, an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education. She is making strides to ensure educators and community leaders recognize multilingualism as a resource, rather than a deficit starting in elementary schools. Dr. Eamer was instrumental in launching Ontario Tech University’s new ESL school, which opened in January 2017 and the TESOL program which started in 2020.

In 2013, Dr. Eamer was named a Fellow of the Nantucket Project for her role in enabling indigenous elders to teach their languages online in the Plains Cree and Dene Nations. Her research is referenced in a high-profile bibliography of recommended reading by world-renowned linguist Dr. Tove Skutnabb-Kangas. Passionate about mentoring language teachers, Dr. Eamer is also developing online courses to improve English skills among teachers and learners in other countries.

For more information:

Courses Taught

Master of Education

  • EDUC 5005G Social and Cultural Contexts of Education
  • EDUC 5199 Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL)
  • EDUC 5501 Using French language Apps in the FSL classroom
  • EDUC 5501 Teaching Arabic with Technology
  • EDUC 5501 Second Language Theory and Pedagogy

Research and Expertise

  • Bilingualism/multilingualism in families, schools and communities
  • English language education
  • Equitable access to higher education
  • Ethnolinguistics and sociolinguistics
  • Indigenous language learning
  • Language and multiculturalism
  • Mother tongue maintenance in immigrant families
  • Online language learning
  • Additional languages spoken: French, Cantonese
  • Eamer, A. & Rodrigues, A. (2019) Encountering Freire: An International Partnership in Experiential Learning and Social Justice. Currents in Teaching and Learning 11(2).
  • Eamer, A.  (2018). Migration, trauma and mental illness: implications for language learning. Contact. Fall, 2018.
  • Eamer, A. (2018). Sorry, not sorry. The Font, 2.
  • Eamer, A., Fernando, S., & King, A. E. (2017). Still on the Margins: Migration, English Language Learning, and Mental Health in Immigrant Psychiatric Patients. Diaspora, Indigenous, and Minority Education, 11(4), 190-202.
  • Eamer, A. (2014). E-learning for Endangered Languages: What is the State of the Art?. In Conference Proceedings (Eds.) CALL Conference. Antwerp, Belgium: University of Belgium.
  • Eamer, A. (2014) Loving and leaving mother: The passing of Chester Nez. Ethnos Project, 22 June.
  • Eamer, A., Hughes, J., & Morrison, L. J. (2014). Crossing cultural borders through Ning. Multicultural Education Review, 6(1), 49-78.Hughes, J., & Eamer, A. (2012). How does the use of digital media benefit adolescent English language learners in the English classroom? English in middle and secondary classrooms: Creative and critical advice from Canadian teacher educators, 57-62.
  • Eamer, A. (2014) Technology and Language Revitalization: A Conspectus.  Ethnos Project,  8 April.

  • Eamer, A. (2012). Making English Our Own:  Ethnolects in Toronto’s Diasporas in A. Eamer (ed.) Border Terrains: World Diasporas in the 21st Century. Oxford: Inter-disciplinary Press.