Karen Bouchard is a PhD student in Education at the University of Ottawa under the supervision of Dr. David Smith. Karen previously completed her M.Ed., B.Ed., and B.A.H. at Queen’s University. Her master’s thesis focused on elementary students’ sense of school belonging. She is an Ontario licensed elementary and secondary teacher and is currently an occasional teacher with the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board. She also teaches Bachelor of Education candidates as part of the Schooling and Society course. Karen has a special interest in students’ social-emotional experiences at school, particularly in how students navigate their social groups and friendships. For her doctoral research, she hopes to use an interpretive phenomenological approach to study how pre-adolescent girls experience victimization within friendship networks.
Canada