The Early Childhood Education Report 2017 is the third assessment of provincial and territorial frameworks for early childhood education in Canada. Nineteen benchmarks, organized into five equally weighted categories, evaluate governance structures, funding levels, access, quality in early learning environments and the rigour of accountability mechanisms.
Results are populated from detailed provincial and territorial profiles developed by the researchers and reviewed by provincial and territorial officials. Researchers and officials co-determine the benchmarks assigned. We are pleased to welcome Nunavut and Yukon as new participants in this edition. ECEReport.ca includes the profiles for each jurisdiction, including the federal government, plus the methodology that shapes the report, references, charts and figures and materials from past reports.
Higher education is glutted with courses, many of which are marginal or associated with arcane, duplicative or
outdated subjects. That is at the heart of tuition increases, student debt, budget shortfalls, legislative distrust, poor
adjunct pay and too few tenured or tenure-eligible professors at typical colleges and universities.
This report provides parliamentarians with an assessment of the state of the Canadian labour market by examining indicators relative to their trend estimates, that is, the level that is estimated to occur if temporary shocks are removed.
To provide additional information on labour utilization that may not be captured by typical indicators for younger workers, PBO also examines how the educational credentials of younger university graduates match their occupational requirements.
Women who start college in one of the natural or physical sciences leave in greater proportions than their male peers. The reasons for this difference are complex, and one possible contributing factor is the social environment women experience in the classroom. Using social network analysis, we explore how gender influences the confidence that college-level biology students have in each other’s mastery of biology. Results reveal that males are more likely than females to be named by peers as being
knowledgeable about the course content. This effect increases as the term progresses, and persists even after controlling for class performance and outspokenness. The bias in nominations is specifically due to males over-nominating their male peers relative to their performance. The over-nomination of male peers is commensurate with an overestimation of male grades by 0.57 points on a 4 point grade scale, indicating a strong male bias among males when assessing their classmates. Females, in contrast, nominated equitably based on student performance rather than gender, suggesting they lacked gender biases in filling out these surveys. These trends persist across eleven surveys taken in three different iterations of the same Biology course. In
every class, the most renowned students are always male. This favoring of males by peers could influence student self-confidence, and thus persistence in this STEM discipline.
Whenever I assign a long reading for homework or offer to peruse one collectively, a tremendous
sigh can be heard filling up the room. Groans of “Do we have to?” or “I’ve never read anything that
long in my life” punctuate the anticipated boredom, and everyone settles in to (grudgingly) do the
work.
For instructors, that isn’t a rare occurrence. Our roles require us teach basic tenets of literature, engage students in thinking about rhetoric and symbolism, and ideally guide them as they evolve into better writers and critical thinkers. However, as we try to reach students who are reading increasingly shorter and shorter pieces, or not at all, one question arises: Do we need to change how and what we teach in English courses, or is it already too late?
The overall participation rate in postsecondary education among those aged 18 to 20 years in December 1999 increased
steadily from 54% in December 1999 to 79% in December 2005. Looking more specifically at participation rates and status by type of institution attended, attendance at university almost doubled over the six years period from 21% in 1999 to 40% in
2005, while attendance at college / CEGEP went up from 26% in 1999 to 42% in 2005 among the YITS respondents. Growth in attendance at postsecondary institutions slowed between 2003 and 2005 as respondents grew out of the prime
postsecondary education age range.
Friendships can blossom naturally between scholars and students, but are they always problematic? Nina Kelly
navigates the boundaries.
So many of our conversations about social media revolve around statistics: two billion Facebook users, 1.5 billion YouTube users, 800 million Instagram users. On a single day we produce 525 million tweets, upload 54 million photos, and watch five billion videos. It is the size of those audiences and the scale of the activity that prove so enticing to academics keen to descend from the ivory tower.
According to Statistics Canada, 25% of Canadian college students drop out of post-secondary training. Many instructors comment that college students are increasingly hard-pressed to keep up with assignments and readings. Would improving student performance through Essential Skills (ES) training enable students to become more effective, and therefore less likely to drop out? In January 2012, Douglas College recruited students into the National Framework for Essential Skills Research Project. In total, 143 students were tested using the Test of Workplace Essential Skills (TOWES) and Canadian Literacy Evaluation (CLE). Of these, almost two-thirds tested below the minimum Level 3 recommended for success in work, learning, and life. Since only those that scored a Level 2 in Document Use were eligible to participate in the project, 66 students were invited to take part in weekly study sessions. Of these, 37 students chose to participate. Following 10 weeks of study sessions, students were tested again. The results indicate that almost all the students moved positively within Level 2 and 75% moved from Level 2 to Level 3 or Level 2(3).
Madeline Levine has been a practicing psychologist for twenty-five years, but it was only recently that she began to observe a new breed of unhappy teenager.
When a bright, personable fifteen-year-old girl, from a loving and financially comfortable family, came into her office with the word empty carved into her left forearm, Levine was startled. This girl and her message seemed to embody a disturbing pattern Levine had been observing. Her teenage patients were bright, socially skilled, and loved by their affluent parents. But behind a veneer of achievement and charm, many of these teens suffered severe emotional problems. What was going on?
Improving student outcomes is a primary goal of all postsecondary institutions. This report includes the first set of results for a research project that aims to understand the effectiveness of an intervention designed to improve postsecondary student success.
Student orientation and transition programs constitute an important part of Mohawk College’s Student Success Plan. The college endeavours to facilitate the development of an individualized “Future Ready Plan” for students to ensure they are prepared for their college experience by organizing goal-setting workshops during orientation and initial transition activities. Recent evidence suggests that an online, guided, writing-intensive approach to goal setting and self-authorship may have significant effects on student outcomes, such as retention and academic performance (Morisan et al., 2010; Schippers, Scheepers & Peterson, 2015).
Background/Context: This exploratory feasibility study assesses a mindfulness program in a fifth-grade classroom. The research discussed herein was built on a previous study targeted at a specific population of children within the classroom and assessed the benefits of teach-ing mindfulness meditation to 7- and 8-year-old children who met criteria for generalized anxiety disorder.
Purpose/Focus of Study: The primary aim of this exploratory study was to investigate the feasibility of a mindfulness training workbook written for young children. The mindfulness workbook uses a fictional character in a storybook format. The goal was to help children understand and access their own mindfulness within the classroom setting without instruc-tion by teachers and without using meditation techniques.
THE PAUCITY OF WOMEN IN SCIENCE HAS BEEN documented over and over again . A 2012 Report from the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology reported that a deficit of one million engineers and scientists will result in the United States if current rates of training in science, technology, math, and engineering (STEM) persist (President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, 2012) . It’s not hard to see how this hurts the United States’ competitive position—particularly if women in STEM meet more gender bias in the U .S . than do women elsewhere, notably in India and China .
Les étudiants français aiment le Québec : le coût de la vie y est abordable et les frais de scolarité peu élevés. En effet, depuis 1978, ils payaient le même tarif que les Québécois, contrairement aux autres étudiants étrangers, mais ce traitement de faveur a pris fin en septembre. Tous les nouveaux étudiants – ce qui exclut ceux qui ont déjà entamé leur baccalauréat et les étudiants aux cycles supérieurs – ont vu leur facture tripler, passant de 2 300 $ à 6 650 $ par année, soit le même montant que les étudiants venus des autres provinces canadiennes. Le gouvernement du Québec espère ainsi faire un profit de 30 millions annuellement.
According to researchers, better-educated parents generally provide their children with a more favourable learning nvironment, increasing the likelihood that they’ll pursue higher education. These parents also have higher educational aspirations for their children, reinforcing this dynamic. On the other hand,“first-generation” youth – those whose par- ents haven’t attended a
postsecondary education institution – are “less likely to plan for higher education, to be convinced of its benefits or to have above-average high school grades,” according to a report from the defunct Canadian Millennium Scholarship Foundation.
Public schools in the United States are almost as racially isolated today as they were 30 years ago and the majority of schools practice ability group-ing or academic tracking in ways that correlate with students’ race and socioeconomic status (SES). The articles in this set of special issues exam-ine these two organizational characteristics of schools and answer key questions: Does the racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic mix of a classroom or a school make a difference for the educational processes that take place in them? If composition is related to student outcomes, is the return to pre-1980 levels of racial isolation germane to either educational policy or practice?
The purpose of this document is to provide a high-level introduction to economic impact analysis (EIA) in a postsecondary education (PSE) context, written for a non-subject-expert audience of postsecondary institution stakeholders. It is intended to serve as broad context for individuals in the postsecondary education community who may wish to measure the economic impacts of their institutions or understand the methods, findings and limitations in studies done elsewhere. The information contained herein is of a general nature and is not intended to be an exhaustive, detailed quantitative textbook in actually conducting such studies, nor is it intended to address the circumstances of any specific individual or entity.
Some of Ontario’s universities may have to reconsider their plans to expand master’s and PhD programs as the province tries to encourage the sector to focus on training students who graduate with skills that are in demand.
Over the next few months, the Liberal government will begin negotiations with the province’s universities that will ultimately lead to a higher portion of funds being linked to each institution’s outcomes, such as graduation or employment rates.
As part of those talks, the government will hold discussions on how and where it provides grants for graduate-level programs. In an earlier round of agreements, the province had agreed to support a certain number of spots at each university. Universities that have not yet attracted enough students to meet those targets will have to explain how they plan to fill the spots or face losing them to programs that are running at capacity, sources said.
“905” Residents are most likely to identify jobs/unemployment” as the most important issue currently facing the Ontario government.
Higher education is experiencing an unprecedented shift in student demographics, forcing admissions officers to take a systematic approach to current recruitment practices, activities, and investments. In the article “Knocking at the College Door,” the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education reports that the U.S. is experiencing its first overall decline in the total number of domestic highschool graduates in more than a decade. The report also indicates that the pool of future college students is notably more ethnically and socioeconomically diverse, and often less prepared to succeed in college. As a result, institutions must rethink their approach to recruiting to identify and engage new target audiences, both domestically and internationally. And they must be prepared to support these students in new and different ways.