Australia’s vocational education sector is a mess. Tightening regulation and tweaking some of the settings will contain the damage, but these measures alone will not address deeper problems in the sector. Real, sustained improvement requires rethinking the funding and regulatory models but also the purpose and idea of vocational education.
Numerous articles and op-eds encourage academics to be more active online. They generally argue that being on social media offers many benefits, including enabling scholars to network with colleagues, share their research and conduct public scholarship.
Often such advice is good. But such hypothetical opportunities stand in stark contrast to experiences of harassment that some academics report when they go online. One public scholar for example, recently told us that she received a Facebook message following a TV appearance.
Few counseling programs directly address the importance of self-care in reducing stress and burnout in their curricula. A course entitled Mind/Body Medicine and the Art of Self-Care was created to address personal and professional growth opportu-nities through self-care and mindfulness practices (meditation, yoga, qigong, and conscious relaxation exercises). Three methods of evaluating this 15-week 3-credit mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) course for counseling students indicated positive changes for students in learning how to manage stress and improve coun-seling practice. Students reported positive physical, emotional, mental, spiritual, and interpersonal changes and substantial effects on their counseling skills and thera-peutic relationships. Information from a focus group, qualitative reports, and quan-titative course evaluations were triangulated; all data signified positive student responses to the course, method of teaching, and course instructor. Most students reported intentions of integrating mindfulness practices into their future profession.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex, asexual, and ally (LGBTQQIAA) students are not commonly discussed in teacher education programs. Issues related to LGBTQQIAA learners need to be addressed in schools and in teacher education programs. Extant research shows that LGBTQQIAA students often face hostile school climates, with few resources and little support, which can lead to higher levels of absence and truancy, lower levels of academic achievement, and numerous negative health outcomes. This article uses autoethnographic methods to examine the experiences of an activist group working with preservice teachers, teacher educators, and other social justice advocates on a long-term service project for undergraduate teacher candidates aimed at increasing recognition of and giving voice to K–12 LGBTQQIAA students’ experiences. Issues related to agency and resistance are addressed, and implications for teacher preparation programs are discussed.
Throughout this past decade, scholars and higher education practitioners have asked: Who will lead the nation’s community colleges in the future? This question is especially critical today since at no previous time in the nation’s history have community colleges confronted such an array of monumental challenges. Presidents and key leaders are departing in droves; in a recent survey by the AACC (2012), as many as 40% of presidents plan to retire within the next five years. This phenomenon occurs at a time when our colleges are faced with a variety of previously unimagined threats, many resulting from the impact of conflicting socio-economic changes. Further, colleges must address the American education and skills gap in an effort to meet the emerging needs of the new knowledge economy, while simultaneously struggling with the task of educating those students with the greatest needs during a time of dwindling funds.
This report presents the findings of a one-year study of the creation and implementation of a new Français course at the University of Ottawa, offered as a pilot project in 2012-2013. The course was created at the request of francophone first-year students from regions of Canada where the French language is in a minority context. These students reported experiencing difficulty in bridging the gap between the literacy skills they acquired in secondary school and the academic literacy skills
required of them to succeed in the mandatory foundational French courses (FRA courses) and other courses taught in French (Lamoureux et al., 2013).
In 2008-09, Lakehead University undertook a study to examine the effectiveness of its Gateway program, an academic intervention program offered to a select population of incoming students. The Gateway program at Lakehead is designed for students who exhibit academic potential but who do not meet the traditional entrance requirements of the university at the time of application. The program not only provides access to a university education but also provides support for success. The intentional and holistic programming provided to students admitted through the Gateway program includes special academic support programming and mandatory academic advising.
This paper analyzes recent developments in e-learning technologies with a particular focus on the Canadian post-secondary education system. Using OUSA‟s four pillars of affordability, accessibility, accountability, and quality, e-learning technologies are analyzed for the potential benefit they may bring to the Canadian post-secondary education system as well as the effects existing technologies have already had. While a number of serious concerns persist, the conclusion is drawn that e-learning technologies, with the proper implementation, can provide great benefits to learners, institutions, and society at large. A number of e-learning enhancement strategies for institutions follow this analysis.
September 1987 and Blaine Favel was sitting in a lecture hall at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont., a long way from his home on Poundmaker Cree Nation, northwest of Saskatoon. Already he had an advocate’s leanings honed from growing up in a family of chiefs and protected by the thick skin he’d developed facing racial intolerance in Saskatchewan. So when his professor opened her lecture on property law with the pronouncement that all land in Canada belonged to the Queen, Mr. Favel’s hand shot up. “I asked her, ‘How did the Queen get the land?’”
The question left the rookie professor so flustered that she cancelled the rest of the class to reconsider her curriculum. Some students hissed at Mr. Favel, but he had made his point. When class resumed the next day, the professor began by teaching about aboriginal title.
KSU redefined the MOOC value proposition through collaboration of university leadership and faculty. The new proposition shifts measures of success beyond just course completion to include measures that benefit students, faculty, and the institution. Students benefitted through access to open educational resources, the acquisition of professional learning units at no cost, and the potential of college credit at a greatly reduced cost. Academic units benefited through a mechanism to attract students and future revenue while the university benefited through digital impressions, branding, institutionally leveraged scalable learning environments, streamlined credit evaluation processes and expanded digital education.
Since the late 1990s, teacher professional development models have shifted from a focus on individual improvement to collaboration as a means to foster support, information, and resource exchange between teachers. Following this shift, researchers began to use social network research methodology in the early 2000s to reveal the ways in which informal relationships affect teachers’ practices. This chapter reviews current literature on teachers’ social networks and teacher quality to describe the ways in which social networks mediate teachers’ practices. It provides detailed examples from two studies on teachers’ social networks and suggests ways that scholars can incorporate the constructs of social capital and social networks into large-scale research on teacher quality.
One of the most maddening things about contemporary book publishing is the niche that a new book is supposed to occupy. This niche is not an abstraction: it corresponds to the actual place where a book will land in the bookstore. Consider, then, an analytical book about contemporary parents: is it a parenting book, which will then end up next to the how-to book on toilet training? Maybe. But if the book doesn’t offer advice, some would say it doesn’t belong there. Then does it belong on the “sociology” shelf, where no parent will find it?
An independent arbitrator will soon hear a case at Queen’s University that raises serious questions about protection of faculty who allege colleagues’ academic misconduct.
The university’s office of the provost has found Professor Morteza Shirkhanzadeh guilty of workplace harassment in a dispute that dates back a decade. As a result, he is banned from entering three university buildings and communicating with certain administrators, professors and the board of trustees.
There is no substantial gap in what we need to know in order to improve schools and student learning and achievement on a very wide scale. In this brief paper I will (1) encapsulate what we obviously know; (2) what we should know but fail to understand (which thus makes finding the solution less likely); and (3) identify the action implications for teachers themselves, principals, district leaders, and system leaders.
Background/Context:Policy discussions in the U.S. and abroad have become increasingly studded with reference to the results of international tests like PISA. Unlike most assessments, PISA is not designed to measure whether students have mastered a particular school curriculum but rather provide a measure of students ability to meet future challenges irrespective of where in the world they live. Though growing in influence, the concept of a contextless form of accountability has an important antecedent in the history of American education: the Tests of General Educational Development (GED), which were developed in the 1940s to assist the transition of American World War II servicemen and women.
This paper reports the results of an analysis of persistence in post-secondary education (PSE) for college students in Ontario based on the extremely rich YITS-B dataset that has been used for other recent studies at the national level. We calculate hazard or transition rates (and cumulative transition rates) with respect to those who i) graduate, ii) switch programs, and
iii) leave PSE (perhaps to return later). We also look at the reasons for switching and leaving, subsequent re-entry rates among leavers, and graduation and persistence rates once switchers and re-entrants are taken into account. These patterns are then probed in more detail using hazard (regression) models where switching and leaving are related to a variety of individual
characteristics, family background, high school outcomes, and early pse experiences. Student pathways are seen to be varied. Perhaps the single most important finding is that the proportion of students who either obtain a degree or continue to be enrolled somewhere in the PSE system in the years after entering a first program remains close to the 80 percent mark for the five years following entry. Seventy-one percent of students graduate within five years of starting, while another 6 percent are still in the PSE system.
The leadership literature suffers from a lack of theoretical integration (Avolio, 2007, American Psychologist, 62, 25–33). This article addresses that lack of integration by developing an integrative trait-behavioral model of leadership effectiveness and then examining the relative validity of leader traits (gender, intelligence,
personality) and behaviors (transformational-transactional, initiating structure-consideration) across 4 leadership effectiveness criteria (leader effectiveness, group performance, follower job satisfaction, satisfaction with leader). Combined, leader traits and behaviors explain a minimum of 31% of the variance in leadership effectiveness
criteria. Leader behaviors tend to explain more variance in leadership effectiveness than leader traits, but results indicate that an integrative model where leader behaviors mediate the relationship between leader traits and effectiveness is warranted.
Abstract
Through the use of mixed qualitative and quantitative methods, the current study explored the impact of postsecondary study on the intimate relationships and school experiences of partnered mature students. Quantitative regression analyses indicated that parental status, family support, partner support, and sexual desire significantly predicted relationship satisfaction, while family support and partner support significantly predicted sexual satisfaction. Age and sexual desire predicted school satisfaction for women only. Through qualitative thematic analysis it was determined that not having enough time, feeling
too tired, and being stressed negatively impacted sexual satisfaction, while experiencing personal growth was described as both beneficial and problematic. Some participants reported using sex to aid in their academic success by way
of offering a distraction or reducing stress. We discuss possible ways that postsecondary institutions, through their campus programs, can better address the impact school may have on mature students’ intimate relationships.
Résumé
Grâce à l’utilisation d’une variété de méthodes qualitatives et quantitatives, l’étude suivante étudie l’effet des études post-secondaires sur les relations intimes et les expériences scolaires des étudiants adultes en couple. La régression des analyses quantitatives indique que le statut parental, le soutien familial, l’appui du partenaire et les désirs sexuels prédisent significativement la satisfaction à l’égard des relations personnelles, tandis que le soutien familial et l’appui du partenaire prédisent de façon significative la satisfaction sexuelle. L’âge prédit aussi la satisfaction académique chez les hommes et
les femmes, de même que le désir sexuel chez les hommes seulement. En utilisant une analyse thématique qualitative, il a été déterminé que le fait de ne pas disposer d’assez de temps, la fatigue et le stress ont des répercussions négatives sur la satisfaction sexuelle. Enfin, une croissance personnelle a été décrite comme étant à la fois bénéfique et problématique. Certains participants ont déclaré avoir utilisé le sexe pour aider à leurs réussites scolaires afin de s’offrir une distraction ou de diminuer leur stress. Nous discutons des moyens possibles pour les institutions post-secondaires de mieux traiter, par
le truchement de leurs programmes, l’effet que peuvent avoir les études sur les relations intimes des étudiants adultes.
In this paper we utilize interview data to explore the workings of a college–community partnership program that delivers tuition-free, for-credit courses to low-income adult students in neighbourhood-based settings. Addressing the interplay of individual and structural barriers on the educational readiness of students, our findings explore how the program builds participants’
confidence and self-belief, and how the neighbourhood-based delivery model encourages their engagement with post-secondary education (PSE). We find that the value of embedding PSE capacity and resources in low-income communities lies not only in its potential to engage adult learners, but also in how it nurtures a greater sense of community integration and social inclusion. We
conclude by suggesting that our study provides a useful foundation for institutions elsewhere aiming to recalibrate and extend their community outreach strategies when seeking to promote post-secondary access and engagement for low-income populations.
Technology moves at lightning speed, Facebook’s algorithm has new rules daily and marketing strategies are ever evolving as the audiences we all seek to reach become increasingly fragmented. And yet, some of us find ourselves
in workplaces where the prevailing sentiment is don’t rock the boat—if it worked in the past, let’s not make any
major changes.
If the culture at your college is all about not fixing what’s not broken, you may have a challenge ahead of you as you
try to suggest and implement some needed change. Turn that challenge into an opportunity with these tips for
shaking things up in a change-averse environment: