Tim Clydesdale’s The Purposeful Graduate: Why Colleges Must Talk to Students About Vocation outlines the results of a multiple campus initiative that encouraged students to critically examine how they might lead meaningful lives. The Lilly Endowment initially supported the initiative. When the Lilly funds came to an end, many campuses continued supporting these so-called pro-exploration programs, encouraged by the enthusiasm of students, faculty, staff, and alumni. This initiative and related programs explored the idea of vocation, defined not as a person’s main employment or occupation, but rather as a sense of purpose that gives meaning to their lives.
The term pro-exploration undoubtedly has religious connotations, a fact that is acknowledged early in the text. The initial Lilly funding targeted institutions with a religious affiliation in keeping with the mission and history of the Lilly Endowment. However, Clydesdale is careful to note that all students possess a vocational identity regardless of their religious identity. In an era
of workforce development, where vocational training correlates with specific skill sets and employment opportunities, the idea of exploring vocation as an individual passion seems to be a luxury. Yet the book positions pro-exploration programs as a nod to the original purpose of higher education: educating globally knowledgeable, capable, and responsive citizens. This goal is too often not realized and pro-exploration programs provide an active path towards this end.
Toronto, ON – With the end of Labour Day marking the unofficial end of summer, post-secondary students are setting their focus on school and their future after it. But according to an Ipsos poll conducted on behalf of RBC, many students are trying to please their parents through the process, and many parents under-estimate the degree to which this is happening.
Over the past decade or so, we have witnessed the rise of transnational higher education and a call to internationalise higher education in Asia. In an increasingly borderless world, some Asian countries have begun the quest to become regional educational hubs by establishing university cities and inviting overseas universities to implement offshore programmes or set up offshore campuses.
School leaders are faced with the daunting task of anticipating the future and making conscious adaptations to their practices, in order to keep up and to be responsive to the environment. To succeed in a rapidly changing and increasingly complex world, it is vital that schools grow, develop, adapt and take charge of change so that they can control their own futures.This paper will examine the tension that exists for school leaders in relation to data about their schools and their students, arguing that the explicit connections between data and large-scale reforms make it impossible to avoid a critical approach to data, drawing on research in Ontario and Manitoba in Canada, and examining parallels with evidence from research in England, to highlight the challenges involved in using data effectively in different political contexts and mandated policies on the uses of data.
Background/Context: Increasingly, researchers and educators have argued that alternative conceptions of Whiteness and White racial identity are needed because current conceptions have undermined, rather than strengthened, our critical pedagogies with White people. Grounded in critical Whiteness studies, and drawing especially on the writings of Ralph Ellison and Leslie Fiedler on what it means to be a White American, this article describes and theorizes White racial identity in ways that avoid oversimplification, but that at the same time never lose sight of White privilege and a larger White supremacist context.
Focus of Study: The research focused on the social production of racial identity for four White men and explored how their racial identities were dependent on relations with real and imagined racial others.
Work-integrated learning (WIL) has been identified as a key strategy for supporting Canada’s postsecondary education (PSE) system in responding to an increasingly dynamic, globalized, knowledge-based economy. Ontario in particular has been described as a “hot bed” of co-operative education (Ipsos Reid, 2010). However, while there is a common belief that WIL improves employment outcomes (see Gault, Redington & Schlager, 2000; Kramer & Usher, 2010), research on this topic has generally been specific to certain programs and types of WIL (Sattler, 2011).
As with higher-education institutions around the world, British Columbia (BC) and Ontario are increasingly faced with demographic and market pressures that erode the traditional difference between the university and nonuniversity
sectors (i.e., colleges and institutes). Key components that ensure these provinces’ institutions preserve their unique roles and differentiations in a changing context, partially driven by their governments, include research mandates, transparency in institutional governance, and strategic documents that resist the academic drift created by institutional isomorphism. Both governments are actively reshaping their post-secondary systems to align with national or regional economic needs, increasing access, streamlining degree completion, and responding to community pressure to have a university or a degree-granting institution. An analysis of the enabling legislation, government policy directives, and institutional documents of both provinces shows that there is a blurring in the distinction between colleges and universities, and the costs associated with this.
The focus of the article is to provide recommendations for how to design learning environments to foster
greater creativity. I bring together art education research, creativity research, and learning sciences research to provide recommendations for how to design learning environments to foster creative learning outcomes.
Essential ingredients to gaining buy-in. The obstacles? Where does accountability for student retention rest?
The promotion of mental health and well-being in our students, faculty, and staff is important to the University of Calgary. Given the symbiotic relation between health and education, Universities are increasingly recognized as places to promote the health and well-being of the people who learn, work and live within them. Research-intensive universities create cultures that demand high performance while promoting excellence and achievement, and also carry the risk of stress, stigma, and challenges to mental health. With the recognition of the importance of promoting mental health and intervening to address illness in a timely way, we join groups across Canada and beyond that are committed to enhancing the mental health of university students, faculty, and staff.
This article examines the career and college advice that high school counselors and vocational teachers give to the “forgotten half,” students who are unlikely to seek a 4-year college degree. Using interview data from 12 Midwestern high schools, we found that most counselors tend to encourage all students to attend college, regardless of the students’ interests or plans. Vocational teachers, on the other hand, showed evidence of a more nuanced view of the need for college. We found that vocational teachers in our sample fit in to four broad categories in terms of their advice and opinions about college: the college-for-all advocates, who push college regardless of circumstances; the diplomats, who try subtly to tell students that their plans are unrealistic; the straightforward, who try to make sure that students have realistic information; and the hands-off, who disavow any role in helping students make future plans. After an examination of these approaches, we conclude with a discus-sion of the implications of the various approaches for guiding students’ choices.
at the university of british columbia, Aboriginal students congregate in a First Nations Longhouse. At the University of Manitoba, senior managers now travel to Aboriginal communities to recruit students. The University of Saskatchewan’s College of Engineering runs outreach programs to engage Aboriginal youth well before they are of university age. At Lakehead University, the Native access program assists students in making a successful transition to university.
Canadian universities are increasingly creating resources and programs for Aboriginal students – including courses, outreach and financial assistance, as well as programs and physical spaces where Aboriginal students can find counselling, support and connection to their culture.
This paper presents the findings of a mixed-method case study conducted at the University of Guelph on the relationship between practice lecturing and graduate student self-efficacy. Building on the work of Boman (2013), and using surveys and individual interviews, we measured and characterized the perceived changes in graduate students’ self-efficacy in learner-centred lecturing. Our research question was: In what ways, if any, does microteaching contribute to participants’ perceived self-efficacy in learner-centred lecturing? Our results and discussion reveal that practice increases self-efficacy with respect to the design, facilitation, and assessment of learner-centred lectures, and is a vital component to graduate student teaching development programming
Canada is at a crucial point: we are well-positioned to manage the opportunities and challenges of the global economy, but despite existing efforts, we are falling behind in investing in people and encouraging research and innovation.
The need to improve postsecondary education and skills training in Canada is driven by global and local challenges. In the global marketplace, our key competitors are moving ahead with economic restructuring, investment in the education and skills of their
people, technological change, research and innovation and aggressive competition. The rapid growth of emerging economies, especially in China and India, along with high oil prices and the strong Canadian dollar, are posing substantial challenges for Canada's industries. To remain prosperous in the face of this competition, Canada needs a workforce that is qualified, flexible, adaptable, and innovative, with employees and employers who embrace lifelong learning.
This report covers the combined results for the summer 2014, autumn 2014, and spring 2015 Ohio State Graduation Survey administrations. An invitation to the Graduation Survey was sent to all undergraduate, Master's, and professional degree recipients who were scheduled to graduate in the summer, autumn, or spring terms of the 2014-2015 academic year.
What some universities are doing to weave indigenous peoples, cultures and knowledge into the fabric of their campuses.
• Fewer than one in five PhD graduates are employed as full-time university professors. The majority of PhDs are employed outside academia in a wide range of rewarding careers—such as in industry, government, and not-for- profit organizations.
• Many PhD graduates face challenging initial transitions to careers outside academia due to underdeveloped professional skills and networks, difficulty articulating the value of the skills gained through PhD studies to non-academic employers, and limited employer awareness or misperceptions about the potential value of PhD hires.
Released: 2015-11-06
After four months of little change, employment increased by 44,000 (+0.2%) in October, bringing the number of people employed in Canada to over 18 million for the first time. The unemployment rate declined by 0.1 percentage points to 7.0%.
Compared with 12 months earlier, employment was up 143,000 (+0.8%), with all of the gains in full-time work. During the same period, the total number of hours worked grew by 0.7%.
A new survey of 43,000 prospective international students echoes findings from other recent student
surveys that employability and career goals are a key motivation for study abroad
The survey notes, however, a growing openness to alternative forms of education beyond university
degrees as well as willingness to stay home to study if the quality of domestic programmes
improves
The accompanying study report observes fierce competition for students in a relatively small number
of markets, mainly in Asia, and calls for a more diversified – and evidence-based – approach to
recruitment
To my memory, I have never been physically afraid of a student.
The maddest I’ve ever seen a student was one calling me a “life ruining motherfucker,” when I told the student that passing the course was mathematically impossible.