Many post-secondary institutions in Canada over the past decade have made the transition from college to university status. The researchers on this team were hired in the midst of such a transition at one western Canadian institu- tion. As new faculty we were navigating the normal tides of adjusting to a new faculty position, but our induction occurred in a shifting
institutional context. Our research question, “What is the new faculty experience in a transitional institution?” guided a five-year focused ethnography, beginning as a self- study of the research team and expanding into 60 interviews with 31 partici- pants over several years. The results demonstrate that a more complex theory is required to reflect the experience of new faculty than has appeared previ- ously in the literature. We propose a framework of competing discourses.
Since 1981 the Canadian Federation of Students has been the progressive and democratic voice of Canada’s college and university students. Today the Federation comprises over 400,000 graduate, undergraduate and college students from over 60 students’ unions from Newfoundland and Labrador to British Columbia.
I'll be the first to admit that I haven't been teaching at my best this semester. Oh, there have been some good classes. And I think I'm finally getting a handle on the one group of students who don't want to speak up in class. But in general it feels like I'm going through the motions a little bit, not fully reaching as many students as I have in the past, talking too much from the front of the room. I have a theory as to why this is happening.
This is my fourth semester at the University of Iowa teaching rhetoric to mostly first-year students. After years of adjuncting, it's great to be able to teach the same course again and again. I'm able to learn from my mistakes and improve semester to semester. Even better, prepping for class takes less and less time each semester. I keep an archive of class activities from previous semesters in Scrivener, and I can quickly arrange a few of them to make up a whole class period. It's great.
Science, technology and innovation (ST&I) drive economic prosperity and fuel advances that improve societal well-being. A sustainable competitive advantage in ST&I is the path to success in the global knowledge-based economy.
Despite ongoing efforts to improve Canada’s lagging business innovation performance, it has continued to deteriorate. Canada has fallen further behind its global competitors on key performance indicators, reflected most tellingly in private-sector investment in research and development (R&D). Canada’s business enterprise expenditures on R&D (BERD) intensity (i.e., BERD as a share of gross domestic product) dropped further between 2006 and 2013, to the point where Canada ranked 26th among international competitors and sat at 36 percent of the threshold of the top five performing countries. Canada’s most profound and urgent ST&I challenge lies in increasing the number of firms that embrace and effectively manage innovation as a competitiveness and growth strategy.
It’s no breaking news that technology is here to stay. Among other things, this means that all schoolkids today, including your child, grandchild, niece and nephew, rely on their tech skills to excel at school. By the time they finish school, they will be required to implement a variety of tech skills on a daily basis at work.
As a parent, grandparent, aunt or uncle you now have to teach your child a new skill: tech intelligence. And the worst part is that by their teens, your kids are likely to surpass your tech-savviness, so you have to do it as early as you can
Among the most heartwarming experiences of my academic career has been serving on university committees. You don’t often hear a faculty member say that, but in this instance, the committees involved awards for teaching at the college and university level.
Determining the best instructors on a campus involves reading through numerous files. In doing so, one learns about the wonderful accomplishments of colleagues and the innovative things they are doing in their classrooms. Perhaps most compelling are the letters from students who describe the life-changing experiences that come from a particular teacher.
When considering LGBT rights and equality, many people nowadays think they’re the just thing to do. What’s often
overlooked is how such social changes actually benefit straight people as well.
Ontario firms and organizations are being challenged to increase productivity through innovation in order to compete on the fiercely competitive world stage and improve the quality of life of Ontarians. Yet, Ontario suffers from innovation gaps
that place its productivity and prosperity goals at risk.
There was a time not too long ago when the person with the most technical knowledge got promoted fastest. But hat’s often no longer the case.
Once someone gets promoted, technical skills become less necessary, and interpersonal ones become more critical in their place. You’ve probably already heard that emotional intelligence is a top factor in companies’ hiring decisions, but it plays a major role in how employers choose to promote their team members, too. This isn’t exactly news; in a 2011 Career Builder survey of more than 2,600 hiring managers and HR professionals, 71% said they valued emotional intelligence over IQ in general, and 75% said they’re typically more likely to promote an employee with high emotional intelligence and a comparatively lower IQ than one where that ratio is
flipped.
The onset of economic downturn in late 2008 and early 2009 has had a varied effect on the Canadian economy. While much has been made about Canada’s relatively stable performance during this time, persistently high levels of youth unemployment since the downturn reveal that for a large number of Canadian youth, the impacts of recession have been deeply felt. Panelists and participants at the symposium Employment Challenges for Youth in a Changing Economy pointed to a need to uncover what the specific impacts of downturn have been, why high youth unemployment rates persist, and what can be done by policymakers, the private sector, and academic and community institutions to help youth realize their full potential.
The goal of the ESI (Essential Skills for Immigrants), Pre-Arrival Pilot Project is to develop and test a model for assessing and developing the essential skills (ES) of trained professionals before they arrive in Canada.
This article contributes to the leterature on how teachers learn on the job and how schools and districts can support teaching learning to improve student learn ing and incorpirate changing standards and curricular materials into instructional practices.
It’s hard to believe that we have less than a month left until September. The beginning of the month of August marks the acceptable time to get ready for back to school. For many this may simply involve picking up some pencils, notebooks, a new backpack, and possibly some fresh new kicks.
However, for those joining the 447,000 Ontarian undergrads, this checklist goes way beyond object necessities. Being a fifth year student, I pretty much got the drill locked down when preparing for the upcoming year. Look over my class schedule and plan accordingly, check in on my finances and budget for the upcoming year, and finally list out methods in which I plan to upkeep my personal wellness. At this point, I wouldn’t say I’m an expert in fulfilling each step, but it is nice to be moving towards a general direction. This definitely was not the case in my first year.
David Kolb published his learning styles model in 1984 from which he developed his learning style inventory.
Kolb's experiential learning theory works on two levels: a four stage cycle of learning and four separate learning styles. Much of Kolb’s theory is concerned with the learner’s internal cognitive processes.
Kolb states that learning involves the acquisition of abstract concepts that can be applied flexibly in a range of situations. In Kolb’s theory, the impetus for the development of new concepts is provided by new experiences.
The purpose of this chapter is to explore some concepts, trends, and projections in education regarding race and educational leadership. Toward this end, I will present information on two aspects of race—phenotype and cultural oppression—paying special attention to the multiple contexts in which these phenomena are manifest in U.S. society.
Religion. Faith. Spirituality. Some faculty may view these phenomena as significant influences on the human experience, others as challenges to intellectualism and the scientific method. There are also academics who struggle with their position, perceiving the power embedded in these ideologies and practices as potentially beneficial as well as restrictive. Most would agree that theology elicits a range of strong and often-personal reactions. Why, then, would faculty teaching secular studies courses want to raise the topic of religion in their classes when they could play it safe and leave the subject entirely to the specialists, their colleagues in religious studies?
Rates of depression and anxiety among young people in America have been increasing steadily for the past 50 to 70 years. Today, by at least some estimates, five to eight times as many high school and college students meet the criteria for diagnosis of major depression and/or anxiety disorder as was true half a century or more ago. This increased psychopathology is not the result of changed diagnostic criteria; it holds even when the measures and criteria are constant.
Interest from Americans looking to study in Canada has increased sharply since the election of Donald Trump as the
next U.S. president, Canadian universities say.
For example, the University of Toronto’s enrolment website received 10 times more traffic from computers based in the United States on the day after the election than on the day before, said Ted Sargent, the school’s vice-president international.
On Nov. 8, the site received a typical 1,000 visits, Sargent said. On Nov. 9, the number jumped to 10,000.
As international linkages are more and more visible in everyday life and work, many countries have articulated an ambition to expose students more extensively to an international experience during their studies.
Evidence indeed indicates that spending a semester or a year abroad tends to increase inter-cultural understanding and sensitivity of students. It tends to lead to internationally oriented careers. Furthermore, students themselves are overwhelmingly positive about their experiences abroad, claiming personal growth and development through the experience.
he government of Ontario went to some effort to showcase its planned Ontario Student Grant in its recent budget, nd with good reason: it’s an intelligent, progressive reform of student assistance, in all the ways that its previous eforms weren’t.
ather than offset the cost of tuition for every student, rich or poor, as under the province’s ill-starred “30 Per Cent ff” plan, the new plan would roll a number of existing grants and tax credits into a single grant targeted at those ost in need. Families earning less than $50,000 would essentially be tuition free, with lesser reductions for those on incomes between $50,000 to $85,000.