As I've mentioned before, my 7-year-old daughter takes piano lessons. One of the biggest challenges has been getting her to play for herself, not for her parents. Often I'll ask her how she thought she played a song and I'll get a shrug in return. She plays, but she doesn't listen to herself play. That lack of listening, I fear, is a sign that she's just playing because we're making her.
Many of the teaching tips I've suggested in this column have been meant to encourage your students to take responsibility for their learning. For active-learning strategies to really work, I've argued, we need students to buy in completely to our courses. They need to want to learn for themselves — not for us or a grade. To accomplish that, we can invite students to take some control over the syllabus. We can turn course policies into collaborative projects, in which students have an equal say in determining important aspects of the course. We can encourage students to articulate their goals for the course, rather than just expect them to meet ours. And we can design our courses to make sure we haven't foreclosed any of those possibilities.
According to a new survey of more than 4,000 undergraduates at 10 community colleges across the nation, half of all community college students are struggling with food and/or housing insecurity. Fully 20 percent are hungry and 13 percent are homeless. These numbers are startling and indicate the need for a multi-pronged, comprehensive set of institutional, state, and local policies to alleviate the barriers presented by poverty, so as to improve educational success.
Immigration is a major driver of Canada’s population growth.1 Over the last century, millions of men, women, and children have travelled from abroad to work, study, and live in Canada. Those who are granted the right to live in Canada permanently comprise Canada’s immigrant population. In 2014, it is estimated that over 260,000 people immigrated to Canada.2,3 These newcomers form a diverse group, contributing to the country’s richly multicultural character. In recent decades, changing trends in immigration have shifted the demographic characteristics of the immigrant population in Canada. This chapter explores these trends from a gender-based perspective.
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Abstract - The earliest studies of undergraduate retention in the United States occurred in the
1930s and focused on what was referred to at the time as student mortality: the failure of students to graduate (Berger & Lyon, 2005). Historically higher education research has had an eye toward pathology with a focus on repairing students’ problems (Shushok & Hulme, 2006). To this end, much research exists on why students fail to persist as opposed to why they succeed. Strength-based approaches to the study of undergraduate retention involve studying successful students. Studying
what is right with students may illuminate new aspects of successful student experiences which can in turn be applied to supporting all students. This paper will provide a brief historical overview of undergraduate retention followed by factors commonly related to undergraduate retention. Finally, an overview of the recent application of motivational theories to understand undergraduate retention including attribution theory, expectancy theory, goal setting theory, self-efficacy
beliefs, academic self-concept, motivational orientations and optimism will be provided. Considerations for the future of motivational theories in undergraduate retention will be discussed with particular emphasis on the value of strength-based approaches to study and practice.
This paper presents an overview of the situation of youth in OECD countries since the onset of the financial crisis focusing primarily on describing the characteristics and living conditions of youth not in employment, education or training (the ‘NEETs’). It also provides data on the availability, coverage and effectiveness of income-support policies for young people, and
summarises available evidence on the impact of interventions that aim at improving the social, education and employment situation of the most disadvantaged youth. Due to the paper’s explicit focus on the hardest-to-place, most disadvantaged youth, the range of policies covered is broader than in earlier studies on the same topic, including various social benefits and in-kind services targeted at this group. The paper shows that NEET rates have not yet recovered from the crisis. There are large differences in youth unemployment and inactivity across countries, and these differences were further exacerbated by the recession. Reducing NEET rates is a great challenge for governments, as youth who remain jobless for long periods typically come from more disadvantaged backgrounds, have low levels of educational attainment, and are in many cases inactive. There is substantial evidence, however, that even the most disadvantaged youth can benefit from a varietyof targeted interventions, including for instance special education programmes and mentoring.
Using well-known tenets of student development and student success as a central organizing premise, it is suggested that higher education curriculum should include outcomes related to the development of students as competent, lifelong learners. This imperative is driven by demands on higher education to prepare graduates for complex, dynamic, and information based social and occupational experiences. Curricula that prepare students with appropriate knowledge and skills to manoeuvre
a changed and changing society is in order. Labelled a learner-centred curriculum, this approach includes, but goes beyond, the already explored learner-centred instruction (Lieberman, 1994; McCombs & Whistler, 1997; SCCOE, 2000; Soifer, Young & Irwin, 1989) to content and skill development regarding the mechanisms of learning and growth.
Small and simple ways to improve your academic writing
A number of programs are exploring options for applied scholarship within the PhD.
This three-year study explored the perceptions of pre-service candidates in a five-year concurrent teacher education program who participated in a peer mentorship practicum model. In this practicum model teacher candidates were placed as a dyad, with each novice first-year candidate paired with a second- or third-year candidate who acted as a peer mentor. Ideally, the pair was then placed in the same classroom under the supervision of the same hosting associate teacher. However, each year
constraints presented by candidates requesting different geographic areas for their placements and/or a lack of associate teachers in some locations who were willing to host two candidates (i.e., a novice and a mentor) necessitated placing between 5 and 8% of candidates in another classroom in the same school as their mentorship partner or in another school in close geographic proximity. The objective of the peer mentorship model was to foster collaborative practice between novice and mentor candidates, which was perceived to hold the potential to provide additional support for both candidates.
Arguably, the greatest barrier to the academic development and functioning of Ontario's twenty-two Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology (CAATs) is the hostile and suspicion laden relationship which exists between management and the union which represents the academic staff of the CAATs - the Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU). This was the conclusion of the commission on workload in the CAATs which I chaired in 1985 (IARC, 1985) and was corroborated in a study of CAAT governance by a Special Adviser to the Minister of Colleges and Universities the following year (Pitman, 1986). An indication of the degree of concern felt by the Ontario Government regarding managementunion relations in the CAATs is that the largest (in terms of time and resources) public commission on the CAATs to date has been the Colleges Collective Bargaining Commission (Gandz, 1988).
This document supersedes The Full-Day Early Learning–Kindergarten Program (Draft Version, 2010–11). Beginning in September 2016, all Kindergarten programs will be based on the expectations and pedagogical approaches outlined in this document.
ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS FOR THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
Ontario elementary schools strive to support high-quality learning while giving every child the opportunity to learn in the way that is best suited to the child’s individual strengths and needs. The Kindergarten program is designed to help every child reach his or her full potential through a program of learning that is coherent, relevant, and age appropriate. It recognizes that, today and in the future, children need to be critically literate in order to synthesize information, make informed decisions, communicate effectively, and thrive in an ever-changing global community. It is important for children to be connected to the curriculum, and to see themselves in what is taught, how it is taught, and how it applies to the world at large. The curriculum recognizes that the needs of learners are diverse and helps all learners develop the knowledge, skills, and perspectives they need to become informed, productive, caring, responsible, and active citizens in their own communities and in
the world.
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Since their creation in 1965, Ontario’s colleges have played a pivotal role in providing PSE opportunities to all residents (Rae, 2005). Often located in smaller and more geographically dispersed communities than Ontario’s universities, colleges were intended to be more responsive to and reflective of these communities (Canadian Council on Learning, 2010) and to work closely with business and labour sectors to ensure programming that produced employment-ready graduates (Rae, 2005).
Education spending on public schools
in Canada increased by $19.1 billion (45.9 percent) between 2003/04 and 2012/13, from $41.6 billion to $60.7 billion.
Postsecondary education in Ontario has seen a number of labour strikes over the past few decades, including some protracted, high‐profile work stoppages. These labour disputes can impact students negatively in a number of ways, yet there has been limited research exploring the psychosocial and academic impact of work stoppages on university students and possible strategies to minimize these effects. This report outlines the findings of a three‐study project designed to expand on the limited, existing research in two ways. The first study analyzed data from a rare longitudinal survey, assessing changes in student responses to the 2008–2009 York University strike by teaching assistants and contract faculty over the course of the work stoppage. The second and third studies adopted a mixed‐methods approach, using focus group interviews and a retrospective online survey to understand students’ experiences of the 2015 labour strikes at the University of Toronto and York University.
The 2012-13 Senate Academic Planning Task force was asked to explore "virtualization and online learning" at Queen's. In the early days, we became familiar with the history of the discussions and identified a number of controversies that had made it difficult to reach a consensus on the role of online learning at Queen's. As new and familiar themes emerged, we realized that the issue of online learning is far more complex than it had seemed, reaching into areas such as course quality, curriculum
planning, staffing, resource allocation, unit autonomy, and academic freedom. We hope that the report provided will address many of the issues about online learning that have been raised within the community. Recognizing that some of our recommendations will fall short of unanimous agreement from the community, we hope that the report will be received as balanced and progressive.
The more open universities are about where their PhDs are getting jobs, the better equipped current students are to
forge their own career paths.
Well-written course outcomes and lesson objectives are the critical foundation of a successful course. Course outcomes and lesson objectives are essential from a standards alignment standpoint, as well as for an overall quality measure of the course.
A learning outcome is a formal statement of what students are expected to learn. Learning outcome statements refer to specific knowledge, practical skills, areas of professional development, attitudes, higher-order thinking skills, etc. that faculty members expect students to develop, learn, or master during a course (Suskie, 2004). Learning outcomes are also often referred to as “expected learning outcomes”, “student learning outcomes”, or “learning outcome statements”.
Beliefs about language learning and teaching have intrigued applied linguists since the mid-1980s starting with the pioneering work of Elaine Horwitz (1985) and Anita Wenden (1986). Since then, the interest in this topic in the field of Applied Linguistics has increased, with the publications of books on the theme (Bernat 2009; Borg, 2006; Kalaja & Barcelos, 2003) as well as several thesis, dissertations and journal articles. As a construct, beliefs have eluded researchers since the beginning being labeled as "messy" (Pajares, 1992) and complex. Several terms have been used to refer to beliefs such as folklinguistic theories of learning (Miller & Ginsberg, 1995), representations (Riley, 1994), metacognitive knowledge (Wenden, 1986), learning culture (Riley, 1997), the culture of learning languages (Barcelos, 1995), and culture of learning (Cortazzi & Jin, 1996), teacher cognition (Borg, 2003), and BAK (Beliefs-Assumption-Knowledge) (Woods, 1996). This profusion of terms is not necessarily negative. To quote Freeman (1991), "the issue is not the pluralism of labels, but the recognition of the phenomenon itself"
There’s mounting evidence suggesting that student evaluations of teaching are unreliable. But are these evaluations, commonly referred to as SET, so bad that they’re actually better at gauging students’ gender bias and grade expectations than they are at measuring teaching effectiveness? A new paper argues that’s the case, and that evaluations are biased against female instructors in particular in so many ways that adjusting them for that bias is impossible.
Moreover, the paper says, gender biases about instructors -- which vary by discipline, student gender and other factors -- affect how students rate even supposedly objective practices, such as how quickly assignments are graded. And these biases can be large enough to cause more effective instructors to get lower teaching ratings than instructors who prove less effective by other measures, according to the study based on analyses of data sets from one French and one U.S. institution.
There are no easy answers for California's two-year college system as it faces an unprecedented decision to move to a new accreditor, while also debating how to change the current one.