Along with the massification of higher education and increasing costs, the pressure on institutions to retain all students to degree completion has been mounting (Crosling, Thomas, and Heagney, 2008). On an international level, for the first time in
the nation’s history, the Unites States is falling behind other nations in terms of the percentage of the population who is educated (National Science Board, 2008). Nationally, obtaining a higher education degree has been linked to economic growth (Baum and Ma, 2007), which may be particularly poignant during the current recession. At an institutional level, the costs of not retaining students are substantial, both financially and in terms of prestige (Crosling, Thomas, and Heagney, 2008).
Ontario students are supportive of the provincial government’s recent decision to create an Ontario Online Institute. This endeavour could significantly advance access, especially for traditionally underrepresented groups facing financial, physical, social, cultural, and geographic barriers which prevent them from attending a traditional post-secondary institution. Moreover, such an Institute could provide increased flexibility for the thousands of current students looking to blend online learning with an in-class education.
Love it or hate it, social media is no passing fad -- and increasingly it’s intertwined with more traditional academic platforms. Numerous scholars have popular blogs, for example, on which they test out new ideas and share research. Other academics have made names for themselves on Twitter or Facebook -- both to the benefit and detriment of their respective careers.
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.
Employers are uniquely positioned to encourage positive financial behaviors in their early career workers, say human resources leaders at three universities.
“By leveraging the full range of the institution’s resources,” says Laurita Thomas, associate vice=president for human resources at the University of Michigan (U-M), “employers can create the right climate to promote Gen Y’s financial wellbeing.” Here are some of the ways, according to Thomas, that employers can set early career workers up for success:
Over recent years, it has become increasingly common for students to pursue multiple pathways through the postsecondary education system. Current research in Canada shows that the movement of students both between and within colleges and universities is becoming more typical (e.g., Youth in Transition Survey, Statistics Canada). In Ontario’s colleges, this trend is evidenced by the fact that current students are more likely to have previous postsecondary experience than in the past. In 2007-08, approximately 37 per cent of college students reported having some previous postsecondary experience; this experience could include an incomplete or a complete credential from either college or university (Student Satisfaction Survey, MTCU). Many of these students were pursuing a second credential, as 11 per cent had previously completed a college diploma, and nine per cent had a university degree. In fact, pursuing multiple credentials is the intended goal of many postsecondary students. For example, in 2007-08, 21 per cent of college students indicated that their main goal in enrolling in college was “to prepare for further college or university study,” a percentage which has increased significantly from 16 per cent of students in 2000-01. In addition, many students make the decision to continue their studies while still attending college, or shortly after graduation. The Graduate Satisfaction Survey (MTCU) is administered to college graduates six months after graduation and includes questions on further education. The most recent survey showed that more than 26 per cent of the 2006-07 graduates were continuing their education within six months of graduation. Many recent college graduates choose to attend university; the percentage of graduates enrolled in university within six months of graduation increased substantially from five per cent for the 2001-02 graduates to nine per cent for 2006-07 graduates.
The boundaries between vocational and academic post compulsory education have been blurred by students combining vocational and academic studies and by students transferring increasingly between the two types of education. Institutions are also blurring the boundaries between the sectors by increasingly offering programs from two and sometimes three sectors. In contrast, teachers seem more entrenched than ever in their own sector. This article reports a project on the preparation of Australian teachers of vocational education. It examines the prospect of integrating the preparation of teachers in post compulsory education to teach in schools, vocational education institutions and higher education institutions. It argues that greater differentiation between different types of vocational teachers and vocational teacher preparation can support the development of a continuum along which it would be possible to establish points of commonality with the preparation of school and higher education teachers.
UBC dataset on PhD outcomes holds key for prospective graduate students to make an informed choice about obtaining PhD training.
Last week, I received an email from my PhD alma mater UBC and instead of a request for donations or an invitation to an event with the expectation of soliciting a donation later, I was treated to a new dataset emerging from the west coast. UBC has collated responses from its PhD graduates between 2005 and 2013 (myself included!) into an outcomes website and document. This is a great move for a number of reasons, but perhaps most importantly, it holds the key for prospective graduate students to make an informed choice about obtaining PhD training – a comprehensive set of data showing what those who have come before you have done.
A lot of Ontario teens are feeling anxious and depressed, and their numbers have grown. That’s the take-away from a large-scale study that’s been tracking students in the province for the last 20 years. One-third of the students in the survey were found to have moderate to severe symptoms of psychological distress – an alarming leap from two years earlier, when only one-quarter of students met the same threshold.
Now comes the hard part: figuring out why high schoolers are increasingly describing their lives as overwhelming, anxiety-inducing and stress-filled, and how to help them early because the higher up the grades you go, the worse the situation tends to get. Grade 12s, for instance, were four times more likely than Grade 7s to report high levels of stress, and more than twice as likely to rate their mental health as fair or poor. Older teens were significantly more likely to think about suicide. Yet they were no more likely than younger teens to seek help.
Background/Context: Despite burgeoning racial and ethnic heterogeneity within the United States, many students grow up in racially
homogeneous schools and neighborhoods. This lack of interracial interaction appears to play a substantial role in shaping students racial attitudes and world views upon entering college.
Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study: The aim of the study was to examine the relationships among multiple forms of precollege exposure to racial/ethnic diversity and racial attitudes (e.g., perceptions of workplace discrimination) upon entering college.
The quality of students’ relationships with teachers and peers is a fundamental substrate for the development of academic engagement and achievement. This chapter offers teachers and researchers a motivational framework that explains how positive
and negative student–teacher and student–peer relationships are sustained in the classroom, and strategies for creating solutions to improve relationships.
I was looking at one of my old teaching and learning books, Kenneth Eble’s 1988 book The Craft of Teaching. Some parts are now a bit dated, but many are not. It was one of those books that greatly influenced how a lot of us thought about teaching and learning back then.
But I found something in the book that was even older. Eble includes a discussion of and several quotes from an 1879 book actually the ninth edition) by Josiah Fitch titled The Art of Questioning. Eble writes that it’s a small book and was originally aimed at British Sunday school teachers.
People abused by angry discipline as children, may tend to abuse or overly punish other people or themselves for perceived wrongs in their adult lives. Passive and aggressive personality types are often attracted to each other. In some individuals, aggressive or passive personality traits may be genetically inherited. The aggressive personality may feel weakened by having guidelines or boundaries for anger. Anger is a normal human emotion, and these guidelines can help express anger in a healthy way:
“Any time a student learns, at least in part, at a supervised brick-and-mortar location away from home and, at least in part, through online delivery with some element of student control over time, place, path, and/or pace. The modalities along each student’s learning path within a course or subject are connected to provide an integrated learning experience.”
The most significant piece of the definition is the “element of student control” highlighting the flowing instructional models to enable improved student-centered learning, giving students greater than before control over the time, place, path, and/or the step of their learning tracks.
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 contributes to the literature on how teachers learn on the job anbd how schools and istricts can support teacher learning to improve student learning and incorpiorate changing standards and curricular materials into instructional practices.
Now here’s an argument I haven’t heard before: Improving your instruction makes it easier for students to learn. If it’s easier for them to learn, they won’t work as hard in the course, and that means they could learn less. It’s called offsetting behavior and we can’t ask students about it directly because it would be disingenuous for them to admit to studying less when learning becomes easier.
This paper provides an overview of research on higher education leadership and management from the 20th and into the 21st century. It highlights the development of specific research in higher education contexts as well as the relationship between research in the management sciences in general on which higher education researchers, practitioners and policy makers have drawn, not always with beneficial consequences. The paper draws particularly on the work of Bensimon et al (1989) and Kezar et al (2006) in the US as well as research in the UK over the last quarter century, including recent research commissioned by the Leadership Foundation for Higher Education in the UK.
As university classes start up this week, officials are already working hard to stave off a major contributor to poor mental health among students — loneliness.
A new study of Canadian university students found more than 66 per cent reported feeling "very lonely" in the past year.
And the problem was worse for female students, with nearly 70 per cent feeling very lonely at least once in the last year, compared with male students at 59 per cent.
This article examines regional differences in the math and reading skills of immigrant children aged 15 based on data from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). It also examines regional differences in high-school and university completion rates among young immigrants who came to Canada before the age of 15 using National Household Survey (NHS) data. Throughout the article, comparisons are made with the children of the Canadian-born (third- or higher-generation Canadians). In Canada, the average PISA math score of immigrant students aged 15 was similar to the score of third- or higher-generation students. The average PISA reading score of immigrant children was slightly lower than the score of third- or higher-generation children. In almost all regions, immigrant students had lower PISA reading scores than third- or higher-generation students. With respect to PISA math scores, immigrant students performed better than third- or higher-generation students in the Atlantic provinces and British Colombia, but performed less well in Quebec and in Manitoba and Saskatchewan. Young immigrants aged 20 to 24 were more likely to have a high school diploma than their third- or higher-generation counterparts (93% versus 87%). Young immigrants aged 25 to 29 were also more likely to have a university degree (40%, compared with 26% of third- or higher-generation individuals in this age group). Manitoba and Saskatchewan (29%) and Quebec (32%) had the lowest proportions of immigrants aged 25 to 29 with a university degree. In contrast, British Columbia (44%) and Ontario (41%) had the highest proportions. Regional differences in the source countries of immigrants explained, in part, why some regions had higher university completion rates than others.