I come not only to praise Kathleen Wynne, but also to bury her. The auspices for her government are so dire that a eulogy today hardly seems premature. Writing it now lets us imagine what settled opinion in the future, freed from the toxic fog of the current campaign, might make of Wynne and her six-year premiership.
Certainly four years of Premier Doug Ford will be more than enough to clear the air. But even before that, I suspect Wynne will emerge in hindsight as the bold leader of the most capable and effective government Ontario has enjoyed since the heyday of the fabled Big Blue Machine. She will be remembered as the best of her generation, representing Ontario at its
best.
Well here it is already — the end of my first year of full-time teaching. With 25 years of experience in the music industry, and 20 of those years teaching music as an adjunct, I’d felt well-prepared for academia. In fact, I was raring to go.
Last fall, as I walked across campus during the first week of classes, I felt the excitement of being part of the whole enterprise. I traveled the hallowed halls, bustling with the commotion of students. I sat in faculty meetings and glanced around at my new colleagues, the collective braintrust charged with developing, monitoring, scrutinizing, and ultimately teaching the curriculum. I met with my classes for the first time, and in between, retired to the solitude of my very first faculty office. It felt exhilarating. It was what I’d been preparing for all those years in grad school.
In this ongoing series focused on flipped and active-learning classrooms, we’re taking a deeper look into how to create successful learning experiences for students. We’ve examined how to encourage students to complete pre-class work, how to hold students accountable for pre-class work, and how to connect pre-class work to in-class activities. Now let’s focus on the challenge of managing the in-person learning environment.
Whenever I assign a long reading for homework or offer to peruse one collectively, a tremendous
sigh can be heard filling up the room. Groans of “Do we have to?” or “I’ve never read anything that
long in my life” punctuate the anticipated boredom, and everyone settles in to (grudgingly) do the
work.
For instructors, that isn’t a rare occurrence. Our roles require us teach basic tenets of literature, engage students in thinking about rhetoric and symbolism, and ideally guide them as they evolve into better writers and critical thinkers. However, as we try to reach students who are reading increasingly shorter and shorter pieces, or not at all, one question arises: Do we need to change how and what we teach in English courses, or is it already too late?
The Shrinking Ph.D. Job Market
As number of new Ph.D.s rises, the percentage of people earning a doctorate without a job waiting for them is up.
While all disciplines face the problem, some have particularly high debt levels.
As a minority group on university campuses, the unique needs of mature students can be easily overlooked. It is important that the term “mature students” does not disguise the heterogeneity of this group: “…it is erroneous to speak of ‘the adult learner’ as if there is a generic adult that can represent all adults.”1 However, amongst this varied group of students, there are common
concerns that they share. This policy sets out students’ priorities in increasing the visibility of mature students on campus as well as optimizing their educational experience.
Mature students need more recognition of the different hurdles they face in achieving success. These can include situational barriers like a lack of time, lack of money, health issues, or dependant care,2 as well as attitudinal or dispositional barriers, including the fear of failure or alienation. Lastly, they also face systemic barriers such as restrictive course offerings and
availability of instructors or support services outside of regular business hours.3
One of the core principles of the Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance (OUSA) is that all willing and qualified students should be able to attend post-secondary regardless of their ability to pay. However, students in Ontario face the
highest tuition fees in the country and the cost and perceived costs of post-secondary education are consistently identified as barriers to post-secondary education. These barriers are contributing factors to the persistently high attainment gaps for various vulnerable groups in pursuing an undergraduate degree.
Imagine if a college, using learning analytics, has determined that students of a specific ethnic background who live in a handful of zip codes and score a certain way on standardized tests are highly likely to earn a low grade in an important course -- potentially jeopardizing their chances of graduating on time. Should the college actively prevent those students from enrolling in the course?
That is an example of the type of dilemma researchers from more than a dozen colleges and universities debated earlier this month as they made progress toward developing a set of shared standards for ethical use of student data, including how the data should be used to improve higher education.
On October 17 1990, the members of the Canadian Federation of Students presented the first edition of its alternative funding model for post-secondary education. The proposal, entitled Strategy for Change, articulated students’ concerns about public funding for post-secondary education, as well as problems with federal student financial assistance programs.
In the intervening seventeen years since the first version of this document was published, federal funding and student aid policies have changed substantially, as have many provincial approaches to post-secondary education. Perhaps the single over arching trend is the federal government’s retreat from a leadership role in broad higher education policy.
This report is the first in a series of reports examining teenagers’ use of technology. Forthcoming reports will focus on how American adolescents use social media and mobile phones to create, maintain and end their friendships and romantic relationships. This report is a collaborative effort based on the input and analysis of the following individuals.
Competition between providers in any market incentivises them to raise their game, offering consumers a greater
choice of more innovative and better quality products and services at lower cost. Higher education is no exception.
To evaluate old and new directions we must keep objectives sharply in mind. Of late, articulately explicit discussion of the objectives of international exchange has fortunately been supplanting the vaguer statements of pious hope that sprang from the unanalyzed convictions that exchange is inherently a Good Thing. A brief review of the principal objectives that have been advanced is made easy by the availability of an excellent summary by the Committee on Educational Interchange Policy.1 From the generally expressed purposes of sponsoring groups, the Committee lists the following in
descending order of frequency:
Background/Context: Research indicates that across democratic societies, teachers face numerous intellectual and emotional challenges when handling controversial topics in the classroom. Less attention, however, has been paid to how teachers’ willingness to teach controversial topics intersects with political and other societal factors in different sociopolitical milieu and, in particular, in an authoritarian–democratic and culturally diverse state like Singapore. Focus of Study: This study focused on constraints to the teaching of controversial topics relating to diversity and the manner in which teachers navigated their personal beliefs amidst the evolving contours of public and official discourses in Singapore. By attending to the intersections of teachers’ beliefs, state policies, and other sociopolitical factors, we aimed to inform scholarship on the teaching of controversial topics and illuminate states’ powers to demarcate the discursive spaces of teachers.
This article makes the case that Canadian universities—both within and be- yond their campuses—must broaden their visions of third-age learners. Ca- nadian third-age learners—defined for the purposes of this article as persons seeking formalized education who are in the stage of life beginning at retire- ment—are more numerous, active, financially stable, and diverse as well as healthier and better educated than at any other time in our history. It follows that Canadian universities have much to offer and gain by both deepening and broadening their involvement with these learners. I argue that universi- ties must consider multi-pronged forms of collaboration and must be motivated, at all times, not by short-sighted financial concerns but by their core obligation to serve the public good by fostering community engagement.
In showing respect for their favorite professors, today’s college students have ventured well beyond the proverbial
apple.
An Indiana University at Bloomington instructor was once given chicken livers … five pounds of them, from an adoring student whose father was a butcher. He gladly accepted and enjoyed the tasty treat. One Southern Methodist University instructor was presented with “a limited-edition Snickers bar” that said “goofball” on it. Apparently the student saw it and thought of her. For now, the candy bar remains in her office, she said, at least until she “gets hangry.”
The aim of this paper is to describe the technical issues to be addressed in enhancing the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) contextual questionnaires instruments for the PISA for Development (PfD) study. We discuss the conceptual framework for the contextual questionnaires used in PISA, describe the evolution of the PISA contextual questionnaires, review the measures used in several other international studies, and consider how the PISA data have been used to address the policy questions relevant to the OECD member countries. This research, alongside discussions with
key stakeholders, including those from participating countries, enabled us to identify seven themes in which the PISA contextual questionnaires could be enhanced and made more relevant for low- and middle-income countries: early learning opportunities, language at home and at school, family and community support, quality of instruction, learning time, socioeconomic status, and school resources. We discuss various options for enhancing these measures.
Constant communication, trust and transparency, frequent feedback and offering recognition – these are all things that research consistently suggests managers should focus on in order to improve employee engagement. But you’ve read this before, and we don’t want to tell you what you already know.
In the wake of student suicides, universities are reflecting on how to respond, and on their approaches to dealing
with mental health.
It can sometimes feel like the final days of a semester can’t come soon enough. Compounding that feeling, because
of where the Easter long weekend fell on the calendar this past academic year, the final exam period at the
University of Guelph ended on a Monday instead of the Friday before. Across the undergraduate residences,
advisers made extra efforts to check in with students to see how they were doing.
Multiple and competing priorities within a dynamic and changing academic environment can pose significant challenges for new faculty. Mentorship has been identified as an important strategy to help socialize new faculty to their roles and the expectations of the academic environment. It also helps them learn new skills that will position them to be successful in their academic ca-reer. In this article, the authors report on the implementation and evaluation of a mentorship circle initiative aimed at supporting new faculty in the first two years of their academic appointment. Participants reported that the men-torship circle provided them with a culture of support, a sense of belonging, and a safe space to discuss concerns and learn strategies from both mentors and fellow mentees as they adjusted to their new position. The interdisci-plinary nature of the mentorship circle further facilitated faculty members’ capacity to navigate their role as new faculty and foster colleagueship.
Over the past two decades, many analysts have explored the various influences on high-school graduates’ college enrollment behaviors.
Theoretical and methodological approaches to studying the topic have become almost standardized. Most new studies of the topic are either replications of earlier analyses or minor variations on earlier themes. Levine and Nidiffer’s Beating the Odds brings us something a little different, however. Instead of another multivariate, quantitative exploration of educational attainment patterns in nationally representative survey data for thousands of students, Levine and Nidiffer present us with an interpretive analysis based on interviews with a very small group of respondents. Instead of beginning with a framework based in the familiar status attainment, cultural capital, or human capital theories, these authors construct their interpretations inductively, as they learn from the voices of their respondents. Instead of investigating what separates college attenders from those who choose other options, Levine and Nidiffer focus only on those who actually enter postsecondary institutions. Finally, instead of examining an economically diverse pool of respondents, these authors consider only those they term "the poor": students from backgrounds so impoverished that opportunities for college attendance are severely limited. These are bold choices. Individually and as a whole, they carry significant analytic risks. For those accustomed to other approaches to the topic, however, the book provides some special pleasures.