There is a general misconception that our beliefs are the cause of our actions. Often it is the other way around.
Just like the fox, people will tell themselves a story to justify their actions. This helps to protect their ego during failure or indicate why they committed a certain action. Teachers need to place students in situations where they can persuade themselves that they were intrinsically motivated to behave a certain way or to carry out certain actions.
Many colleges speak of the importance of increasing student retention. Indeed, quite a few invest substantial resources in programs designed to achieve that end. Some institutions even hire consultants who promise a proven formula for successful retention. But for all that effort, most institutions do not take student retention seriously. They treat student retention, like so many other issues, as one more item to add to the list of issues to be addressed by the institution. They adopt what Parker calls the "add a course" strategy in addressing the issues that face them. Need to address the issue of diversity? Add a course in diversity studies. Need to address the issue of student retention, in particular that of new students?Add a freshman seminar or perhaps a freshmen mentoring program. The result is that student experiences are increasingly segmented into smaller and smaller pieces; their relationships with faculty, staff, and each other becoming more narrow and specialized; their learning further partitioned into smaller disconnected segments.
This commentari is contextualized in America's gilded age of corporate education caharacterized by millionaire CEO university presidents and a growing chasm of wealth inequality in our educational system. America's deepening educational stratification mirrors and magnifies wider social, economic, racial, and political inequality and injustice.
Teacher education programs must help teaching candidates to link the moral purpose that influences them with the tools that
will prepare them to engage in productive change.
Teaching at its core is a moral profession. Scratch a good teacher and you will find a moral purpose. At the Faculty of Education, University of Toronto, we recently examined why people enter the teaching profession (Stiegelbauer 1992). In a random sample of 20 percent of 1,100 student teachers, the most frequently mentioned theme was "to make a difference in the lives of students." Of course, such statements cannot be taken at face value because people have a variety of motives for becoming teachers. Nonetheless, there is a strong kernel of truth to this conclusion.
Scholars who study educational equity and inequality in education, academic achievement gaps, and educational opportunity offer a variety myriad of explanations as to how or whether race has any role or impact on educational experiences, access, or opportunity. Indeed, race has been an abiding question in the social sciences and education for several decades.
Despite the debates within both fields regarding the meaning of race, the current popular sentiment among the lay public and many educational practitioners is that on November 4, 2008, America reached a post-racial moment with the election of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States. In other words, according to the post-racial discourse, race no longer matters, especially as it relates to people of color. The editors and contributors of this volume challenge this rhetoric and examine how and whether race operates in understanding how issues of access to productive opportunities and quality resources converge and impact experiences and outcomes in education. Hence, the purpose of this NSSE Yearbook is to explain how and why race is a “dynamic system of historically derived and institutionalized ideas and practices” shaped by myriad forces (e.g., power, gender, language, class, and privilege), which determine the quality of educational opportunities, experiences, and resources for people of color in the United States.
This study focuses on culturally endorsed implicit theories of leadership (CLTs). Although cross-cultural research emphasizes that different cultural groups likely have different conceptions of what leadership should entail, a controversial position is argued here: namely that attributes associated with charismatic/transformational leadership will be universally endorsed as contribut- ing to outstanding leadership. This hypothesis was tested in 62 cultures as part of the Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness (GLOBE) Research Program. Universally endorsed leader attributes, as well as attributes that are universally seen as impediments to outstanding leadership and culturally contingent attributes are presented here. The results support the hypothesis that specific aspects of charismatic/transformational leadership are strongly and universally endorsed across cultures.
For many years, critics of the SAT have cited a verbal question involving the word "regatta" as an example of how the test may favor wealthier test-takers, who also are more likely to be white. It's been a long time since the regatta question was used -- and the College Board now has in place a detailed process for testing all questions and potential ques questions that may favor one group of students over another.
he Conference Board says we need to train more PhDs in Canada. Good. Now, where will they work?
A widely noted report last week by the Conference Board of Canada gives Canada an “A” grade for its overall performance in education and skills, up from a B last year. We also rated an A and B, respectively, in terms of the percentage of Canadians who’ve completed college and university. The only black mark in the board’s otherwise relatively positive review is a D for the number of PhD graduates the country produces.
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.
A string of recent stranger sexual assaults at Vancouver's University of British Columbia can be an opportunity for the university to educate students and address the larger issue of campus rape culture, say experts and alumni.
“But why do I have to go? School is not fun!” That quote is from a first-grade child, asking his mom why he has to go every single day to this place that he was told was going to be a lot of fun, but has not lived up to the hype. If he could articulate further, he might say, "I am only six. I like to have fun, but school is not fun and from what I can tell, it's going to get worse every year, not better."
Purpose/Objective: This study documents the ways in which successful, award-winning teachers function creatively in their classrooms. It investigates their beliefs about creativity in teaching—what “creativity” means, and how skilled teachers instantiate it in classroom practices. Finally, this research examined the teachers’ personal creativity (in terms of creative pursuits, hobbies, and habits of mind) and the practical ways this translates into teaching.
How can Canada encourage more postsecondary students to study abroad?
Employers and higher ed institutions have acknowledged the value that this type of experience could bring to the country’s workforce. But only 3.1% of full-time university students and 1.1% of full-time college students have studied abroad as part
of their postsecondary education.
While competency-based education is growing, standardized tools for evaluating the unique characteristics of course design in this domain are still under development. This preliminary research study evaluated the effectiveness of a rubric developed for assessing course design of competency-based courses in an undergraduate Information Technology and Administrative Management program. The rubric, which consisted of twenty-six individual measures, was used to evaluate twelve new courses. Additionally, the final assessment scores of nine students who completed nine courses in the program were evaluated to determine if a correlation exists between student success and specific indicators of quality in the course design. The results indicate a correlation exists between measures that rated high and low on the evaluation rubric and final assessment scores of
students completing courses in the program. Recommendations from this study suggest that quality competency-based courses need to evaluate the importance and relevance of resources for active student learning, provide increased support and ongoing feedback from mentors, and offer opportunities for students to practice what they have learned.
The ubiquity of online meeting software has made it increasingly easy for professors to include live online class sessions to both brick-and-mortar and online courses. I have learned in recent years that live online class sessions not only increase flexibility for students and the professor but can also be a powerful tool in creating community and engaging students in a range of dynamic learning opportunities. That said, I have also learned that in order for online class sessions to be more than just office hours or students passively listening to lecture, three careful considerations for course design and pedagogy are needed: structuring learning activities, communicating the expectations for participation and rational behind it, and grading.
On February 25, 2016, the Ontario government announced a major redesign of the Ontario Student Assistance Program (OSAP) with the goal of making postsecondary education more accessible, affordable and cost transparent. In launching the redesign, the government said that “for Ontario to thrive in the knowledge-based economy, the government needs to ensure all members of society are given the opportunities, as well as the tools, they need to succeed” (Ontario Ministry of Finance, 2016).
OSAP is Ontario’s umbrella financial-aid program for students at publicly-assisted colleges and universities and approved private institutions. OSAP is jointly funded by the province and the federal government, and offers students combinations of repayable (loan) and non-repayable (grant) assistance for eligible education related and living costs on a needs-tested basis.
Rachelle Peters is exactly the kind of student colleges are hoping to attract more of.
She went back to school at 40, after years of boom then bust. Her career had been in art publishing in Vancouver, a niche business of finding artists whose artwork is then reproduced, say, 2,000 times. The company would frame and sell the prints with an eye to home decor trends. Think record company, but selling art reproductions instead of music.
Part-time faculty teach approximately 58% of U.S. community college classes and thus manage learning experiences for more than half (53%) of students enrolled in community colleges (JBL Associates, 2008). Often referred to as contingent faculty, their work is conditional; the college typically has no obligation to them beyond the current academic term. At many colleges, the use of contingent faculty began with hiring career professionals who brought real-world experience into the classroom. Historically, colleges also have hired contingent faculty when enrollment spiked, the college needed to acquire a particular type of expertise, or full-time faculty members were not available to teach a particular course.
Increasingly, however, contingent faculty have become a fundamental feature of the economic model that sustains community college education. Because they typically have lower pay levels than fulltime faculty and receive minimal, if any, benefits, part-time faculty are institutions’ least expensive way to deliver instruction. As public funding, as a percentage of college costs, has steadily declined—and as colleges have been forced to find ways to contain costs so they can sustain college access—the proportion of part-time faculty has grown at colleges across the country. Today part-time faculty far outnumber full-time faculty at most colleges.
I have been doing some reading and thinking about hard courses. Courses need to be challenging, but when they become too hard, students stop trying and little learning results. So how do we find that sweet spot between hard and not too hard? More importantly, how do we create that sweet spot in our own courses through the decisions we make about content, assignments, and exams?
In preparing students for employment in commerce, the student needs to be aware of many aspects not necessarily included in business programs. In recognizing students often have no or limited exposure to foreign envi- ronments, the authors developed an electronic exchange between students in Canada and Kazakhstan. In this exchange, students not only learned about foreign marketplaces but were able to integrate classroom teachings and text knowledge into their actions. This approach
resulted in enhanced learning for students through double-loop porcesses and development in their other courses.