The Education For Practice Institute led thedevelopment of the professional and practice-based education (P&PBE) standards for Charles Sturt University undergraduate and graduate entry courses in 2010. This exercise was conducted with
extensive consultation with the CSU community and led to the development of 70 standards based on the four aspects identified as influencing the quality of learning and teaching at course level: learning outcomes, teaching and learning activities, course infrastructure at a local level, and infrastructure at the university level.
As the higher education community continues to work to create a more inclusive learning environment, the needs of our gender-variant students are too often overlooked. This article outlines a few ways faculty can create an atmosphere that supports trans-identified and gender-nonconforming students.
There hasn’t been a lot written recently about test anxiety, but that doesn’t mean it’s no longer an issue for a significant number of students. Those of us who don’t suffer from test anxiety—and I’m betting that’s most faculty— can find it hard to be sympathetic. Life is full of tests, and students need to get over it. Besides, if students have studied and prepared, there’s no reason for them to feel excessively anxious about a test.
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.
For the past 18 years, I have worked at the same university. I see some distinct advantages in that — most notably, that I haven’t had to look for another job in all that time. There is also something to be said for avoiding the pains of relocating. And staying put has allowed me to establish really rewarding ties with the surrounding community.
But there are also serious problems for any academic who pursues a faculty career in one place. As my Twitter friend John Warner recently noted, perhaps the most common way for professors to get a raise is to apply for a job elsewhere. Then, if you get a job offer, you take it to administrators at your current campus and try to get them to match the salary and benefits you would receive if you changed jobs.
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.
Context: There is growing interest in the integration of meditation in higher education.
Purpose: Here, we review evidence bearing on the utility of meditation to facilitate the achievement of traditional educational goals and to enhance education of the “whole person.”
Research Design: We examine how meditation practices may help foster important cognitive skills of attention and information processing, as well build stress resilience and adaptive interpersonal capacities through a review of the published research literature.
Conclusions/Recommendations: We offer directions for future research, highlighting the importance of theory-based investigations, increased methodological rigor, expansion of the scope of education-related outcomes studied, and the study of best practices for teaching meditation in educational settings.
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.
This exploratory comparative study examines the meaning-making experiences of six sexual minority males attending college or university in Canada or the United States. All of the participants identified as sexual minority males who were cisgender, out to family and/or friends, and between 20 and 24 years of age. In particular, the participants spoke about the intersections
between their race, gender, and sexual orientation as salient aspects of their multiple identities. Using a blend of qualitative methods, including case study, phenomenology, and grounded theory, I identified four themes that emerged from the data: (1) engagement in a social justice curriculum; (2) involvement in LGBT student organizations or resource centres; (3) experiences
of discrimination and dissonance; and (4) engagement in reflective dialogue. I discuss the implications of these themes for professional practice and future research.
La présente étude comparative exploratoire examine les expériences de recherche de signification de six hommes de minorité sexuelle fréquentant des collèges ou des universités au Canada et aux États-Unis. Tous les participants se sont définis comme des hommes cisgenres âgés entre 20 et 24 ans et ayant dévoilé leur homosexualité soit aux membres de leurs familles respectives, soit à des amis. Les participants ont entre autres identifié le recoupement de race, de genre et d’orientation sexuelle comme étant les principaux aspects de leurs multiples identités. À l’aide d’une variété de méthodes qualitatives
dont la phénoménologie, la théorie ancrée et des études de cas, j’ai relevé quatre thèmes récurrents parmi les données recueillies : (1) la participation à des programmes d’études en justice sociale; (2) l’implication dans des organisations estudiantines ou des centres de ressources pour LGBT; (3) l’expérience de discrimination et de dissonance; et (4) l’engagement
dans un dialogue réfléchi. Je discute des conséquences de ces thèmes en milieu professionnel et en prévision de futurs projets de recherche.
Many people question the need for special scholarships and bursaries specifically targeted at certain demographic roups, but the need for these scholarships goes beyond levelling the playing field for all students. The costs of iscrimination are not just shouldered by those on the receiving end; discrimination imposes costs to us all when it prevents some of our most productive members from playing an active role in society.
This paper reviews and critiques the existing literature on accompanying partners of international students (APIS), who are often an ignored population in programs and services for the internationalization of Canadian higher education. Particularly, we identify three issues. First, we argue that current research on this group overwhelmingly focuses on their social and cultural adaptation difficulties while ignoring their agency in dealing with life challenges in the host society. Second, we note that research on this population should go beyond an overemphasis on gender, to include a comprehensive analysis of how gender intersects with other unequal social relations, such as race and class, in contributing to the complexity and multiplicity of their lived experiences. Finally, we suggest that rather than conflating APIS with trailing partners of expatriates or immigrants and treating them as a homogenous group, researchers should do more to address their heterogeneity from an anti-essentialist approach.
This paper presents preliminary findings from a pilot study whose purpose was to explore how we, a tenure-track faculty member and a doctoral student, understood and developed our teaching practice when engaged in a formal faculty–student relationship. Using a hybrid of collaborative inquiry and collaborative self-study—which included verbal and written dialogue, interrogation, as well as observation—we sought to understand how that formal faculty–student relationship promoted the development of strong teaching pedagogy. The motivation for this study was a commitment to fostering highquality teaching in undergraduate courses in our faculty of education. Driving this study was the research question: How are we investigating and improving upon our practices as teachers in post-secondary education?
This article compares aspects of an educational program offered at Nipissing University through the Centre for Continuing Business Education (CCBE) with the guidelines for successful adult learning programs that were developed by the Council for Adult and Experiential Learning. Through the use of a survey, the students of the CCBE were asked to provide their opinions on the evidence of adult learning success factors from their experience with the program. Analysis of the results showed that the students did find evidence of these factors in the program, and other areas for research were identified.
We’ve heard the debates about how much postsecondary institutions should focus on training students to enter specific careers. Many argue that the traditional role of these institutions— especially universities—is to equip students with the reflective and critical thinking skills they’ll need for a lifetime of learning. Others argue that institutions should provide students with an education that helps them find good jobs after graduation.
But what if this entire debate is based on a false choice? What if the same skills that encourage reflective, critical thinking are also the bedrock for finding and pursuing a meaningful career?
An Leadership PowerPoint Presentation
More than half of the college students who visited their campus counseling centers during the 2015-16 academic year reported symptoms of anxiety, according to a survey by the Association for University and College Counseling Center Directors.
This marks the seventh year in a row that anxiety has been the top complaint among students seeking mental health services. This year, 51 percent of students who visited a counseling center reported having anxiety, followed by depression (41 percent), relationship concerns (34 percent) and suicidal ideation (20.5 percent). Many students reported experiencing multiple conditions at once.
Yes, the stress of work can be immense, but I’ve developed a few simple tricks to keep it under control.
I have been feeling bit down lately. Maybe this is to be expected. It’s been a brutal winter and a stressful school year, my first as an assistant professor. I’m adapting to a new city, new job and new expectations.
But I’m not unique in feeling this way or facing these kinds of obstacles. All around me are students, colleagues, and staff who are dealing with the hurdles of work, life and mental health. And, if a recent series of articles and surveys by The Guardian are to be believed, then psychological distress is becoming a crisis on university campuses, and many students and academics are keeping their mental health problems hidden from colleagues.
Three teacher education tasks are analyzed using Bateson's "levels of learning" and the distinction between reference experiences and cognitive maps (Dilts, l994). The tasks were 1) writing a risk log of classroom innovations, 2) writing articles, and 3) doing public presentations. Student feedback indicated perceived shifts in behaviors, beliefs, and identities
through both active tasking (reference experiences) and their ongoing dynamic "explanations" (cognitive mapping). The results and activities are then discussed in relation to Freeman's (1992, 1994, 1995) concept of the socialization of teachers into professional discourse and the value of communities of explanation toward continual teacher development.
As sites of work-force development, community colleges must be responsive to the demands of the rapidly changing job market. Now, many communitycollege systems are turning to job-market data that are more up to date and more precise than ever before.
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.