a b s t r a c t
This study examined the trajectories of depressive and anxious symptoms among early-career teachers (N ¼ 133) as they transitioned from their training programs into their first year of teaching. In addition, perceived school climate was explored as a moderator of these trajectories. Multilevel linear growth modeling revealed that depressive and anxious symptoms increased across the transition, and negative perceived school climate was related to more drastically increasing symptoms. Results suggest that this career stage may be a time when teachers are particularly vulnerable to declines in mental health, and speak to some within-school features that may be related to teachers’ experiences.
School-level conditions nnd school leadership, in particular, arc key issue, in effort.'> LO change instruction. While new organizational structures and new leadership roles maner to instructional innovation, what seems mot critical is how leadership practice is undcrrnken. Yet, the practice of cbool leadership bas received limited attention in the research literature. Building on activity theory and theories of d1srribun:d cognition, this paper develops a disrrihute<l perspective on school leadership as a fromc for studying leadership practice, arguing that leadership practice i; constituted m the mteracuon of school leaders, followers, and the situation.
In order for teacher education programs to act as significant scaffolds in supporting new teachers to become informed, creative and innovative members of a highly complex and valuable profession, we need to re-‐‑imagine ways in which teacher education programs operate. We need to re-‐‑imagine how courses are conceptualized and connected, how learning is shared and how knowledge, not just “professional”, but embedded knowledge in authentic contexts of teaching and
learning is understood, shaped and re-‐‑applied. Drawing on our collective case study of instructors’ lived experience of a locally developed program in secondary teacher education called Transformative University of Victoria (TRUVIC), we offer a relational approach to knowing as an alternative to more mechanistic explanations that limit teacher growth and
development. To ground our interpretation, we draw on complexity as a theory of change and emergence that supports learning as distributed, relational, adaptive and emerging.
In this study, the authors examined the findings and implications of the research on trust in leadership that has been conducted during the past 4 decades. First, the study provides estimates of the primary relationships between trust in leadership and key outcomes, antecedents, and correlates (k 106). Second, the study explores how specifying the construct with alternative leadership referents (direct leaders vs. organizational leadership) and definitions (types of trust) results in systematically different relationships between trust in leadership and outcomes and antecedents. Direct leaders (e.g., supervisors) appear to be a particularly important referent of trust. Last, a theoretical framework is offered to provide parsimony to the expansive literature and to clarify the different perspectives on the construct of trust in leadership and its operation.
Despite the cash injection, campus services will not be able to meet everyone's mental health needs, Minister of
Advanced Education and Skills Development Deb Matthews said in a statement to the Toronto Star.
"Mental illness is a spectrum," Matthews said. "For some students, on-campus resources such as counselling
and/or peer support may be the best and most helpful provision of care. For students with more complex mental
health needs, the institution can serve as a point of referral or information in helping that student access the
appropriate community supports and get the help that they need."
Ceasing need-blind admissions is a politically tenuous move for colleges and universities -- need-blind policies,
associated with meritocracy and equal opportunity, cut to the heart of institutional values that many students, staff and faculty hold dear.
But sometimes those values have run up against cold, hard finances. Admitting students without considering their need for financial aid can make it difficult to control budgets from year to year. That’s particularly true when the policy is paired with promises to meet the full demonstrated financial need of applicants. And it is that combination of policies that truly makes it possible to tell a student without money that he or she is on equal footing with a trust-fund teen during admissions decisions.
With information collected on 2,400 PhD graduates, we can begin to see what humanities programs contribute to the
academy and beyond.
In May 2015, the Future Humanities conference, put on by McGill University’s Institute for the Public Life of Arts and Ideas, or IPLAI, brought together more than 130 graduate students, faculty and administrators from 26 Canadian universities (francophone and anglophone), along with a number of PhD holders with careers outside the academy and representatives from organizations such as the Canadian Association for Graduate Studies, the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences and MITACS. (For an overview of what transpired at the conference, see this video and article.)
The Canadian Physical Activity Guidelines, established by the Canadian Society for Exercise Physiology, maintain that adults should get at least 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity every week in order to maintain their optimal health.1 However, only 15 per cent of Canadian adults meet these guidelines. Of equal concern, Canadians spend 10 of their waking hours each day being sedentary. Even when adults meet the recommended guidelines for physical activity, it is important for them to limit their sedentary time in order to improve or maintain their health.
The ability of postsecondary students to write and communicate proficiently is an expectation identified by many, including not only organizations such as the OECD but also other public and employer groups. There is concern, however, that students and thus employees often fail to meet expectations in these areas. To address this concern, it is necessary to understand more about the writing skills that students learn during their postsecondary education. This research project was designed to examine whether and how students are taught to write at university.
Around 9 p.m. on Friday, I opened my kitchen door to chants and flickering lights. After telling my kids to stay inside,
I scrambled over a stone wall and down a brick stairwell to find torch-bearing men and women clad in white polo
shirts and khakis, chanting "You will not replace us" and "Anti-Black." They marched in cadence, two by two, as far
as I could see.
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.
A partnership between the Mastercard Foundation, Rideau Hall Foundation, Vancouver Island University and Yukon College has ambitious aims.
Tasha Brooks likes to have an open-door policy. As one of Vancouver Island University’s four new “education navigators,” her job is to help First Nations students to transition into university and complete their education. “I’m very open about my own struggles through university,” says Ms. Brooks, who earned two degrees in business administration at VIU. “They can look at my past and say, she was also like me, very close to dropping out at some point. … I’m there to not only support them but I can empathize with them.”
National training packages have become the mandated framework for course delivery in Australia’s vocational education and training sector. Each training package contains: qualifications that can be issued, industry-derive d competencies , and assessment guidelines but do not contain an endorsed curriculum component or learning outcomes. All public and private vocational education and training providers must use training packages, or industryendorsed competencies in cases where they do not exist, if they are to receive public funding for their programs. This article describes the operation of Australia’s national training packages and considers some of their strengths and weaknesses, many of which may be shared by similar
systems elsewhere. Argues that training packages may result in poorer student learning outcomes, and that they may threaten the end of effective credit transfer between the vocational education and training and higher education sectors. Suggests that national training packages are not a good model for other countries and that Australia’s current vocational education and training policy needs to be reviewed.
The time may have come for the Ontario government to take a closer look at the issue of part-time faculty at the province's public colleges, says Charles Pascal, a professor at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, at the University of Toronto.
Focus of Study: This study aimed at examining teacher needs specific to data-related professional learning through a lens informed by knowledgebased organizational learning. We were guided by two broad questions: (a) What knowledge and skills do teachers need in order to engage in datainformed practice? (b) How do professional learning supports address these needs?
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.
They should be used to inform and encourage, not to penalize.
With reference to Gerald Walton’s opinion piece, in which he declares that “academic underperformers must be called out,” I would like to suggest an alternative, more helpful approach to the problem he identifies. As dean of the faculty of arts at the University of Manitoba, from 1999 to 2004, it was my task to implement Article 35 of our collective agreement, which called for meaningful annual performance evaluations. The trick was to do that in a positive way rather than a destructive one.
Life is filled with opportunities that either come along or are created. Regardless of how an opportunity is presented, it is important to make the best of the situation. I have the great fortune to serve in my second year as the president of Lone Star College-North Harris. LSC-North Harris is located in Houston, Texas, one of the six colleges that make up Lone Star College. I believe that serving as president of the college is a great opportunity, coupled with tremendous responsibilities. The college has a great history and was the original college of Lone Star College. Prior to his current role, Lone Star College’s chancellor, Dr. Stephen C. Head, was the president of LSC-North Harris.
As industries evolve and demographics change, the need for education continues to grow.
We, as a global society, spend quite a bit of money on higher education – BMO Capital Markets estimates that the United States alone spends approximately US$1.7 trillion on educational services – including about US$600 million on post-secondary education – and GSV Advisors estimates that worldwide spending is quickly approaching US$5 trillion.
That’s a lot of cash. And yet, as we spend more money on education, and as universities create new degree and certificate programmes, employers are asking for graduates with different skills than the ones we teach and some students struggle to get jobs, leaving many unemployed or underemployed.
Higher ed is an industry built on relationships. This is no more so than on a traditional residential campus.
Much of the work of moving projects and initiatives forward happens in conversation. There is a reason that a shared joke across higher ed is that nobody can get any work done during the day - as everybody is too busy in meetings.
On most campuses, these conversations are face-to-face. They involve going to each other’s offices, finding a meeting room, and sometimes grabbing a coffee. (My preferred one-on-one meeting venue is a walking meeting).
A face-to-face meeting culture accomplishes many important goals. There is a ritual to the face-to-face discussion, one that involves norms of social connections. Meetings are places to do work - but they are also places to learn about and make connections with our colleagues.