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.
In this essay I discuss the effects of globalization on Canadian community colleges. I apply contemporary social theories culled from the fields of feminism, geography and political science to understand one hidden manifestation of globalization in community colleges: involvement in global civil society via participation in international development projects. I begin by discussing the history of community colleges, highlighting their flexible missions, as a way of understanding how they have changed within the current socio-economic climate. I then present evidence of community colleges participating in international development projects, and provide an analysis of what participation might signify on the broader social level. I end with a call to understand more about these somewhat overlooked activities in order to ensure that they are carried out effectively whilst keeping in mind the needs of both ‘local’ communities.
No one has ever criticised a hammer for being a hammer; it is an invaluable tool when that is what you need. But it is useless or destructive if used for the wrong purpose, and university rankings can be the same.
There are three main problems that make international rankings a poor mechanism for assessing, improving or differentiating any but the top few dozen universities in the world.
A growing body of research shows that college students who enroll full-time, taking even 12 credits’ worth of course work in a single semester, are much more likely stick with college, save money and eventually graduate.
Yet while the researchers behind these studies encourage efforts to nudge more students to go full-time (ideally taking 30 credits in a year), they warn against neglecting the many who will continue to attend part-time because of work and family demands -- currently only 38 percent of community college students are enrolled full-time, according to the American Association of Community Colleges.
This paper defines and operationalizes definitions of good teaching, scholarly teaching and the scholarship of
teaching and learning in order to measure characteristics of these definitions amongst undergraduate instructors at McMaster University. A total of 2496 instructors, including all part-time instructors, were surveyed in 2007. A total of 339 surveys were returned. Indices of good teaching, scholarly teaching and scholarship of teaching and learning were developed. The data
illustrated a strong correlation between good teaching and scholarly teaching and between scholarly teaching and scholarship of teaching and learning. The perceived value placed upon teaching varied across the different Faculties. New instructors and those engaged in sch larly teaching and scholarship of teaching and learning perceived teaching to be more valued than their
peers.
Most of the time, instructors use activities as a way for students to demonstrate their mastery. But activities can be used differently — to spark curiosity and get students thinking, before they know much of anything about a particular topic. That was the premise of “The Power of the ‘Naïve Task,’” one of the most interesting sessions I attended at the Designing Effective
Teaching conference in Bethesda, Md., last week.
Canada needs to take an integrated and innovative approach to enhancing student mobility, according to participants at a workshop held December 2014 by Universities Canada. The workshop – held in Calgary and attracting university and private sector leaders – called for Canada to step up its efforts to get university students moving beyond their province and beyond our borders.
Conventional scholarship within the sociology of education and organizations posits that schools achieve legitimacy by virtue of conforming to normative standards, abiding by government regulations and mimicking the forms of successful peers. Through this study, an examination of a sample of 751 Canadian for-profit colleges (FPCs) is performed, revealing the presence of
an alternative logic. Rather than conformity, organizations within this sector engage in niche-seeking behaviour, using promotional materials to carve out unconventional identities. They do so by directly drawing on symbolic resources
and affiliations from the industrial sectors which they service. These findings are interpreted through the prism of contemporary theorizing within organizational sociology.
Abstract
Various studies acknowledge the uncertainty many doctoral graduates face when beginning their search for full-time employment within the academic sector. Recent graduates face a job market where the likelihood of obtaining full-time permanent positions in academia is perceived to be declining, and the mobility of graduates within the sector is unclear. Drawing on Statistics Canada’s 2013 National Graduates Survey, this paper assesses whether graduates who pursued a doctoral degree to become a full-time professor achieved their goal within three years of graduation. The results suggest that although a large portion of doctoral graduates pursued their degrees to become full-time professors, relatively few reported obtaining such positions within three years of graduation, regardless of field of study.
Résumé
Plusieurs études attestent de l’incertitude que doivent affronter les titulaires d’un doctorat quand ils entament leurs recherches pour un poste à temps plein dans le secteur universitaire. En effet, les récents diplômés font face à un marché de l’emploi où on plein dans le secteur académique s’amenuisent, et où la mobilité professionnelle des titulaires d’un doctorat de ce secteur demeure floue. À partir des données de l’Enquête nationale auprès des diplômés 2013 de Statistique Canada, cet article examine la propension des titulaires d’un doctorat souhaitant devenir professeurs à temps plein à réaliser leur objectif sur une période de trois ans après leur collation des grades. Indépendamment du domaine d’étude, les résultats démontrent que, bien qu’une grande proportion de titulaires d’un doctorat aspire à devenir professeurs à temps plein, peu d’entre eux rapportent avoir obtenu de tels postes trois ans après leur remise de diplôme. perçoit que les chances d’obtenir un poste permanent à temps
Conversations with 14 sitting college and university presidents reveal a belief that the “busines s model” of higher education today is irrevocably altered, and that presidents and their senior staff leaders must take bold, creative
approaches to secure their schools’ futures. The following report summarizes seven key themes we heard during candid one-on-one interviews with these leaders about how leadership is changing in higher education; it also presents concrete suggestions for how presidents and their administrative peers can reshape their roles and strategies to help their institutions thrive in a dramatically different academic
TORONTO — Many of this year's new post-secondary graduates have left the academic world carrying tens of thousands of dollars in debt. Meantime, those heading to college and university this fall will soon contend with steep tuition rates that often result in a similar burden.
While schools attempt to lessen the load by offering financial aid, average student debt appears to be climbing. So some institutions are also responding by beefing up their mental health services to help students cope with life in the red.
Applicants from institutions with grade inflation are favored over those who had more rigorous instructors, study finds.
When colleges crack down on grade inflation, students invariably complain that they will be at a disadvantage when they apply to graduate school without as many A grades as might otherwise be the case.
The students may be correct.
Aboriginal women with higher levels of education had slightly higher employment rates than non-Aboriginal women in 2011. Specifically, 81.8% of Aboriginal women with a certificate, diploma or degree at the bachelor level or above were employed, compared with 79.5% of their non-Aboriginal counterparts. The same pattern held true for all three Aboriginal identity groups: First Nations, Métis and Inuit women.
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.
Gender disparities appear to be decreasing in academia according to a number of metrics, such as grant funding, hiring,
acceptance at scholarly journals, and productivity, and it might be tempting to think that gender inequity will soon be a problem of the past. However, a large-scale analysis based on over eight million papers across the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities reveals a number of understated and persistent ways in which gender inequities remain. For instance, even where raw publication counts seem to be equal between genders, close inspection reveals that, in certain fields, men predominate in the prestigious first and last author positions. Moreover, women are significantly underrepresented as authors of single-authored papers. Academics should be aware of the subtle ways that gender disparities can occur in scholarly authorship.
This report provides a systems perspective on the state of skills and higher education in Canada and identifies areas where the sector could improve in producing highly skilled graduates. I
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.
Abstract: The paper presents the results of the second stage of training academia in designing e-learning courses in a foreign language. An action research conducted during such staff development project showed high appreciation of continuous mutual support, need for established channels for sharing, and raised confidence in designing own electronic courses by young specialists.
Key words: Staff Development, e-Learning, Higher Education, Language Teaching.
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.)
Women are much less likely to be reappointed as faculty deans than men, says a new study of hiring at Canadian
universities.
While recruitment of new deans at Canadian universities largely reflects the overall gender balance of its academic sector, a University of Toronto researcher has found that women were far less likely to be reappointed once their five-year office had concluded.
Analysing almost 300 appointment and reappointment announcements from the Canadian publication University Affairs between 2011 and 2016, Eric Lavigne, a PhD student at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, found that 58 per cent of appointments for dean positions went to men and 42 per cent were awarded to women.