A growth mindset, as described by Carol Dweck, is a belief that while individuals are different in many ways in terms of their initial performance, interests, talents, and skills, everyone can improve, change, and grow through application and experience. We believe that one of the greatest school-based factors for improving education today is empowering educators with
opportunities to develop a growth mindset by working together to build skills and strategies to increase the impact of their instruction in the classroom.
Over the last quarter century, as public education has made a hard shift towards “accountability” and increased standardized testing, the trend towards the use of research-based instruction in classrooms has become nearly as ubiquitous as the Scantron sheets students are asked to bubble in multiple times each semester. For those of us in the field of educational psychology, this would seem like a golden opportunity to capitalize on empirical evidence to improve the educational outcomes for millions of school children. Yet there are legitimate questions about whether empirical research findings have made their way into classrooms during this time or if the term “research-based instruction” has simply become a catch phrase for the latest anecdotal trends in education. Is there a disconnect between “research-based” practices employed in schools and the actual research compiled on human learning?
This article proposes a methodology for measuring institutional diversity and applies it to Ontario’s university sector. This study first used hierarchical cluster analysis, which suggested there has been very little change in diver- sity between 1994 and 2010 as universities were clustered in three groups for both years. However, by adapting Birnbaum’s (1983) diversity matrix
meth- odology to Ontario’s university sector, the author appears to have found a decrease in systemic diversity (differences in the type of institution and size of institution; Birnbaum, 1983) and climate diversity (differences in campus environment and culture; Birnbaum, 1983) between 1994 and 2010. Policy implications resulting from this study are also considered.
Ontario is introducing legislation today that would help build a province where everyone is free
from the threat of
sexual violence and harassment, and would strengthen support for survivors.
The legislation would help deliver on commitments in It's Never Okay, the government's ground-breaking action plan to stop sexual violence and harassment. If passed, the Sexual Violence and Harassment Action Plan Act would make workplaces, campuses and communities safer and more responsive to the needs of survivors and to complaints about sexual violence and harassment.
Many academic institutions are struggling to put their data to work. According to KPMG’s recent Higher Education Industry Outlook Survey, 39 percent of the respondents said adopting new analytical techniques is a top data challenge, and just 29 percent report using data to inform strategic decisions. Still, 36 percent say that while they have good data, they lack the resources to conduct analyses.
Abstract
This article explores the relationship between unionization and academic freedom protections for sessional faculty in Ontario universities. Specifically, we compare university policies and contract provisions with a view to determining whether unionized sessionals hired on a per-course basis have stronger academic freedom protections than their non-union counterparts.
We then explore whether particular kinds of bargaining unit structures are more conducive to achieving stronger academic freedom provisions. Finally, we consider whether academic freedom can be exercised effectively by sessionals, whether unionized or not. We conclude that unionization does help to produce stronger academic freedom protections for sessional faculty and that faculty association bargaining unit structures are most likely to help deliver this outcome. We further conclude that academic freedom is difficult to exercise for sessional faculty, regardless of union status, but that unionization offers greater protections for sessionals facing repercussions as a result of asserting their academic freedom.
Keywords: academic freedom, sessional instructors, contract faculty, faculty associations, unions, bargaining unit structures
This paper explores the concept of accountability as it relates to the University of British Columbia. It examines the discourse surround- ing social accountability laid out in the university’s Trek 2010 vision and then juxtaposes this with the private accountability to commercial and government interests as evidenced in other documents and recent university decisions. The paper, thus, concludes that both private and public attempts at accountability are present yet the call to account to a wider social public gets muffled by the vagueness of the goals and, in particular, the appeals to excellence.
When a person enrolled in university in 1967, he or she entered a world barely recognizable to most students today. Today’s students can only gaze back at it with envy.
Tuition was $2,750 a year (in current dollars), less than half today’s. Unlike many students today, few students then had to work during the school year to pay for their education, so they could devote as much time as they wanted to their studies.
And even with no financial support from parents, that era’s lower tuition and more generous student aid meant that students could graduate with less than half the debt carried by the average student today.
Students then saw their professors frequently, including outside class hours at university social events, such as spontaneous common-room discussions. Their professors were either tenured or tenure-track, who worked full-time.
This document supersedes The Full-Day Early Learning–Kindergarten Program (Draft Version, 2010–11). Beginning in September 2016, all Kindergarten programs will be based on the expectations and pedagogical approaches outlined in this document.
ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS FOR THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
Ontario elementary schools strive to support high-quality learning while giving every child the opportunity to learn in the way that is best suited to the child’s individual strengths and needs. The Kindergarten program is designed to help every child reach his or her full potential through a program of learning that is coherent, relevant, and age appropriate. It recognizes that, today and in the future, children need to be critically literate in order to synthesize information, make informed decisions, communicate effectively, and thrive in an ever-changing global community. It is important for children to be connected to the curriculum, and to see themselves in what is taught, how it is taught, and how it applies to the world at large. The curriculum recognizes that the needs of learners are diverse and helps all learners develop the knowledge, skills, and perspectives they need to become informed, productive, caring, responsible, and active citizens in their own communities and in
the world.
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PowerPoint Presentation
A new study out of Yale University confirms a notion college and university administrators have held for years -- that substance abuse is linked to a decline in student grades -- but this study also reveals a number of trends among college students that surprised its authors.
Researchers at Yale University and the Institute of Living in Hartford, Conn., found that students who drank a moderate to heavy amount of alcohol actually had similar grade point averages to those who consumed little or no alcohol. However, students who used moderate to heavy alcohol as well as marijuana saw their grades plummeting.
Carol Dweck is a psychology professor at Stanford University whose ideas on education have swept through schools. She insists that children who have a “growth mindset”, a belief that through effort they can overcome problems and improve their own abilities, perform radically better in class – and in life.
In a TED talk that has so far garnered more than 4 million views online, she shares inspiring tales of pupils in tough,
inner-city areas who have zoomed ahead after being trained to believe that their talents are not fixed.
Pendant que presque tous les pays du monde s’occupent, de façon tout à fait justifiée, de la récession actuelle, une crise démographiquetouchant le marché du travail menace d’ébranler les fondements mêmes de notre société et denotre économie.
What is your learning style? Identifying your learning style serves you and helps you use it to your advantage to learn new skills efficiently. Your learning style is your approach to learning based on your preferences, as well as your strengths and weaknesses. Learners can be grouped into main categories:
Those who learn through reading and writing prefer to read and write rather than listen. In fact, they enjoy reading books and can follow written directions with ease. Visual learners learn best through maps and diagrams as opposed to verbal directions. While auditory learners prefer verbal directions and enjoy working in groups and discussing information. They remember best
through listening and may find it difficult to work quietly. These type of learners often read with whispering lip movements.
This document describes the development of analytic rubrics for competency assessment project. The purpose of this report is to describe the process of developing a set of general analytic rubrics to assess competencies in design, communication and teamwork, and a set of outcomes and indicators to assess problem analysis and investigation.
The work to develop the rubrics was structured into three main phases. In the first or planning phase, a review of the literature was carried out to create a comprehensive list of learning outcomes in the five competency areas under investigation. A list of more specific, measureable learning outcomes, called indicators, was also compiled. The resulting comprehensive list of learning outcomes and indicators was distilled by removing redundancy between the systems, filling content gaps, and grouping indicators into common learning outcome categories.
A new study appears to offer additional evidence that drivers are less likely to brake for African-American pedestrians trying to cross the street, a phenomenon known as “walking while black.”
Researchers at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas also found that the disparity is greater depending on whether the pedestrian is in a high- or low-income neighbourhood: the average number of vehicles to pass by a black pedestrian who was already in the crosswalk was at least seven times higher compared with a white pedestrian in the wealthier neighbourhood, the study’s lead researcher said.
Even though your toughest students are just kids at the mercy of emotions they don't understand or can't control, it can be hard for a teacher to stay calm and not take these ongoing behavioral problems personally. My advice: it's time to hit the reset button!
Tough kids are usually covering a ton of hurt. They defend against feeling pain by erecting walls of protection through rejection. Efforts to penetrate those walls by caring adults are generally met with stronger resistance expressed through emotional withdrawal and/or offensive language, gestures, and actions. Like a crying baby unable to articulate the source of its discomfort, these kids desperately need patient, determined, and affectionate adults with thick skin who refuse to take offensive behavior personally. Here are some ways to connect or reconnect with students who make themselves hard to like.
Increasingly, graduate teaching assistants serve as the primary instructors in undergraduate courses, yet research has shown that training and development for these teaching assistants is often lacking in programs throughout the United States and Canada. Providing mentoring and skill development opportunities for graduate teaching assistants is vital, as many will become the next generation of faculty. This paper discusses the literature on effective training programs, which underscores the importance of consistent feedback from mentors, intrinsic motivation, and practical applications. Afterwards, we examine an existing training program at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. Specifically, we focus on an institute for teaching assistants that helps graduate students understand applied learning as an effective pedagogical modality and helps them implement applied learning lesson plans tailored to their disciplines. Suggestions for strengthening training programs are discussed.
In last week’s post, we looked at a sample of the discipline-based evidence in support of quizzes with the goal of gaining a better understanding of what it means to say that an instructional practice is evidence-based. We are using quizzes as the example, but this type of exploration could and should be done with any number of instructional practices.
This publication, “Norms for Global Perspective Inventory,” is divided into four parts.
Part One: Demographic information for undergraduate students included in our national norms, based on a sample of 19,528 four year college and university undergraduate students who completed the GPI from November 2012 – June 2014, are presented in pages 2 – 3.
Part Two: Frequency distributions and means of items of the six global perspective taking scales
are listed on pages 4 – 6. The mean or average score of the scales is presented in the top right
hand corner of the table – highlighted in yellow. The frequency distribution and mean of each item
of the three experience scales – Curriculum, Co-curriculum, and Community – are presented on pages
7 and 8.
Part Three: Means of global perspective taking scales and items for freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and seniors are presented on pages 9 - 14. The mean or average score of the scale of all undergraduates is presented in the top row of the table – highlighted in yellow.
Part Four: Means of global perspective taking scales and each item in the scale by four different
types of institutions (Private or Public; BA/MA or Doctorate) are presented on pages 15 - 20.