This article explores for a broad audience the changing landscape of education in the digital age, the changing roles of teachers in a technologyrich education system, and the skills, knowledge, values, and ways of thinking that teachers will need to have to support students’ social, emotional, and intellectual development in a digital learning environment.
What is “mindful teaching”? It entails, as Elizabeth MacDonald and Dennis Shirley explain, an “openness to new information, a willingness to explore topics that are marginalized in the dominant reform fads of the moment, and a readiness to review one’s previous assumptions as a part of a life-long career marked by critical inquiry, reflection and compassion” (p. 27). That definition seems reminiscent of reflective teaching. It certainly appears related.1 But there seem to be qualitative differences between reflective teaching and mindful teaching. Within the last decade a body of literature has blossomed; it is a literature that borrows from western and eastern contemplative traditions, underscores the role of the self and emotions in teaching, and attempts to consider the conflicts, conundrums, and paradoxes of teaching. Parker Palmer (1998), Irene McHenry and Richard Brady (2009), Rachael Kessler (2000), Linda Lantieri (2001), and Maria Lichtman (2005) are a few of the authors who have ventured into these dimensions of vocational exploration. It is a growing literature and one worth examining. Within this space MacDonald and Shirley, a public school teacher and an academic respectively, offer valuable insights and a description of an unusual program.
Chrarismatic leadership has been largely overlooked by organizational theorists. In part, the problem can be attributed to the lack of a systematic conceptual framework. Drawing from political science, sociology, and social psychology, this paper addresses the problem by proposing a model linking organizational contexts to charismatic leadership. A series of research hypotheses is offered.
This study aimed to better understand campus mental health culture and student mental health coping strategies, and to identify the mental health needs of students as well as gaps in mental health services within postsecondary education. A videovoice method was used to identify and document health-related issues and advocate for change. Forty-one interviews were conducted with campus stakeholders at five universities. Five themes involving mental
health emerged from the campus interviews: the stigma of mental illness; campus culture related to mental health; mental health services available and barriers to mental health services on campus; accommodations for students’ mental health needs; and student mental health coping strategies. A documentary was developed to advocate for better mental health.
We conclude that although Canadian campuses are raising awareness about mental health issues, there is not enough mental health infrastructure support on campuses; in particular, accessibility to campus mental health resources needs improvement.
Academic Profile of College Applicants
• Forty-two percent of all Ontario college applicants are direct entrants, 16% are delayed
entrants, 27% are PSE transfer students, and 15% have past PSE experience.
• Thirteen percent of applicants applied to a university in addition to applying to a college
or polytechnic.
• Nearly half of Ontario college applicants (46%) attended high school full-time or part-time at
the time of application. Less than one-quarter (21%) were attending either college or university;
26% were not attending any school.
• The majority of applicants attended a public high school (no religious affiliation—65%;
religious
affiliation—28%); only 5% attended a private school.
• More than half of Ontario college applicants (53%) plan to obtain a college certificate, diploma,
or advanced diploma as their highest credential, while 22% plan to obtain an undergraduate degree.
Four percent plan on obtaining a graduate/post-graduate certificate or diploma, while 6% plan to
obtain a Master’s degree.
• The most popular programs among all Ontario college applicants are health
sciences/kinesiology/nursing (25%), business (11%), social and community services (11%), fine art
and design (9%), and skilled trades/applied technologies/apprenticeship (8%).
• The mean high school grade average among Ontario college applicants (self-reported) was 77.4%
with nearly half of students falling between the 75% and 84% range (48%).
• A majority of Ontario college applicants (72%) are not first-generation students; 22% are first
generation, that is, neither parent had participated in post-secondary education.
When I interviewed for my current job, running a small graduate and postdoctoral career and professional development program in a hospital-based research institute, we got onto the topic of alumni data tracking. My program had an exit survey on their website, one that suggested they were collecting contact information and checking in with PhDs in the years after they'd left our institution to see how and what they were doing. (It turns out that no one knew the form was there, and it hadn't been used in many years.) We then got to talking about program evaluation, one of my favourite subjects, and about how we could start assessing if the professional and career development work we were doing--if they hired me--was having any effect on the post-PhD lives of our graduate students and postdocs.
Cognitive processes constructs provide a framework for analysis of transformational leadership and transactional leadership behaviors. Working memory, attribution, expectation, schema, script, and strategy processes are viewed as mediators in the relationships between feedback and environmental inputs and leadership behaviors. While these processes are the bases for both transformational and transactional leadership behaviors, the specific cognitive content differs between them. Whether an individual leads by developing a vision and enlisting subordinates' ego involvement in it or by setting goals and structuring tasks, depends upon the content of relevant schemata and scripts. This content is developed through experiences in similar situations or through vicarious Iearnmg. Literature relevant to the leadership and cognitive processes areas is reviewed, propositions are presented, and implications for research and practice are discussed.
In our over-stressed world, many health care providers, social workers and caregivers are suffering from slow yet painful burnout. Many of the rest of us, working long hours and raising families, seem to be approaching burnout, too. Sometimes we may feel that we’re too exhausted to keep giving to others, even though giving is a primary source of happiness in our lives.
“Wanted: former academic. Must have PhD in the humanities and at least two years of must be conversant in Chicago Manual ofStyle. Familiarity with plagiarism policies and competence in Blackboard a plus.”
As a new semester approaches, the academic's to-do list can fill up pretty fast. All of that course planning you’ve been putting off all summer now seems pretty urgent. Your chair wants a copy of your syllabi by the end of the week. And there’s still the matter of those writing deadlines. I’m here to add one more item to your list. Now is the time — not later — to think about accessibility in your classroom.
For many of us, accessibility is a topic handled by a brief section toward the end of our syllabus — a paragraph detailing the steps a disabled student can take to receive accommodations. Such policies are very much figured as an exception to the norm, an appendix pinned onto the end of the syllabus, as if to say: “Oh yeah, and if you’ve got a disability, we can probably work to find some kind of solution.” For Anne-Marie Womack, assistant director of writing at Tulane University, that way of conceptualizing accessibility is all wrong.
One of the core principles of the Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance (OUSA) is that all willing and qualified students should be able to attend post-secondary regardless of their ability to pay. However, students in Ontario face the highest tuition fees in the country and the cost and perceived costs of post-secondary education are consistently identified as barriers to post-secondary education. These barriers are contributing factors to the persistently high attainment gaps for various vulnerable groups in pursuing an undergraduate degree.
After years of collecting literally millions of documents and hearing the stories of thousands of aboriginal people who
experienced abuse at residential schools, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission is ready to archive this material, much of it brutal and heartbreaking, in the new National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation at the University of Manitoba. Scheduled to open to the public this fall, it will serve as a rich repository and essential historical record of a haunting and tragic chapter of First Nations and Canadian history.
The report’s authors call for at least one-quarter of students within the next decade to have an international learning experience.
“You can take bigger risks, or go do something that maybe scares you, because you know you can do it.” For Emma Monet, this was the benefit of having an international educational experience. The Ryerson University graduate studied in Turkey for the winter semester of 2016, where she took five courses at Koç University toward her sociology degree. She said that, in addition to the course credits, she gained problem-solving skills, a wider appreciation for how others live and a greater ability to trust herself.
Many of us here on the Student Vu staff have transferred between programs or between institutions at some point in our academic career so we were very interested to hear about current students' perceptions of and experiences with transferring.
Top research colleges.
Monitoring the emotions of students during online learning could help to improve retention and course design, researchers believe.
This paper analyzes the incentives induced by a formula to fund universities based primarily on enrolment. Using a simple
game theoretical framework, we argue that the strategic behaviour induced by those formulas is to favour enrollment. We
further argue that if the funding value differs by enrolment type, it introduces incentives to substitute enrolment where most
profitable. If the public appropriations do not follow the outcomes induced by the formula, the incentives introduce a dynamic
inconsistency, and funding per student can decline. We use these results to discuss the 2018 funding formula changes in Québec.
We argue that Québec’s latest reform should reduce substitution effects and increase graduate enrolment. We provide
simulations of the reform’s redistributive effects and show that some universities gain structural advantages over others. Whilst
the reform, on a short-term basis, deploys a mechanism to mitigate these advantages, on a long-term basis the effect introduces
a larger gap between Québec higher-education institutions.
Keywords: university funding, reforms, simulation, induced effects, post-secondary education, game theory
Ken Coates is a Munk Senior Fellow with the Macdonald-Laurier Institute and co-author of What to Consider If
You’re Considering University. Douglas Auld is a professor of economics at the University of Guelph.
As students at colleges and universities across the country head back to class, the nation’s media have been filled with familiar debates about tuition fees, student debt, careers and government funding. As the debate goes on, universities, colleges and polytechnical institutes will defend their work, governments will laud the contributions of postsecondary institutes to Canada’s so-called innovation agenda, and student organizations will demand lower fees. This is all predictable, producing more heat than light in the process.
Just a tiny minority of Canadian students choose to study abroad, and that’s a problem. Here’s what some
universities are doing to try to reverse the trend.
Caitlyn Ryall had her doubts – and her fears. Then a third-year material art and design student at OCAD University,
Ms. Ryall weighed the pros and cons of heading abroad for a semester at the University of Southampton in Winchester, England. On the one hand, she felt an excitement and fascination due to her upbringing – her father is a travel writer, and she shared his wanderlust and curiosity about the world. On the other hand, she faced serious challenges: the costs were almost unthinkable (upwards of $15,000), the initial administrative processes seemed to be moving as slow as molasses, and the payoff, in terms of transfer credits, was uncertain. And it would be her first time abroad, without her traditional network of friends and family.
According to the World Health Organization, depression is the leading cause of disability worldwide.
If you haven’t experienced this common mental disorder, it’s likely that someone you know has, though they may not have told you. An estimated 350 million people of all ages suffer from depression, causing them to function poorly at work, at school and in the family.
Today, significant headway has been made in understanding depression and its causes, how depression can be recognized and how to treat it.