The news that two publicly funded Ontario colleges are operating men-only campuses in Saudi Arabia feels wrong at first glance.
At second glance, too. There’s bound to be a level of complexity in any business transaction with a repressive country that discriminates against women, among its other human rights sins. Conscious of the yawning gap between professed ideals and entrepreneurial self-interest, we often find it easier to accept the moral contradictions built into real-world relationships as unavoidable and even necessary.
Our teaching persona is expressed in how we go about shaping the learning environment. A purposeful integration of our teaching persona helps link students with content in subtle ways. This matters because we’re after an expression of teaching persona that plays a constructive role in creating a learning environment where learners thrive and teachers flourish.
Using a cross-case analysis of online, on-campus and online university teacher preparation courses, this study critically examines the constraints and affordances of online teacher education in preparing teachers for culturally and linguistically diverse (CLO) urban schools. The results of the study indicate that while there was no significant difference between online and on-campus courses in terms of teacher acquisition of knowledge related to CLO instruction and assessment, questions remain about whether online teacher preparation can promote critical self-reflection, culturally responsive teaching practices, and collaboration within schools, when teacher learning is not supported and situated in schools and communities in an ongoing and structured way.
Keywords
teacher education, urban education, linguistically responsive pedagogy, culturally relevant pedagogy, language education, identity, teacher beliefs
Most students are encouraged to seek help to combat stress, but international students who are burning out fear
that asking for help may lead to deportation.
Adolfo Ruiz, 21, is from Venezuela and studying in B.C. After months of intensive study, working part-time and living
in a cramped room, he hit a wall emotionally.
"You are just crying your guts out and you are not able to talk," Ruiz said. "It was like a total, mental emotional
the breakdown for me."
But Ruiz said he was afraid to ask for help. "If you mess up once, then your record is totally stained for the rest of
your life," he said.
As an international student hoping to stay on in Canada, Ruiz feared that any public sign of weakness could hurt his
chances
Professionalism, elucidates the philanthropic dimension of the contemporary faculty career. In this volume, scholars address the notion that in addition to teaching, research, and service, contributing to the public good by way of philanthropy is inherent in the fabric of the academic professorial career and as such, they advocate for its recognition as a dimension of faculty work.
When people first think of professorial philanthropy, they may conjure images of faculty engaging in activities such as community service. Shaker takes a different stance, focusing on the element of the faculty role that serves the public good in its broadest form. Therefore, to illustrate this paradigm shift, Shaker reflects on her graduate advisor’s philanthropic actions from which she benefited, including mentorship sessions, motivational meetings, one-on-one writing time, access to
personal office space, introduction to personal contacts, and gifted books. Employing her personal experience as a springboard, Shaker argues that the faculty profession is “grounded in a responsibility to contribute to the public good. The expectation to meet society’s needs for an educated citizenry and societal requirements to advance and disseminate knowledge lend a philanthropic component to the act of being a faculty member” (p. 11). Thus, Shaker asserts that the faculty profession is anchored in the responsibility to growing demands of research productivity and increased pressure for student accountability, calls to both preserve and recognize the importance of faculty philanthropy.
Trusting people is not easy for any of us, but it may be particularly difficult for administrators.
It entails a degree of letting go that may feel uncomfortable for people used to being in charge. It also requires a fair
amount of courage, since you never really know what other people are going to do — and in this case, what they do
might very well reflect negatively on you.
STATEMENT OF COMMITMENT
1. All members of the University of Toronto (“the University”) community should have the ability to study, work, and live in a campus environment free from Sexual Violence, including Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment.
2. Sexual Violence is a serious issue that undermines the health, well-being, and security of individuals, communities, and society. Addressing the causes and consequences of Sexual Violence requires the deliberate and collective efforts of governments, institutions, and citizens.
3. The University is committed to making available programs and resources to educate its community on the prevention of and response to Sexual Violence.
4. The University is committed to responding to and addressing incidents and complaints of Sexual Violence involving its students, staff and faculty, and to ensuring that those members of the community who are affected by Sexual Violence receive support.
5. The University recognizes that Sexual Violence can occur between individuals regardless of sex, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity or expression, or relationship status.
6. The University recognizes the intersection of Sexual Violence with discrimination and harassment, including but not limited to the grounds set out in the Ontario Human Rights Code. The University recognizes that individuals from historically marginalized communities may be disproportionately affected by Sexual Harassment and Sexual Violence.
7. Sexual Violence can be committed against any person and is an issue that requires an inclusive response. The University recognizes that Sexual Violence is overwhelmingly committed against women, and in particular women who experience the intersection of multiple identities such as, but not limited to, indigenous women, women with disabilities, and racialized women. Additionally, the University recognizes that those whose gender identity or gender expression does not conform to historical gender norms are also at increased risk of Sexual Violence.
8. The University recognizes that individuals who have experienced Sexual Violence experience a range of effects that can profoundly affect their lives.
A number of studies suggest that student evaluations of teaching are unreliable due to various kinds of biases against instructors. (Here’s one addressing gender.) Yet conventional wisdom remains that students learn best from highly rated instructors; tenure cases have even hinged on it.
What if the data backing up conventional wisdom were off? A new study suggests that past analyses linking student achievement to high student teaching evaluation ratings are flawed, a mere “artifact of small sample sized studies and publication bias.”
In the leafy suburbs of Philadelphia, the affluent Downingtown, Pa., school system has high test scores, plenty of digital resources, and features one of the best high schools in the country.
Even so, Superintendent Lawrence J. Mussoline decided to shake things up. The 13,000-student district already offered students online courses from a vendor, but Mussoline wanted a blended- learning program taught entirely by Downingtown teachers with Downingtown-created courses.
To have the most impactful mental health and wellness services at our institutions, we must go beyond frontline staff. Everyone has a role to play in supporting student mental health and wellness.
The university sector developed More Feet on the Ground to teach faculty, staff and student leaders how to recognize, respond, and refer students experiencing mental health issues on campus. The educational website has been so successful that CICMH is managing the website moving forward and its scope is being expanded to include Ontario colleges.
Throughout the summer, I have often found myself in discussions about international students. During these discussions I have constantly heard about the “benefits” these individuals bring to Canadian universities described as “unique perspectives in class discussions” or “a significant economic impact.” This is true – international students do provide immeasurable benefits; however, they also face significant barriers while attending our institutions. We need to start shifting our focus from the benefits these students bring, to ways that we can help them succeed while they are attending our institutions.
The idea for sharing this post came from a session I recently conducted at the annual teaching conference organized by my university. A pedagogical conundrum was raised by a colleague whose enthusiasm and question stayed with me and inspired me to write this post. The question posed by this colleague is relevant to all instructors who have ever used group work to assess their students: How should one deal with the issues that arise when members of a group are not picking up their share of the responsibilities during a group work project?
Love him or hate him, there’s lots to say about Donald Trump. But how should instructors handle class discussions about the new president, if they allow them at all? An assistant professor of public and strategic communication at American University established with his students a set of ground rules for talking about Trump, which he says may be useful to colleagues elsewhere as they engage with policy and other issues.
To evaluate old and new directions we must keep objectives sharply in mind. Of late, articulately explicit discussion of the objectives of international exchange has fortunately been supplanting the vaguer statements of pious hope that sprang from the unanalyzed convictions that exchange is inherently a Good Thing. A brief review of the principal objectives that have been advanced is made easy by the availability of an excellent summary by the Committee on Educational Interchange Policy.1 From the generally expressed purposes of sponsoring groups, the Committee lists the following in
descending order of frequency:
What does it mean to be a great teacher? Of course credentials, knowledge, critical thinking, and all other faculties of intelligence are important. However, a great teacher should be much more than credentials, experience and intelligence
I have been wanting to write about tired teaching for some time now. Concerns about burnout are what’s motivating me. Teachers can reach a place where teaching does nothing for them or their students. They don’t just wake up one morning and find themselves burned out; they’ve moved there gradually, and it’s a journey that often starts with tired teaching.
There’s nothing on the subject in my big file of articles and resources. I can’t remember having read about it, and I’m not sure how much we even talk about it. We do talk about being tired. Teaching is relentless. It happens every day, several times a week—or potentially 24/7 if it’s online. And it’s demanding. There’s so much more than the actual teaching. There’s considerable planning involved before each class. Plus, we need to spend time with students—those who want to talk, those needing
help, and those with questions or, sometimes, complaints. There are assignments to grade and feedback to provide—
all carrying the expectation of a quick turnaround. With multiple courses to teach, we do get tired, but I think we regularly confuse physical fatigue with the more serious emotional tiredness that comes from a heavy workload of always being there, always giving, and always juggling multiple balls in the air.
When approached for a letter in the bleak midwinter of recommendation-writing season, many of us wish for responsible ways to say, like Herman Melville’s Bartleby the Scrivener, “I prefer not to.” Yet in weak or guilty moments, we may accede to a student’s plea and then spend hours racking our brains for something to say.
It’s hard for a scrupulous teacher to resist the fear that, in declining to write a recommendation, you may be torpedoing someone’s professional life. Ultimately, though, a student’s application materials will speak for themselves and the professional world will make its own judgment, fairly or not. Disappointment, even heartbreak, is a reality from which even the deserving can’t always be shielded. And you aren’t obligated to make a case for a student whom you can’t, in good conscience, support.
Many universities have implemented campus-based initiatives addressing students’ mental health with the goal of promoting well-being. One such initiative is the newly developed Counsellor-in-Residence (CIR) program at the University of Calgary, which targets students’ mental health by providing residence- based counselling services and mental health programming. In this
process evaluation, students completed three waves of data collection conducted over the academic year. Each wave measured students’ mental health literacy, using the Mental Health Literacy Scale (O’Connor & Casey, 2015), and resiliency, using the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale-25 (Connor & Davidson, 2003). Males reported lower mental health literacy than females (p < .001), and international students reported lower mental health literacy than domestic students (p < .001). No differences in resilience levels were found between groups. These findings suggest that male and international students experience additional barriers to accessing campus-based mental health services. Implications for residence-based mental health programming that target male and international students are discussed.
Partnerships between public and private colleges, which have brought thousands of new international students to Ontario, carried unacceptable risks to the students, the province and the quality of education, says a report for the provincial government that led to a moratorium on the programs.
This paper challenges conventional wisdom about the drivers of international community at the individual level. Presenting
new data and a novel natural experiment approach to the study of cross-border contact and international community,
it tests some of the key microfoundations of international relations theory about how a sense of shared international community may arise and evolve among individuals. The hypotheses are tested using survey data from a large sample (n = 571)
of American study abroad students in a range of universities across a treatment and a control group. Surprisingly, findings
do not support the main hypothesis that cross-border contact fosters a sense of shared international community. However,
the second hypothesis drawn from the liberal paradigm, suggesting that cross-border contact lowers threat perceptions, is
strongly supported. The “Huntingtonian” hypothesis that cross-border contact heightens nationalism also garners wide
support. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications for theory and future research, especially the potential
of rethinking the drivers of international community at the individual level to rely less on a sense of shared identity and
essential sameness, and more on a feeling of “enlightened nationalism” and appreciation for difference.