Conventional wisdom suggests that teaching students how to be creative is a task best left to the arts and design. But faculty members from other fields are increasingly seeing the benefits of cultivating in their students the kinds of integrative and lateral thinking that creativity can foster. Two examples from psychology came to us in response to our recent request for your thoughts on this topic.
When I was 19 and decided I wanted to become a psychology professor, I did so from the comfort of my dorm room, on the window seat across from a decommissioned fireplace. I’d always loved reading, writing, and talking, so what better career for me than academe? I could not have known that my vision of faculty life would become anachronistic by the time I was out of graduate school.
I am one of an increasingly small group of Ph.D.s whose faculty dreams have been realized. I have a tenure-track job with paid sabbaticals and institutional support for my research. I’ve written a book. But with each passing year, my experiences as a faculty member are less and less the norm. What it means to be a professor has changed for many other Ph.D.s — largely because academic life and culture is nothing like it used to be.
Using the chronicles of three friends, this chapter presents a counterstory that sets the stage for the examination of racism in teacher education, within the United States of America, using critical race theory (CRT) as an analytical tool. The setting of these chronicles is during a time when postracial rhetoric in the United States was at its highest—just after the 2008 election of President Barack Obama. The three friends take the readers on a journey through their graduate experience in teacher education and into their first faculty position in teacher education. Their experiences, as students and junior faculty, are akin to what many faculty and students of color and their White allies experience daily in teacher education programs across the United States. The analysis of their chronicle, using CRT, reveals that postracial discourse has disguised racism and racial microaggression in teacher education. Racial microaggression is as pernicious as other forms of racism and, through its passiveaggressive orientation, validates institutional and individual lack of attention to issues of race.
The University of Waterloo will decide this fall whether a standardized system for course evaluations can balance
student demands for more feedback on their classroom learning with faculty concerns about the impact of bias and
evidence that such surveys may not improve student outcomes.
Art is one of the most underutilized resources in today’s ELA classroom. The Roman poet Horace claimed, “A picture is a poem
without words” meaning art and written word are different mediums of expression. Art offers students a break from written words while continuing to develop the same skill set needed to be successful readers through challenging students to think both critically and analytically.
This month, we’ll focus on how to prepare for existing state and national tests. I’ll focus on three things that can help your students improve their chances to score up to their potential. By the way, kids never score above their potential; they’re just not going to randomly make enough lucky right answers time after time after time (in statistics, it’s called regression to the mean).
But, they often underperform for a host of reasons, even when they should perform much better. While we could focus on dozens of variables that influence standardized testing, we’ll focus on these three: 1) brain chemistry, 2) priming, and 3) episodic memory triggers. Some of these suggestions got so many rave reviews that they are reproduced from an earlier bulletin!
From growing the perfect crop to marketing within restrictive rules, Canadian colleges and universities are cultivating courses for those wanting to work in the booming marijuana industry.
Kwantlen Polytechnic University started offering online courses in cannabis production, marketing and financing about three years ago after officials at the British Columbia school realized there was a need for training and education around medicinal marijuana, said David Purcell, the university's director of emerging business.
Background/Context: In recent years, college attendance has become a universal aspiration. These rising ambitions have been attributed to the “college-for-all” norm, which encourages all students to aim for college attendance; however, not all students are prepared for the college application process or college-level work.
“Increased domestic and global access to higher education,” writes Amy Lee in her 2017 book Teaching Interculturally: A Framework for Integrating Disciplinary Knowledge and Intercultural Development, has resulted in having “multiple diversities in any given classroom or academic program.”
It happened in early January, when all my historian friends were at the annual meeting of the AHA, the
leading organization in our field.
I was sitting at home, revising my manuscript introduction and feeling jealous of my friends, when I got an email telling me my last (and best) hope for a tenure-track job this year had evaporated. I’d promised myself that this would be my last year on the market. Of course, I’d promised myself that last year, too, and then decided to try again. But this time, I knew it was over.
I’m a tenured professor at a large public research-oriented university. This was my first job straight out of doctoral studies. It was, and still is, the job of my dreams. As opposed to the many tenure-track horror stories we hear (particularly from women), I felt valued and appreciated from Day 1 in my department. I respect my colleagues and feel respected by them.
So what’s the problem? Last fall I physically collapsed.
The more open universities are about where their PhDs are getting jobs, the better equipped current students are to
forge their own career paths.
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.
Any college leader considering a curriculum change for his or her institution has a lot of questions to ask and answer. First, what are the specific goals? To increase graduation rates? To increase particular knowledge in certain majors? And what changes in the curriculum would achieve those goals? We’ve gone through multiple curriculum reforms at the City University of New York over the past 15 years, and it’s never an easy process. Some faculty members, as well as administrators, can be sceptical and resistant to change, and resources to carry out the reforms are hard to obtain. One of the most important things we have learned during that time is that relevant, clear data can help you make better decisions about curriculum reform. That means you need to put a premium on data — both collecting it and analyzing it.
When it comes to skills development, sometimes you have to make advantage before you can take advantage.
I’m sitting at my desk in the Research Institute at SickKids, putting the finishing touches on our skills and career development curriculum for the upcoming academic year. Our office has an open-door policy, so one of the institute’s PhD students pops in to talk about internships. They’re interested in participating in our administrative internship program, which places grad students and postdocs in departments like grant development, knowledge translation and tech transfer. What they really want though is to work in the project management unit. They’re seriously interested in moving into a project management role after they graduate, but they want to get some practical experience first to find out if they really enjoy the work and to build their network.
Abstract
This article presents the results of the first Canada-wide survey on how university admissions personnel view the International Baccalaureate Diploma Program (IBDP) in relation to other curricula. The purpose of this study was twofold: (i) to move beyond anecdote and discover how Canada compares with universities in the UK and Australia/NZ, and (ii) to determine whether a dominant or hegemonic discourse surrounding the IBDP exists. Building on a smallscale pilot of perceptions in Ontario universities, the present study replicates two International
Baccalaureate Organization studies (in the UK, 2003, and in Australia/NZ, in 2007) in the Canadian context. Results reveal a pattern of responses consistent with the previous studies —i.e., a confident positive general view, combined with uncertainty regarding specific aspects of the IBDP. Such widespread and consistent views suggest the existence of a dominant or hegemonic discourse surrounding the IBDP, constructing it as the standard of excellence in pre-tertiary education, which has important implications for publicly funded education in Canada.
In recent years, Ontario universities have increasingly targeted Indigenous and international students for recruitment. Focusing on three southern Ontario universities, I examine how service delivery for these student groups is organized in space. In light of Henri Lefebvre’s work, I argue that the spatiality of the information hubs created to support them differs significantly, each
being defined in the interactions between institutional assumptions about the student group, the social presence and activities hosted, and the lived experiences of the students utilizing these services. Whereas Indigenous student services are organized as a resource centre to create a separate space for Indigeneity on campuses, international student services take the form of an
experience desk to emphasize rapid integration into the mainstream. Based on interviews with students and staff, I reflect on the differences between the two models to discuss the spatial politics of information hubs within the context of Ontario universities.
1) Strengthening our Canadian fabric
• How many newcomers should we welcome to Canada in 2017 and beyond?
• How can we best support newcomers to ensure they become successful members of our communities?
• Do we have the balance right among the immigration programs or streams? If not, what priorities should form the foundation of Canada's immigration planning?
When I think about my highest goal as a teacher, it is to help create responsible citizens who take care of each other and their world.
And the best way that I can help form human beings who do good is to teach them empathy. I’d like to think that the ability to
understand and share the feelings of others is something that everyone is born with, but I also think that it is important enough to
be explicitly taught just in case.
Just starting out? Worried about your lectures, your students, your time-management skills and more? Eight academics offer up their advice.
There are plenty of mistakes to go around early in one’s academic career. Whether they happen in front of a class or
behind the scenes, hindsight shows us how to do better. Here you’ll find a mix of experience and advice from eight
professors who’ve been there, done that and lived to share some lessons.