Abstract
Several individual differences have been shown to predict academic and psychological outcomes among university students,
however, it is not always clear which are most impactful, in part because many of the constructs overlap. Thus, the purpose
of the present study was to examine the unique contributions of self-esteem, self-compassion, self-efficacy, and mindsets
when predicting outcomes among university students. Undergraduate students (N = 214) completed an online survey
including measures of the predictors as well as the outcomes of self-control, mental health, and both course and term grades.
Correlations confirmed the overlap among the predictors highlighting the importance of examining the unique contributions
of each. Results of multiple regression analyses showed that self-esteem and self-compassion explained unique variance
in depression and anxiety over and above self-efficacy and growth mindsets. In contrast, self-efficacy and growth mindsets
each significantly predicted self-control when controlling for self-esteem and self-compassion. Only self-efficacy predicted
course grades. Given our results, we suggest that self-compassion and one’s beliefs about their abilities are complementary
strengths for students attending university and should be considered when designing interventions to improve outcomes.
Keywords: self-esteem, self-compassion, self-efficacy, mindsets, self-control, mental health, grades
Many of us have stress dreams that surface over and over in our lives. Here is one of mine: I’m driving. It gets dark suddenly. I turn on my lights, but I still can’t see. I turn on my bright lights, but that does not help. I say to myself, "This is too dangerous," as I pull over to the side of the road. Because the dream happens only when I am faced with a situation that has no obvious answer, I do not need an expert interpreter to tell me that my subconscious is warning me to pause until I have better information about the path forward.
Recent media attention has brought to light the levels of sexual harassment faced by undergraduate students, and it appears that such incidents are on the rise for graduate students, too. Most of the cases reported involve faculty members as the perpetrators, yet little attention has been given to harassment among faculty members themselves, and this is a phenomenon that also affects student learning.
You have chosen to teach in higher education because you are a subject-matter specialist with a tremendous knowledge of your discipline. As you enter or continue your career, there is another field of knowledge you need to know: teaching and learning. What we know about teaching and learning continues to grow dramatically. It includes developing effective instructional strategies, reaching today’s students, and teaching with technology. Where is this
knowledge base? Books, articles in pedagogical periodicals, newsletters, conferences, and online resources provide ample help. Take advantage of your institution’s center for teaching and learning or other professional development resources.
As an instructor for large classes, it is a challenge for me to get a range of students to speak up in class. When I invite comments (“Who would like to add or ask?”), there are always a handful of students that rescue me—I think of them as my Hermiones—but the other 100-200+ students remain silent. I contrast this with my small online classes, where I hear from everyone on a regular basis. One August night a couple of years ago, I was lying in bed, thinking about how to incentivize more students to contribute in class, and came up with Fired Up and Ready to Discuss.
This qualitative case study uses the Capability Approach (CA) as a framework for experiential learning courses in the Faculty of Arts Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Windsor, in Ontario, Canada. Specifically, this is a case study of two courses titled Ways of Knowing and Ways of Doing that are offered as undergraduate general credit electives. In this paper, we describe the case study context and provide a brief introduction to the CA. The lead author presents the case study courses' pedagogical framework and describes the materials and methods of the case. Next, we provide a summary of the data collection and analysis alongside thick descriptions of the CA in the context of the case. In the final section, we share reflections for further discussion.
Keywords: Canada, Capability Approach, curriculum, decolonization, experiential learning, higher education, HDCA, liberal arts, Ontario, Strategic Mandate Agreement
Have you ever become so frustrated with students and overwhelmed by your workload that you start questioning what you are doing? At times it can feel suffocating. Baruti Kafele, an educator and motivational speaker offers a perspective of being mission-oriented to educators and others working with young people in our nation’s classrooms. He suggests affirming your goals and motivations to facilitate successes among students. However, in the college classroom, it is also essential that we, as faculty members, remember and affirm our purpose, acknowledge the contributions we make in students’ lives and professional
pursuits, and respect the call or passion that brought each of us to the teaching profession.
Abstract
In the context of the increasing focus on harms, psychological safety, and mental health in post-secondary settings, this qualitative study explores the challenges and opportunities for harm reduction through focus groups with student leaders, service providers, and administrators in one large Canadian university. Key themes explored by participants include a pervasive work hard, party culture, clashes regarding how to define and operationalize harm reduction, broad approaches to harm reduction in tension with the risk of becoming a band-aid solution, and knowledge transfer and privilege in an academic context. These findings suggest possible avenues for harm reduction that could be implemented as part of the new post-secondary standard,
as well as in society as a whole.
Keywords: harm reduction, mental health, post-secondary, Canada
After I received word of my promotion to full professor this past June — a day after my 39th birthday — I decided to text my friends rather than post the news on Twitter. One of them asked how I was celebrating. I told her that I wasn’t yet. Instead I was making a list of all the people who had tried to destroy my career.
"Wow, that’s heavy," she said. It was.
But it was also cathartic. Writing the list helped me realize something. From the outside, being a mother probably seemed like the greatest challenge on my path to full professor (the most common reply to my text was some version of "I can’t believe you did that with two kids!"). In fact, the biggest obstacle was actually race.
For most faculty members, the hardest thing about entrepreneurship is the marketing — figuring out how to "monetize" your academic skills and services.
It’s a tedious and time-consuming process that depends largely on trial and error. It also involves a fair amount of self-promotion, something that is anathema in faculty culture. Words like marketing and monetize tend to make academics very uncomfortable. And yet, without marketing, you’re just a person sitting around waiting for the phone to ring.
This essay is based on an episode of the University of Technology Sydney podcast series “The New Social Contract”. This audio series examines how the relationship between universities, the state and the public might be reshaped as we live through this global pandemic.
Leesa Wheelahan
In an era of heated debates around the purpose, priorities, and payment of senior administrators in Canadian higher ed, relationship management has become a key part of dayto-day life for many institutional leaders. This often takes the form of carefully worded interactions with the media, social media channel monitoring, and face-to-face meetings with important stakeholders.
But there’s one major set of opinions that’s often missed in all this: that of the students. As the group that feels it has the most at stake when it comes to the public standing of their institution, students are among the fastest to speak out on social media or fill the window of the president’s office with poster board when a PR disaster strikes. In their roles as current students, peers, and family members, they also stand to be one of the biggest influencers of a next year’s postsecondary applicant pool. As the savviest enrolment and communications staff know, current students are more than a listserv - they’re the future of your school.
Given this critical positioning, we reached out to over 1,400 students, applicants, and alumni across Canada to see what they thought of postsecondary senior administration today.
Some professors go into administration as a career choice, scaling institutional ladders. Some are coerced into serving temporarily as department chair because of rotating leadership rules. And some professors, like me, do it because we grew weary of being acted upon by supervisors.
You’ll find two types of administrators in that third group:
Those who wreak havoc, doing unto others as they had done to them — e.g., playing
favorites, concealing budgets, excluding critics from participation.
Those who treat everyone as they always wished to be treated.
Like many faculty members, I approach my syllabus before a new semester begins with some trepidation: Do I need to add anything new?
Usually the reasons for inserting additional language are quite valid: Perhaps a student identified a loophole last semester that needs to be corrected. Maybe a colleague suggested a new provision that has been neglected on course syllabi, such as contact information for mental-health resources or gender-pronoun policies.
This thesis seeks answers to the questions: why divide higher education into sectors, are they meeting their current goals and are they likely to meet emerging goals? Higher education was segmented into sectors in many countries to handle a mass expansion of participation. Access to lower level and lower cost tiers was made reasonably broad, while the funding needed for higher level and higher cost tiers was contained by limiting access to them. Student transfer is central to assessing the performance of
segmented systems such as these if students are not to be trapped in the lower cost and lower level tiers.
Providing a high-quality education where students have the opportunity to take part in active learning is one of the most important things we can do for our students. Doing so, however, is much more involved than we may think. All of our instructional work functions within a broader teaching and learning ecosystem where intentions interact, for better or worse, with the expectations and assumptions we have for ourselves and our students. Falling into the trap of attempting to engage students in a large class discussion, where random students reluctantly respond or provide additional information, is one of the most
common teaching practices applied in the higher education classroom. The problem is, large class discussions can feel like a waste of time as students are unmotivated, unprepared, and therefore unwilling to speak.
When I first began teaching online courses, I did so with a fair amount of uncertainty and trepidation. Could I replicate in a digital environment what I believed was essential for an in-person course? What I learned, however, was that I didn’t need to replicate my face-to-face pedagogy exactly. I could find different, albeit related, techniques and practices to achieve a similar outcome online.
Black students continuously experience, fight against and bear emotional scars from
racism, which can lead to increased anxiety and poor mental health outcomes. Some
colleges are just starting to address these issues.
This paper examines the policies to achieve universal participation in postsecondary education of 3 governments: those of Ontario, the UK (for England) and Australia. All 3 jurisdictions have high tuition fees and already have high access yet seek to further increase participation and attainment. But they do so in very different ways. The paper compares the governments’ policies on financing, relations between institutions, the involvement of community colleges and the role of private institutions in progressing towards universal postsecondary education. The paper finds two different approaches to achieving government goals in higher education – by formal planning and by constructing a market – and suggests that each is likely to achieve the goals government set for them.
Have you ever taken one of those implicit bias tests that assess your hidden prejudices about characteristics such as age, gender, weight, or skin tone? As I reviewed the list of test options recently on Project Implicit, it occurred to me that the site was missing one that would be especially helpful to those of us in higher education: a quiz to assess our bias for charismatic leaders.
It would be interesting to test how much we value confidence over competence and how often we gravitate toward those who are charming, dynamic, and engaging — even when they lack the skills or intellect to effectively lead a college or university into the future.