A look at the sexual harassment policies at Canadian universities.
The recent decision of the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal in the case of Fariba Mahmoodi, a student who accused her professor of sexual harassment, has once again focussed attention on a controversial issue. Ms. Mahmoodi complained to the tribunal that Donald Dutton, a psychology professor at the University of British Columbia, and UBC as his employer, had sexually harassed her. The tribunal agreed, awarding her a total of $13,000 including $4,000 for injury to her dignity, feelings and self-respect, and $5,200 for counseling expenses.
Instructors have temporary experiences with groups of students each semester. Even so, these brief moments have the power to change lives. As professors, we decide the impact of our semester-long relationships. We decide to what degree we will work towards student engagement and transformation within our courses. If you would like to create a community of engaged learners within your classroom, it takes more than regurgitating the most compelling content, and it goes beyond collaborative pedagogical practices. The secret to inspiring and transforming students rests in the power of building a community of learners.
You know, I'm a numbers guy. Yes, I'm a math guy, but no, that doesn't automatically make me a numbers guy. In fact, being a pure mathematician at the University of Waterloo, the running joke was none of us could do mental math because we hadn't seen numbers since high school.
But that never really applied to me, because I also love numbers. The Pythagoreans said that "all is number"; Plato believed that numbers were the "gateway to the divine"; Erdos and Ramanujan found "extraordinary beauty" in numbers; and a colleague recently said in a talk that "numbers transcend us, yet bind us together."
I've always found that numbers told stories.
Chpt. 12 from Prentice Hall
Hosting international students has long been admired as one of the hallmarks of internationalization. The two major formative strands of internationalization in Canadian universities are development cooperation and international
students. With reduced public funding for higher education, institutions are aggressively recruiting international students to generate additional revenue.
Canada is equally interested in offering incentives for international students to stay in the country as immigrants after completing their studies. In its 2011 budget, the Canadian federal government earmarked funding for an international
education strategy and, in 2010, funded Edu-Canada—the marketing unit within the Department of Education and Foreign Affairs (DFAIT)—to develop an official Canadian brand to boost educational marketing, IMAGINE:
Education in/au Canada. This model emulates the Australian one, which rapidly capitalized on the recruitment of international students and became an international success story. Given current Canadian higher education policy trends, this paper will address the cautionary lessons that can be drawn from the Australian case
Vision
Prosperous communities and transformed lives.
Mission
Creating new realities by opening endless opportunities.
Most teachers enter the profession with strong ideals regarding the work they are about to undertake, and the impact this work will have on the students they teach. A good number of those who apply to faculties of education will report that teaching is something they have dreamed of doing since they were, themselves, young children. Others will tell stories of teachers encountered throughout their own schooling – teachers who, through effective teaching strategies, personal encouragement and modeling, influenced their decision to pursue a teaching career. Conversations with teacher candidates entering their first years of professional life are, in many cases, full of hope, passion and the expectation that, through their work as teachers, they will be able to inspire, excite, and make a similar impact on the lives of the young people with whom they work.
Conversations with teachers who have spent some time in the profession often reflect a tempering of the high ideals with which they began their careers. While they are still hopeful about the work they are doing, there is a sense from many teachers that factors beyond their immediate control prevent them from fully realizing their original vision of what their professional life was going to be like. In short, there is often a noticeable difference between the teacher they aspire to be and the teacher that they feel they are required to be.
The purpose of our research project was to assess the relevance and value added of using a specific technology – video screen capture (VSC) – for instructional purposes in university-level second-language writing courses. VSC technology makes it possible to "trace" all activities visible on a computer screen. Our objective was to understand how VSC, which helps visualize the process of writing on computers, can support this process and enhance students’ autonomy as second-language writers.
With all the post-Harvey-Weinstein wringing of hands about why it takes so long for abuse to be revealed, especially when everyone clearly knows it’s happening, I was reminded of what my department head had said to me when I asked for a member of my dissertation committee to be removed:
"Please don’t ask me to do this. He’ll make my life miserable."
I had approached the chair for help after it became clear that this professor and I had an "unworkable relationship." Ditching him, another faculty member told me, was the only way I could finally finish a lagging doctorate. I’d even sought help from a therapist who told me, "He doesn’t seem to want to let you go," and added, "but you have to get away."
When the Royal Bank of Canada was recently caught up in a maelstrom of bad publicity over its use of temporary foreign workers, it led politicians and pundits to scrutinize and question the growing use by Canadian firms of imported, short-term labour. The Royal Bank was accused of misusing a system designed to help employers who could not find Canadian
workers by using it, instead, to find cheaper foreign labourers to replace higher-cost Canadians. But the incident raises a bigger question than simply how one bank makes use of Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP): Whether the program is, in fact, interfering with the natural supply and demand responses of the labour market. And if we want
to make better use of available Canadian labour, the time has come for the federal government to start cutting back on the use of TFWP.
The number of admissions under the TFWP has nearly tripled in 25 years, from 65,000 to 182,000 in 2010. The primary justification for the expansion of the program has been the widespread assumption that Canada is suffering from a growing shortage of labour. Yet, it is hard to find any evidence to support this belief.
The Canadian College and University Environmental Network (CCUEN-RCCUE) is an organization established to bring together environmental educators at universities, colleges, CEGEPs, technical institutes, and similar organizations that offer educational programs in any environmental field.
Since the initial meetings of college and university educators in 2002 and 2003 the Canadian College and University Environmental Network (CCUEN) - Réseau Canadien des Collèges et des Universités en Environnement (RCCUE) has aspired to become the primary voice of Canadian college and university environmental educators. One of the core activities is the annual CCUEN1 conference. This conference brings together researchers, employers and educators, students and related associations together to explore a range of issues and challenges for environmental educators.
55% OF PROFESSIONAL LEADERS HOLD A SOCIAL SCIENCES OR HUMANITIES DEGREE
ALMOST HALF OF LEADERS HAVE INTERNATIONAL EXPERIENCE
Mentoring novice teachers often features buddy support, technical advice, and classroom management tips to meet teacher-centered concerns of survival. Such mentoring aligns with conventional models of teacher development that describe the
novice concerned with self-image, materials and procedures, and management, and only after the initial years, able to focus on individual student learning. Drawing on the wisdom of practice of 37 experienced teacher induction leaders and case studies of mentor/new teacher pairs, this study found that mentors can interrupt that tendency among new teachers, focusing them on the learning of individual students, especially those underperforming. For this work, mentors tap knowledge of student and teacher learners, pedagogy for classrooms and for tutoring teachers, and especially multilayered knowledge and abilities in several domains of assessment. These include assessment of students, alignment of curriculum with standards, and formative
assessment of the new teacher. Skillful use of this knowledge can bring individual student learning into focus and help new teachers generate methods for shaping instruction to meet students’ varied learning needs. These results challenge developmental models of teaching and conservative mentoring practices, calling for articulation of a knowledge base and relevant mentor development to focus new teachers early on individual student learning. Do students think I’m in charge? What materials should I use in this unit?
ALTHOUGH WE KNOW THAT SEXUAL VIOLENCE OFTEN GOES UNREPORTED, RESEARCH INDICATES THAT THERE ARE 460,000 SEXUAL ASSAULTS IN CANADA EACH YEAR. FOR EVERY 1000 SEXUAL ASSAULTS, ONLY 33 ARE EVER REPORTED TO THE POLICE; 12 RESULT IN CHARGES LAID; ONLY 6 ARE PROSECUTED AND ONLY 3 LEAD TO A CONVICTION.
Very few reach the courts and far too many survivors don’t access support and counselling. This means that survivors aren’t getting the help that they need, and perpetrators of sexual violence are not being held accountable.
Why? Because too many of us have attitudes towards women, men, relationships and rape that towards women, men, relationships and rape that are sexist, misogynist and often just plain wrong.
Leadership and management must go hand in hand. They are not the same thing. But they are necessarily linked, and complementary. Any effort to separate the two is likely to cause more problems than it solves.Still, much ink has been spent delineating the differences. The manager’s job is to plan, organize and coordinate. The leader’s job is to inspire and motivate.
In Canada, Aboriginal postsecondary enrolment and completion rates are significantly lower than those of non-Aboriginals (Canadian Millenium Scholarship Foundation, 2004; Mendelson, 2006). This is most evident in disciplines involving science and mathematics (Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, 2005). Moreover, Aboriginal student achievement in K – Grade 12 mathematics courses is significantly lower than those of non-Aboriginal students (Neel, 2007). In the contemporary Canadian context of low Aboriginal participation and completion rates in postsecondary studies of mathematics, it is important to provide Aboriginal students with experiences of mathematics that foster their interest and ability in the early stages of their schooling (Bourke et al, 1996; Council of Ministers of Education, Canada, 2002).
A survey of faculty participation in paid consulting arrangements in Ontario Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology reveals that 34% were involved in at least one project during a specified one-year period. There was significant variation in participation by division of academic appointment and by gender. The authors suggest that further research should be undertaken concerning the nature and role of paid consulting in community colleges. A number of basic questions are raised in an attempt to induce further study on this important topic.
Between June 2013 and June 2014, 11 graduates from the School of Education at Laurentian
University,most teaching in smaller communities scattered across northern Ontario, were interviewed about their recent experiences. The purpose of these interviews was to determine how well the concurrent education program had prepared these graduates for the realities of teaching in First Nation, Métis and Inuit (FNMI) remote and rural communities in the province. Five of the graduates’ administrators or school principals were also interviewed to determine how thoroughly teacher
training had prepared the graduates to work in the north and how the program could be improved.
What messages do our students receive from their parents, their high school teachers, their older peers, and siblings before they enter college? When I ask my first-year students the answers are, “Now you are on your own,” or “No one will help you when you are in college!” and “You are responsible for your own work.”
Notice something here? All these messages focus on the individual’s sole responsibility to succeed in college without the help of others. You are independent now.
Aboriginal peoples in Canada face multiple and systemic barriers to attaining and succeeding in post-secondary education. A long history of discrimination, including the legacy of residential schools, and chronic government underfunding of Aboriginal
education has contributed to low high school completion rates, a widening gap in post- secondary attainment, and the lowest labour market outcomes of any group in Canada.