On behalf of Universities Canada, Abacis cpmdicted amd extensive online nationwide study of Canadian's views of Universities.
Vision
•Transforming lives and communities through learning.
Mission
•To educate students for career success.
If you read my previous work, Journey of Joy: Teaching Tips for Reflection, Rejuvenation, and Renewal, you may recall that I suggested using an acronym for the word joy— Just Offer Yourself. In short, when confused about where to locate joy, we can
remember to give of ourselves in basic ways in order to receive the benefits that derive from each simple act. But what about those times when we feel as if we have little to offer? Let’s take a look at some contributing factors and possible solutions.
This analysis is about the role of poverty in school reform. Data from a number of sources are used to make five points. First, that poverty in the United States is greater and of longer duration than in other rich nations. Second, that poverty, particularly among urban minorities, is associated with academic performance that is well below international means on a number of different international assessments. Scores of poor students are also considerably below the scores achieved by white middle-class American students. Third, that poverty restricts the expression of genetic talent at the lower end of the socioeconomic scale. Among the lowest social classes environmental factors, particularly family and neighborhood influences, not genetics, is strongly associated with academic performance. Among middle-class students it is genetic factors, not family and neighborhood factors, that most influences academic perfor-mance. Fourth, compared to middle-class children, severe medical problems affect impoverished youth. This limits their school achievement as well as their life chances. Data on the negative effect of impoverished neighborhoods on the youth who reside there is also presented. Fifth, and of greatest interest, is that small reductions in family poverty lead to increases in positive school behavior and better academic performance. It is argued that poverty places severe limits on what can be accomplished through school reform efforts, particularly those associated with the federal No Child Left Behind law. The data presented in this study suggest that the most powerful policy for improving our nations’ school achievement is a reduction in family and youth poverty.
Post-secondary education is effectively a requirement to succeed in today’s labour market. Unfortunately, while the demand for education has increased, public funding has failed to keep up. Public funding shortfalls have resulted in a significant growth of costs that have been downloaded onto individual students, namely in the form of high tuition fees. From 1990 to 2014, national average tuition fees have seen an inflation-adjusted increase of over 155%. In Ontario, tuition fees have increased over 180%.
Ontario’s colleges share the provincial government’s belief that apprenticeship must play a greater role in addressing skills shortages and contributing to innovative, high-performance workplaces that enhance Ontario’s competitiveness.
Given the severity of the economic downturn, Ontario faces an immediate, serious challenge as apprenticeship workplace training is disrupted. Businesses are less able to take on apprentices and registrations drop as apprentices are often last on a company’s payroll and first off. To help apprentices and their employers, Ontario’s colleges propose that the government:
Over the last decade the global economy has become more competitive, and the jobs needed in that new economy have grown more technologically complex. As a result, educators, education researchers, and national and state policymakers have emphasized that students must graduate from high school “ready for college and career.” While college and career readiness has become the goal for all individuals, opinions have recently begun to differ about what college and—especially—career readiness actually means and how best to assess it.
With so many classroom research studies published daily, you can be forgiven for missing some. The techniques below are super-tactical and, for the most part, unsung strategies that you’ll be excited to try tomorrow.
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 retirement patterns of senior faculty are an issue of ongoing interest in higher education, particularly since the 2008-09 recession. If a significant share of tenured faculty works past “normal” retirement age, challenges can arise for institutional leadership focused on keeping the faculty workforce dynamic for purposes of teaching, research and service. Buyout packages and phased retirement programs have been common responses to encourage faculty retirement, but colleges and universities are increasingly interested in alternative and complementary strategies to manage faculty retirement patterns.
Tenured faculty age 50 or older can divided into three groups—35% expect to retire by normal retirement age; 16% would prefer to retire by normal retirement age, but expect to work longer (i.e., they are “reluctantly reluctant” to retire); and 49% would like to and expect to work past normal retirement age (i.e., they are “reluctant by choice”). The key drivers differ between those reluctantly reluctant and those reluctant by choice.
In recent years, there has been much discussion and a great deal written about the economic and social well‑being of young people. Are they encountering more problems today than in the past? Are some doing better than others? This article paints their socioeconomic portrait and looks at where they are in the labour market in terms of unemployment and certain work conditions.
Effective classroom management is much more than just administering corrective measures when a student misbehaves; it's about developing proactive ways to prevent problems from occurring in the first place while creating a positive learning environment.
Establishing that climate for learning is one of the most challenging aspects of teaching, and one of the most difficult skills to master. For those new to the profession, failure to set the right tone will greatly hinder your effectiveness as a teacher. Indeed, even experienced faculty may sometimes feel frustrated by classroom management issues. Strategies that worked for years suddenly become ineffective in the face of some of the challenges today’s students bring with them to the classroom.
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.
Creating effective solutions to global challenges will require a range of skills from leaders in the public and private spheres. The British Council, in partnership with Ipsos Public Affairs, conducted a study of current professional leaders with higher education qualifications1 from 30 countries, and across sectors, to reveal:
What are the higher education pathways of professional leaders around the world? What contribution did direct learning and other higher education experiences make to their careers?
Globally, some 39 million girls of lower secondary age are currently not enrolled in either primary or secondary education, while two‐thirds of the world’s 796 million illiterate adults are women. Only about one‐third of countries have achieved gender parity at secondary level. The evidence shows that something needs to change.
The IIEP 2011 Evidence‐Based Policy Forum on Gender Equality in Education: Looking Beyond Parity, aimed to review how schools and the education system as a whole can function pro‐ actively in the equal interests of girls and of boys, men and women. Much of the currently available research on gender equality in education has focused on gender parity in terms of access to primary and secondary schools (including how this is related to engagement of women within the teaching
profession and the education system more broadly). More recently, evidence has emerged that looks beyond access, examining gender equality in more depth in terms of learning achievement.
Vision
Prosperous communities and transformed lives.
Mission
Creating new realities by opening endless opportunities.
The purpose of this report is to present the findings from a comprehensive research study with recommendations on the following question:
“Does Ontario have the appropriate mix of credential options and opportunities in its publicly funded postsecondary system to ensure successful student and labour market outcomes that will contribute to Ontario’s economic productivity and competitiveness?”
The evaluation of the postsecondary education credential mix1 included an in-depth analysis of student outcomes, consultations with a wide range of stakeholders including students, institutions, and quality assurance bodies, as well as a consultation and review of research on employer needs.
The study also considers recent proposals for new postsecondary education credentials in Ontario, as well as global trends in higher education that focus on labour market outcomes of students. This includes a detailed scan of seven jurisdictions to further explore those trends in more detail.
The problem with textbooks is that they’re expensive. They’re sort of a hidden educational fee.
Like a lot of students, James Tait was supposed to buy the online component to his textbook. Buying used to save a bit of money, he didn’t get the online access code that comes with a new book.
“I needed it for my chemistry class, it was called Mastering Chemistry, but I never bought it,” he said.
The online component is an addition to the textbook, for homework, self-tests, and tutorials. Textbook companies include these platforms with the sale of new textbooks as an additional service, but also to reduce used textbook sales. The access code for Mastering Chemistry is about $70.
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."
This article presents a case study of a technology-enhanced face-to-face health sciences course in which the principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) were applied. Students were offered a variety of means of representation, engagement, and expression throughout the course, and were surveyed and interviewed at the end of the term to identify how the UDL inspired course attributes influenced their perceptions of course accessibility.
Students responded very positively to the course design, and felt that the weaving of UDL throughout the course resulted in increased flexibility, social presence, reduced stress, and enhanced success. Overall, students felt more in control of their own learning process and empowered to make personal choices to best support their own learning. This course design also led to increased satisfaction from the perspective of the instructor and reduced the need for intervention by the campus disability services department.