This paper presents an overview of gender differences in education outcomes in OECD countries. A rich set of indicators describes the improvement of educational attainment among women over the past decades, and various dimensions of male under-performance in education. Possible explanatory factors include incentives provided by changing employment opportunities for women, demographic trends, as well as the higher sensitivity of boys to disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds. Gender differences in field of study and in performance by subject are found to be related to attitudes and self-perceptions towards academic subjects, which are in turn influenced by social norms. A number of policy options to
address gender gaps are presented in the final section of the paper.
Preventing youth suicide is an issue that naturally garners support from everyone including parents, policy makers and youth directly and indirectly affected. Schools can play a positive role in suicide prevention because they offer consistent, direct contact time with large populations of young people. There are other important reasons why schools should be involved in suicide prevention:
Students from a number of groups remain underrepresented in Ontario’s universities and colleges, including low-income students, Aboriginal students, first generation students whose parents did not attend a post-secondary institution, rural and northern students, and students with dependants. Improving access to higher education for these and other underrepresented groups is widely acknowledged as essential to building a more equitable society and to competing in the increasingly knowledgebased economy. Indeed, Premier McGuinty has stated his desire to see 70 per cent of Ontarians complete post-secondary education, and achieving this target will require a concerted effort to reduce participation gaps.
Jobs paranoia is widespread in Canada. Elementary pupils are coming home after receiving the “job talk” from their teachers, typically emphasizing the importance of getting good grades so they can get into a high-quality university – rarely a college, a polytechnic institute or an apprenticeship program. Parents worry about enrolling their children in the “right” schools and academic programs. There is growing concern about the transition from school to work. News media, television programs and movies offer tales of underemployed university and college graduates, intense competition for decent jobs and chronic youth unemployment.
College characteristics that may be associated with sexual victimization have become a salient topic in popular and
scholarly discourse. However, very little research has formally tested these relationships. Utilizing the Online College
Social Life Survey, a dataset that includes 22 schools and approximately 16,000 women respondents, a logit analysis is used
to measure relationships between risk of different types of sexual victimization (namely, attempted physically forced
intercourse, drug- and alcohol-facilitated sexual assault, physically forced intercourse, and unwanted sex because of verbal
pressure) and student body size, school-level sex ratio, school selectivity, the type of school (public or private), and the
percentage of students involved in Greek organizations on campus, all while controlling for individual-level characteristics
and clustering standard errors at the school level. Each additional thousand students enrolled increases the odds of a
physically forced rape by 2.47 times. The odds ratio for being a private institution ranges from .65 to .7, whereas percentage
Greek shows opposing associations with individual-level Greek membership for physically forced rape. All other variables
are statistically insignificant. These results suggest that institution-level factors play some role in the risk of sexual
victimization; future research should expand on these findings.
In this summary we provide a list of practices for universities to consider when creating or expanding a student retention or degree completion grant program. These practices were gathered from a series of interviews with ten urban-serving institutions. More
comprehensive information from those interviews and additional background information are presented in the full report.
This paper explores general issues relating to globalization and higher education; the internationalization of higher education, and particularly the recruitment of international students. This subject is examined through a range of topics around the global development of the market approach to the recruitment of international students and a focus on the current situation regarding the recruitment of international students in the Colleges of Applied
Arts and Technology in Ontario (CAATs). As the number of international students seeking educational opportunities grows to 7 million over the next 20 years, the ability of the CAATs, the Canadian educational system, and the governments of Ontario and Canada to market the welcoming and safe multicultural Canadian experience, and the excellence of the educational offerings and opportunities in CAATs to potential international students will, in great measure, determine their success and their survival in an increasingly globalized world.
This paper explores general issues relating to globalization and higher education; the internationalization of higher education, and particularly the recruitment of international students. This subject is examined through a range of topics around the global
development of the market approach to the recruitment of international students and a focus on the current situation regarding the recruitment of international students in the Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology in Ontario (CAATs). As the number of international students seeking educational opportunities grows to 7 million over the next 20 years, the ability of the CAATs, the Canadian educational system, and the governments of Ontario and Canada to market the welcoming and safe multicultural Canadian experience, and the excellence of the educational offerings and opportunities in CAATs to potential international students will, in great measure, determine their success and their survival in an increasingly globalized world.
Background/Context: The rapid pace of technological change, undergirded by near ubiquitous access to the web, is producing a new learning ecology—a new ecology of information, of knowledge, of reading, of teaching, and of thinking. This instant availability of digital resources frees both time and cognitive energy that may be used to facilitate higher order thinking. This article provides a framework through which to better understand, evaluate, and scaffold the generative synthesis of knowledge in a web-mediated world.
Purpose/Objective: The purpose of this article is to describe a theory that can stimulate additional scholarly work examining higher order, or generative, thinking in web-mediated environments.
Accelerated courses continue to be part of the changing academic landscape at Canadian universities.
However, there is limited evidence to support their efficacy in relation to knowledge retention. A greater understanding of knowledge retention associated with accelerated courses (i.e., intensive full-day course for a one- or two-week duration) as compared to traditional courses (i.e., one three-hour lecture once a week for 12 weeks) will provide university stakeholders and
administrators with evidence to determine whether quicker courses should be pursued in the postsecondary education environment.
This project was designed to evaluate how an online social learning environment implemented within the disciplinarily-defined context of a university department might enhance academic engagement, research collaboration and the achievement of learning outcomes among undergraduate students. In developing this research, we were guided by the following research questions:
• How can social networking and progress-tracking technologies enhance academic engagement and student experience in a discipline-bounded environment?
• How can networked academic profiles create a more cohesive academic experience for students?
• Can use of networked academic profiles strengthen students’ academic orientation to new media and information literacy?
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.
In a longitudinal, randomized field experiment, we tested the impact of transformational leadership, enhanced by training, on follower development and performance. Experimental group leaders received transformational leadership training, and control group leaders, eclectic leadership training. The sample included 54 military leaders, their 90 direct followers, and 724 indirect followers. Results indicated the leaders in the experimental group had a more positive impact on direct followers' development and on indirect followers' performance than did the leaders in the control group.
This study addresses the research question of how instructor transformational leadership behaviors and transactional leadership behaviors affect student outcomes of cognitive learning, affective learning, student perceptions of instructor credibility, and communication satisfaction in distance education. An overview of the theoretical underpinnings of the study is provided, as well as the tested hypotheses. A summary of the methodology, including sampling procedures, instrumentation, and data collection processes is presented, along with the procedures used for data analysis. Multiple linear regression was used to examine the relationships among the specified variables. Results support all four hypotheses, indicating that instructor transformational leadership behaviors are a more significant predictor of cognitive learning, affective learning, perceptions of instructor credibility, and communication satisfaction than instructor transactional leadership behaviors. The implications of the findings as well as the limitations of this research and suggestions for future research are discussed.
How do changing economic conditions and uncertain market opportunities affect young adults’ transition from their undergraduate college years to adult roles and responsibilities? The Arizona Pathways to Life Success (APLUS) project is uniquely positioned
to answer this question. Launched in 2007, APLUS examines what factors shape and guide individual life trajectories — the pathways that young adults tread on their way to independence and self-sufficiency.
When Bernie trailed Behind me to my office after class looking crestfallen and slumped into the chair to study with some intensity the laces on his sneakers, i realized that a battle of epic proportion was being waged. after some moments of silence, he blurted out that he was dropping out of school, that he just didn’t feel connected to the students in my class or to students in any other of his classes for that matter. he felt much more comfort- able with the construction crew he worked with every summer. maybe, after all, this was his true calling—being in the open air with scuffed work boots and dirt under his fingernails. maybe this was where he really should be. maybe college just wasn’t for him.
Canada’s universities put ideas to work for Canadians.
Canada needs ingenuity, creativity, entrepreneurship, new ideas and competitive drive. We need to compete on our wits to succeed in the global economy. Canada’s universities are centres of knowledge, learning and innovation. Through teaching, research and community engagement, Canada’s universities help deliver the solutions needed to achieve ongoing prosperity for Canada. University faculty, researchers, graduates and students put their knowledge and skills to work for the benefit of Canada and Canadians now, and in the future.
Schools and school systems all across the world are seeking ways of improving student achievement to respond to the growing public recognition of the importance of education for individual and societal progress and success. Ontario has adopted an exciting approach to supporting school improvement that is research and evidence based. Unlike many jurisdictions around
the world that have adopted simplistic practices, Ontario has recognized that sustained improvement depends on schools, districts, and provinces adopting an aligned approach that builds the capacity of teachers, school leaders, boards, district leaders, parents, and community allies. Ontario is putting that approach into practice in elementary schools through the Literacy and Numeracy Strategy and Secretariat, and in secondary schools through the Student Success Strategy. In both strategies, the Ministry of Education is closely working with schools and school districts to develop common approaches to mean- ingful change focused on improved school and classroom practices. We recognize that within these broad parameters there can be many different ways to proceed, taking into account the diverse demographics and contexts of Ontario schools.
The ways in which a new university, the University of Ontario Institute of Technology (UOIT), was represented in local, regional, and national newspa- pers highlight the difficulties of identity creation for organizations. Drawing on theories of organizational identity and supplemented by interviews with UOIT’s founding members, a qualitative analysis of newspaper articles about UOIT
published between 2001 and 2004 demonstrates that the words and phrases used in these articles played an important role in establishing an im- age of UOIT that continues to impact its identity. These news reports also illustrate the complex relationships that existed between UOIT and its geographical, educational, and political contexts. Although UOIT was founded as a four-year
baccalaureate degree-granting university, it was linked with its well-established neighbour, Durham College, with which it shared land and services. As a result, UOIT was viewed by some as no more than a “community college with ivory tower pretensions.”
La représentation de l’Institut universitaire de technologie de l’Ontario (IUTO) dans la presse locale, régionale et nationale met en évidence les difficultés de création d’une identité corporative. Une analyse qualitative des articles sur l’IUTO, publiés entre 2001 et 2004, étoffés par des entretiens avec les membres fondateurs de l’IUTO, démontre, en s’appuyant sur les théories
de l’identité organisationnelle, que leur contenu a joué un rôle important dans la définition de l’image de l’IUTO qui affecte encore son identité. Ces reportages illustrent aussi les relations complexes entre l’UOIT et son cadre géographique, éducatif et politique. Bien que l’IUTO soit une université décernant des baccalauréats de quatre ans, il est lié à son voisin bien établile Collège communautaire Durham, car il partage avec lui les terres et les services. En conséquence, on considère parfois l’IUTO comme rien de plus qu’un « collège communautaire enfermé dans une tour d’ivoire ».
Cooperative learning is an example of how theory validated by research may be applied to instructional practice. The major theoretical base for cooperative learning is social interdependence theory. It provides clear definitions of cooperative, competitive, and individualistic learning. Hundreds of research studies have validated its basic propositions and demonstrated that cooperative learning (compared with competitive and individualistic learning) increases students’ efforts to achieve, encourages positive relationships with classmates and faculty, and improves psychological health and well being. Operational procedures have been derived from the validated theory to implement cooperative learning in university classes, including those needed to implement formal cooperative learning, informal cooperative learning, and cooperative base groups.