Koichiro Matsuura, Director-General of UNESCO, asserts that education is one of the most effective instruments that society can employ in the effort to adopt sustainable development. This paper is a first effort to explore the degree to which Canadian institutions of higher education, including colleges and universities, have embraced this assertion. It includes the first census
of the existing environment/sustainability policies and/or plans of Canadian postsecondary institutions (n = 220), and an examination of the relationships between the existence of an environment/sustainability policy/plan and the presence of other sustainability initiatives on campus. The focus on policies and plans is timely because in public institutions like colleges and universities, actions and practices are determined by policy. The results reveal a number of patterns and insights, including, for example, the influence of provincial legislation on the uptake of policies.
First-year students on Academica’s StudentVu Panel were surveyed about their
orientation experiences.
• The survey was conducted September 24th to October 4th, 2014.
• 629 students were invited to participate in the survey and 496 responded. This is a
79% response rate.
• The median survey completion time was 6 minutes.
Abstract This study investigates the degree to which biodiversity concepts are included within university curricula in Ontario and provides a baseline for tracking this. A keyword search of undergraduate and graduate academic calendars from six Ontario universities was conducted. A list of 28 relevant keywords was developed, and university program descriptors were searched for these keywords, while considering core and elective courses within each program. Almost half (49.5%) of the 386 undergraduate programs, and 29.4% of the 327 graduate programs featured biodiversity keywords. Science programs showed the highest degree of integration (74.5% for undergraduate and 37.4% for graduate programs), followed by business programs (57.6% and 38.4%, respectively). The arts and social sciences showed the least biodiversity integration (25.8% of undergraduate and 21.0% of graduate programs). This research method provides a depth of understanding of biodiversity integration within university curricula, although the analysis is limited to the content provided in academic calendars.
Résumé Cette étude évalue le degré d’intégration des concepts de la biodiversité dans les programmes universitaires en Ontario, et établit des repères pour suivre cette intégration. Une recherche par mots-clés a été réalisée dans les calendriers des cours de premier cycle et de cycles supérieurs de six universités ontariennes. Nous avons dressé une liste de 28 mots-clés pertinents, puis avons effectué une recherche de ces mots-clés parmi les descripteurs de programmes universitaires, en englobant les cours obligatoires et facultatifs de chaque programme. Près de la moitié (49,5 %) des 386 programmes de premier cycle et 29,4 % des 327 programmes de cycles supérieurs étaient assortis de mots-clés liés à la biodiversité. Parmi tous les programmes, les programmes scientifiques ont démontré le degré d’intégration le plus élevé (74,5 % pour le premier cycle et 37,4 % pour les cycles supérieurs), suivis des programmes en commerce (57,6 % pour le premier cycle et 38,4 %, pour les cycles supérieurs). Par ailleurs, les arts et les sciences sociales ont démontré la plus faible intégration de la biodiversité (25,8 % pour le premier cycle et 21,0 % pour les cycles supérieurs). Cette méthode de recherche permet de mieux comprendre l’intégration de la biodiversité dans les programmes universitaires, même si l’analyse se limite au contenu indiqué dans les calendriers des cours.
Hindered by video screens, fluctuating schedules, and health regulations, teachers are up
against the odds this school year when it comes to getting to know their students.
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.
Canada’s businesses agree completely with the Prime Minister regarding the potential of our Aboriginal peoples to contribute to our collective economic prosperity. In fact, members of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce identified the participation of
the Aboriginal peoples in our workforce as one of four priority areas in addressing the barrier to their competitiveness posed by their difficulties in finding workers with the skills they need.
The Canadian Chamber has focused on the significant difficulties Aboriginal peoples face in completing elementary, secondary and post-secondary education and in obtaining and retaining employment. In this paper, we take a different approach to this issue by highlighting productive initiatives to improve the workforce participation of Aboriginal peoples and the competitiveness of employers. We will also offer recommendations to the federal government and Canada’s businesses
on measures both can take to provide Aboriginal peoples and communities—as well as businesses—with the tools to make these
success stories the norm.
Vocational education and training are highly valued by many. The European Ministers for Vocational Education and Training, the European Social Partners and the European Commission have issued in 2010 the Bruges Communiqué, which describes the global vision for VET in Europe 2020. In this vision, vocational skills and competencies are considered as important as academic skills and competencies. VET is expected to play an important role in achieving two Europe 2020 headline targets set in the education field: a) reduce the rate of early school leavers from education to less than 10 percent; b) increase the share of 30 to 40 years old having completed tertiary or equivalent education to at least 40 percent. However, there is limited hard evidence that VET can improve education and labour market outcomes. The few existing studies yield mixed results partly due to differences in the structure and quality of VET across countries.
This article focuses on high school to university transitions for Indigenous youth at universities in British Columbia, Canada. The study is premised on an Indigenous research design, which utilizes the concept of visioning and a storywork methodology (Archibald, 2008). The results challenge existing in-stitutional and psychological approaches to transitions in revealing that they are deeply impacted by a variety of lived experiences and that a visioning process is vital to Indigenous youths’ participation in university. The paper concludes with implications for practitioners working in educational and Ab-original community-based settings.
Are books a condition of our labour? Do we need libraries with stacks and physical collections? Recent discussions within libraries across the country have highlighted faculty anxiety and displeasure with the fate of university libraries, as cuts are made to purchasing and operating budgets, collections culled, and the very nature of acquisitions transformed by changes in the
methods of conducting and disseminating our research. Are libraries not an intrinsic part of our working conditions? How can we teach a student about the history of slavery, for example, if they do not have access to a wide range of interpretive sources that reflect changes in the writing of history over time? How can we encourage students to seek out many different kinds of evidence and to ask new and innovative questions, if libraries do not offer a variety of materials from a variety of different time periods? How can we encourage students to be venturesome and curious if they can no longer browse shelves? Those of us at smaller institutions long ago gave up the idea of having a ‘research’ library, but we do need very basic book collections, as well as collections of government documents and other sources that have not been digitized and, in fact, may never be. Without these, our teaching will be impoverished and our students’ learning will too.
Digital resources are changing the ways students engage in learning and provide increased opportunities for student success. New technologies also provide improved assessment tools for measuring learning outcomes and student engagement. These benefits come without an additional cost burden to students.
The Ministry of Training, Colleges, and University’s (MTCU) recently released Tuition Fee Framework and Ancillary Fee Guidelines for Publicly-Assisted Universities (December, 2013) indicates support for the use of digital learning materials, including materials used in assessment. The new framework reflects a change in the Ministry policy concerning ancillary fees and enables the use of digital learning resources. This position paper explains Ontario universities’ support of MTCU’s new guidelines.
The goals of Education for All (EFA) are centrally concerned with equality. If children are excluded from access to education, they are denied their human rights and prevented from developing their talents and interests in the most basic of ways. Education is a torch which can help to guide and illuminate their lives. It is the acknowledged responsibility of all governments to ensure that everyone is given the chance to benefit from it in these ways. It is also in the fundamental interests of society to
see that this happens – progress with economic and social development depends upon it.
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.
This study was a phenomenological study examining the experiences of faculty in an online learning environment in order to identify the factors that could produce job burnout and stress in master’s programs in education. The challenges and related stress-producing factors were also explored to identify best practices for online faculty and attributes most suited for the demands and expectations required in the online teaching environment. The study’s insights and findings are based on perspectives from online faculty who have been teaching in the modality for three or more years. These findings may be useful to stakeholders such as administrators, faculty mentors, faculty trainers, and faculty interested in employment in the modality so that identifiable and realistic criteria may be available upon which to base future hiring standards, employment practices, training, and decisions about teaching online. Insights about procedures and practices have been identified that may be effective in helping to develop initial training programs, faculty mentor supports, administrative decisions, and on-going faculty training. Based upon the findings, institutional leaders have information that could help identify best practices for online faculty and attributes most suited for the demands and expectations required in an online teaching environment. Institutions and administration can seek out and recruit the best possible online faculty who have the necessary skills, abilities, and characteristics required in this modality rather than hiring based merely upon academic credentials that would fail to identify specific attributes necessary for online teaching. Finally, those specific characteristics can then be applied to alleviate job burnout challenges online faculty would experience. The study will help institutional leaders (a) identify faculty earlier who will be better suited to the modality; (b) identify how to offer relevant, on-going faculty supports and training practices; and
(c) prevent online faculty job burnout.
Americans reaching traditional retirement ages during the past two decades and today face a different retirement environment than did prior cohorts. Mandatory retirement has been eliminated for the vast majority of American workers, and important work disincentives (or retirement incentives) in Social Security and in employer pension plans have been eliminated or reduced. Americans are living longer and healthier lives, fewer have physically arduous jobs, and technology has increased the options about where and when people work. In addition, the age of eligibility for ‘full’ Social Security retirement benefits has been increased from 65 to 66 (and will soon increase to 67), which is equivalent to an across-the-board benefit cut, and fewer firms are offering employer-sponsored post-retirement health insurance. There are concerns about the future of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Some of these changes are good news for older workers and some bad, but they all have altered the relative attractiveness of work and leisure late in life in favor of work.
HIGHER EDUCATION IS IN TRANSITION – one as significant as when Gutenberg’s printing press hastened the transition from a world based on oral communication to one based on the written word. Consider the following challenges higher education faces: ፖ Public funding for higher education provides less than half of what it did at its height in the 1980s1. ፖ College tuition and fees increased 600% since 1980, much faster than real household income, inflation, and healthcare costs2. ፖ 70% of people with high school degrees (or equivalent) seek post-secondary education opportunities, up from less than 40% just a generation ago. The total number of people seeking higher education soon will hit 20 million3. ፖ 85% of higher-education seekers are older than 24, attending part time, seeking a degree other than a baccalaureate, and not living in or around a residential university4. Yet we continue to wedge the majority of students, the so-called “nontraditionals,” into inflexible educational structures that were built for 18-22 year olds and that have changed very little in almost a millennium. ፖ Students and faculty have equal access to today’s “Google world” of ubiquitous information, shifting educational needs from information access to information evaluation, information application to solve complex problems, and creation of new knowledge. Some say that higher education is dead5, the next “bubble” about to burst. At the very least, it’s an enterprise ripe for disruption6.
Charter schools, Teach For America, and the Knowledge Is Power Program may have their merits, but they are not whole-system reform. The latter is about improving every classroom, every school, and every district in the state, province, or country, not just some schools. The moral and political purpose of whole-system reform is ensuring that everyone will be affected for the better, starting on day one of implementing the strategy. The entire system should show positive, measurable results within two or three years. We have done this in Ontario, Canada, where we have had the opportunity since 2003 to implement new policies and practices across the system—all 4,000 elementary schools, 900 secondary schools, and the 72 districts that serve 2 million students. Following five years of stagnation and low morale, from 1998 to 2003, the impact of the new strategies has been dramatic: Higher-order literacy and numeracy have increased by 10 percentage points across the system; the high school graduation rate has risen 9 percentage points, from 68 percent to 77 percent; the morale o teachers and principals has improved; and the public’s confidence in the system is up.
Postsecondary education in Ontario has seen a number of labour strikes over the past few decades, including some protracted, high‐profile work stoppages. These labour disputes can impact students negatively in a number of ways, yet there has been limited research exploring the psychosocial and academic impact of work stoppages on university students and possible strategies to minimize these effects. This report outlines the findings of a three‐study project designed to expand on the limited, existing research in two ways. The first study analyzed data from a rare longitudinal survey, assessing changes in student responses to the 2008–2009 York University strike by teaching assistants and contract faculty over the course of the work stoppage. The second and third studies adopted a mixed‐methods approach, using focus group interviews and a retrospective online survey to understand students’ experiences of the 2015 labour strikes at the University of Toronto and York University.
OUSA’s 2014 Budget Submission is focused on how the government can leverage post-secondary education to help achieve its vision of creating a fairer society. Despite the current discourse questioning the value of post-secondary education, the evidence demonstrates that attaining a post-secondary credential can significantly change a recipient’s social, economic, and health outcomes for the better.
However, to be able to achieve these ends, we must ensure that access to post-secondary is fair, that students have equal opportunities for success upon graduation, and that while students are in postsecondary, their educational experience is equivalent to their increasing investment.
This is a multiple case study of seven colleges using field methods research to examine institutional life and organizational context. This study determines that community colleges in both Canada and the United States exhibited educational and work behaviors in the 1990s consistent with the globalization process. Education was oriented to the marketplace, and the needs of business and industry received high priority in educational programming. Work within these institutions was valued for and carried out with economic ends: to realize productivity and efficiency.
This paper presents the findings of a research study on a complete course re-design of a large first-year class, which changed the learning environment and reduced boundaries to allow for more meaningful student engagement and improved student learning. The specific purpose of this study was to determine if a blended course design can increase student engagement and influence students’ approach to learning in a large first-year course.