The subject of Leadership has been studied for hundreds of years and reveals an evolving succession of theories. The earliest theories focus mostly on the character and personality of successful leaders and how they behave. The more recent theories focus on what leaders actually do rather than on them need to have certain innate qualities or traits.
OECD’s Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI) has worked on Open Educational Resources (OER) in the past, which led to the publication Giving Knowledge for Free – the Emergence of Open Educational Resources (2007). This working paper thus builds on exploratory and forward-looking research in CERI and invites countries to consider the policy implications of the expansion of OER, its benefits and associated challenges.
A small OER expert group was established to discuss the subject, link it to other relevant developments in the field, and develop a draft questionnaire for member countries in order to collect information regarding the policy context related to OER. The expert group met in June 2011 and for a second time in September 2011. The questionnaire was sent to the 34 OECD member countries in August 2011. It outlined a short informative note about the benefits and challenges of OER. The responses to the questionnaire are analysed in this document.
We have seen considerable discussion in recent Inside Higher Ed articles about “Teaching Excellence”, whether at the individual or institutional levels. We know this concept can be problematic: a focus on Excellent Teaching can have negative side effects in promoting an individualistic and competitive environment.
I think we need to consider a shift in focus, from Excellent Teaching to Exemplary Teaching ‒ again, at both the individual and institutional levels. A focus on Exemplary Teaching could promote a collective outcome of surpassing past accomplishments in teaching and learning, by fostering professional teaching at the individual level and coopetition at the institutional level (i.e., “cooperation in creating value, competition in dividing it up”).
Ensuring access to postsecondary education (PSE) for all qualified individuals is key to Ontario’s future competitiveness and equally critical from an equity perspective. This paper provides an empirical analysis of access to PSE among a number of under-represented (and minority) groups in Ontario, including comparisons to other regions. Having parents that did not attend PSE is the most important factor across the country, and the effects are even greater in Ontario than in some other regions. Being from a low-income household is considerably less important than parental education, and the income effects are even smaller in Ontario than in certain other regions. Aboriginal and disabled youth are also strongly under-represented groups in PSE in Ontario, driven entirely by their lower university participation rates, offset to different degrees by higher college participation rates . Rural students are also significantly under-represented (though to a lesser degree) in university, but again go to college at somewhat higher rates. Furthermore, for these latter groups, Ontario does not compare favourably to other regions. The children of immigrants are much more likely to go to university but somewhat less likely to attend college almost everywhere. Being from a single parent family has little independent effect on access to PSE, as is also the case for being a Francophone outside of Quebec, the latter effect in some cases actually being positive. Intriguingly, although females generally have significantly higher PSE (especially university) attendance rates than males, females in under-represented groups are generally more disadvantaged than males.
Work-integrated learning (WIL) has been identified as a key strategy for supporting Canada’s postsecondary education (PSE) system in responding to an increasingly dynamic, globalized, knowledge-based economy. Ontario in particular has been described as a “hot bed” of co-operative education (Ipsos Reid, 2010). However, while there is a common belief that WIL improves employment outcomes (see Gault, Redington & Schlager, 2000; Kramer & Usher, 2010), research on this topic has generally been specific to certain programs and types of WIL (Sattler, 2011).
ecently, I gave a reading at a local independent bookstore for my new book, Trans/Portraits: Voices From Transgender Communities. The book uses an oral history framework to examine the daily lives of 34 transgender and nonbinary individuals
In 2005, the report issued by the Rae review of college and university education in Ontario, Ontario: A Leader in Learning, re-stated an estimate that 11,000 new university faculty would be required by 2010. No source was cited, nor any of the assumptions that underlie the conclusion. OCUFA subsequently conducted an analysis that showed Ontario universities would have to hire nearly 11,000 full-time faculty between 2003 and 2010 to replace retiring professors and to reduce the student-faculty ratio to a level at comparable US institutions and at which Ontario could be a true leader in learning.
Using a variety of research approaches and instruments, previous research has revealed what university students tend to see as benefits and disadvantages of the integration of research in teaching. In the present study, a questionnaire was developed on the basis of categorizations of the research–teaching nexus in the literature. The aim of the Student Perception of Research Integration Questionnaire (SPRIQ) is to determine the factors that capture the way students perceive research integration in their courses. The questionnaire was administered among 221 students from five different undergraduate courses at a research intensive university in The Netherlands. Data analysis revealed four factors regarding research integration: motivation, reflection, participation, and current research. These factors are correlated with students’ rating of the quality of the course and
with their beliefs about the importance of research for their learning. Moreover, courses could be distinguished in terms of research intensiveness, from the student perspective, based on the above-mentioned factors. It is concluded that the SPRIQ helps to understand how students perceive research integration in specific courses and is a promising tool to give feedback to teachers and program managers who aim to strengthen links between research, teaching, and student learning.
It's one of the commonly held beliefs about First Nations people in this country: they all get free post-secondary education.
Problem is, it's not true. And the reality is much more complicated.
To help make sense of it, here's a little of what Canadians should know about First Nations people and funding for
post-secondary education.
This report covers the combined results for the summer 2014, autumn 2014, and spring 2015 Ohio State Graduation Survey administrations. An invitation to the Graduation Survey was sent to all undergraduate, Master's, and professional degree recipients who were scheduled to graduate in the summer, autumn, or spring terms of the 2014-2015 academic year.
In his 1984 book Experiential Learning, David Kolb describes the role of experience in learning.1 Kolb’s Learning Cycle is a conceptual model that frames learning as an active process engaged in by adults as they grasp and transform experience into learning and development through action and reflection.2 According to the model, learners’ understandings deepen and broaden through an iterative process, supported by teaching actions and assessment processes.
This commentary discusses the problem of bullying as it relates to Muslim students. The authors posit that teacher education programs can impact how Muslim students are treated in schools. In doing so, they provide practical avenues teacher educators can use to prepare pre-service teachers to address the problem.
Canadians invest considerable energy, resources, and personal and societal aspiration postsecondary education. It is good public policy to assess how we are doing and outcomes we are achieving with that investment. One of HEQCO’s core mandates evaluate the postsecondary sector and to report the results of that assessment. in this report, we have assembled data that assess the performance of Canada’s provincial public postsecondary education systems.
Canadians invest considerable energy, resources, and personal and societal aspiration postsecondary education. It is good public policy to assess how we are doing and outcomes we are achieving with that investment. One of HEQCO’s core mandates evaluate the postsecondary sector and to report the results of that assessment. To this end, in this report, we have assembled data that assess the performance of Canada’s 10 provincial public postsecondary education systems.
Reflecting on what’s at play with the Ontario college faculty strike, as Yogi Berra once noted, it’s “déjà vu all over again.”
I was a college president in 1984 when college faculty voted overwhelmingly for a strike because they felt they were treated as lemmings, victims of top-down management styles that eschewed proper faculty involvement in decisionmaking, especially when it came to instructional delivery and workloads.
This clearly defined the majority of colleges at the time. Faculty was right to strike. Each strike has an idiosyncratic ethos — core factors that vary from obvious to vague. In 1984, the issues were clear.
In 1987, not so. The faculty hit the bricks with only a 51.25 per cent strike vote. It remains unclear to this day, why the union leaders at the time took their brothers and sisters to the picket line with an unprecedented low strike mandate and no apparent issues at stake. Was it runaway megalomania? Was there an unrelated personal agenda? Who knows? But the result was a disaster for faculty who were led down a prickly garden path and dealt a financial blow by an arbitrator.
The overarching message of this report is that equality does not happen by accident.
The research reviewed suggests that education policy makers should ensure that gender equality is a
real rather than a rhetorical priority and that change is substantively resourced in teacher
education and in school practices.
The publication of this report is part of our ongoing commitment to promoting gender equality in European schools and societies. A complementary report on gender and educational attainment will be published by Eurydice in November 2009. Also in November, a conference on gender and educational attainment organised by the Swedish Presidency of the European Union will bring together many of the key actors with the aim to providing an improved basis for further European policy
cooperation in this field.
The study of leadership has been an important and central part of the literature on management and organization behavior for several decades. Leadership is a topic of interest, study and debate in almost every professional community worldwide. Organizations are constantly trying to understand how to effectively develop leaders for long term success within their organizations. The systemic problem with this endeavor is that there are many different leadership theories and styles. These options make it virtually impossible for professionals to agree concerning which one theory and or style can best help organizations to develop great leaders. Indeed, “no other role in organizations has received more interest than that of the leader” (Schwandt & Marquardt, 2000,p. 177).
Working while learning is now the accepted pathway to education and training for both young and mature working learners.
When working with aggregate data, it’s easy to lose sight of the voices and experiences of the people being studied. As part of the research for this report, the authors interviewed a number of actual working learners — some of whom were part of ACT’s working learner advisory council — and utilized their personal experiences and stories to illuminate the report and to develop policy proposals that would satisfy their needs. The following are some of the individuals who helped to provide insight into the lives of today’s working learners:
In 2011, HEQCO issued a call for research projects related to technology-enhanced instruction. Part of a broader effort to identify and evaluate innovative practices in teaching and learning, HEQCO’s purpose in commissioning these projects was both to inform best practices at the classroom, institution and policy levels, as well as to encourage institutions and faculty members to assess the effectiveness of what they were doing in the classroom.
Now that the technology studies have concluded and that most have been published, this report draws some broader conclusions from their methods and findings. First, it reflects on how certain key terms related to technology-enhanced instruction, such as ‘blended’ and ‘hybrid’, have fluid and contextual definitions that can create confusion by disrupting terms of reference that are assumed to be common. Then, it identifies common pitfalls in the implementation of technology in the
classroom to consider how new tools might be introduced and integrated more effectively. Finally, it highlights methodological lessons about the challenges of blending research and practice in the classroom.
Student wellness is an essential component of academic success in higher education and subsequent opportunities in the labor market. The Ohio State University Office of Student Life’s Student Wellness Center uses a model that includes nine key dimensions of wellness: career, creative, emotional, environmental, financial, intellectual, physical, social and spiritual.