This paper argues that competency-based training in vocational education and training in Australia is one mechanism through which the working class is denied access to powerful knowledge represented by the academic disciplines. The paper presents a modified Bernsteinian analysis to argue that VET students need access to disciplinary knowledge using Bernstein’s argument that abstract, conceptual knowledge is the means societies use to think ‘the unthinkable’ and ‘the not-yet-thought’. I supplement Bernstein’s social argument for democratic access to the disciplines, with an epistemic argument that draws on the philosophy of critical realism.
Keywords: competency-based training; academic disciplines; sacred and profane knowledge; vertical and horizontal discourse.
International students have increasingly become an important part of postsecondary education in Canada. The number of international students has risen 84% between 2003 and 2013, and most precipitously since Canada introduced the
Canadian Experience Class as part of its new immigration policy changes.1 A report published by the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (Williams, K., Williams, G., Arbuckle, A., Walton, Roberts, M., & Hennebry, J., 2015) describes the political
and economic climate, as well as the policy changes over that time period. These changes have allowed for an increase in the number of international students being admitted into Canada’s post-secondary institutions by streamlining application
processes and revising policies regulating off-campus work and post-graduation work permits. Students from India and China have had greater ease in accessing Canadian post-secondary education with the introduction of the Student Partners
Program (SPP) in 2009, though financial restrictions have become a potential barrier to access.2 With these changes, according to Williams et al., Ontario has become the primary destination for international students in Canada. This is especially
true at Ontario colleges. “Ontario-bound international students show a growing tendency to study in the college sector, with over 50% of new entrants attending a college in 2012” (Williams et al., 2015). Despite this trend, the discussion on student
characteristics does not distinguish between the two sectors.
Despite recent innovations, it remains the case that most students experience universities as isolated learners whose learning is disconnected from that of others. They continue to engage in solo performance and demonstration in what remains a largely show-and-tell learning environment. The experience of learning in higher education is, for most students, still very much a "spectator sport" in which faculty talk dominates and where there are few active student participants. Just as importantly, students typically take courses as detached, individual units, one course separated from another in both content and peer group, one set of understandings unrelated in any intentional fashion to what is learned in other courses. Though there are majors, there is little academic or social coherence to student learning. It is little wonder then that students seem so uninvolved in learning. Their learning experiences are not very involving.
Key Word: Tinto
Change seems to be the new constant regarding our country’s educational systems – at every level. Major changes in K-12 are, in part, a result of the new Common Core, which is intended to eliminate the need for developmental education. The standards of the new Common Core are excellent and seem to align with and exceed the “college-ready indicators” assessed on current college placement tests. However, developmental education is not going away anytime soon.
The Instructional Skills Workshop (ISW) is an internationally recognized, peer-based, educational development program involving 24 hours of structured intensive instruction designed to strengthen instructors’ skills in planning, teaching, feedback and critical reflection through a student-focussed process. For over 30 years, the ISW has been offered at more than 100 institutions worldwide as a method of facilitating the development of student-centred, reflective instructors (Day, 2004). Although based on best pedagogical principles for teaching adult learners (Day, 2005), little empirical research has been performed to assess the impact on faculty of participating in the ISW (Macpherson, 2011). Research performed to
date has typically shown that individuals who participate in this workshop report that it is transformative to their teaching in the classroom (Macpherson, 2011). The present study sought to extend these findings by conducting a pre-post analysis of ISW and non-ISW participants. The goal of this research was to investigate the influence of the ISW on developing a student-centred approach to teaching in university and college faculty.
Community colleges are a distinctively American contribution to higher education. While invented a century ago, these “junior colleges” were defined in modern terms after World War II in response to the Truman Doctrine’s call for developing post-secondary institutions that encourage adults to return to college. More than 70 percent of American community colleges were established between 1945 and 1970 and are still evolving today.
If we are serious about accessible online learning, we must talk openly about disability as if it is right here, right now – because it is.
Mental health is a growing concern for all Canadians. To date, it is estimated that approximately 20% of Canadians will experience some sort of mental illness in their lifetime1. It also remains a pressing issue for students across Canadian campuses as institutions continue to signal a rise in the number of mental health cases.
As health humanities programs grow and thrive across the country, encouraging medical students to read, write, and become more reflective about their professional roles, educators must bring a sense of self-reflexivity to the discipline itself. In the health humanities, novels, patient histories, and pieces of reflective writing are often treated as architectural spaces or “homes”
that one can enter and examine. Yet, narrative-based learning in health care settings does not always allow its participants to feel “at home”; when not taught with a critical attention to power and pedagogy, the health humanities can be unsettling and even dangerous. Educators can mitigate these risks by considering not only what they teach but also how they
teach it.
In this essay, the authors present three pedagogical pillars that educators can use to invite learners to engage more fully, develop critical awareness of medical narratives, and feel “at home” in the health humanities. These pedagogical pillars are narrative humility (an awareness of one’s prejudices, expectations, and frames of listening), structural competency (attention to
sources of power and privilege), and engaged pedagogy (the protection of students’ security and well-being). Incorporating these concepts into pedagogical practices can create safe and productive classroom spaces for all, including those most vulnerable and at risk of being “unhomed” by conventional hierarchies and oppressive social structures. This model then can
be translated through a parallel process from classroom to clinic, such that empowered, engaged, and cared for learners become empowering, engaging, and caring clinicians.
Invited to reflect on community college leadership tran-sitions, I agreed, perhaps too readily. I have found myself struggling to respond to a very complex topic. Hardly a month goes by that there is not something in the higher ed press about the challenges posed by leadership changes in community colleges. Among the most recent was an article that lamented a dearth in the presidential pipeline, noting the intention of 75% of all current com-munity college presidents to retire within the next ten years. The author notes also the intent of 75% of senior level administrators to step down in that same timeframe.
Many countries strive to make postsecondary education maximally accessible to their citizens under the assumption that educated citizens boost innovation and leadership, resulting in social and economic benefits. However, attempts to increase access, especially in contexts of stagnant or diminishing financial support, can result in ever-increasing class sizes. Two aspects of large classes are extremely worrisome. First, economic and logistical constraints have led many such classes to devolve into settings characterized by lectures, readings and multiple-choice tests, thereby denying students experience and exercise with important transferable skills (e.g., critical thought, creative thought, self-reflective thought, expressive and receptive communication). Second, such classes are depicted as cold and impersonal, with little sense of community among students.
One of the commitments emerging from the Canadian Education Association's What’s Standing in the Way of Change in Education? workshop in Calgary in October 2013 was to convene a series of Regional Workshops designed to expand the conversation about change in Canada’s education systems. To this end, in the Spring of 2014, similar workshops were held in New Brunswick, Manitoba, Ontario and British Columbia with a final session held in Quebec in August, 2014.
This paper introduces two new concepts to the debate on job quality: the low-wage gap and low-wage intensity. These two measures provide information on the depth and severity of low wages. Using Labour Force Survey microdata, we discuss trends in these two measures, along with trends in the incidence of low wages over the 1997-2014 period. For example, in 2014, 27.6 per cent of all employees aged 20 to 64 years earned less than two-thirds of median hourly wages for full-time workers aged 20 to 64 years (or $16.01 per hour), our low-wage cutoff. In this same year, the low-wage gap was 21.0 per cent, which means that the average low-wage employee earned approximately 79.0 per cent of the low-wage cutoff (or $12.66 per hour). Consequently, low-wage intensity, defined as the product of the incidence and the gap (scaled by 100) was 5.8. This is down from an intensity of 6.3 in 1997, which was the result of a slightly higher incidence (27.9 per cent) and a higher gap (22.7 per cent). This paper also provides these results by gender, age, educational attainment, industry, occupation, employment status and province. These detailed results help identify which groups face the highest rates, greatest depths, and largest intensities of low-wage employment in Canada. Furthermore, this paper explores the implications of a $15 minimum wage on the low-wage gap in 2014. Finally, to provide a brief sensitivity analysis, we discuss (1) the results for low-wage employment in Canada using a different cutoff (two-thirds mean hourly wages for full-time employees aged 25 to 54 years) and (2) comparisons of our results to those of CIBC’s Employment Quality Index and the OECD’s low-pay data.
Training packages are based on the divorce of learning outcomes from processes of learning and curriculum. Policy insists that training packages are not curriculum, and that this ‘frees’ teachers to develop creative and innovative ‘delivery strategies’ that meet the needs of ‘clients’. This paper argues that training packages deny students access to the theoretical knowledge that underpins vocational practice, and that they result in unitary and unproblematic conceptions of work because students are not provided with the means to participate in theoretical debates shaping their field of practice. Tying knowledge to specific workplace tasks and roles means that students are only provided with access to contextually specific applications of theoretical knowledge, and not the disciplinary framework in which it is embedded and which gives it meaning. The paper illustrates this argument by comparing the current Diploma of Community Services (Community Development) with a previous
qualification that preceded training packages in the same field.
A diploma mill, also known as a degree mill, is a phony university that sells college diplomas and transcripts—the actual pieces of paper—rather than the educational experience. Diploma mills are scam colleges that literally crank out fake diplomas to
anyone who pays the requested "tuition."
Diploma mills often promise a fast college degree based on "life experience."
The Get Educated online education team has prepared these Top 10 Signs of an Online College Degree Mill to help students protect themselves from this popular online scam.
Responsible ethics evaluation is the heart of Canada’s research community, but some believe that the evaluation process could be better tailored for the college sector.
SIX YEARS AGO, Georgia State University (GSU) gathered a decade’s worth of its historical data with the help of a third-party vendor — some 15,000 student records and 2.5 million grades — and applied advanced analytics. Officials hoped to use this information to uncover early-warning signs for students in danger of dropping out of school.
• Fewer than one in five PhD graduates are employed as full-time university professors. The majority of PhDs are employed outside academia in a wide range of rewarding careers—such as in industry, government, and not-for- profit organizations.
• Many PhD graduates face challenging initial transitions to careers outside academia due to underdeveloped professional skills and networks, difficulty articulating the value of the skills gained through PhD studies to non-academic employers, and limited employer awareness or misperceptions about the potential value of PhD hires.
One in three students globally is enrolled in private higher education institutions, according to research that reveals the huge growth and wide reach of private providers.
The analysis, the first study based on comprehensive data on the size and shape of private higher education internationally, finds that private institutions have 56.7 million students on their books, or 32.9 percent of the world’s enrollment.
Both the higher education sector and the healthcare sector require people who do not identify with a formal role of leader to engage in leadership. In both sectors, leadership must be exercised on a continuous basis. Leadership development in higher education is influenced by an increase in managerial control, market competition, organisational restructuring and government scrutiny. Tensions between the need to meet requirements of industry versus academic requirements will continue as long as universities face these dual challenges in a competitive global economy. Universities are expected to be efficient and cost effective, flexible in their offerings, while being increasingly responsive to student expectations and needs. These tensions have resulted in some resentment from academic staff members who perceive that their autonomy is being reduced. This chapter presents current debates about leadership with a particular focus on higher education and leadership development of academic staff. Academic leadership is understood to incorporate the core academic functions of teaching/learning, and research and scholarship together with a broader focus on academic values and identity. The changing nature of this sector provides a background for current thinking about academic leadership. This chapter will draw on a recent case study from the healthcare sector which we argue contributes to the thinking on leadership not only
in the healthcare sector, but also in higher education context. The chapter concludes with key messages for academic staff making a case for building capacity of leaders in education at all levels.