ABSTRACT
Creativity is widely accepted as being an important outcome of schooling. Yet there are many different views about what it is, how best it can be cultivated in young people and whether or how it should be assessed. And in many national curricula creativity is only implicitly acknowledged and seldom precisely defined. This paper offers a five dimensional definition of creativity which has been trialled by teachers in two field trials in schools in England. The paper suggests a theoretical underpinning for defining and assessing creativity along with a number of practical suggestions as to how creativity can be developed and tracked in schools. Two clear benefits of assessing progress in the development of creativity are identified: 1) teachers are able to be more precise and confident in developing young people’s creativity, and 2) learners are better able to understand what it is to be creative (and to use this understanding to record evidence of their progress). The result would seem to be a greater likelihood that learners can display the full range of their creative dispositions in a wide variety of contexts.
RÉSUMÉ
La créativité est largement acceptée comme étant un résultat scolaire important. Pourtant il y a beaucoup d’opinions différentes sur ce qu’elle est, comment on peut la cultiver chez les jeunes gens, et si et comment on devrait l’évaluer. De plus, dans beaucoup de programmes scolaires, la créativité n’est reconnue que de manière implicite et rarement définie de manière précise. Ce document offre une définition de la créativité reposant sur cinq dimensions, qui a été testée par des enseignants durant deux expériences de terrain dans des écoles en Angleterre. Le document propose un soubassement théorique pour définir et évaluer la créativité ainsi que nombre de suggestions pratiques sur le développement et le suivi de la créativité à l’école. Deux bénéfices clairs d’évaluer le progrès dans le développement de la créativité sont identifiés : 1) les enseignants peuvent être plus précis et confiants lorsqu’ils développent la créativité des jeunes gens, et 2) les apprenants sont davantage en mesure de comprendre ce que « être créatif » signifie (et à utiliser cette compréhension pour documenter et relater leur progrès). Le résultat semble être une plus grande probabilité que les apprenants témoignent de toute l’étendue de leurs dispositions à la créativité dans un large éventail de contextes.
Many proponents of online education have speculated that the digital learning environment might be a meritocracy, where students are judged not on their race or gender, but on the comments they post.
A study being released today by the Center for Education Policy Analysis at Stanford University, however, finds that bias appears to be strong in online course discussions.
The study found that instructors are 94 percent more likely to respond to discussion forum posts by white male students than by other students. The authors write that they believe their work is the first to demonstrate with a large pool that the sort of bias that concerns many educators in face-to-face instruction is also present in online education.
This article explores the internationalization of Canadian universities, with a focus on the rise of foreign postsecondary students in Canada, the economic impacts, and the various benefits, challenges, and adjustments that have been
influenced by the continuing demographic shifts on Canadian campuses since 2000. Rooted in recent global and Canadian higher education internationalization trends, this paper suggests that accommodations for such shifts have
not kept pace with the influx of culturally and linguistically diverse foreign students, whose population growth rate outpaces domestic university students’ by several times. I conclude with unresolved dilemmas that continue to pose challenges for Canadian universities, and with suggestions for manageable supports to ensure the needs of students are responsibly balanced with the economic constraints of universities.
An exclusive CBC News investigation has revealed that more than 700 sexual assaults were reported to Canadian universities and colleges over the past five years. The investigation also discovered that the numbers vary widely from school to school, even when adjusted for population.
This report explores the use of social capital theory in understanding educational advantage/disadvantage from a public policy development perspective. We undertake a detailed review and critique of the key ‘strands’ of social capital theory, contextualising these in an analysis of applied social capital theory in a public policy and a development environment. Finally, we use our modified understanding of the theory to explore the social capital of business and IT students in higher education and vocational education and technology (VET) in Victoria.
Student pathways increasingly rely on transfer between postsecondary institutions as greater numbers of students move between institutions, pursue multiple credentials, or return to postsecondary education. In a 2011 survey of Ontario college students, 41% reported having some post-secondary experience; the same survey also found that 19% of respondents said their main goal in applying for their current program was to “prepare for further university or college study.” Transfer of credit for prior learning is clearly an increasingly mainstream educational activity, and institutions are under increasing pressure to improve the processes by which this occurs.
The Canadian Graduate and Professional Student Survey (CGPSS) is a national survey that was completed by over 51,000 students across 48 universities in 2013. This comprehensive survey includes questions covering a broad array of topics including students’ satisfaction with their departments, programs and advisors, availability of funding, use and quality of university services, and satisfaction with professional development supports (CAGS, 2010). This report uses data and opinions collected from graduate students through the CGPSS in an effort to contribute to the conversation on graduate student education in Canada.
During this latest recession the enormous losses being incurred by university endowment funds received extensive media attention. Ontario university administrators were sounding the alarm, warning that their institutions would have to cut expenses and take a hard line at thebargaining table as a result of endowment fund losses.
In 2004, former Ontario Premier Bob Rae was invited to lead the Postsecondary Education Review to provide advice on the seemingly intractable job of reconciling the province’ aspirations for a high quality, highly accessible and affordable postsecondary education system with the level of financial support that governments have felt able to provide for this endeavor. The report was considered extremely successful in providing 28 recommendations that were “sensitive to long- standing patterns of public opinion, articulated new public goals, [and] recognized the important role to be played by each major stakeholder.”(Clark and Trick, 2006, p. 180).
The community college is one of many providers of postsecondary and adult education in Canada. In making decisions about how the community college should allocate its efforts among various possible programs and activities, it is important to understand its relationship to other providers of postsecondary and adult education. This article describes and analyzes the relationship between Canada's community colleges and other providers of postsecondary and adult education in Canada. It attempts to identify the comparative strengths and weaknesses of community colleges relative to other providers with respect to particular types of activity, and from that analysis it offers suggestions regarding the emphases that colleges might place on certain of their activities.
Le collège communautaire est un des nombreux fournisseurs d’enseignement supérieur et d’éducation aux adultes au Canada. En prenant des décisions concernant la manière dont les collèges communautaires devraient allouer leurs efforts parmi différents programmes et activités, il est important de comprendre leurs relations avec d’autres fournisseurs d’enseignement supérieur et d’éducation aux adultes. Cet article décrit et analyse la relation entre les collèges communautaires du Canada et les autres fournisseurs d’enseignement supérieur et d’éducation aux adultes au Canada. Il tente d’identifier les forces et faiblesses des collèges communautaires comparativement à d’autres fournisseurs relativement à certains types d’activités, et à partir de cette analyse, il offre des suggestions concernant l’importance que les collèges peuvent accorder à certaines de leurs activités.
Research on role congruity theory and descriptive and prescriptive stereotypes has established that when men and women violate gender stereotypes by crossing spheres, with women pursuing career success and men contributing to domestic labor, they face back- lash and economic penalties. Less is known, however, about the types of individuals who are most likely to engage in these forms of discrimination and the types of situations in which this is most likely to occur. We propose that psychological research will benefit from supplementing existing research approaches with an individual differences model of sup- port for separate spheres for men and women. This model allows psychologists to examine individual differences in support for separate spheres as they interact with situational and contextual forces. The separate spheres ideology (SSI) has existed as a cultural idea for many years but has not been operationalized or modeled in social psychology. The Sepa- rate Spheres Model presents the SSI as a new psychological construct characterized by individual differences and a motivated system-justifying function, operationalizes the ideology with a new scale measure, and models the ideology as a predictor of some important gendered outcomes in society. As a first step toward developing the Separate Spheres Model, we develop a new measure of individuals’ endorsement of the SSI and demonstrate its reliability, convergent validity, and incremental predictive validity. We provide support for the novel hypotheses that the SSI predicts attitudes regarding workplace flexibility accom- modations, income distribution within families between male and female partners, distribu- tion of labor between work and family spheres,
and discriminatory workplace behaviors.Finally, we provide experimental support for the hypothesis that the SSI is a motivated, system-justifying ideology.
Preamble
This investigation arose as a result of the Brock University Administration’s handling of a series of complaints laid under the University’s Respectful Work and Learning Environment Policy [RWLEP]1 against five members of Brock University (henceforth referred to as the respondents), namely Drs. Ana Isla and Cathy Van Ingen (members of the Brock University Faculty Association), Dr. June Corman (then Associate Dean of Social Studies and hence not a member of the Faculty Association), and teaching assistants Ian Wood and Tim Fowler (members of CUPE Local 4207). The complaints were filed by Brock University Roman Catholic Chaplains, Brs. Raoul Masseur and German McKenzie.
Working with, not on behalf of students with disabilities.
Inside Higher Ed’s eighth annual survey of college and university presidents seeks to understand how these leaders view the opportunities and challenges facing higher education institutions in the U.S.
This study addresses the following questions:
• What effects do presidents perceive the election of Donald Trump had on their campus and on higher education more generally?
• What are presidents’ views of some of the federal policies that affect higher education?
• Are presidents confident in the sustainability of their institution’s financial model over the next 5 and 10 years?
• Do presidents believe the business models used in various sectors of higher education are sustainable?
• Do presidents anticipate that additional colleges will close or merge in the coming year?
• What are presidents’ opinions about tuition resets or tuition freezes?
• What are presidents’ biggest concerns about the size and composition of their student body?
• How do presidents assess race relations at their institution and at colleges nationwide?
• Do college presidents believe that Americans have an accurate view of the purposes of higher education?
• What factors do presidents see as causing declines in public support for higher education?
• How vocal have presidents been about political matters?
• How well prepared do presidents think they were for the various tasks of a college presidency when they first became a president?
Consuming information online is as simple as a click, scroll, or swipe these days. All searches are not created equal — and rarely do we think about fact checking what we find on the internet.
“…The internet is actually changing the way we read, the way we reason, and even the way we think, and all for the worse,” says Tom Nichols in his recently published book, The Death of Expertise.
In higher education, I think it is imperative that we teach our learners and peers about what it means to participate and interact in digital spaces and places. How can our institutions help students, staff, and faculty “be” online and consider how both information and digital environments impact knowledge sharing and learning.
I f you want to be a chair, dean, provost, or even president, you must ace every step of the hiring process, or you will not advance to the next. Each stage has its own nuances and peculiarities.
So far in the Admin 101 series, we have covered the initial decision to seek a leadership position, the ways to prep for the job hunt, the challenges of working with search consultants, and the tricks to assembling your application.
Now we turn to a crucial intermediate step before you are a full-fledged candidate: getting your name in the pool that matters. That is, either: (a) the pool of people that an executive-search firm will present to the hiring committee or, (b) where no outside consultant is used, the pool taken seriously by the campus search committee. In both cases, your goal is to be selected for the next step — a first-round interview, often held at an airport or on Skype.
Within the past decade, the unprecedented growth in non-tenure/tenure track faculty has led to speculation as to the learning environment and learning outcomes for students. Both nationalmedia and researchers have raised concerns about the growth in short-term contract faculty, yet there is little evidentiary data to support policy development. Our study of sessional faculty
in Ontario’s publicly funded universities provides much needed data and insight into the current pressures, challenges, and adaptations of the rapidly rising number of university instructors who work on short-term contracts, also known as sessional faculty.
This paper reports on some of the findings of a 2008–2009 graduate study conducted as a shared organizational learning experience for the Grant MacEwan College (now MacEwan University1) Board of Governors to learn about a vital board governance responsibility—presidential search. Through a facilitated, qualitative action research exercise, participants engaged in a four-stage progressive learning experience to create a body of knowledge about presidential search experiences and to develop strategies for transferring this knowledge when membership changes. The study examined how, through the application of knowledge management theory, a board can learn and share knowledge. This learning experience contributed to the creation of a comprehensive board succession plan for the MacEwan Board of Governors and, in 2010–2011, this plan was used to guide the institution’s search for its fourth president.
Two former college presidents, both longtime scholars of higher education, discuss their new book on the problems - - real and imagined -- facing academe.
When Ontario began to expand its higher education system in the mid-1960s, it made an important choice: to provide public funding to universities on the basis of a formula. Many jurisdictions, in Canada and beyond, do not use such formulae in their higher education systems. But there are clear advantages to such an arrangement. A funding formula supports the distribution of funding in a predictable, equitable way, that can be easily understood by those who study and work within our universities.
Nevertheless, no formula can remain functional forever, especially as the world changes and our expectations of universities shift. For this reason, OCUFA welcomes the University Funding Formula Review, initiated by the Government of Ontario in early 2015. We particularly welcome the opportunity to provide feedback into this process on behalf of the province’s professors and academic librarians.
The university funding formula is deeply important to the success and vitality of Ontario’s universities. It cannot therefore be treated as a laboratory to play with the latest fads in university finance. A measured and responsible approach to reforming the university funding formula should retain its greatest strengths, while correcting its flaws. The Government of Ontario, as the steward of the university sector, has the important task of working with the sector to identify these weaknesses and strengths, and rejecting harmful policy proposals masquerading as innovations.
This submission makes the case that the basic mechanic of the existing formula is sound, but needs to be updated and streamlined. It is also important to consider how the existing formula does not serve some universities – such as those in Northern Ontario – and how changes can be made to address these challenges.
We also argue that performance funding – currently a cause célèbre south of the border, chiefly among those who do not actually work in universities – is not the right approach for Ontario. There is no evidence that performance funding improves student outcomes, but there is growing evidence that it actually has a variety of negative effects. It also violates numerous principles outlined by the University Funding Formula Review team, while cutting against beneficial and collaborative processes for improving quality.
Finally, we suggest that the goals of transparency, accountability, and quality are best served by a new higher education data system. Such a system would be created and run collaboratively by the sector, with the goal of fueling meaningful policy discussions through the provision of timely and useful data.
Once again, OCUFA appreciates the opportunity to provide input into the University Funding Formula Review. We look forward to working with the government to build a university system that promotes quality while protecting the important principles that have allowed our institutions to be so successful.