Powerful things happen when leaders from diverse backgrounds gather and commit time to dialogue on a single issue. The results of the dialogue are even more powerful when those leaders are well informed and committed to action. When the issue at hand is central to a whole country’s future, the results of this dialogue must be shared so that others can join in.
The National Working Summit on Aboriginal Postsecondary Education produced important commitments for action from its participants and substantive policy recommendations for the federal government. The summit was held at Six Nations Polytechnic on October 5, 2010. Over 50 participants from universities, colleges, Aboriginal institutes, charities, Aboriginal organizations and the private sector took part.
Abstract
The purpose of the paper is to describe our peer mentorship experiences and explain how these experiences fostered transformational learning during our PhD graduate program in educational administration. As a literature backdrop, we discuss characteristics of traditional forms of mentorship and depict how our experiences of peer mentorship was unique. Through narrative inquiry, we present personal data and apply concepts of transformational learning theory to analyze our experiences. Our key finding was that it was the ambiguous boundaries combined with the formal structure of our graduate program that created an environment where peer mentorship thrived. We conclude that peer mentorship has great capacity to foster human and social capital within graduate programs for both local and international students.
Résumé
Le but de cet article est de décrire nos expériences de mentorat par les pairs et d’expliquer comment ces expériences ont favorisé l’apprentissage transformationnel au cours de notre programme d’études supérieures de doctorat. Avec la littérature comme toile de fond, nous discutons des caractéristiques des formes traditionnelles de mentorat et décrivons comment
notre mentorat par les pairs est unique. Grâce à l’analyse narrative, nous présentons des données personnelles et appliquons les concepts de la théorie de l’apprentissage transformationnel pour analyser nos expériences. L’élément clé de l’étude démontre clairement que les frontières ambiguës, combinées à la structure formelle de notre programme d’études supérieures, créent un environnement favorable au mentorat par les pairs. À la lumière de notre étude, nous concluons que, tant pour les étudiants locaux qu’internationaux, le mentorat par les pairs rehausse le développement humain et social dans les
programmes d’études supérieures.
According to data released by Statistics Canada in 2014, the years of 2000 - 2010 have seen significant increases in large and private debt among graduating students, and skyrocketing private debt among graduates with doctoral degrees. Although the
percentage of graduates in debt appears to be decreasing overall in this decade, this is both because of the introduction of the Canada Student Grants Program (which turns a portion of student loans into non-repayable grants) and because enrollment growth has outpaced increases in student loan borrowing. Even so, those who are borrowing are taking on much higher debts,
and increasingly from private sources.
Graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) occupy a unique position in teaching and learning in higher education. Typically, individuals arrive at graduate school already socialized into disciplinary ways of knowing. GTA pedagogical professional development offers opportunities for GTAs to engage with current “best practices” and different pedagogical ways of knowing, and to initiate new and innovative practices. Research has demonstrated that as content knowledge and expertise develop, experienced instructors do not always recognize the ways that their expertise (e.g., how they organize materials or knowledge) can interfere with student learning (Ambrose, Bridges, DiPietro, Lovett, & Norman, 2010). GTAs are therefore well positioned to scaffold learning for content novices such as undergraduate students. The teaching preparation and pedagogical development of GTAs is not just a resource to support learning; in fact, the teaching and instructional skills that GTAs acquire can be transferred to professional domains outside academia (Osborne, Carpenter, Burnett, Rolheiser, & Korpan, 2014; Rose, 2012). GTA professional development has never been just training to fulfill a particular niche or to achieve a singular goal such as teaching; however, the current post-secondary climate of accountability and quality enhancement does bring the goals and purposes of GTA professional development into view.
The 2016 Canadian National Postdoctoral Survey (the 2016 Survey) is an outcome of the collaboration between Canadian Association of Postdoctoral Scholars (CAPS-ACSP) and the Tri-Council granting agencies (Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council and Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council). The content of the 2016 survey leverages the results from two earlier National Postdoctoral Surveys1 and a CAPS-ACSP 2014 report2 developed in collaboration with Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), which highlighted the professional development needs of postdocs in the Social Sciences and Humanities.
Researchers say that discrimination at colleges and universities may have negative impact on black students' mental health.
Mergers have been a frequent phenomenon in higher education in the last quarter century. The conventional wisdom is that mergers are undertaken mainly for economic reasons, either to expand markets or to reduce costs. About four out of five college or university mergers survive. In the for-profit sector the comparable rate is closer to two out of five. From this one might conclude that the future for mergers among colleges and universities is robust. If, however, the principal purpose of mergers is economic efficiency, there logically ought to be a point beyond which the efficacy of merger will begin to decline. There is, however, another motive for merger, which is unrelated to economic efficiency. Mergers can produce greater diversity of programs and services, both among individual colleges and universities and within systems of postsecondary education.
Education is vitally important to a person’s personal, social and academic development. Achieving one’s education potential affects a person’s ability to take part in the labour market, live independently, participate meaningfully in society, and realize their full potential.
The Ontario Human Rights Code (Code) recognizes the importance of creating a climate of understanding and mutual respect for the dignity and worth of each person, so that each person can contribute fully to the development and wellbeing of the community and the Province. The Code guarantees the right to equal treatment in education, without discrimination on the ground of disability, as part of the protection for equal treatment in services. This protection applies to elementary and secondary schools, and colleges and universities, both public and private.
The Gallup organization, perhaps America’s most respected surveyor of public opinion, recently conducted its annual Alumni Survey of nearly 20,000 adults who attended college, slightly more than 1,600 of whom graduated between 2010 and 2019. Presumably most of these respondents are in their twenties or early thirties. When asked, 63% of white or Hispanic students agreed or strongly agreed with the statement “My professors at [University name] cared about me as a person,” compared with only 44% of Black
students.
Purpose: Barriers to simulation-based education in postgraduate and continuing education for anesthesiologists have not
been well studied. We hypothesized that the level of training may influence attitudes towards simulation-based education
and impact on the use of simulation. This study investigated this issue at the University of Toronto which possesses two sites
equipped with high-fidelity patient simulators.
International Students in Canada 2018
Executive Summary
Centrality of language proficiency in academic achievement
Proficiency in language is recognized as an essential component of student success at Ontario‟s colleges and in the provincial workplace.
Research indicates that postsecondary underachievement, failure, and attrition are highly
correlated with academic under-preparedness, especially with respect to deficits in language
proficiency.
Contemporary college students in Ontario do not represent a homogeneous population; rather, they
exhibit a wide range of abilities and needs related to language proficiency. Additionally, an
increasing percentage of Ontario college students have second language challenges.
The identification of students who are at-risk of not successfully completing their programs due to
deficits in language proficiency, and the provision of timely and appropriate remediation where
necessary, represent critical priorities in supporting
student success.
A monumental shift is steadily occurring in America’s workforce, as an ever-increasing percentage of jobs require some form of postsecondary education and training. In the Recovery 2020 report, Georgetown University Center for Education and the Workforce projects that by 2020, 65 percent of all jobs will require some form of postsecondary education. However, this may be a conservative estimate, according to the center, considering that of the 11.6 million jobs created in the 2010 to 2016 recovery, 11.5 million of them, or 99 percent, were filled by workers with postsecondary training.
While higher education has seen a plethora of initiatives designed to increase educational attainment and alternative delivery methods intended to expand educational opportunities, large numbers of students still do not have access to higher education while still in high school. In particular, offering academically advanced high school students the chance to take college courses (dual enrollment) is widely seen as a way to help them make better use of their senior year. And even less advanced students can participate in dual enrollment courses with support, through approaches such as the Early College model.
So much of what determines the overall success or failure of a course takes place well in advance of the first day of class. It’s the thoughtful contemplation of your vision for the course— from what you want your students to learn, to selecting the instructional activities, assign-ments, and materials that will fuel that learning, to determining how you will measure learning outcomes.
While much literature has considered feedback and professional growth in formative peer reviews of teaching, there has been little empirical research conducted on these issues in the context of summative peer reviews. This ar- ticle explores faculty members’ perceptions of feedback practices in the summative peer review of teaching and reports on their understandings of why constructive feedback is typically non-existent or unspecific in summative reviews. Drawing from interview data
with 30 tenure-track professors in a research-intensive Canadian university, the findings indicated that reviewers rarely gave feedback to the candidates, and when they did, comments were typically vague and/or focused on the positive. Feedback, therefore, did not contribute to professional growth in teaching. Faculty members suggested that feedback was limited because of the following: the high-stakes nature of tenure, the demands for research productivity, lack of pedagogical expertise among academics, non-existent criteria for evaluating teaching, and the artificiality of peer reviews. In this article I argue that when it comes to summative reviews, elements of academic culture, especially the value placed on collegiality, shape feedback practices in important ways.
It is necessary and desirable to enhance student learning in higher education by integrating multiple perspectives during institutional policy reviews, yet few examples of such a process exist. This article describes an institutional assessment policy review process that used a questionnaire to elicit 269 students’ perspectives on a draft policy document. Among the key findings were a lack of focus on using assessment to inform instruction, and a lack of clarity around the purposes for assessment. Within the final policy, there seemed to be an absence of focus on assessment as supporting learning and informing instruction, although there was a significant focus on the role of assessment in measuring achievement, despite students’ emphasis on the former two characteristics. The study’s implications point to the important theoretical contributions
students offer to institutional policy reviews, and the practical challenges institutions face in providing mechanisms that facilitate engagement and reflect shifts in culture.
Bridging programs are designed for internationally educated immigrant professionals who have completed formal training in another country but who may not have the educational, professional or language requirements necessary to become licensed to practice in Canada. As Ontario’s population ages, the successful integration of internationally educated health professionals (IEHPs) into the health care workforce has been identified as a strategy to address the challenges created by the shrinking labour pool and growing demands on the health care system (Finley & Hancock, 2010; Stuckey & Munro, 2013). To better understand the role of Ontario’s postsecondary system in facilitating the entry of IEHPs into the health care workforce, this study analyzed seven Canadian bridging programs and obtained input from 15 key informants. The goal of the evaluation was to identify the characteristics and practices of effective IEHP bridging programs. The specific research questions addressed by the evaluation were:
1. What are the expected outcomes of effective bridging programs and how should they be measured?
2. What are the key features that contribute to bridging program effectiveness?
3. What challenges do bridging programs face in achieving their goals?
4. What is the appropriate role of regulatory colleges, government, employers and professional associations in ensuring bridging program effectiveness?
Why We Need to Act
One in five women is sexually assaulted in college. Most often, it’s by someone she knows – and also most often, she does not report what happened. Many survivors are left feeling isolated, ashamed or to blame. Although it happens less often, men, too, are victims of these crimes.
The President created the Task Force to Protect Students From Sexual Assault to turn this tide. As the name of our new website – Not Alone.gov – indicates, we are here to tell sexual assault survivors that they are not alone. And we’re also here to help schools live up to their obligation to protect students from sexual violence.
According to data released by Statistics Canada in 2014, the years of 2000 - 2010 have seen significant increases in large and private debt among graduating students, and skyrocketing private debt among graduates with doctoral degrees. Although the
percentage of graduates in debt appears to be decreasing overall in this decade, this is both because of the introduction of the Canada Student Grants Program (which turns a portion of student loans into non-repayable grants) and because enrollment growth has outpaced increases in student loan borrowing. Even so, those who are borrowing are taking on much higher debts,and increasingly from private sources.
This morning I will speak to what we must do next to more effectively address the continuing problem of student attrition in higher education. To do so I will briefly look back on what is now a thirty-year history of research & practice on student retention and reflect on the lessons we have learned over that time. I will argue that we have yet to attend to the deeper
educational issues that ultimately shape student success in higher education. Until we do so, our efforts will always be less effective than we desire.