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.
Here’s a question to ponder in the wee hours of the morning – or right now. How can a government respond to the following societal dynamic?
1. A persistent and growing demand for more availability of public postsecondary education.
2. Fewer public dollars to sustain or grow public postsecondary education, especially in Canada
with the insatiable financial appetite of the health care system.
3. A political imperative to minimize tuition increases.
4. Greater scrutiny and accountability around everything governments and public institutions do.
As the global marketplace becomes increasingly competitive and knowledge-driven the potential social and economic benefits of education have increased. As a result, the past few decades have witnessed an unprecedented expansion in the demand for post-secondary education (PSE) worldwide.
The Canadian Council on Learning monograph series, Challenges in Canadian Post-secondary Education, was launched in November 2009 as a means of examining the impact of this expansion on the PSE sector.
Two of five Canadians would have difficulty reading this sentence, following the instructions on a prescription bottle,
finding out information about how to vote, or filling out a permission form for their child’s upcoming school trip. Although for nine of the past 14 years, Canada has ranked first on the United Nations Human Development Index (HDI), a measure of a country’s relative wellbeing, complacency would be a serious mistake. Low levels of literacy – especially among adults and vulnerable groups – remain a significant challenge to Canada’s continued wellbeing. As our performance on the HDI and other international rankings confirms, we have a solid foundation on which to build; but we must not underestimate the significance
of literacy problems in this country. The groups most vulnerable to low literacy are the poor; persons of Aboriginal ancestry; persons whose native language is neither English nor French; persons in rural and isolated communities; and persons with certain disabling conditions. Given the rise in skill levels demanded throughout the labour market, the ubiquity of new technologies in daily and work life, and the desire of people to engage with public issues, those with poor literacy will become even further marginalized.
The number of students interested in studying abroad is at a record high, with more than 4.5 million students being globally mobile in 20141 and many more looking to follow in their footsteps. For these students, making an informed choice regarding what and where they would like to study is a complex, lengthy process, and inconsistencies and differences in how universities choose to communicate information about their programs is a significant barrier.
The question of how to hold Ontario’s universities accountable to the needs of students is a relatively complex one. One must be careful to balance the need for academic freedom with the public’s (and especially students’) right to be assured that its considerable investments into postsecondary institutions are being used effectively and appropriately. OUSA’s Accountability paper offers recommendations to improve quality assurance and strategic goal-setting in Ontario’s universities. In essence, it
describes students’ vision of to whom, for what, and how universities should be held accountable.
Vision
Canadore is the college of choice for connecting people, education, and employment through leadership and innovation.
Mission
To provide outstanding applied education and training for an ever-changing world.
The onset of economic downturn in late 2008 and early 2009 has had a varied effect on the Canadian economy. While much has been made about Canada’s relatively stable performance during this time, persistently high levels of youth unemployment since the downturn reveal that for a large number of Canadian youth, the impacts of recession have been deeply felt. Panelists and participants at the symposium Employment Challenges for Youth in a Changing Economy pointed to a need to uncover what the specific impacts of downturn have been, why high youth unemployment rates persist, and what can be done by policymakers, the private sector, and academic and community institutions to help youth realize their full potential.
Facilitating dialogues about racial issues in higher education classroom settings continues to be a vexing problem facing postsecondary educators. In order for students to discuss race with their peers, they need skilled facilitators who are knowledgeable about racial issues and able to support students in these difficult dialogues. Yet previous research on difficult dialogues has largely focused on students’ experiences in these dialogues and the outcomes they gain from participating in them with little knowledge about the roles of facilitators of these dialogues.
The University of Guelph (U of G) is committed to creating a campus founded on the principles of equity and inclusion. As part of this commitment, the University has undertaken a review of salary equity among the faculty, with a particular focus on gender equity. In addition to gender equity, U of G attempted to identify salaries that were unusually low compared to what could be expected based on various characteristics of faculty members. The review was overseen by the Office of the Provost, with support from the Office of Institutional Analysis and Research, the Office of Faculty and Staff Relations, and the Office of Diversity and
Human Rights.
It would be a shame if the lesson learned is simply to remove the controversial bits from your course.
The issues of freedom of speech and transgender rights, highlighted by recent events involving a teaching assistant at Wilfrid Laurier University, remind me of my first year as a university instructor in the late 1990s, when I taught a communications course on advertising at York University. (Yes, I understand that the status of a TA is different than that of an instructor, but I think for the purposes of this anecdote, the principles are similar.)
While teaching the course, I saw an ad for Sauza tequila in the campus newspaper. It featured a photo of an attractive, swimsuit-wearing woman, with the phrase, “She’s a He,” written across her chest. The ad’s tag line read: “Life is Harsh, Your Tequila Shouldn’t Be.” (The ad didn’t identify the model, who in fact was Caroline Cossey, a transgender model.)
Welcome to the Workshop!
9-11:00 Module I-The Leader in You 11-11:30
11:30-1:00 Module II-Professional Cultures Module III-Leading Professional Capital
2:00-3:15 Module III-Leading Professional Capital (cont’d) Module IV -The Leader and Technology
Module V-Closing
A main goal of this themed issue of Teachers College Record (TCR) is to move the conversation about PISA data beyond achievement to also include factors that affect achievement (e.g., SES, home environment, strategy use). Also we asked authors to consider how international assessment data can be used for improving learning and education and what appropriate versus inappropriate inferences can be made from the data.
There is widespread interest among a variety of stakeholders, including parents, teachers, policy makers, and the general public, about what and how well students are learning in educational systems around the world and how well educational systems are preparing students for life outside school (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, OECD, 2009). Student achievement is often monitored at the national level, but nations are increasingly interested in cross-national educational comparisons as well. Perhaps in response to increasing globalization in both social and economic terms, stakeholders want to understand their country’s education system within a broader international context (OECD, 2009; 2010). What are its relative strengths and weaknesses? Is it preparing citizens to participate in a globalized economy? Is it valuing high quality learning opportunities and distributing them equitably among children and youth? Is it sufficiently resourced in terms of personnel and materials? Are teachers prepared and supported to work with diverse and high needs student populations?
Premier Kathleen Wynne is set to announce a sweeping review of how students are assessed in Ontario, including possible changes to EQAO tests in math and literacy and what skills are measured on report cards.
Sources told the Star Wynne will unveil plans Wednesday to create a panel of experts who will report back to the government this winter with recommendations. The announcement comes a day after the province’s 2 million students headed back to class after the summer break.
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.
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.
In their aptly named book on organizational management, Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert I. Sutton write about Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths, and Total Nonsense. A hard fact is something for which there is solid evidence. A dangerous half-truth is when this fact is superficially applied. And total nonsense is often the outcome of not knowing the difference.
We can gain insight about the current state of school leadership by applying this organizational thinking to two of education’s hard facts: The principal is crucial to school success, and professional learning communities are more effective than individual professionals working in isolation. In doing so, we should remember that the danger in the half-truth is not just that it is incomplete or misleading, but that its proponents are unaware that it is not true.
“Are you keeping us for the whole time today? Because I need to leave in 20 minutes,” asked a student with a baffled expression on his face. As I looked at him, I wanted so badly to explain: Of all the ways you could have chosen to introduce yourself on the first day of class, that was not the optimal one.
For more than six years, HEQCO has conducted research on the differentiation of Ontario’s public postsecondary system, where institutions build on and are accountable for their specific strengths, mandates and missions. This report identifies clear distinctions between universities in terms of their research and teaching missions. The data point to critical pathways to achieve the benefits of greater differentiation. The goal is a system that is more cohesive, more sustainable and of higher quality.
The increases in tuition and fee prices in 2015-16 were, like the increases in the two preceding years, relatively small by historical standards. However, the very low rate of general inflation makes this year’s increases in college prices larger in real terms than those of 2014-15 and 2013-14. Significantly, and perhaps counter to public impressions, price increases are not accelerating over time. However, the average published tuition and fee price of a full-time year at a public four-year institution is 40% higher, after adjusting for inflation, in 2015-16 than it was in 2005-06.The average published price is 29%
higher in the public two-year sector and 26% higher in the private nonprofit four-year sector than a decade ago.