Understanding Community Colleges brings together a variety of subjects and issues that face community colleges as they evolve in the higher education landscape. The edition is organized into four sections that cover three arenas: students, administration
and leadership issues, and workforce development. Each chapter, regardless of author, does a quality job of explaining the historical context of the given issue and the development or change that is occurring for community colleges nationwide. The text is accessible for those unfamiliar with community colleges and does not fall into the writing traps of consistently comparing community colleges to four-year institutions. Instead, each chapter treats community colleges as stand-alone entities,
examining them in each particular setting with no preconceived notions.
We use data for a large sample of Ontario students who are observed over five years from their initial entry into high school to study differences in postsecondary education participation. The students are grouped by average neighbourhood income and birthplace (Canadian or foreign‐born). We find substantial differences in the allocation of students based on their performance in Grade 9 courses and the types of PSE participation within achievement groupings.
We document differences in PSE participation based on the students’ birthplace. Foreign‐born students, conditioning on performance in high school, are more likely to continue onto university and college. Foreignborn students in higher income neighbourhoods are more likely to pursue a university degree than a college credential. Uniformly, Canadian‐born students are less likely to pursue a PSE credential upon the completion of high school.
After putting in the time, money and energy to complete a degree, it can be extremely discouraging to realize you no longer want to work in that industry. If you spent the better part of four years in a classroom only to learn you don’t want to pursue the field you’re now qualified for, what do you do? Most people don’t have the time or money to go back to school and start over again — but don’t fret. There are steps to take when trying to change career paths to something not directly associated with your degree. While making the switch may be difficult, it’s not impossible. The following steps will help push you in the direction you want to go.
They should be used to inform and encourage, not to penalize.
With reference to Gerald Walton’s opinion piece, in which he declares that “academic underperformers must be called out,” I would like to suggest an alternative, more helpful approach to the problem he identifies. As dean of the faculty of arts at the University of Manitoba, from 1999 to 2004, it was my task to implement Article 35 of our collective agreement, which called for meaningful annual performance evaluations. The trick was to do that in a positive way rather than a destructive one.
Much of our work as educators consists of designing and delivering experiences in which students can develop their understanding and application of concepts and skills in our disciplines. Given that we have only 16 weeks with our students, we need various ways for deepening and expanding these formative experiences in our field. Visiting experts can be a wonderful way of developing expertise, and leveraging online tools like Skype and Zoom can open up powerful possibilities for new collaboration and conversation.
Over the past months, since the Brexit vote and the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States – in particular after the transition – many articles have been published about the negative impact of these two events on the internationalisation of higher education in the United States and the United Kingdom and beyond.
The increasing wave of nationalist, populist, anti-immigration and anti-globalisation trends in the United States, Europe and countries like Turkey and the Philippines make us wonder if the end of internationalisation is near.
We are often told that we live in a global era, driven in part by technology, globalisation and intensified international commerce. There is a great urgency to cultivate internationally minded and ready citizens. Higher education institutions worldwide are
situated at the epicentre of generating the world’s next legion of global citizens.
In the United States alone, institutions now commonly have study abroad centres or offices of international education and many have established international outposts.
At the core of internationalisation is an ambition for internationalised curricula. Through this, institutions aim to equip students with the tools they need to thrive in the global economy. Yet, despite the momentum surrounding the internationalised curriculum, its substance and benefits are still uncertain.
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.
It is often the case that research questions in education involve units of analysis that can be naturally grouped or placed within hierarchical or multilevel configurations. This type of grouping is referred to as nesting. It results in the exposure of the lowest-level units of analysis to common environments that are likely to impact their behaviors, outcomes, or levels of performance. These lowest-level units are commonly referred to as level-1 units. Typical examples of these units are students nested within classrooms. Classrooms are the nesting structure, constituting a second-level unit or level-2 unit. Following this rationale, researchers could further model level-3 units consisting of classrooms (comprised of students) nested within schools. Notably, this logic can be further expanded to higher order levels. The successful identification of units situated at different levels prompted the development of techniques designed to model this phenomenon. These techniques are known as multilevel modeling.
Teach on Purpose! Responsive Teaching for Student Success, written by Leslie David Burns and Stergios G. Botzakis, is an impassioned argument for the importance of using responsive teaching within today's and tomorrow’s K–12 schools. The authors and their guest teacher-authors provide a straightforward rationale that explains why teaching purposefully and responsively is not just an option, but fundamental to teaching well. They collectively do this in a way that is relevant, practical, timely, and sometimes even humorous.
Much attention over the past decade has been given by policy makers to the importance of data-driven decision making and evidence-based practices in education (Aguerrebere, 2009; Cilbulka, 2013; CCSSO, 2012; Duncan, 2009, 2010, 2012; Easton, 2009, 2010; National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education, 2010). And much has been written about data-driven decision making in recent years. The field has seen special issues of journals (Coburn & Turner, 2012; Turner & Coburn, 2012; Wayman, 2005a, 2005b, 2006), edited books (Herman & Haertel, 2005; Kowalski & Lasley, 2009; Mandinach & Honey, 2008; Moss, 2007), focused books (Boudett, City, & Murnane, 2007; Mandinach & Jackson, 2012; Supovitz, 2006), research syntheses (Hamilton, Halverson, Jackson, Mandinach, Supovitz, & Wayman, 2009), and federally funded landscape studies (Means, Chen, DaBarger, & Padilla, 2011; Means, Padilla, & Gallagher, 2010). Yet the field is still emerging. There is much we know (Hamilton et al., 2009), and there is also much we do not know (Mandinach, 2012; Marsh, 2012; Turner & Coburn, 2012) or that has methodological challenges. Even some of the most rigorously designed studies about impact result in interpretive questions (Carlson, Borman, & Robinson, 2011; Konstantanopoulus, Miller, & van der Ploeg, 2013).
This article summarizes some significant insights of articles in this issue from the perspective of public policy, emphasizing their potential resonance in today's policy environment in using data for program improvement as well as accountability purposes.
The suite of papers in this special Teachers College Record volume on data-driven decision making in education reflects a burgeoning subdiscipline of scholarship on the topic that has been stimulated by the constantly evolving educational policy landscape. For at least two decades, policy makers have resonated to the importance of data in education as an accountability tool and have advocated policies for the collection and reporting of such data to fulfill accountability objectives. Early examples of this at the federal level include the creation of the National Education Goals Panel in 1990 (National Education Goals Panel, 1999) to annually report on national and state educational progress toward the National Education Goals adopted by president and the nation’s governors, as well as requirements by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget for data documenting the effectiveness of federal programs both in and outside of education under the Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) of 1994.
Focus of Study: This study aimed at examining teacher needs specific to data-related professional learning through a lens informed by knowledgebased organizational learning. We were guided by two broad questions: (a) What knowledge and skills do teachers need in order to engage in datainformed practice? (b) How do professional learning supports address these needs?
Even though your toughest students are just kids at the mercy of emotions they don't understand or can't control, it can be hard for a teacher to stay calm and not take these ongoing behavioral problems personally. My advice: it's time to hit the reset button!
Tough kids are usually covering a ton of hurt. They defend against feeling pain by erecting walls of protection through rejection. Efforts to penetrate those walls by caring adults are generally met with stronger resistance expressed through emotional withdrawal and/or offensive language, gestures, and actions. Like a crying baby unable to articulate the source of its discomfort, these kids desperately need patient, determined, and affectionate adults with thick skin who refuse to take offensive behavior personally. Here are some ways to connect or reconnect with students who make themselves hard to like.
I'll be the first to admit that I haven't been teaching at my best this semester. Oh, there have been some good classes. And I think I'm finally getting a handle on the one group of students who don't want to speak up in class. But in general it feels like I'm going through the motions a little bit, not fully reaching as many students as I have in the past, talking too much from the front of the room. I have a theory as to why this is happening.
This is my fourth semester at the University of Iowa teaching rhetoric to mostly first-year students. After years of adjuncting, it's great to be able to teach the same course again and again. I'm able to learn from my mistakes and improve semester to semester. Even better, prepping for class takes less and less time each semester. I keep an archive of class activities from previous semesters in Scrivener, and I can quickly arrange a few of them to make up a whole class period. It's great.
As reported in June 2016, UNHCR estimates that 65.3 million persons were forcibly displaced displaced, 21 million of whom were refugees. Such staggering numbers are unprecedented. Here, we explore the response of Canadian universities and colleges to the crisis in ways that are fulfilling their role as actors for social public good. In addition to offering courses and conducting research that delve into global forced displacement issues across a variety of disciplines, the response of Canadian higher education institutions can be organized broadly into three types of activities. One, they have intensified involvement with refugee sponsorship and scholarships. Two, they have provided advocacy and legal assistance for sponsors and refugees. Three, institutions have organized and participated in forums to share and discuss ideas and engage with other actors to identify needs, effective practices and innovative interventions.
This month, we’ll focus on how to prepare for existing state and national tests. I’ll focus on three things that can help your students improve their chances to score up to their potential. By the way, kids never score above their potential; they’re just not going to randomly make enough lucky right answers time after time after time (in statistics, it’s called regression to the mean).
But, they often underperform for a host of reasons, even when they should perform much better. While we could focus on dozens of variables that influence standardized testing, we’ll focus on these three: 1) brain chemistry, 2) priming, and 3) episodic memory triggers. Some of these suggestions got so many rave reviews that they are reproduced from an earlier bulletin!
Last October, we argued that various changes in the post-secondary landscape have converged to create a compelling need—and opportunity—for PSE to shift toward a new paradigm of Education & Career Development (ECD). That paper generated considerable interest, and also some great discussions flowing from several keynotes and presentations
At a conference in Ottawa, academics, policymakers, students and community leaders addressed the role universities can play in reconciling Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples.
What role can and should universities play in reconciliation efforts between Canadian institutions and Indigenous communities? What’s working well and what needs to change? These questions were central to a two-day symposium of university administrators, students, policymakers and community organizers called Converge 2017, hosted by Universities Canada in Ottawa last week.
After years of collecting literally millions of documents and hearing the stories of thousands of aboriginal people who
experienced abuse at residential schools, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission is ready to archive this material, much of it brutal and heartbreaking, in the new National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation at the University of Manitoba. Scheduled to open to the public this fall, it will serve as a rich repository and essential historical record of a haunting and tragic chapter of First Nations and Canadian history.