In this article, we describe a teacher education program that attempted to deal with a teacher quality agenda by changing both the content and mode of operation of a pre-service teacher education program. We first describe the program and its differences from the standard BEd model, and then comment on research conducted into the program. We conclude the article with the proposal that robust, syndicated partnerships between schools and universities are the most likely arrangement to foster significant changes in teacher education.
This paper is about school reform for the purpose of improving student academic achievement. More specifically the paper provides an insight into the concept of ‘School Readiness for Teaching Improvement’ by providing an account of an underpinning theory complete with an examination of an associated process and report format. The paper concludes with a sample of an associated ‘Readiness Report’ and an explanation of its key elements and how such a report is read for key points of reference.
The government of Ontario has signalled the need to expand graduate education to create and sustain a highly skilled workforce in today’s knowledge-based economy. Ontario has grown its PhD capacity deliberately since 2005, beginning with its Reaching Higher initiative, to produce highly qualified personnel to work both inside and outside academia.
Canada's post-secondary institutions are at the forefront of excellence in science, research and innovation. They help to
train the workforce of tomorrow and create the knowledge and insights needed by the private and public sectors to build a
clean, sustainable economy.
Historically, much of education research has focused on exploring the classroom as a context for learning, explaining the learning processes that occur in the classroom, and designing lessons that help students learn. The past decades have seen considerable research on the various social factors that affect learning; they have also seen increasing research into the effects of policy on educational attainment.
The debate over how universities and colleges should relate to one another has been lively in Ontario for at least two decades.
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.
With information collected on 2,400 PhD graduates, we can begin to see what humanities programs contribute to the
academy and beyond.
In May 2015, the Future Humanities conference, put on by McGill University’s Institute for the Public Life of Arts and Ideas, or IPLAI, brought together more than 130 graduate students, faculty and administrators from 26 Canadian universities (francophone and anglophone), along with a number of PhD holders with careers outside the academy and representatives from organizations such as the Canadian Association for Graduate Studies, the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences and MITACS. (For an overview of what transpired at the conference, see this video and article.)
David Kolb published his learning styles model in 1984 from which he developed his learning style inventory.
Kolb's experiential learning theory works on two levels: a four stage cycle of learning and four separate learning styles. Much of Kolb’s theory is concerned with the learner’s internal cognitive processes.
Kolb states that learning involves the acquisition of abstract concepts that can be applied flexibly in a range of situations. In Kolb’s theory, the impetus for the development of new concepts is provided by new experiences.
As the threat of MOOCs and for-profit education fades, so too does the sense of urgency that drives innovation.
Yet anyone who thinks that a decade from now higher education will look much as it does today is
sadly mistaken.
Higher education starts earlier than ever as students earn more early college/dual degree and AP credits. Students increasingly accumulate credits from multiple institutions. Undergraduate introductory survey courses lose enrollment, and, as they do, the cross-subsidies that helped support upper division courses decline. In the humanities, the loss of introductory course enrollment.
contributes to a decline in the number of majors.
It may seem natural for a president to try to appease a board, but establishing clear roles and boundaries is vitally important, write Barbara McFadden Allen, Ruth Watkins and Robin Kaler.
Team research is the source of some of the great breakthroughs of all time, such as the 1947 invention of the transistor, which took the complementary skills of applied researcher Walter Brattain, quantum theory researcher John Bardeen and solid-state physicist William Shockley. And today, despite the expediency of individual work, researchers are moving strongly and clearly in favor of teamwork because of its often strong advantages.
NEW YORK -- Administrators sometimes disagree with faculty members about the value of online education, and nthusiastic instructors sometimes clash with skeptics. But what can colleges do when their students are the ones esisting change?
he question emerged here last week as the Teagle Foundation, which supports liberal arts education, brought ogether grant recipients to provide updates on nine projects involving blended learning -- face-to-face courses with ome online content. The collaborative projects, many of which won’t conclude until 2017 and 2018, have attracted articipation from more than 110 faculty members and staffers and 115 students at about 40 colleges and universities in 16 states.
Online courses have for years driven enrollment growth at community colleges, but as more students take their
chances in the job market, institutions face new challenges to retain them, a new study found.
During the height of the recent recession, community colleges saw double-digit percentage growth in their online courses, according to the Instructional Technology Council, which is affiliated with the American Association of Community Colleges. But the ITC’s most recent survey of trends in online education at two-year colleges shows growth last academic year sat at 4.7 percent -- the lowest in about a decade.
It is very lonely at the top and the road to the presidency is becoming less linear. The paths are also becoming more
varied for those seeking to lead at that level. The traditional roadmap of faculty to department chair, to dean, then provost, then president is becoming the road less and less traveled, as surveys of provosts reveal that fewer and fewer of those in such positions aspire to become presidents. Earlier this month, the American Council on Education (ACE) held its annual conference
that included a pre-conference focused on cultivating and advancing women leaders for leadership positions, not just the presidency. It was an invigorating convening that promoted, although not explicitly, Jon Wergin’s concept of leadership in place. Throughout the pre-conference and the main conference, there was a recognition that the world is also changing and our sector—the higher education sector—needs to be prepared to meet the needs of our students, but also to cultivate the leadership for this new and changing world.
Author of a new book on how family matters for college women's success argues that four-year public institutions are increasingly dependent on active -- and wealthy -- parents, and that can harm students with less-involved parents.
Each year the Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance releases its Habitats project: a series of case studies on municipal-level issues affecingundergraduate students. These case studies are written by OUSA campus researcher from our member institutions.
Employers and higher ed institutions have acknowledged the value that this type of experience could bring to the
country’s workforce. But only 3.1% of full-time university students and 1.1% of full-time college students have studied abroad as part of their postsecondary education.
Existing research shows that Canadian students are generally interested in studying abroad, yet they face a number of obstacles. These obstacles have been categorized as the four Cs: cost, curriculum, culture, and circumstance.
aculty dread the grade appeal; anxiety prevails until the whole process is complete. Much has been written about ow to avoid such instances, but the potentially subjective assessments of written essays or clinical skills can be specially troublesome. One common cause of grade appeals is grading ambiguity in which the student and faculty ember disagree on the interpretation of required content. Another cause is inequity, whereby the student feels thers may have gotten more credit for very similar work or content (Hummel 2010). In the health-care field specially, these disagreements over clinical-skills assessments can actually result in student dismissal from the program and may lead to lawsuits.
There hasn’t been a lot written recently about test anxiety, but that doesn’t mean it’s no longer an issue for a significant number of students. Those of us who don’t suffer from test anxiety—and I’m betting that’s most faculty— can find it hard to be sympathetic. Life is full of tests, and students need to get over it. Besides, if students have studied and prepared, there’s no reason for them to feel excessively anxious about a test.