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Story 42-2 Ken Cossoy Interview
Get PDFKen Cossoy shares his experience attending the Talmud Torah, a Jewish religious school, and the important role it played in his social life
Mbwaach\u27idiwag Episode 1: Visiting with Dr. Diana Lewis
No full textIn episode one Sara Mai visits with Dr Diana Lewis, a Mikmaq researcher and Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography and Environment and Indigenous Studies program, at Western University. They discuss Mikmaq connections to land, community-led research approaches and the concept of Two-Eyed Seeing, as Dr. Lewis tells the story of how she came to research collaboratively with Pictou Landing First Nation to document the impact of effluent from a pulp mill on the community, and land
A Curriculum Framework at GLSM, A Canadian Medical School
Get PDFMedical education has seen minor changes over the decades, but a dynamic movement towards competency-based medical education (CBME) has swept across the field in recent years. Organizing medical education curriculum to respond to these changes can be challenging due to many factors, in both content and context. The public rightly expects that graduating medical students be competent physicians, ready to deliver effective health care. This Organizational Improvement Plan (OIP) looks at a relatively new medical school’s lack of an outcomes-based curriculum framework. The Problem of Practice (PoP) is focused on the difficulty of moving the school toward the development of a curriculum framework. The PoP is seen to have a high degree of instability and complexity due to the combination of markedly different administrative and academic governance structures. Strategies for driving change towards an OIP are grounded in adaptive leadership (Heifetz & Linsky, 2017), third space (Whitchurch, 2013) and sensemaking (Weick, 1995) theories.
The divide between the administrative and academic sides of the school can be bridged by the galvanizing influence of accreditation, which represents a potential existential threat to the school. The OIP proposes to move towards the dual goals of (a) developing a CBME curriculum framework, while (b) simultaneously fostering the growth of a third space in between the two sides of the organization, from which creative work can take place. This OIP also looks to deconstruct binaries in higher education and medical education, such as administration vs. academia. The change initiative is seen as a combination of both top-down and grass roots driven movments. By combining the two approaches, the school can still move towards change with urgency, while also protecting faculty’s academic freedom to take ownership of the issue and impact the direction of the change. Finally, while the OIP is a plan for implementing change, it is acknowledged that rigidly pre-determined plans can be counter-productive for effective and deep change that will have a lasting effect after the accreditation event has passed.
Keywords: curriculum, dichotomy, adaptive leadership, third space, sensemaking, medical education, organized anarch
Enhancing Support for Student Mental Health and Wellbeing through Service Renewal at a Canadian College
Get PDFAs the postsecondary education sector has evolved toward mass education, the proportion of students studying at postsecondary institutions experiencing mental health and wellness-related challenges has continued to rise. This continued growth in prevalence and severity of mental health and wellness conditions impacting students in the postsecondary sector has occurred without similar growth in resourcing for departments responsible for supporting these students in successfully navigating their learning environments. These realities require that institutions begin developing strategies to address this gap. This Organizational Improvement Plan (OIP) presents a possible solution to enhance the capacity of a large urban College in Canada to support the increasing complexity of, and demand for, mental health and wellness-related services and interventions which foster students’ personal and academic success.
Introducing the Model for People-Centred Leadership through Praxis (PCLP Model), which incorporates principles of transformational and distributed leadership through a social justice lens, this OIP addresses the gap between institutional capacity and student demand for support while also navigating the process of amalgamating personal counselling and accessible learning departments. Through meaningful engagement and co-construction, this OIP focuses on three key priorities: unifying the team’s vision and values, identifying opportunities to enhance services and collaborative approaches, and communicating and integrating the new state into the institutional culture. This OIP may provide a model for other institutions working toward empowering students in meeting their wellness goals while creating conditions that maximize students’ potential to thrive
An Institutional Strategy to Address Financial Preparedness in a Post-Secondary Environment
Get PDFAttending post-secondary comes at a cost. With rising tuition and life costs, the financial responsibility students are taking on is significant. Many young adults lack the experience and knowledge to manage their financial obligations. For some, during times of financial stress this may lead to balancing a part-time job, a reduced course load or considering withdrawing from studies. Many students rely on financial aid to support their academic and life costs. In the past few years, the provincial government made various changes to the financial aid program and tuition fees. These changes have led to many students misunderstanding how much financial aid they will receive, which further confuses their overall financial responsibilities to the institution. For many students, this can lead to financial stress or crisis. As the leader of the Financial Aid & Accounts team at Province University, I ask: What is Province University’s strategy for developing better financially prepared students? This Organizational Improvement Plan (OIP) addresses the gap between the current state of students\u27 lack of knowledge and under-preparedness for the financial responsibilities of post-secondary education. With the focus of driving change and improving financial literacy, adaptive leadership will be used to engage a cross-functional team to implement a solution focused on financial education for students and staff, the development of financial crisis framework, and internal collaboration. Solutions focus on improving student self-efficacy through the application of Social Cognitive Theory and by obtaining campus partner support. Kotter’s eight-stage change process will provide the framework to drive this change into campus culture
Continuous Improvement Leadership in Applied Research
Get PDFThe purpose of this Organizational Improvement Plan (OIP) is to assist leaders in Ontario colleges in understanding the barriers and challenges of engaging faculty to enact applied research practices. Undergirding this OIP is social cognition theory and the analytical discipline of improvement science theory. Taken together, these theories align with systems thinking and are a step towards a holistic understanding of the dynamics of a college learning culture. Underpinned by a set of simple principles including improving through communication, learning through collaboration, and changing through coordination, a continuous improvement (CI) leadership approach, which combines servant (Greenleaf, 1977), team (Kogler Hill, 2019), and adaptive (Heifetz & Linsky, 2002) attributes, is utilized to address this problem of practice. To lead the change process, the CI leadership approach provides positive opportunities to engage with faculty by building relationships, social capital and professional capital, for deeper and more lasting change. The premise of this OIP is that developing a network improvement committee is an opportunity to engage, accelerate learning, and develop relationships with faculty. This OIP’s change management, implementation, and communication plan takes an action-research and ethics-based approach. Different perspectives inform this approach, including Lewin’s (1947) 3-Step Change Process and the Carnegie Foundation’s Six Core Principles of Improvement Framework (Bryk, 2015). Once implemented, it is anticipated that the outcomes of this OIP will contribute to a common language for applied research that increases the likelihood of influencing faculty engagement. Stronger linkages between teaching and applied research are consistent with continuous improvement in learning and collective accountability to meet the expectations of a competitive global market, strategically aligned with economic and community impact priorities
Exploring the Role of Collective Teacher Efficacy in Closing Achievement Gaps: A Review of an Urban District Model School Program
Get PDFAbstract
Urban Academy is one of Urban Diverse School Board (UDSB)’s model schools situated in Ontario, Canada. A model school program was created to provide students with equitable access to resources and learning opportunities. Despite UDSB’s commitment to equity and inclusion, this urban school continues to experience persistent achievement gaps when aggregate data are analyzed. Based on student data, the achievement gap has been strongly connected to demographic factors such as low socioeconomic status (SES) of the parents. Educators’ beliefs and assumptions of low SES as an external factor posit achievement as a dilemma beyond teachers’ control. This Organizational Improvement Plan (OIP), guided by Cawsey, Deszca, & Ingols’ s (2016) Change Path Model and Donohoo’s (2017) Collective Teacher Inquiry Model, addresses a problem of practice (PoP) that needs school leaders to explore the closing of achievement gap through the promotion of collective teacher efficacy (CTE). According to research, CTE positively correlates with improved student performance. Academic achievement tends to be poorer in schools with lower sense of CTE while improved academic performance is higher in schools with greater sense of CTE. In order for Urban Academy to experience change and close achievement gaps, this OIP recommends a blend of transformational and transformative leadership approach known for fostering collaboration, addressing inequity, and modelling valued behaviours and beliefs (Sun & Leithwood, 2012; Shields, 2010; 2013). With deep learning and reflections through collaborative inquiry, the preferred solution of this OIP is to explore how CTE can be enhanced to effect transformational change that will improve student academic achievement