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Case 8 : Reaching the Hard-to-Reach: Conducting Research on Elder Abuse in Toronto\u27s Arab Community
Get PDFA number of factors common to the post-migration context have been shown to negatively impact the lives of new immigrants to Canada. Within the Arab community in Ashcroft, certain factors such as sponsorship requirements, intergenerational cohabitation practices, financial dependence, language barriers, and cultural stigmas often act as risk factors, increasing the vulnerability of older adults to abuse. Caroline Rochester has recently accepted the research coordinator position for the Elder Abuse Project at Rudyard University. The goal of the study is to identify the key factors that increase the risk of abuse of elders in the Arab community. Once these factors are better understood, it will be possible to develop culturally relevant strategies to address the risks that are amenable to change.
Caroline’s team wants to collect qualitative data by organizing focus group interviews with community members; however, she is running into numerous difficulties conducting research with this hard-to-reach population. Mistrust of the research process and the absence of mutually beneficial relationships with the community have brought participant recruitment to a standstill. Moreover, the team’s failure to consider the cultural context of the population being studied has directly inhibited the progress of the project. It is clear that the current research methodology is not working and that a new approach is required. Caroline wonders what actions she should take to improve the research process.
The goal of this case is to introduce readers to a number of commonly encountered concerns when conducting research with hard-to-reach and vulnerable populations. Through the development of solutions to the problems faced by the protagonist, readers will become more familiar with the principles of community-based participatory research and gain an understanding of the importance of cultural competence in research practice
Ch. 11 - Becoming a Story: Searching for Music Educations
Get PDFThis short philosophical chapter borrows and diverges from Estelle Jorgensen’s In Search of Music Education. It aims to address the pertinent and defiant questions asked over two decades ago, while re-position them in light of current challenges. Following Jorgensen’s style—carefully and tactically—this chapter draws a line of flight between philosophical and policy-oriented ways of thinking, underlining some ways in which the two meet and how pertinent these encounters can be to music educators today. The chapter makes use and highlights the potential of craftly constructed epistemological familiarity and how it can engender practice. Specifically, it reminds and exemplifies to the reader how a ‘wondering disposition’ about one’s work and field, remain central to any critical practice. Specially so, in times where democratic challenges strongly challenge our social and educational environments
Ch. 10 - Rethinking the Transgressive: A Call for “Pessimistic Activism” in Music Education
Get PDFThis essay asks the question: How are we to think of what Estelle Jorgensen has called “the transgressive” in music education today? My entry point to the question is the suggestion that the struggle against modes of music education that eulogize the status quo, against oppression and authoritarianism, against practices that exclude and intimidate students, has to take the form of “a struggle on two fronts” (Badiou). A struggle against imposed canonicities and obsolete approaches to music teaching but also a struggle against the emerging neoliberal appropriations of education, learning, and creativity. The chapter sketches a struggle-on-two-fronts perspective with regard to the following questions: (1) How are we to understand the call for being ‘open’ to students and their needs? What does it mean, today, to adopt a child-centric perspective in music education? (2) How should we think of the notion of “active” participation? (3) Should we simply accept an equation between informality and openness? The chapter concludes by arguing that, if an important task of education is to critically reconstruct, reinterpret, and re-examine “knowledge for the present and future,” as Estelle Jorgensen has put it, then our approach might need to take the form of a “pessimistic activism”. Invoking the Foucauldian notion of pessimistic activism, I wish to emphasize the need for persistent uncompromised working modes that foster experimentation and criticality on the basis of equality, in the knowledge that in the end, we can neither be sure that our efforts will lead to openness, nor that these efforts will not be cancelled and/or co-opted by the pervading neoliberal ethos
PD in International Schools: Getting the Right Message Out
Get PDFThis Organisational Improvement Plan aims to outline how to improve the organisation and delivery of professional development at a for-profit international school in the Middle East. It examines the organisational context of the school, and the structure of the greater system of which it is part. The role of its regional context is discussed, with the effect on the operation of the school made plain. As a vision for change must rest on solid theoretical foundations, the conceptual lens through which the problem of practice is explored, as are appropriate issues that arise in relevant literature. It then examines the various values of the stakeholders in the school. With these analyses completed, it outlines a tripartite approach to remedy the dearth of effective planning for professional learning. This allows the Organisational Improvement Plan to create a one-year change implementation plan that hopes to improve the delivery of professional development in the organisation
The Ethics of Contracting for Education within a Neoliberal Framework
Get PDFNo matter how lightly you tread, you can not cross a beach without leaving footprints, nor without carrying a little sand away with you. Open systems theory states that an organization has permeable boundaries “dependant on its environment for survival and will go out of existence unless it is actively attended to” (Burke, 2011, p. 61), and it is with this consideration that the tenets of social justice are understood to be a responsibility of all entities, as “the public” is not a target group that can be somehow isolated so as to be impacted by only public administrators. Private colleges in Canada benefit by their constituents having access to public funds, and therefore government regulations restrict how private investors can profit from this relationship. However, as with any imposed control system, it is only as good as its policing; the alternative is a system that is sanctioned by those it is meant to control.
This organizational improvement plan is an exploration into change that is intended to ensure that the social justice imperative embodied in following an admission process that supports an ethical approach to student contracting is fully adopted. Commitment to this behavior, the author argues, supports organizational goals related to student persistence, and improved student loan default rates. These goals are intended to have a positive impact on the consequences of problem debt, to contribute to regional infrastructure and economic growth by increasing workplace intelligence, and to a reduction of the social services burden
Case 10 : Supporting Students with Learning Disabilities: Reducing Secondary School Non-Completion and its Associated Health Disparities
Get PDFShelley van Dam needs to write a policy brief for her board on the effects of learning disabilities. This policy brief is a response to the upcoming termination of some of the funding for the Learning Disabilities Association of Sudbury (LDAS). The LDAS provides various programs that support students and families that have, or are in the process of being identified as having, a learning disability. The LDAS is a not-for-profit organization that operates throughout Greater Sudbury and across Northeastern Ontario to provide assistance to students who have learning disabilities so they attain the highest level of education possible. Some funding sources are available in the short term, including an Ontario Trillium Foundation grant that allows the LDAS to hire part-time employees in the organization’s satellite offices located in North Bay, Sault Ste. Marie, and Timmins. With this Ontario Trillium Foundation grant ending soon, Shelley realized that the LDAS would not be able to continue employing these people, and ultimately knew that the students in those regions who have learning disabilities would suffer. Shelley identified one possible solution that may help the organization avoid having to cease operations at their satellite offices—looking for more sustainable sources of funding from provincial ministries such as the Ministry of Children, Community and Social Services.
In order to develop the appropriate policy brief required by her board, she needed to gather and present the most up-to-date information available. Students who have learning disabilities have average- to above-average intelligence but require different teaching methods in order to successfully complete school. Shelley found recent data from Statistics Canada (2015) showing the proportion of students who have learning disabilities dropping out of high school was 33% of total students with learning disabilities, compared with 13.1% of the total student population without learning disabilities. She wanted to discuss how socioeconomic status plays a role in one’s health and the importance of successfully obtaining at least a high school education, as that opens the door for other post-secondary educational opportunities. Graduating from high school is necessary in today’s job market because many jobs require post-secondary credentials as a prerequisite to employment. Shelley found research discussing how a lack of education for Canadians who have learning disabilities can fuel further inequities including food scarcity, incarceration and crime. The ecological systems theory, social learning theory, and strain theory were all discussed to better understand some underlying problems that may contribute to the continued, cyclical health disparities faced by Canadians who do not have a high school diploma. By including this information, Shelley hopes to highlight the effects of inadequate support for students who have learning disabilities throughout their academic careers, and how this can increase health care costs not only to the individual, but to society as a whole
Red and Blue Make Purple: Alignment of Socially Just and Neoliberal Approaches to Higher Education Internationalization
Get PDFInternationalization of higher education may have “lost its way” Knight (2014), such that “the end of internationalization” may be on the horizon (Brandenburg & de Wit, 2015). Competing visions and goalsetting may be at the heart of this dissolution, and may be mirrored in both global tensions between market- and justice-based perspectives, as well as in the fragmented offices and disparate goalsetting of a large Canadian university, UX (a pseudonym). Thus, UX has a Problem of Practice wherein international supports do not work together in a concerted way to effectively support international, and perhaps other, marginalized students. In this Organizational Improvement Plan, transformative leadership will present a synergistic path forward, using Riel & Martin’s (2017) constructive alignment to distill positive elements of both perspectives, specifically informing the transformation of one such office of international support: the International Foundations Program. This vision is largely based on a wider vision of intercultural needs, including Indigenous, LGTB, and other marginalized populations alongside international within the learning community. These populations provide not only models for deeper recognition, service, and support in higher education, but also serve to expand the market for the International Foundations Program. Overall, the OIP is intended to provide leadership in UX internationalization support, with the eventual goal of restructuring internationalization offices and informing UX Internationalization policy