Global youth unemployment and localized impact: A career studies teacher's story

The global economic downturn and high youth unemployment have created a challenging context for Ontario secondary-school teachers to meet the compulsory half-credit career studies course objectives intended to support

Collaborative application of the Adaptive Mentorship© model: The professional and personal growth within a research triad

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe a qualitative action research study into the collective experiences of establishing a mentoring culture within a research triad consisting of a university professor together with a doctoral student and a master's level student who served as research assistants (RAs). This paper documents a process of ongoing reflection, which was used to gain insight about the personal selves, the professional selves, the role of being a RA, and concepts, ideas, and frameworks that might be useful in fulfilling the work inside and outside of the collaborative research project. Design/methodology/approach – A Faculty of Education within a Canadian university provided the context for the study. A large-scale, pan-Canadian document analysis research project served as the context for mentorship activities. The Adaptive Mentorshi

The impact of mentoring on the Canadian early career teachers’ well-being

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact that mentoring has on Canadian early career teachers’ (ECTs’) well-being. The authors describe findings from a pan-Canadian Teacher Induction Survey (n=1,343) that examined perceptions and experiences of ECTs within K–12 publicly funded schools, with particular interest in retention, career interests and the impact of mentoring on well-being. Design/methodology/approach: An online survey was used to examine perceptions and experiences of ECTs within publicly funded K–12 schools across Canada. For this paper, the authors selectively analyzed 35 survey questions that pertained to mentorship and well-being of ECTs, using quantitative and qualitative procedures. Findings: The findings revealed a strong correlation between the mentoring experiences and well-being of the participating Canadian ECTs. The teachers who did not receive mentorship indicated significantly lower feelings of well-being, and conversely, teachers who participated in some kind of mentorship demonstrated much higher levels of well-being. Research limitations/implications: This paper draws on the selective analysis of the data from a larger study to elicit the connections between the mentoring support and perceived well-being. Due to inconsistencies in terminology and multifaceted offerings of induction and mentoring supports for ECTs across Canada, there might have been some ambiguity regarding the formal and informal mentorship supports. A longitudinal study that is designed to specifically examine the connection between the mentorship and well-being of ECTs could yield deeper understandings. A comparative study in different international contexts is commended. Practical implications: The findings showed that the ECTs who did not receive any mentorship scored significantly lower feelings of well-being from external, structural, and internal well-being sources, and conversely, the ECTs who participated in some kind of mentorship scored much higher levels of feelings of well-being. Policy-makers should therefore continue to confidently include mentorship as an intentional strategy to support and help ECTs to flourish. However, inconsistent scoring between individuals and their levels of external, structural and internal well-being suggest that more research on the connection between mentoring and well-being of the ECTs. Social implications: Work-life imbalance seems to be more challenging for ECTs than policymakers who provide these expectations are aware. Therefore, excessive work demands and intensive workloads need to be given proper attention for their potential negative effects (such as stress, burnout and absence) on the beginning teachers’ health and well-being. Likewise, purposeful strength-based approaches should be undertaken to establish generative and pro-social efforts to enhance the connectedness, collaboration, collegiality and resilience-building opportunities for novice professionals within flourishing learning communities. Originality/value: In this paper, the authors have undertaken the

Widening our evaluative lenses of formal, facilitated, and spontaneous academic development

As conceptions of academic development expand to encompass a more diverse and flexible set of supports, traditional approaches to evaluation, including impact studies of formal programming, become insufficient. A program may appear ineffective when evaluation ignores additional supports that interact to counteract implementation or alternatively satisfy individuals’ needs. Recognizing the inherently interactive nature of academic development within systemically complex social contexts, this paper examines four evaluative lenses (traditional, ecological framework, complexity theory, and developmental) applied to graduate students’ support. By selecting an appropriate evaluation lens, based on local purposes and context, academic developers are better positioned to assess and improve supports provided

Creating supportive school cultures for beginning teachers: Mitigating the cultural contextual factors

Our internationally focused, systematic review of research literature explored a variety of contextual factors that affect experiences of beginning teachers and how these factors are addressed in the programs of support for new and beginning teachers. The transition and socialization processes that accompany early-career teachers, as well as efforts focused on acculturation to school contexts and the profession, are commonly noted in the literature and provide insights for those who support novice teachers. In this article, we report our findings that focus specifically on the cultural contextual factors. We view the cultural context as the eclectic environment wherein these early-career teachers learn to organize their thoughts, emotions, and behaviours, based on shared norms, beliefs, values, customs, and traditions that are common to a group of people. Upon the initial review of the literature on teacher attrition, retention, induction, and mentorship, we discuss the overarching themes that we found from our exploration of the cultural factors affecting beginning teachers, the aspects of induction and mentoring programs that were designed to address these factors, and we offer conclusions and research implications

Preparing at-risk youth for a changing world: Revisiting a person-in-context model for transition to employment

Background: The current global cohort of youth has been called ‘a generation at-risk’, marked by a dramatic rise in youth who are not in employment, education or training programmes. In 2010, youth were three times as likely as adults to be unemployed, with youth unemployment worsening in 2012 and 2013. Accordingly, there is an urgent need to examine educational structures that can promote greater labour market attachment and successful transition into employment for youth worldwide. Vocational and work-based education (WBE) has been identified as one of the most recommended and promising educational structures for curtailing youth under- and unemployment. However, WBE takes many forms, making it difficult to discern which WBE programme is most likely to meet the diverse needs of any individual at-risk youth. Moreover, there has been a dearth of theoretical conceptualisations to explain WBE as a context that promotes resilience for at-risk youth as they transition into the world of work. Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to present a revised model for WBE as an enabling context for at-risk youth in transition from school to employment. Specifically, a person-in-context approach is used, situating youth-related facets (e.g. agency) in relation to systemic facets (e.g. political, cultural) to provide a comprehensive theoretical basis for WBE. The revised model maintains three overlapping domains – the individual, the social-cultural and the economic-political – to address a theoretical gap in the literature on transition systems while providing a foundation for practical efforts to prepare at-risk youth for engaging in a changing labour market. Design and Methods: The model was constructed through a systematic and interdisciplinary integrative literature review that examined empirical, conceptual, policy-based and practice-based literature on at-risk youth transition from school to work. Articles and documents were analysed for both individual and contextual factors that influence transition, in order to contribute towards the development of a robust person-in-context model. Existing models of transition and other systems were also examined that addressed the needs of at-risk youth. A ‘person-in-context’ approach was selected for our model as it enabled representation of both macro- and microcosmic factors that shape effective WBE programming. Conclusions: The model is organised around three critical domains that were identified as being influential for school-to-work transition: the individual domain, the social-cultural domain and the economic-p

The design and evaluation of a master of science program in anatomical sciences at Queen's University Canada

The purpose of this study was to describe the design and evolution of a unique and successful Master of Science program in anatomical sciences at one Canadian post-secondary institution and to evaluate its long-term impact on student learning. This program prepares students to teach anatomy and design curricula in the anatomical sciences and is structured around three pillars of competency—content (disciplinary knowledge and transferable skills), pedagogy, and inquiry. Graduates of the program from the last ten years were surveyed, to better understand the knowledge, skills, and habits of mind they have adopted and implemented since completion. Interest was taken in identifying aspects of the program that students found particularly beneficial and areas that needed to be further developed. Based on the findings, this program has been a highly valuable experience for the graduates especially in helping them develop transferable skills, and grow as individuals. The hope is that other institutions that have similar programs in place or are considering developing them would benefit from this description of the program design and the sharing of the lessons learned

At-risk Youth Find Work Hope in Work-Based Education

The transition from school to the workplace has been identified as challenging for at-risk youth who have already disengaged from learning and feel disenfranchised in the context of school. Work-based education (WBE), including co-operative education, has been recognized in recent years as an effective strategy for enabling at-risk youth to re-engage with learning and to make more successful transitions to the workplace and to further education. Not all at-risk youth thrive in WBE, even in programs that are judged to be effective for most. What remains unclear is what changes for those previously disengaged youth, as a product of participation in WBE, that enables them to shift their perspective and re-engage with learning. The purpose of this paper is to describe the experiences and changes in perspectives, in their own words, of seven previously disengaged youth while they were participating in WBE. Their teachers recommended these youth because they had made a “turnaround” since beginning WBE. The experiences and changed perspectives reported by these seven youth suggest that they found work hope through their success in WBE, and were beginning to set goals, view themselves as agents, and seek pathways to reach their goals. We discuss implications for increasing the effectiveness of WBE to re-engage even greater numbers of at-risk youth and to facilitate their transition to work by enhancing work hope