New Teacher Perceptions of Inclusive Practices: An Examination of Contemporary Teacher Education Programs

This article details a sequential explanatory mixed-method study into the perceptions of 44 new teachers regarding inclusive practices from their teacher education program, as well as their relative intent to utilize them in their practice. The purpose of this study was to determine the self-perceived capacity of the next generation of teachers leaving a Canadian teacher education program from a mid-sized university in Southern Ontario. As new teachers are the product of contemporary teacher education programs, their lingering needs and perceptions are potential avenues for intervention in continuing the refinement of teacher education. First, a complete audit of relevant teacher education was performed, followed by participants completing a mixed-methods survey. Then, these survey findings informed critical-case interviews. Analyses yielded two groups of themes: confidence from teacher education, and the lingering needs of new teachers. These data suggest that teacher education programs are not entirely effective at producing new teachers who are confident in their abilities to be inclusive practitioners in the classroom. Further, the perceptions of new teachers illustrate avenues for intervention in making teacher education programs more effective.Cet article présente en détail une étude exploratoire à méthodologie mixte portant sur les perceptions de 44 nouveaux enseignants quant aux pratiques inclusives de leur programme de formation et leurs intentions de les intégrer à leur pratique. L’objectif de cette étude était de déterminer l’auto-évaluation qu’établit la prochaine génération d’enseignants de leur capacité au terme de leur programme de formation dans une université de taille moyenne dans le Sud de l’Ontario. Les nouveaux enseignants étant le produit des programmes de formation contemporains, leurs perceptions et leurs besoins persistants représentent des pistes d’intervention possibles pour l’amélioration continue de la formation des enseignants. Une vérification complète des programmes de formation en question a d’abord été effectuée. Les participants ont ensuite complété un sondage à méthodologie mixte. Par la suite, les résultats du sondage ont servi dans les entrevues portant sur les cas importants. Les analyses ont fait ressortir deux grands thèmes : la confiance des enseignants relative à leur programme de formation et les besoins persistants des nouveaux enseignants. Ces données laissent supposer que les programmes étudiés ne sont pas entièrement efficaces dans la formation d’enseignants quant à leur confiance d’intégrer des pratiques inclusives dans leurs salles de classe. Les perceptions des nouveaux enseignants offrent des pistes d’intervention visant l’amélioration des programmes de formation.

Examining How Expectancies and Values Can Overcome the Costs of Innovation: A Systematic Review of Environments and Approaches

Making innovation more likely is a common goal of numerous educational initiatives ranging from the makerspace movement to high-skills majors and innovation incubators popping up across Canada. However, there has been limited cross-pollination across different disciplines towards a truly interdisciplinary understanding of what makes innovation more likely. This systematic review study examines the expectancies, values and costs that have been found to be involved in approaches and environments that promote the act of innovating. A systematic approach integrating an all-databases search in EBSCOhost (n=375 databases) yielded 115 full-text papers for data extraction. A majority of papers were found to be from business settings and predominantly using a survey methodology. There were limited considerations for implementation in schooling and education more broadly. Persistent trends for building expectancy tend to be supportive environments or approaches that make it safer for the aspiring innovators to practice and develop self-efficacy. Aspiring innovators tended to find intrinsic and utility value rather than attainment value as their principal task values, which suggests possibilities for maximizing their effect. Costs of innovation followed a similar pattern to costs as noted in other expectancy-value theory (EVT) studies. These findings point to a need for those interested in promoting innovation, especially educators, to focus their energies on creating a supportive environment and a needs-supportive approach

What Helped Me Innovate: Identified Motivation Factors from Canadian Innovators’ Education Experiences

Past innovation research has focused on business contexts and prodigy, leaving the insights of today’s successful innovators in a range of fields overlooked in their utility to inform the education of our next generation of innovators. This mixed method study combined surveys (n = 500) and interviews (n = 30) of Canadian innovators to identify motivation factors that could be leveraged in formal and informal education to make innovation more likely in Canada. The findings point to methods of maximizing expectancies and values, while proactively mitigating the costs of innovating. Recommendations are made for teachers, mentors, and decision makers for better stoking the capacity to innovate through education. Keywords: innovation, innovators, maximizing innovative capacityDans le passé, la recherche sur l’innovation s’est concentrée sur les contextes d’entreprises et les prodiges, laissant de côté les idées des innovateurs actuels qui réussissent dans un éventail de domaines dont l’utilité pour instruire de notre prochaine génération d’innovateurs a été négligée. Cette étude utilise une méthodologie mixte qui combine des sondages (n = 500) et des entrevues (n = 30) effectués auprès d’innovateurs canadiens afin d’identifier les facteurs de motivation pouvant être exploités dans l’éducation formelle et informelle pour rendre l’innovation plus probable au Canada. Les résultats indiquent des méthodes permettant de maximiser les résultats potentiels, tout en atténuant de manière proactive les coûts de l’innovation. Des recommandations sont faites aux enseignants, aux mentors et aux décideurs pour mieux alimenter la capacité d’innover par l’éducation. Mots-clés : innovation, innovateurs, maximiser la capacité d’innovatio

New Teacher Perceptions of Inclusive Pedagogies: Designing New Future for the Changing Classroom

Our perceptions of knowledge attainment have changed (Bezemer & Kress, 2010). The type of students our teachers once were is vastly different from the students they currently teach. We need our next generation to thrive in a dynamically, interactive world saturated with opportunities for meaning making (Kress & Selander, 2012). Our current students are responsible for continuing our society, but that does not mean we need them to become us (Gee, 2009). Rather desperately, we need them to be thinkers and expressive in a variety of modes. The world will be different when they take their rightful place as the next generation of leaders, and so too must their thinking be different (Cope & Kalantzis, 2000). This explanatory mixed-method study (Creswell, 2013; Mertens, 2014) involved an investigation into perceptions of new teachers regarding inclusive pedagogies like Universal Design for Learning (CAST, 2011). It specifically discusses the contemporary thinking of 44 new Ontario teachers regarding inclusive pedagogies in their teacher education as well as their relative intent to utilize them in their practice. This study reveals a distinct tone of skepticism and provides suggestions for the continued improvement of teacher education programs in this province

Developing Academic Advisors and Competence Committees members: A community approach to developing CBME faculty leaders

Introduction: Implementing competency-based medical education (CBME) at the institutional level poses many challenges including having to rapidly enable faculty to be facilitators and champions of a new curriculum which utilizes feedback, coaching, and models of programmatic assessment. This study presents the necessary competencies required for Academic Advisors (AA) and Competence Committee (CC) members, as identified in the literature and as perceived by faculty members at Queen’s University. Methods: This study integrated a review of available literature (n=26) yielding competencies that were reviewed by the authors followed by an external review consisting of CBME experts (n=5). These approved competencies were used in a cross-sectional community consultation survey distributed one year before (n=83) and one year after transitioning to CBME (n=144). Findings: Our newly identified competencies are a useful template for other institutions. Academic Advisor competencies focused on mentoring and coaching, whereas Competence Committee member’s competencies focused on integrating assessments and institutional policies. Competency discrepancies between stakeholder groups existing before the transition had disappeared in the post-implementation sample. Conclusions: We found value in taking an active community-based approach to developing and validating faculty leader competencies sooner rather than later when transitioning to CBME. The evolution of Competence Committees members and Academic Advisors requires the investment of specialized professional development and the sustained engagement of a collaborative community with shared concerns

Participant perceptions of the faculty development Educational Research Series

Interest in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) is driven in part by the need to provide systematic academic development for faculty anchored in evidence-based practice such as the introduction of quality assurance frameworks. This article reports on a mixed-method evaluation of one institution’s grassroots multidisciplinary faculty development program, called the Educational Research Series, to determine if it met the needs of its faculty, graduate student, and staff participants. Conducted at one mid-sized university in southern Ontario and framed, as was the program design and implementation, by both adult learning theory and constructivism, the evaluation collected data from session exit surveys, attendee interviews, and facilitator focus groups. The data analysis revealed that reasons for participating included increasing levels of understanding, receiving individual support, and learning about colleagues’ research interests. The major strengths of the program included individual learning, resources, facilitator expertise, interactive sessions, and the multidisciplinary focus. The main challenges centered on depth versus breadth of the sessions, time, and educational language and theory. Participants recommended additional resources, communication among facilitators, institutional recognition, and increased depth of content. As a result of this evaluation, an Advanced Educational Research Series is being offered at the institution. This article will inform other institutions wishing to build SoTL as a field within their institutions

Validation of four candidate pancreatic cancer serological biomarkers that improve the performance of CA19.9

Abstract Background The identification of new serum biomarkers with high sensitivity and specificity is an important priority in pancreatic cancer research. Through an extensive proteomics analysis of pancreatic cancer cell lines and pancreatic juice, we previously generated a list of candidate pancreatic cancer biomarkers. The present study details further validation of four of our previously identified candidates: regenerating islet-derived 1 beta (REG1B), syncollin (SYCN), anterior gradient homolog 2 protein (AGR2), and lysyl oxidase-like 2 (LOXL2). Methods The candidate biomarkers were validated using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays in two sample sets of serum/plasma comprising a total of 432 samples (Sample Set A: pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC, n = 100), healthy (n = 92); Sample Set B: PDAC (n = 82), benign (n = 41), disease-free (n = 47), other cancers (n = 70)). Biomarker performance in distinguishing PDAC from each control group was assessed individually in the two sample sets. Subsequently, multiparametric modeling was applied to assess the ability of all possible two and three marker panels in distinguishing PDAC from disease-free controls. The models were generated using sample set B, and then validated in Sample Set A. Results Individually, all markers were significantly elevated in PDAC compared to healthy controls in at least one sample set (p ≤ 0.01). SYCN, REG1B and AGR2 were also significantly elevated in PDAC compared to benign controls (p ≤ 0.01), and AGR2 was significantly elevated in PDAC compared to other cancers (p \u3c 0.01). CA19.9 was also assessed. Individually, CA19.9 showed the greatest area under the curve (AUC) in receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis when compared to the tested candidates; however when analyzed in combination, three panels (CA19.9 + REG1B (AUC of 0.88), CA19.9 + SYCN + REG1B (AUC of 0.87) and CA19.9 + AGR2 + REG1B (AUC of 0.87)) showed an AUC that was significantly greater (p \u3c 0.05) than that of CA19.9 alone (AUC of 0.82). In a comparison of early-stage (Stage I-II) PDAC to disease free controls, the combination of SYCN + REG1B + CA19.9 showed the greatest AUC in both sample sets, (AUC of 0.87 and 0.92 in Sets A and B, respectively). Conclusions Additional serum biomarkers, particularly SYCN and REG1B, when combined with CA19.9, show promise as improved diagnostic indicators of pancreatic cancer, which therefore warrants further validation