Post-secondary Context Research Articles

Disciplinary Apprenticeship: A Novice–Expert Case Study

ABSTRACT The postsecondary context plays a critical role in shaping students’ trajectories toward becoming participatory members within their disciplinary communities. Immersed into literacy-rich learning environments, students must navigate and assimilate existing literacies with increasing expectations for disciplinary-specific practices. Prior research suggests that student novices are enculturated into these discursive ways of thinking, being, and doing through apprenticeship from expert community members such as faculty; however, descriptive accounts of such relationships and processes are largely absent. This case study explores how disciplinary apprenticeship is constructed and experienced from the lived experiences of novice and expert members, including academic and professional perspectives. Findings revealed apprenticeship is co-constructed across individual and social dimensions as members’ collective activity shapes how disciplinary identities and activities are actualized. Implications include the need to reconcile existing connotations of apprenticeship away from novice or expert-led distinctions in recognition of all members’ contributions as well as the importance of broadening conceptions of disciplinary literacy instruction in support of strengthening students’ participatory capacities within and beyond the college classroom.

Unexpected Journeys: The Professional Identity Development of Canadian Accessibility Advisors

Through examining nine Accessibility Advisors' (AA) stories of becoming, this study provides an important entry point into understanding the individuals whose work is central to supporting students with disabilities within Canadian post-secondary institutions. This understanding adds to the existing literature, augmenting the current work on student experience and policy development. The respondents describe an unplanned, but formative, journey that led to a committed career in disability advising. AA’s construction of their professional identities provides a lens into how post-secondary disability support is tied to the medicalization of disability and advisors’ acknowledgement of the social construction of disability. Advisors start their narratives in post-secondary institutions and experiences related to disability, leading up to an unanticipated job opportunity. Once in the role, the narratives note the importance of professional development in understanding the role. As the advisors conclude their stories of becoming, they return to their pre-role experiences adding new intentionality to the past experiences, connecting post-secondary context to a social definition of disability. As a result, the narratives show how AA situate their work as policy drivers as neutral – neither faculty nor student aligned. However, this neutrality reflects the need of the AA in research-focused universities to develop cultural capital as third space professionals.

Supporting slow scholarship through building reading practices with first-year early childhood studies students

This article details a two-year small pilot project investigating possibilities for enacting slow scholarship reading practices with first-year undergraduate early childhood studies students. We follow the emerging push to think with “slow” practices as an antidote to the consumptive, reproductive, fast-paced knowledge politics of the neoliberal university. To begin, we review the literature on slow scholarship in the early childhood studies and education context, before sharing the structure and content of the course that housed this slow-reading experiment. Then, we analyse student responses to an optional online questionnaire that gathered insights into their reflective experience of slow reading. We argue that slow reading disrupts quotidian student subjectivities and opens space for reconfiguring our relations with knowledge, which stretches beyond the post-secondary context into work with young children and families. To conclude, we offer provocations for cultivating slow-reading practices.

The College Student Adaptive and Maladaptive Academic Behaviors Scale: Development, Reliability, and Validity

The purpose of this study was to validate a new measure of undergraduate college students’ responses to perceived academic difficulties, the College Student Adaptative and Maladaptive Academic Behaviors Scale (CSAMABS). Participants were undergraduate college students assessed at two timepoints ( N = 598). Exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis and associated modifications to items resulted in three subscales indicative of avoidance behaviors, active engagement, and academic support seeking, each with strong internal consistency and test–retest reliability. Avoidance behaviors were positively associated with both procrastination and cognitive behavioral avoidance. Students scoring lower on avoidance and higher on active engagement had higher cumulative grade point averages (GPAs) both at the end of the semester in which data were collected and at the end of the following semester. Support seeking was unassociated with GPA at either timepoint. The CSAMABS is a reliable and valid measure of responses to perceived academic difficulties specific to the postsecondary context.

Testing the model of a proficient academic reader (PAR) in a postsecondary context

Testing the model of a proficient academic reader (PAR) in a postsecondary context

In Service of Others – Connected Leadership in a Post-Secondary Context

In this article, three associate deans, who each lead one of three Academic Support Offices in a School of Education at a Canadian research-intensive university, feature their reflections, leadership approaches, found synergies, and collaborations to cultivate and advance connected leadership and resilience. The Offices of Research, Teaching and Learning, and Internationalization are located in a common physical space. Each associate dean manages their own portfolio in addition to collaborating with one another on identified points of intersection and joint initiatives. These three Offices were formed to support faculty members and students in the two programs areas in the School—Undergraduate Programs in Education and Graduate Programs in Education. The work of the Academic Support Offices is supported by two administrative support individuals and two facilitators who work across all three Offices.
 Over the past 23 months, this team of seven transitioned to remote and virtual work in response to COVID-19. Opportunities and challenges pertaining to communications, collaborations and how leadership and resilience is lived amongst the three associate deans, in particular, are discussed. Authors apply the lenses of relationality and connectivism to make meaning of and reimagine their leadership through reflections on foundations of learning, such as autonomy, connectedness, diversity and openness, and how these essences contribute to collective and collaborative leadership and resilience. Authors assert that building on the relational and connectivity to support collaborative and generative work and learning communities that thrive is essential, moving forward.

Women's Lived Experiences of the Gender Gap: Gender Inequalities from Multiple Global Perspectives

Women's Lived Experiences of the Gender Gap: Gender Inequalities from Multiple Global Perspectives. An article from journal Atlantis ("Mis/classification: Identity-based Inequities in the Canadian and Global Post-secondary Context" and Open-themed), on Érudit.

Mis/classification: Identity-based Inequities in the Canadian and Global Post-secondary Context

Mis/classification: Identity-based Inequities in the Canadian and Global Post-secondary Context

Using participant-oriented research in post-secondary mental health program development and evaluation

Purpose With the recent release of the National Standard for Mental Health and Well-Being for Post-Secondary Students, there is increased interest to integrate research and practice for mental health services on post-secondary campuses. Participant-oriented research is a useful framework to bridge this gap. This paper aims to describe the program development and evaluation process and reports challenges and lessons learned to inform future implementation strategies for similar endeavours. Design/methodology/approach A participant-oriented research approach was used to revise and evaluate an innovative interdisciplinary resilience program, entitled Roots of Resiliency, for post-secondary students. Findings This case analysis used the development and evaluation of Roots of Resiliency to demonstrate some of the strategies and challenges that exist for participant-oriented research related to mental health in the post-secondary context. Collaborative relationships among the various development team members contributed to an overall positive experience. Some challenges that others who work in post-secondary mental health field may consider include the need for content expertise, the ongoing need for communication among team members and the need for an effective system to give voice to all participants. Originality/value Any mental health program has a cultural component and is best co-developed by the particular students (e.g. indigenous students) who are to be served by the program. In this regard, the co-design and shared development and evaluation of the current mental health program is an example that can be emulated in other programs within the post-secondary context.

Learning From COVID-19: Unchanging Inequality and Ideology in Higher Education

Articles in this two-issue series have done an excellent job showing how higher education stakeholders responded to a rapidly changing postsecondary context due to COVID-19. In this concluding essay, I reflect on some of that work and take a moment to also focus on what has not changed. As many others have noted, the pandemic amplified already-existing aspects of societal inequality. This was due in part to decisions, policies, and institutional practices grounded in unchanging logics that accept, maintain, or exacerbate inequitable systems and processes. As more people recognize the injustices in our postsecondary system that COVID-19 has helped to reveal, the time is right for a new progressive research agenda. Building on the work authors have contributed to these issues, the agenda must include new ways of thinking and investigating questions that often remain unasked. It must come from a place of seeing a possible transformation for higher education. As part of this agenda, racism, ableism, neoliberalism, and related ideologies must be analyzed, scrutinized, and ultimately transformed if higher education is to address the continuation of the COVID-19 crisis and be ready for the next ones.

Using model essays in conjunction with noticing as a feedback instrument in IELTS writing preparation

ABSTRACT This study investigated the effects of using IELTS model essays in conjunction with noticing as a feedback instrument on Vietnamese undergraduates’ IELTS Task 2 writing performance. To investigate this, a quasi-experimental design was undertaken. The control group used the course textbook and received traditional writing feedback (i.e. direct, indirect, and peer feedback), which they drew on while composing their second drafts. Conversely, the experimental group utilized IELTS model essays in conjunction with noticing as a feedback instrument to compose their second drafts. To compare each group’s writing gains, pretest and posttest writing samples were evaluated using the IELTS Task 2 rubric’s overall and four subscale band scores. The data were analyzed using inferential statistics (paired-samples t-test, independent-samples t-test). The results indicated that the experimental group significantly outperformed the control group in all areas. As prior research specific to using IELTS model essays in conjunction with noticing as a feedback instrument with IELTS Writing Task 2 in the Vietnamese postsecondary context is noticeably absent, this paper is offered as a starting point for future investigations and discussions. The paper also discusses the topic and results’ relevancy to the larger Asian context and poses suggestions for further study.

Pay-to-Pass: Emerging On-Line Services that are Undermining the Integrity of Student Work

Students have been connected digitally from an early age and have been encouraged throughout their educational journey to turn to the internet for information. However, less emphasis is typically placed on educating students about the origin and appropriateness of these sources. For many post-secondary students, it can be challenging to distinguish between resources that are supportive of their academic development and resources that are undermining and questionable in their veracity. In this workshop, we discuss the emergence and infiltration of pay-to-pass websites in the Canadian post-secondary setting. We differentiate pay-to-pass websites from other forms of contract cheating by describing them as sites encouraging students to share and access course material, assignments, tests, and notes for academic and personal gain. These sites are alluring to students because they commonly offer real-time support from academic 'experts' or tutors that is available 24/7. In the rapid shift to online learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we have acutely observed the impact of these services on student behaviour in online-based assessments. This workshop examines the growing scope and deepening impact of these sites on teaching and learning in the post-secondary context. To address the challenges posed by these websites, we present a three-part approach that may be implemented in the efforts to uphold academic integrity in post-secondary education.

Review: Advocating, Building, and Collaborating: A Resource Toolkit to Sustain Secondary School Writing Centers edited by Renee Brown and Stacey Waldrup

The past decade has shown enormous growth in the number of SSWCs and a need for increased scholarship and research from this group. Inspired by the work of previous secondary school writing center director (SSWCD) authors, the content offered in the Advocating, Building, and Collaborating toolkit is rooted in directors’ real experiences in K–12 schools, rather than in the post-secondary context we find in most writing center scholarship.

A longitudinal examination of predictors of nonsuicidal self-injury disclosures among university students.

There is a paucity of longitudinal research on predictors of disclosures of nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI) among emerging adults. However, understanding the factors that facilitate disclosure is critical, as disclosure may serve as a first step in accessing care. To address this gap, the present study examined predictors of prospective NSSI disclosures in a postsecondary student sample. A total of 475 university students with a history of NSSI (Mage = 17.96; 74.9% women) reported on several potential predictors of NSSI disclosure, and their disclosure history at baseline and 4- and 8-month follow-ups. It was found that 22% of students reported disclosing NSSI during the first year of university; students who had previously disclosed, and who reported greater NSSI severity, were more likely to disclose over time. Results of the present study suggest that disclosures often occur in the postsecondary context, and students who disclose NSSI may engage in more severe NSSI behaviours.

Our restive selves: a collaborative autoethnography on confronting complicity in neoliberal doctoral socialization

As institutions of higher education continue to evolve and adopt neoliberal ideologies, doctoral student socialization is increasingly shaped by logic and exacerbated for students of color. In this paper, we use the five tenets, privatized consumerism, precarity, competitive individualism, surveillance, and declining morality, offered by Museus and LePeau derived from a postsecondary education context. To understand this experience, we as three Asian American women in an education doctoral program utilize Kimoto’s theorization of restiveness and collaborative autoethnography to examine and untangle our complicities in contributing to neoliberal doctoral socialization. By employing a restive orientation, we acknowledge and discuss our complicities as a pathway towards continual collective consciousness-raising, self-reflexivity, and collective care.

Integrating traditional educational practices of the Siksikaitsitapi (Blackfoot confederacy) into a post-secondary context

ABSTRACT The colonisation of the Indigenous Peoples of Canada, has led to the subjugation of Indigenous knowledges and the structuring of an education system that excludes the use of Indigenous ways of knowing, being, and doing. This paper makes space for and privileges Siksikaitsitapi (Blackfoot Confederacy) human development theory and articulates the four stages of human development (knowledge of tribal and cosmic responsibilities; experiential knowledge of tribal alliances; embodiment of knowledge and skills acquired for the wellbeing of a cosmic universe, and; transfer of knowledge and skills to the next generation) through the words of Blackfoot scholars. Six Blackfoot pedagogical methods of teaching and learning (experience; language; transfer; grandparents; stories, and; place) are shared and their utilisation is illustrated in each different stage of development. I do this by describing how I apply these Blackfoot teachings into my teaching philosophy and practices to achieve two-eyed seeing.

Diversity Displays and Organizational Messaging: The Case of Historically Black Colleges and Universities

Diversity has simultaneously become a pervasive goal and euphemism for racial differences in higher education. Although discourses within the postsecondary context highlight the positive impact of diversity on learning outcomes, organizational diversity efforts nevertheless warrant interrogation, given their possible obfuscation if not reification of, racial inequality and hierarchy. How do Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs)—colleges and universities that are, by their very nature, racialized organizations within higher education—express and adapt to the challenges presented by diversity imperatives? In this article, we interrogate this question through systematic content analyses of visual and narrative materials from 31 HBCUs. Results highlight how these institutions often rely on the same mechanisms that characterize diversity within predominately White institutions (PWIs)—commodification of difference and disconnection from issues of racial equity. Consequently, diversity for HBCUs reflects the more general racialized inequality regime in higher education—a regime wherein these organizations largely reinforce ideas, such as racial capitalism, which have implications for racial equity. Our results and discussion hold implications for scholarship on organizational diversity but are also informative with regard to the capacity and constraints of racialized organizations to meet the needs and interests of those they serve.

The User Experience Design for Learning (UXDL) Framework: The Undergraduate Student Perspective

The User Experience Design for Learning (UXDL) Honeycomb is an online learning design framework aimed at creating valuable online learning experiences, which some post-secondary institutions have started to use to guide the design of their online courses. While each of the principles are supported by psychological research, this framework has not been directly validated or corroborated by the student experience. The present study aims to address whether the UXDL framework aligns with students’ preferences, beliefs, and behaviours in online learning in a post-secondary context. This research adds to the growing literature on students’ preferences, beliefs, and experiences in online learning, focusing specifically on second-year Canadian undergraduate students at a mid-sized, research-intensive university. Using a three-pronged methodological approach, we explore not only students’ implicit beliefs (via open-ended surveys, N = 805), but also their experiences (in-depth interviews, N = 36), and impressions and behaviours while working in an online course (two user experience sessions, N = 36). Our qualitative analyses of these data reveal 4 prominent themes in online design that students find particularly valuable: (a) Accessible: flexible; (b) Useful: modes of design and delivery, (c) Intuitive: usable and findable, and (d) Desirable: affective design and humanizing learning.

Putting Social Justice in Social Work Education with Inquiry-Based Learning

ABSTRACT This paper situates inquiry-based learning (IBL) in a post-secondary context while examining possibilities for social work education and practice. Specifically, in what ways has IBL been utilized in higher education, and how might IBL be compatible with social work values that promote social justice? This paper begins with a brief overview of the definitions of IBL and associated theory, then illustrates the benefits of the approach and varying experiences of its application, and finally considers how IBL and social work are complementary insofar as IBL upholds various social work principles and supports the linking of theory to practice during service-learning.

Testing the inference mediation hypothesis in a post-secondary context

Testing the inference mediation hypothesis in a post-secondary context