21st Century Reform
Education as a Practice of Freedom: Enabling Leadership Capacity in Large-sized Classrooms
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Kent Williams
Higher education institutes continue to struggle with budget and enrollment challenges due to the changing complexity of living in the epoch of the Anthropocene. Coupled with this phenomenon, students continue to be disengaged with normative traditional pedagogical approaches that look to '"transfer and bank knowledge." For several decades research continues to accumulate and suggest that experiential learning approaches that stretch and challenge students to critically think and behave might best engage them in the higher education learning process. This case study shares the pedagogical approach of education as a practice of freedom in the large-sized Canadian undergraduate business classroom. Through this explicated shared approach the professor, teacher's assistants, and students collaborate in as a learning community that has a foundation set in a dialogic process that has a primary purpose of enabling agency with all participants. The core elements of learning emphasized are learning to dialogue; embracing failure to learn; to critically think through reflexivity; to connect to curiosity, empathy, and wonder; and, develop moral consciousness through core value development. Through this approach there is a shared learning process that co-creates and co-inspires new levels of capacity for emerging leaders to creatively embrace the rapidly changing complexity of the world.
The Student of Tomorrow: The Third Wave of Education Reform, the Twenty First Century
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Ami Volansky
The rise of the third wave of reform, Critical Thinking, Creativity and Self-learning, since the turn of the twenty-first century, is the result of mounting criticism, which coalesced with the rise of the Knowledge Society in developed countries. The impact of a rapidly changing knowledge economy on the working place, forecasts that automatic machines, robots, and artificial intelligence will replace large proportions of current human forces in the job market, the changing characteristics of the young generation and its symbiosis with technology – have all driven calls for changing the teaching methods and learning styles across many countries. The third wave characterized by a more diverse leadership within developed economies, with countries such as Finland, Singapore, Alberta and Hong-Kong in the lead. The main course of change which has and still is shaping the third wave, is associated with the emergence of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) as a learning tool. ICT became a platform and opportunity for developing new skills which are highly regarded in the new global market. Competences such as self-learning, critical thinking, collaboration, team learning, communication, and deep learning, are regarded as key qualifications for the future success of the young generation in the changing global world.
Imagining a Better Society through Higher Education: A Case Study of Barriers and Drivers for Change at a Small Undergraduate Institution
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Jean L. Manore, Mary Ellen Donnan, Avril Aitken
This paper discusses a case study of one small institution of higher education where professors from three departments: Education, Sociology and History, designed an inquiry into the capacity of the university to change institutional culture and increase Indigenous student success. The study is a response to the 2015 release of the findings of Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) and a comprehensive and related set of guidelines put forward by Universities Canada (UC). The TRC reports point to disparity and racism currently experienced by Indigenous Canadians in areas of income, health, social conditions and education; the TRC “Calls to Action” direct universities to revise selected programs so that graduating healthcare providers, lawyers, educators and journalists will better serve Indigenous peoples. The UC framework provides additional points of departure for universities that take into account the possibilities of transformation for all learners and institutional structures. A mixed methods approach was used to answer the following questions: What is the readiness of the university to act upon the UC Principles? What are the barriers and drivers that might shape the design of a less-oppressive and transformational university environment? Participants of the study include faculty members, university administrators and Indigenous students. Finding show that three main perspectives are held by participants; these include: desire to retain the status quo, interest in carrying out limited reforms and 3) commitment to radical reforms or those that are relationally-driven. Actions taken by the university in response to the research findings will also be discussed.
The Complexity Leadership Theory as It Relates to Innovation and Commercialization of Research at Historically Black Colleges and Universities
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Rebecca L. Faison
Public-academic research institutions in the United States receive billions in funding from public and private entities (Wagner, 2014). By effectively commercializing research portfolios, many of these universities produce marketable products and services that are essential to the economic sustainability of higher education institutions. The researcher will examine factors germane to the commercialization process throughout institutions of higher education. Specifically, the researcher’s objective is to determine if Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and Predominantly White Institutions (PWIs) exhibit differences in their infrastructures, policies, practices, and obligation to the commercialization of research. The researcher will implement a mixed method research algorithm, using a sample that will include some 390 faculty members affiliated with research-intensive HBCUs and PWIs as defined by the Carnegie Classifications. This study is significant in that the findings will reveal those differences and similarities that exist in the innovation ecosystems of HBCUs and PWIs. This level of learning about leadership ecosystems will allow us to make a social difference, by improving the economic viability of the institutions and the communities that they serve.
