Postsecondary Education

Team Members: Lynn McAlpine (Leader), Philip Abrami, Mark Aulls, Robert M. Bernard, Silvia d’Apollonia, Helena Dedic, Steven Rosenfield, Richard F. Schmid, Cynthia Weston, Laura Winer.

By contributing to the overall success of individuals, postsecondary education has a positive role to play in shaping society, enhancing economic growth, and improving global competitiveness. The goal of this theme is to examine the broad range of factors that shape effective postsecondary learning environments, in order to foster academic success. To this end, the Postsecondary Education theme membership reflects a multidisciplinary approach that draws on the insights and expertise of researchers in psychology, mathematics, science, and pedagogy. The scope of our focus provides a rich representation of the postsecondary experience. We are unique in Quebec (and likely in Canada) in encompassing studies of learning and teaching from CEGEP through undergraduate to doctoral education.

This year, Lynn McAlpine, Anthony Paré, Doreen Starke-Meyerring, and Cheryl Amundsen embarked on a project to address high attrition rates among doctoral students – particularly in the humanities and social sciences – entitled “Reframing social sciences and humanities doctoral programs: A learning perspective.” This project will analyse the learning experience of doctoral students within and across two distinctly different disciplines, namely English – a mainstream humanity - and Education – a multi-disciplinary applied social science. Analysis will be conducted at McGill and Simon Fraser, a medical-doctoral university and a comprehensive university, respectively. Members of the project will then document and support institutional efforts to enhance the learning experience of doctoral students, and develop the pedagogical and policy implications of their findings.

This project is illustrative of the way we attempt to integrate a strong developmental approach into our work. Not only do we draw on the findings of our studies to inform practice – building findings into workshops and resources for teaching and learning – but we also study the developmental activities themselves. For example, one goal of McAlpine et al's project will be to document how participants in the analysis use the findings to bring about change. We are interested in documenting real programs in real time, implementing longitudinal investigational methods that look at both individuals and institutions, so that we can develop strategies that will have long-lasting positive effects.

We continue to benefit through our practice of meeting with members of other theme groups (particularly Numeracy, Scientific Reasoning, and Inquiry). This practice strengthens collaborative relationships both within and across institutions, with a number of notable examples in the past year. McAlpine et al drew on the expertise of collaborators like Amundsen (Simon Fraser University) and Chris M. Golde (Stanford). Robert Savage worked with Rauno Parrila (University of Alberta) and Helene Deacon (Dalhousie University), on a project entitled “University Students with Specific Reading Disabilities.” Marcia Delcourt (Western Connecticut University) worked on the project “Classroom conditions, student participation and discourse, and inquiry instruction in higher education,” with Numeracy, Scientific Reasoning, and Inquiry theme members Mark Aulls and Bruce Shore. Most recently, we held a meeting with Alejandro Gonzalez-Martin (Université de Montréal) to explore future collaboration. We feel that collaborations of this kind can only enhance our effectiveness and relevancy, and look forward to more such opportunities.

Highlights:
McAlpine, Pare, Starke-Meyerring, and Amundsen were awarded a 2006-2009 SSHRC Standard Research grant for their project, “Reframing social sciences and humanities doctoral programs: A learning perspective”.

Parrila, Deacon, Savage, John Kirby, and Nicole Conrad were awarded an SSHRC grant for their project “University Students with Specific Reading Disabilities.”

Johannes Strobel's article, "Focus on Learning", was published in the Bulletin of the Canadian Association of University Teachers Association (CAUT/ACPPU), September 2006.