Please join us for the next HERG seminar:

Friday, October 21, 2016, 12:00-2:00, Multipurpose Room (room 2012), Ponderosa Commons Oak House

Fei Wang, Assistant Professor, EDST

The Lived Experiences of Canadian-Born and Foreign-Born Chinese Canadian Post-Secondary Students in Northern Ontario

This phenomenological study provided an in-depth description of the internal meaning of the lived experiences of Canadian-born and foreign-born Chinese students in Canada and uncovered the differences in their social experiences. The study used semi-structured interviews to allow the participants to express their views on their lives in Northern Ontario, Canada. Four themes emerged: (a) perceptions of ethnic identity; (b) cultural integration; (c) perceptions of academic performance and (d) the effect of Canadian education on career options. The study revealed that Canadian-born Chinese students differed from their foreign-born counterparts in their viewpoints on ethnic identity; their perceptions concerning acculturation; and academic performance. They shared similarities in their views about Canadian and Chinese educational systems, teaching styles, and their career expectations.

Related to this recent article:
Wang, F. (2016). The Lived Experiences of Canadian-Born and Foreign-Born Chinese Canadian Post-Secondary Students in Northern Ontario. Journal of International Students, 6(2), 451.

François Lachapelle, PhD student, Sociology and Patrick John Burnett, PhD Candidate, Sociology

The Rise and Stall of the Canadianization Movement: Canadian Professoriate, Envy-League, and the Social Sciences, Evidences from 1978-2015

The Canadianization Movement is one of the constitute moments in the relatively recent history of Canadian social sciences that emerged in the late 1960s under the leadership of two Carleton University English professors, James Steele and Robin Matthews. This social movement later gained momentum in the mid-1970s when the young Canadian Sociology and Anthropology Association adopted an aggressive Canadianizing policy that culminated in 1982 when the federal government adopted the Canadian First Policy. Afterwards, as the domestic narrative goes, the Canadianization Movement, which proposed to limit the access of non-Canadians to academic jobs, may possibly have overturned the post-war Americanization of Canada’s social scientific field. Using the largest database on Canadian professoriates to date (5,000 cases), we are undertaking a series of longitudinal studies of U15’s social sciences professors’ educational trajectory between 1978 and 2015 to document ‘the rise and stall’ of the Canadianization Movement at the institutional level.

We are delighted to kick off the Fall 2016 term with a HERG seminar on September 23rd. Please join us! No RSVP required. Please feel free to bring your lunch.

Friday, September 23, 12:00-2:00, Multipurpose Room (room 2012), Ponderosa Commons Oak House

Alison Taylor, Associate Professor EDST and Renate Kahlke, Postdoctoral Fellow, Centre for Health Education Scholarship

Institutional Logics and Community Service-Learning in Higher Education

This paper explores how community service-learning (CSL) participants negotiate competing institutional logics in Canadian higher education. Drawing theoretically from new institutionalism and work on institutional logics, we consider how CSL has developed in Canadian universities and how participants discuss CSL in relation to other dominant institutional logics in higher education. Our analysis suggests participants’ responses to competing community, professional, and market logics vary depending on their positions within the field. We see actors’ use of hybrid logics to validate community-engaged learning, as the strategy most likely to effect change in the field.

Related to recent work such as:
Taylor, A. (2014). Community service-learning and cultural-historical activity theory. The Canadian Journal of Higher Education, 44(1), 95. Online: http://journals.sfu.ca/cjhe/index.php/cjhe/article/view/183605

Michael Marker, Associate Professor EDST

Indigenous Knowledge, Universities, and Alluvial Zones of Paradigm Change

Indigenous faculty and graduate students have been asserting a kind of cultural and intellectual sovereignty over their own academic production and participation. Colonization through assimilationist education suppressed Indigenous community knowledge; Indigenous scholars are reclaiming this ancient intelligence and bringing it to the conversation on what constitutes research. This presentation brings forth two recent examples of how Indigenous Ph.D. students are decolonizing both identities and academic processes.  Universities are in conflicted positions as they invite Indigenous expression, but resist the undoing of hierarchies that maintain hegemonic equilibrium. Are Universities that welcome Indigenous knowledge and the place based blending of metaphysical and physical realities leading a paradigm change in ecological consciousness? Can Indigenous scholars and Indigenous communities be represented in academic locations in ways that redirect the goals and purposes of research and knowledge production?

Related to recent work such as:
Marker, M. (2016). Indigenous knowledge, Indigenous scholars, and narrating scientific selves:“to produce a human being”. Cultural Studies of Science Education, 1-4. Online: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11422-015-9660-1

Marker, M. (2015). Geographies of Indigenous leaders: Landscapes and mindscapes in the Pacific Northwest. Harvard Educational Review, 85(2), 229-253. Online: http://www.hepgjournals.org/doi/abs/10.17763/0017-8055.85.2.229

July 15, 2016 HERG Seminar

Our last seminar for the summer 2016 term was a huge success, with outstanding presentations by Dr. Jude Walker and PhD Candidate Ashely Pullman. Below are some additional resources from each speaker’s recently published research. We look forward to seeing everyone at the next HERG seminar in September 2016.

Dr. Jude Walker

Jude Walker’s departmental homepage

Walker, J. (2016). Stratification and vocationalization in Canadian higher education. In S. Slaughter & B. J. Taylor (Eds.), Higher Education, Stratification, and Workforce Development (pp. 251-269). Springer International Publishing.
http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-21512-9_13

Ashley Pullman

Ashley Pullman’s Google Scholar Profile

Pullman, A. (2015). Emancipation, marketisation, and social protection: the female subject within vocational training policy in Canada, 1960–1990. Gender and Education, 27(7), 759-775. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09540253.2015.1103840

HERG seminar on Friday, July 15, 2016
Ponderosa Commons Oak House, room 1011 (please note this is a room change)
Noon to 3:00pm

Dr. Judith Walker, Assistant Professor, Educational Studies

“Fracking” and “refining” Canada’s higher education system: examining trends of vocationalisation and stratification

Canada has embarked on a project of vocationalising and stratifying its higher education system. The metaphor of resource extraction works well for examining these changes, not in small part because both federal and provincial governments have pursued a type of “extraction education” for an “extraction economy.” Fracking is evidenced by the fracturing of the humanities, the injection of money into programmes associated with LNG and oil industries, and the breaking down of the existing system to create higher status institutions, such as converting community colleges into universities. Refining is seen in increasingly prestigious and competitive grants and scholarships to develop Canada’s budding and existing intellectual and scientific elite, and also in the refining of institutions and funding to become more responsive to labour market needs.  In this talk, I will speak to the trends of vocationalisation and stratification in Canadian higher education, will further theorise “extraction education” in the context of British Columbia, and will speculate on what the future may hold.

Ashley Pullman, PhD Candidate, Educational Studies

Troubling perceptions of educational advantage: A life course study in the efficacy of higher education

Postsecondary education (PSE) is often framed as a means to produce high-skilled individuals, a benefit that extends not only to graduates themselves in securing high-paying and high-quality employment but overall economic advancement for society. Often asserting the value of PSE as if it is universally accepted, government and research rhetoric explicitly and/or implicitly promotes the efficacy of postsecondary education. Yet assumptions surrounding the efficacy of PSE cannot be taken for granted, especially as prior research on beliefs towards education have highlighted how individual value systems differ and change over time. The following paper examines how “PSE efficacy” beliefs—that is, the extent to which PSE is deemed necessary “for a successful future”—differ between individuals in relation to demographic factors and changes over time in response to labour market attachment and skill use within employment. The following presentation will discuss four aspects of my research on this subject: First, I will explore prior research and theory on the interplay between education and beliefs. Next, I will present the possibilities, limitations and assumptions of studying beliefs and values through growth analysis, a quantitative modeling approach used within longitudinal research. Third, I will discuss the data set employed and the composite measures constructed. Finally, I will present my research findings and elicit feedback.

For students interested in developing a proposal for Div J Postsecondary Education of AERA for the 2017 conference in San Antonio, Dr. Amy Metcalfe will provide an overview of the conference and submission criteria during the second half of the HERG seminar on June 10, 2016. The HERG seminar will be held in room 1008 of Ponderosa Commons Oak House, UBC from noon-3:00. The call for proposals for AERA can be found on the association’s website: http://www.aera.net/EventsMeetings/AnnualMeeting/2017AnnualMeetingCallforSubmissions/tabid/16328/Default.aspx

The next HERG seminar will be held on June 10, 2016!
12:00 Noon
Ponderosa Commons Oak House, UBC
Room 1008 (please note this is a room change)

Dale McCartney, PhD student in Educational Studies

Inventing International Students: Canadian parliamentary debate about international students, 1945-69

Although there is a growing literature examining international student policy in Canada, very little of it examines the historical development of that policy. “Inventing International Students” historicizes international student policy by looking at the ways in which policy makers – specifically Canadian parliamentarians – talked about international students in the period after WWII.  This paper argues that international students were seen as vehicles for other political agendas, or as representatives of social or political crises that had little to do with international students themselves. Some of the discourses that international students were invested with in this period still shape policy discussion today. This study has two important insights for the study of internationalization higher education. One, it makes an important and original contribution to the policy analysis of international student policy in Canada, which lacks both this sort of historical perspective and the understanding provided by examining policy talk. Specifically, it helps historicize some elements of modern discourses about international students by examining their historical roots. Moreover, the paper reminds us that to understand international student policy at any time we need to see it in a larger socio-educational context, linked with immigration, foreign policy, and international economics. Contemporary international student policy is built on this historical foundation – understanding that foundation is key to understanding modern policy debate.

The HERG seminar on May 13, 2016 will feature two speakers: Bernard Chan (MA student in Educational Studies, concentration in Higher Education) and Dr. Amy Scott Metcalfe, Department of Educational Studies. Titles and abstracts of their presentations appear below. Please join us at UBC in Ponderosa Commons Oak House (PCOH), Multipurpose room 2012 from noon to 3:00. Feel free to bring your lunch!

Bernard Chan
Re-imagining Borderlands: Towards the Plurinationalisation of Higher Education
Abstract: In recent decades, internationalisation has become a “buzz word” in higher education settings around the world. The notion of “internationalisation”, by itself, is not precisely defined; how it is understood and enacted depends on (trans)national, local, and/or institutional and individual contexts. Yet, the “international imperative” (Altbach, 2013) has evolved into a core concern in higher education, and it has contributed to the emergence of dynamic and ever-shifting education landscapes hereby conceived to be theoretical “borderlands” (Anzaldúa’s, 1999). Such spaces, by their inherent nature and composition, are diverse in a variety of ways (Metcalfe, 2009). In the dominant discourse on higher education internationalisation however, ideas of “diversity” often privilege organisational (e.g. institutional structures and processes) and recognition aspects (e.g. student headcounts and phenotypical features) of difference that are immediately “visible” (Hakkola, 2015; Haring-Smith, 2012). This is apparent in the arena of international student recruitment, whereby the contributions of cultural and intellectual diversities of students from across nation-state boundaries are particularly emphasised (Lobnibe, 2009; Mayuzumi, Motobayashi, Nagayama, & Takeuchi, 2007; Peterson, Briggs, Dreasher, Horner, & Nelson, 1999). The anchoring of international students to notions of “cultural” and “intellectual” diversities, and the transactional nature of their relationships to host nation-states, education institutions, and communities are reflected in policy and strategic documents, media reports, and other forms of discourse on higher education internationalisation. This anchoring process, however, may promote the inclusion of certain students, yet perpetuate the exclusion of many others from higher education borderlands. In this study, I employ multimodal discourse analysis to examine diversity discourses in international student recruitment practices in British Columbia, and consider their potential contributions to the systematic exclusion of certain bodies, minds, and spirits from higher education landscapes in the province. In particular, I focus on policy documents on three authority levels: the provincial government, quasi-government, and institutional. Based on my analysis, I contemplate the possibility of a plurinational future of higher education borderlands, one that creates the conditions for a politics of difference that is committed to forms of heterogeneity and multiplicity embracing the “contingent, variable, tentative, shifting, and changing” (West, 1990, p. 93) bodies, minds, and spirits, and to the emergence of new, democratised spaces in higher education.

Dr. Amy Scott Metcalfe
Visualizing the future of educational research: Photography as contested witness and apocalyptic flâneur
Abstract: The journal Research in Education has undergone a transition, with a new editorial team: Matthew Clarke, Jane Rand, and Kalervo N. Gulson. As a member of the new editorial board, Dr. Metcalfe will introduce the changes to the journal, including the new editorial team’s “aim to edit a journal imbued with an ethos of reflexivity and criticality, an attendance to questions of power and politics, and a scope that embraces diversity, complexity, contestation and liminality, in order to continually challenge, unsettle and problematise easy or received understandings of research in education” (Introduction to the New Editors, Research in Education 0034523716630894, first published on April 11, 2016 as doi:10.1177/0034523716630894). Dr. Metcalfe will discuss her invited contribution to the first volume in the newly configured journal, focusing on the promise and pitfalls of photography in educational research.

Our HERG seminars for 2016 will be held on the following dates:

April 22
May 13
June 10
July 15
[no meeting in August]
September 23
October 21
November 18
[no meeting in December]

The HERG seminars will be held in the Multipurpose Room of Ponderosa Commons from noon to 3:00 unless otherwise noted.

A schedule of speakers for upcoming sessions will be forthcoming soon.

See you there!

On April 22, 2016, we held our first HERG seminar in Ponderosa Commons at UBC. Two speakers shared their recent conference presentations, Gang Li and Sharon Stein. Abstracts and citations of the presentations are listed below.

Gang Li, PhD Candidate in Educational Studies
Abstract
Since the late 1990s citizens from the People’s Republic of China have become the largest single group of international students in all major English-speaking countries. However, relatively little has been done to understand the political dimension of Chinese students’ experience in their host societies. Taking Canada as a case country with democracy as a point of reference, this paper explores Chinese international students’ political interactions with Canadian society. Delving into six social-science graduate students’ lived experience with democracy in Metro Vancouver, this paper highlights the fact that some Chinese students tend to become highly sensitive to the political significance and implications of their overseas experience in and through their engagement with democratic discourses and practices in Canada. Furthermore, those students who have obtained Canadian permanent residency or citizenship are even inclined to become fairly active in political life in Canada.

Gang’s paper will be published soon:
Li, G. (2016, forthcoming). Politically sensitive Chinese students’ engagement with democracy in Canada: A case study. Journal of Chinese Overseas, 12(1), 96-121.

Sharon Stein, PhD Candidate in Educational Studies
Abstract: Although efforts to emphasize higher education’s role in global development have grown in recent years, important questions remain about the resulting initiatives. In this study, drawing on theories of social imaginaries and the insights of decolonial and
postcolonial scholars, we employ our concept of the ‘modern/colonial global imaginary’ in order to consider the impact of enduring colonial power relations and modes of knowledge production on the Association of Commonwealth Universities’ “Beyond 2015” campaign.

Sharon’s co-authored paper was presented at the 2016 AERA meeting:
Stein, S., Andreotti, V.D.O., & Susa, R. (2016, April 12). “Beyond 2015,” within the modern/colonial global imaginary? Global development and higher education. Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Washington, DC.