In British Columbia, the issue of low graduation rates among Aboriginal students has been addressed often. Some researchers have claimed that racism is a factor that impedes the progress of Aboriginal students. Since teachers' decisions potentially have a profound impact upon students, this study investigated whether teachers discriminate when they make decisions about students. Fifty pre-service teachers recommended 24 fictional students for remedial, average or advanced programs based upon the program eligibility criteria. Results indicated that students whom teachers were led to believe were of Aboriginal ancestry and students whom they were led to believe were students for whom English was a second language were consistently under-rated in comparison to their non-Aboriginal counterparts regardless of the students' prior academic record. / Education, Faculty of / Educational Studies (EDST), Department of / Graduate

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No description available.

No description available.

The purpose of this study was to examine the perceptions of British Columbia elementary school counsellors, in terms of the following primary research questions: (a) What counsellor competencies were included as part of each elementary counsellor's specialized educational or graduate program, (b) how effective was the educational content and experience in these competency areas, (c) how important is the educational content and experience in these competency areas with respect to their current role as elementary school counsellors, (d) what counsellor competencies are perceived as strengths and weaknesses of elementary counsellor education programs, and (e) what areas should be included in elementary graduate training programs to make them more effective? A list of B.C. elementary school counsellors was developed and 219 elementary school counsellors (67%) completed and returned the questionnaire. Respondents indicated that preparation related to the context of the elementary school was of primary importance to them. Theories were highly emphasized and well taught by counsellor education programs, but were viewed as less important than specific counselling skills and interventions. Implications of this study are discussed with respect to (a) contributing to existing literature in elementary counsellor role description, (b) assisting practicing elementary counsellors by outlining their challenges, recommendations and concerns, and (c) contributing to the development and relevance of elementary counsellor education programs.

This study is a micro-analysis of a particular educational milieu: a history of the development of rural schools and community in the Okanagan Valley of British Columbia from 1874 until 1930, focussing mainly on the period from 1920 to 1930. The teacher, or more specifically the female teacher, is the main subject. A series of oral interviews conducted with surviving rural teachers and pupils from the 1920s comprise the primary data. Personal narratives form the core of the text. Also used were the pertinent printed and manuscript records of the Department of Education, penned by teachers, school inspectors and other officials, local histories, the 1931 Census of Canada and photographs. The purpose of the study is two fold. First, it is to delineate what the job of teaching in a rural school in the 1920s entailed. The physical and pedagogical conditions of that work are described. The role and status of the teacher in the local community are also highlighted. Teaching in an isolated community, especially for the novice, was an arduous assignment and one that demanded the acceptance of considerable physical, professional, mental and emotional hardships. The underlying relationship that existed between the individual teacher and the local world of education in rural districts and how the nature of that relationship influenced the quality of teacher experience is a central theme of the study. Social background and up bringing, as well as personal disposition, were found to be key variables determining the extent to which teachers were able successfully to adapt to living and working in a remote rural district. Second, the study examines the social context and meaning of the experience of teaching as work for women. By focussing on how involvement in the profession fitted into the larger structure of the female life course, a more complex, yet clearer, vision emerges of what teaching actually did for women in terms of how they used the profession to accommodate their own personal agendas. For many women their experience as a teacher, albeit brief, played an important, and for some a profound, role in their lives. Despite the strenuous and often frustrating nature of their working and living circumstances many teachers enjoyed their jobs. Motivated by a determination to succeed many regarded their experiences in rural schools as a challenge. They had their sense of self-worth and confidence enhanced by their ability to prove to themselves that they could survive under such adverse conditions. Teaching also afforded women economic independence and relative autonomy and thus expanded their personal and career horizons beyond the traditional domestic roles. Moreover for a substantial number of women teaching was by no means just a prologue to anticipated marriage but rather a life-time commitment. At the same time women's career pathways, unlike that of the majority of their male collegues, were not organised to enhance career aspirations. Women negotiated their work interests with traditional sex role and family expectations. Decisions concerning work were deeply entrenched within, and contingent upon, their changing personal and family circumstances. Home and family obligations, both real and perceived, defined their lives and played a key role in their life planning. Pursuing a "career" as a teacher in the traditional sense was not necessarily always the main priority in women's lives and certainly had little to do with what they viewed as commitment to the job. The study contributes to a fuller understanding of the phenomena of rural schooling and teaching in British Columbia and provides some insights into rural life itself. It also raises important questions as to the meaning of teaching as work to women and the nature of their participation in the workforce. It demonstrates that any evaluation of women's work must be derived from women workers' own perceptions and definitions of work and career.

This research was undertaken to clarify the nature of barriers to persistence in natural resource sciences distance education at the tertiary level in order that participation through to completion may be improved. Its aim was to provide insights and theoretical concepts useful in clarifying distance education access as a whole, while also providing understandings helpful in improving education and communication initiatives concerning sustainable development and the environment. Ethnography was used to illuminate the declarative and tacit understandings of withdrawal and persisting students. Ethnographic interpretations of student understandings were complemented by demographic and other data collected through questionnaires and the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, a psychological survey instrument. Statistical analysis of quantitative data yielded predictive relationships that accounted for 24-39% of the variability in student withdrawal/persistence. However, many variables defy meaningful measurement and quantitative analysis. Overall results suggest that student withdrawal is related to a set of complex multivariables that act additively and interactively in numerous context-dependent ways to result in a dropout decision that is almost idiosyncratic in nature. Nonetheless, important common barriers to persistence are evident. Both withdrawal and persisting students experienced situational, institutional, dispositional and epistemological problems that acted as barriers. A number are relatively unique to second chance learners, who are effectively disadvantaged. Many of the problems students experienced reflect the social contradiction between their roles as students and their roles as mature adults. The newly elucidated cluster of potential barriers to student persistence termed epistemological problems are the result of incongruency between the student's cognitive and affective perceptions of knowledge, and the nature of the knowledge presented in the courses. Although the courses mainly present hard, applied knowledge with a generally positivistic, empirical viewpoint, they also demand high levels of integration and inference. as well as abstract and relativistic thinking. A number of students found the courses' diverse epistemological stances problematic: some thought the content too scientific and technical; a few found it too abstract and ambiguous. Some were challenged by demanding prerequisite knowledge requirements. Still others found it difficult, in the absence of face-to-face interaction with instructors and peers, to make the epistemological shift from learning by rote to higher level thinking. It was concluded that more facilitative instructional design and student support are needed. Distance education persistence could be enhanced by providing students with all the resources and support they need in order to exercise personal control over their learning. A dialogic construct reflecting empathetic response to the views, values, frames of reference and varying dependency states of individual adult learners is suggested. Elucidation of the epistemological problems also provides understandings useful in general improvement of natural resource management education and communication initiatives. Because the highly structured, technical and specific nature of the disciplinary content and the dense formal jargon of the disciplinary discourse in themselves impede effective communication, it appears that natural resource scientists could more effectively share their knowledge if they simplified it, assumed no prior understandings, and helped people learn by informally and subjectively putting it in a more holistic context for them, including making inferences to application and implication.

This study addressed the controversy among academics in conventional universities over the credibility of distance education for degree credit. Faculty scepticism has slowed the development and expansion of distance education despite increased demands for it. Distance education is an educational method in which the teacher and learners are separated in time and space for the majority, if not all, of the teaching-learning process; two-way communication occurs primarily via print, postal service, and telecommunications (Keegan, 1990). There is little empirical evidence about the reasons for the antagonism between the supporters and opponents of distance education. The purpose of this research was to explain why some faculty support distance education while others do not. Support was defined as how faculty would speak about and vote for proposals to offer distance education courses for degree credit. The conceptual framework drew on studies of faculty attitudes towards university expansion and distance education, and literature on academic culture and change. An interpretive perspective and qualitative methods dominated the two-phase study. First, a mailed survey (n=487) investigated the extent of faculty familiarity with and support for distance education. Then faculty (n=50) were interviewed from three categories of support for distance education identified by the survey: supportive, divided support, and opposed. The interviews explored how faculty understood the compatibility and feasibility of distance education. Compatibility was defined as the congruence of distance education with faculty beliefs and values about the accessibility and quality of university education. Feasibility was the perceived ability to successfully implement distance education. In general, faculty were not very familiar with or supportive of distance education, except for undergraduate courses. There was very little support for a graduate program by distance education. There were significant differences in faculty support by discipline and gender. The reasons for variations in faculty support for distance education are best explained by the concept of compatibility. Faculty supported distance education if it was congruent with their beliefs and values about university education in general. Faculty thought about distance education as promoting social justice, as an educational method, or as the distribution of information. Faculty who were supportive held the beliefs and values Trow (1973) associated with mass education while those who were opposed tended to believe in an elite approach to university education. There was a substantial divided group who were in a conflict about the priority that should be given to the major values involved, the accessibility and quality of university education. The study contributes to the development of theory about different conceptions of university and distance education and provides insight into the study of disciplinary cultures. It presents a revised conceptual framework for further research on the topic. The results have implications for educational planning and for the development of distance education.

In 1957, The University of British Columbia launched Canada's first degree-granting program in adult education. It subsequently grew to be one of the largest departments in the Faculty of Education, and recognized internationally for its work. As it grew, however, the program lost its initial administrative privilege. This study asks why UBC had the honour of this Canadian "first," and how the program flowed and ebbed. It shows the relations between the department's administrative and intellectual activities, and how the program fit British Columbia's social development more generally. The study concludes that the successes were largely opportunistic, as the program profited from the changing face of higher education more generally and privileges secured under an early administrative regime. The program's failure was that it did not create a stable identity independent of these opportunities: it failed to gain recognition from academic outsiders as the home of distinct adult education research and knowledge, and it failed to become the gatekeeper of a controlled profession.

Over the last decade, practice ethics in adult education has become an increasingly visible topic of interest and concern in the literature of the field. However, relatively little research has been done in the whole area of ethics and codes of ethics. This study was undertaken to broaden the empirical data base within the field and provide further insight into the area of practice ethics. The purpose of the study was to examine the views of adult educators in British Columbia about the need for a code of ethics for the field of adult education and to identify the issues, concerns and dilemmas experienced by them. The study is an approximate replication of a 1991 study by McDonald in the state of Indiana. Using survey methodology, three groups of adult education practitioners (N = 460) received a mailed questionnaire that included items related to the study topic and demographic characteristics. A 60% return rate was achieved. The major findings generated by this study confirm positive practitioner views about codes of ethics and support the findings reported in the Indiana study. The findings of this study include: • The majority of adult educators surveyed believe there should be a code of ethics for the field of adult education. • Less than a majority of adult educators surveyed knew of the existence of, or were currently operating under, a code of ethics. • The majority of adult educators surveyed indicated an overall positive view about the general functions of a code of ethics. • Issues related to the learner are most frequently cited as needing to be addressed in a code of ethics for the field of adult education. • The professional association was the most frequently identified organization that adult educators believe should create, disseminate and enforce a code of ethics. • The majority of adult educators either disagree or are unsure about the regulating function of a code of ethics. • The majority of adult educators surveyed cited examples of ethical issues/concerns/dilemmas from their practice settings. • The most frequently cited ethical issues/dilemmas relate to confidentiality concerns and learner/adult educator relationship issues. Historically, the debate about the need for a code of ethics for the field of adult education has been focused within the academic community. This study contributes a practitioner perspective to the ongoing debate. The strong message conveyed by British Columbia adult educators about the need for a code of ethics also clearly reflects the growing trend of code development by professional associations in Canada and the United States. Continued emphasis on educational efforts to address the issues arising from this study and further research in the area of practice ethics are suggested.