Upcoming/current Conference and AGM
The Canadian Society for the Study of Higher Education (CSSHE) will hold its annual conference at Western University 31 May – 2 June 2020 within the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences. Website for registration, accommodation, delegate services is congress2020.ca.
Stay tuned for conference updates!
2020 CSSHE Conference
Call for Paper/Poster/Ignite Proposal Submissions
Deadline: January 20 2020 – Detailed description of authors and the panels in pdf document above
(SUBMISSION PORTAL AVAILABLE AFTER DECEMBER 16)
CSSHE 2020 Accepted Panels
Read the Call for Paper Proposal Submissions for detailed descriptions and call for papers for each panel, including the open papers track.
Bridging Divides in Higher Education through Visual Research Methods
Visual research methods are emerging as salient scholarly approaches in many academic disciplines and fields, especially Education. Within Higher Education research, visual research methods have much to contribute to our understanding of institutional histories, organizational culture, daily experiences of campus life, and the socio-economic role of postsecondary education globally. This panel will offer opportunities for presenters and audience members to consider a broad range of visual research methods as applied to the study of higher education issues and phenomena.
Calling for Change: Addressing Gender Based Violence in Higher Education
Recently, significant literature and media attention have been paid to the widespread issue of sexual and gender-based violence (Anitha & Lewis, 2018; Davies & True, 2016). While sexually violent acts can occur in a variety of environments, university and college campuses remain one of the most common sites (Kong et al., 2003). Despite prevention efforts and updated policies and procedures on campuses, institutional responses remain insufficient in effecting meaningful change. The primary goals of the panel are to increase our understanding of the complexities of gender-based violence and to provide recommendations for research practice and policy initiatives.
Canadian University Professors’ Perceptions on Academic Work
This panel explores how professors at Canadian universities are being impacted by the pressures of the knowledge society, whether in their teaching, research, service or administrative duties.
Collegial Governance in Uncertain Times
The objectives of this panel are to create a space to discuss the nature of the Canadian university as a historical, social, philosophical and legal entity in order to identify the rights and responsibilities of university constituents in a democratic, collegial, self-governing structure.
Community Engaged Learning and Social Accountability
There is a growing need for social accountability and real world problem solving among health professionals. This panel aims to facilitate a dialogue on how community engaged learning (CEL) can improve students’ ability to understand and engage with complexity in the social world. The panel aims to bring together educators and practitioners who are involved in community engaged learning, to share curriculum and assessment strategies for evaluating learning outcomes. Participants are encouraged to share the problems facing the community partners, helping assess the relevance of these skills to solving local issues.
Diversification of Chinese Universities Serves Diverse Stakeholders
Since the late 1990s, Chinese higher education has experienced an unprecedented expansion, and the university sector grew from 590 in total and 2.23 million enrolment in 1998 to 1,243 and 16.49 million in 2017. The expansion has had a tremendous impact on diversity of Chinese universities. Chinese universities have been reconfiguring their functions and capacities—particularly to take on research and service functions. Meanwhile, they have been exploring and craving identities and niches in the new context of a knowledge-based economy as well as globalization. This session aims to shed light on such endeavours of Chinese universities, starting from policy analysis at the system level to case studies at institutional and project levels.
Faculty and Student Affairs/Services Communications and Collaborations
Research investigating faculty and student affairs/services (SAS) interactions suggests that communications and collaborations are much more diverse than generally acknowledged and have exceptional potential to encourage student success (Streit, Dalton, & Crosby, 2009). This panel will showcase the multitude of communications and collaborations between faculty and SAS that occur across college and university campuses daily in our efforts to support student success. There are various reasons and rationales that necessitate and encourage working together on campus and we are seeking to examine the organizational, cultural, financial, educational, political, and communal experiences in which researchers and professionals are currently involved.
Impact of English for Academic Purposes (EAP) Bridging Programs on Student Success
Along with Canadian universities’ active recruitment of international students, 88% of these institutions have established Pathway English for Academic Purposes (EAP) Bridging programs providing conditional entry. Some argue that pathway colleges merely represent a model for institutions to gain greater revenue and market share. Alternatively, research shows that these programs meet the students’ needs with English language and academic skills development as well as university life integration. Given the critical and laudatory perspectives of Pathway EAP Bridging programs and their prevalence at Canadian universities, this panel examines the impact of such programs on student success.
Internationalization of Higher Education in Comparative Perspective
A growing body of research has found that approaches to internationalization vary across institutions and cross-nationally. This panel seeks to deepen our understanding of how higher education institutions, including colleges and universities, are internationalizing higher education in Canada and around the world. The panel seeks to bring together scholars examining differences in priority activities, discursive rationales, justifications, and models of internationalization. The panel is particularly interested in comparative work, including across provinces, national contexts or time.
Long Term Monitoring of Post-Secondary Outcomes: Student Demographics, Achievement and Graduation Patterns
This panel explores the academic trajectories of students as they navigate elementary, secondary and post-secondary transitions. It will investigate what insights can be gleaned from exploring students’ experiences prior to entry, and during, their post-secondary studies on their academic trajectories, successful institutional transitions and subsequent graduation.
Methodological, Practical, and Ethical Challenges of Conducting Research on Vulnerable Youth in the Context of Higher Education
This panel will be interesting for researchers, who conduct or are planning to conduct research on the experiences of vulnerable youth in or post higher education. Examples of vulnerable youth include but are not limited to such populations as young immigrants, refugees, youth from foster care, young unmarried mothers, and minorities. The panel will gather scholars, who have prior experience conducting research with the populations and who will share their stories about the experience. Methodological, ethical, and practical challenges and strategies for addressing them will be discussed. Examples of topics include gaining access, dealing with service providers as intermediaries in access, reimbursing participants, minimizing risks and maximizing benefits, maintaining confidentiality in reports.
Perspectives of Traditionally Underrepresented Students
This panel provides a space for exploring what traditionally underrepresented students say about their postsecondary education experiences and how those narratives can inform pedagogical and structural changes within postsecondary institutions.
Priorities Paradox: The Student/learner and Higher Education Institution
Although they are mutual stakeholders, higher education institutions and students/learners paradoxically espouse both shared and opposing goals. Institutions face increasingly competitive and constrained operating environments with new visions, missions and even mandates. At the same time, learners have diversified in myriad ways, exhibit new wants and needs, and chart non-linear credential pathways. But learners’ demands – – themselves complex – – compete with those of other stakeholders in higher education. Can the diversifying student be served amidst this turbulence?
Supporting the Campus Experience of Students with Disabilities
Due to improved access, students with disabilities enrolling in post-secondary education has increased over time across Canadian campuses (Prairie Research Associates, 2013;2016). However, even though enrollment has increased, students with disabilities may experience several challenges in the post-secondary environment. In consideration of the new ‘Accessible Canada Act’, which was recently proclaimed, it is important for us to assess our current understanding of students with disabilities. This panel will shed new light on questions regarding what information currently exists on students with disabilities, what information is still needed, and how institutions are supporting specific subgroups.
Still Invisible? Private Universities in Canada
This panel seeks to deepen our understanding of private universities in Canada. The panel would like to highlight provincial-level policies and regulations that have permitted new private universities to operate, challenges private universities face, and the increasingly diversified roles they are playing in Canadian higher education.
Student Experiences in the Era of Active Student Mobility in Higher Education
This panel invites papers exploring systemic, institutional, cultural, and social barriers that students experience in Canadian postsecondary institutions. The panel is hoping to achieve a broader and deeper understanding of the student experiences from diverse backgrounds in current Canadian postsecondary institutions. By examining a variety of barriers students experience throughout different stages of their educational trajectories, it is our hope that the discussions not only raise awareness but also bring together best practices and possible solutions to the issues that impact all stakeholders in the postsecondary institutions.
The Arc of Policy-making in Canadian Post-secondary Education
This panel empirically and theoretically analyzes the postsecondary policy directions and the policy making of the provincial governments across Canada in order to identify the implications for equity, diversity, inclusion and indigeneity.
The Growing International Education and Immigration Nexus: Implications for Higher Education
Scholars and policy makers speak to the growing link between immigration policies and higher education. International students are ‘ideal’ immigrants is a policy discourse that is now circulating globally and has been translated into a policy priority in many countries around the world. To what extend is the link between international education and immigration agendas shifting the roles and functions of the higher education sector? This panel aims to examine the evolution of this discourse, higher education institutions’ engagement with this policy discourse, its implications for institutional policies and practices and resulting shifts relationships and power dynamics between different policy actors.
The Logic of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in Academic Leadership and Organizational Change
This panel seeks to explore connections between the logic of equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) as a socio-political phenomenon and the contexts of leadership and organizational change in higher education. The panel comprises papers using different levels of analysis and employing a range of methodologies while focusing on a broad range of responses dealing with EDI in academic leadership and organizational change.
The New Geopolitics of International Higher Education
The current political era is one of emerging powers, shifting international and regional relations, and growing populism and nationalism. Within this altered global context, the intense internationalization of higher education that was a feature of the late 20th and early 21st century appears to be in stark contrast to current political trends. This panel investigates the new geopolitics of international higher education, focussing on the power dynamics that come into play when politics come into conflict with policy and practice in international higher education. The panel also welcome theoretical papers that propose new lenses through which to explore these dynamics.
University Professors in Canada: Doctoral Pathways, Research Production, International Collaboration and Governance Activities
This panel explores how professors at Canadian universities experienced doctoral education, gender differences in research production, the extent to which professors collaborate internationally and their perceptions on their influence at the departmental and institutional realms of their university. The papers presented at this panel examine pan-Canadian data that helps to understand how professors at Canadian universities were formed during their doctoral studies and how this shapes their current activities.
Connecting Today’s Postsecondary Classroom to the Open Future: Open Education Resources (OER’s) Empower the Teaching of Educational Administration, Policy, and Leadership
This panel discussion will focus on how postsecondary faculty are making use of open education resources (OER’s) to teach interdisciplinary courses in educational administration, policy, and leadership with a particular focus on learning organizations. We will also consider how the use of OER’s is impacting student learning across our increasingly diverse subset of learners, and what new pedagogical approaches are being developed as OERs are being introduced.
Open Papers
CSSHE invites papers that may not fit under the specific panels selected for the 2020 conference but are aligned with the conference theme and focused on the study of higher education.
