Careering

Career Briefs

January 21, 2015By 0 comment

 New on ContactPoint: Glossary of Career Development

CERIC and the Canadian Council for Career Development (CCCD) have collaborated to produce a glossary of career development.

From Abilities to Workplace Training, the glossary is primarily intended to serve as a resource to those working or studying in the field of career development, though it will also be of value to Canadians more broadly who are looking for definitions of terms in relation to their own careers.

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Careering

BOOK REVIEW – Danger and Opportunity: Bridging Cultural Diversity for Competitive Advantage

January 21, 2015By 0 comment

By Jon Woodend, MSc

Woodend_Book Review_coverBook by Lionel Laroche and Caroline Yang

Canada was one of the first developed countries to adopt multiculturalism as an integral part of its identity. Because of this, Canada now has the highest proportion of foreign-born individuals, and its immigration system, which successfully attracts skilled workers, is heralded internationally. Given that the government of Canada will continue to seek skilled immigrant workers to offset a low domestic birthrate, the Canadian workforce will only continue to become more diverse. Lionel Laroche and Caroline Yang in their book Danger and opportunity: Bridging cultural diversity for competitive advantage note that, while the Canadian workforce may benefit from these skilled workers and their diverse skills, without multicultural awareness, these lucrative benefits can quickly turn into sour disadvantages for all involved.

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Careering

10 Questions for Marc Kielburger

January 21, 2015By 0 comment

10 questions_Mark Kielburger HeadshotMarc Kielburger is a social entrepreneur, New York Times best-selling author and gifted orator.

Along with his brother Craig, Marc is co-founder of Free The Children, an international charity and educational partner that empowers youth to achieve their fullest potential as agents of change.

Marc is also the co-founder of Me to We, an innovative social enterprise that advances the vision of philanthropy and provides people with better choices for a better world.

Every year, Marc and Craig organize a series of We Days, Free The Children’s signature domestic event attended by 200,000 students from 6,000 schools. We Day also reaches over 6 million viewers through televised broadcasts and has more than 3.7 million followers on Facebook.

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Putting practice in place: Significant learning in a co-operative education foundational course

January 21, 2015By

By Candy Ho (Cannexus15 GSEP Award Winner) 

Typically, when one thinks of co-operative education (co-op) programs in post-secondary institutions, processes such as placing students in temporary roles and liaising with employers come to mind. Yet, there is more than meets the eye, as the educational components of teaching and learning in co-op programs is rarely mentioned, arguably because there seems to be a disconnect between career development and the academic curriculum. To this end, how might co-op programs integrate theory and practice and as a result establish their legitimacy as an important part of the university experience? My poster, which I’ll be showing at the Cannexus15 conference, explores the connection of a co-op foundational course with Fink’s (2003) taxonomy of significant learning.

COOP 1101 is a one-credit foundational course all students must take prior to entering the co-op program at Kwantlen Polytechnic University (KPU), a former university college that has recently attained university status in 2008. Striving to achieve its strategic vision by 2018, KPU is focusing on three pillars of providing quality education, building reputation, and maintaining relevance within its communities.

With co-op programs often showcased as a strong feature of the institution, COOP 1101 shares similar goals as it aims to engage students with high quality experiential learning, continue its reputation as a valuable course, and ensure course content is relevant to the contemporary world of work. The last point forms my poster’s main question: In an ever-changing world evolving exponentially, how can COOP 1101 remain relevant and useful to students from the first day of class to beyond their graduation? Preliminary insights and recommendations for future course planning were realized through analyzing the six major categories of Fink’s (2003) taxonomy, which are foundational knowledge, application, integration, human dimension, caring, and learning to learn.

The poster will be of interest to practitioners intrigued about teaching and learning in career education, as they may generate insights to incorporating theories into their existing programs and workshops. Also, practitioners working in post-secondary institutions may want to learn about this for-credit co-op course (since co-op programs are typically considered co-curricular rather than part of the academic curriculum) and how it can apply in their schools.

 

Author Bio

Candy Ho (@CanceHo) is a graduate student pursuing doctoral studies in the Faculty of Education at Simon Fraser University. She currently holds teaching and research positions in both Kwantlen Polytechnic University and Simon Fraser University.

 

Reference

Fink, L. D. (2003). Creating significant learning experiences. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

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Investigating career transitions of major junior hockey players

January 21, 2015By

By Lauren K. McCoy (Cannexus16 GSEP Award Winner)

Limited exploration has been directed towards the psychological, social and physical adjustments encountered by elite athletes upon career transition, despite a significant body of research suggesting that athletes that lack transitional coping skills may be at greater risk of adverse outcomes (Smith & McManus, 2008). While recent literature has begun to investigate these issues in other competitive sports, Canadian major junior hockey (CHL) continues to operate as a closed community that commonly restricts access to the institution and its players (Allain, 2013; Robinson, 1998). In an effort to protect their personal hockey careers, active players often perpetuate the insulation of the league through carefully crafted accounts that guard the best interests of the institution (Allain, 2013).

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Career education and student engagement

January 21, 2015By 0 comment

By Annelise Welde (Cannexus15 GSEP Award Winner)

Career education and student engagement have been linked in existing research (i.e., Orthner, Jones-Sanpei, & Akos, 2013; Sutherland, Levine, & Barth, 2005). Student engagement can be conceptualized as the interaction between the resources that are invested by students and institutions to enhance students’ experiences, learning outcomes and development (Trowler, 2010). Kuh (2009) writes that increased levels of student engagement are linked to more opportunities for students of all educational and social backgrounds to:

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Trade to teaching: Second career or second phase?

January 21, 2015By

By Barbara Gustafson (Cannexus15 GSEP Award Winner)

As a part of doctoral-level research at the University of Saskatchewan, I surveyed trades instructors at three Western Canadian post-secondary institutions about their career transition from trades practice to teaching. The survey was followed up with focus groups for a qualitative-dominant mixed methods study that was completed in November 2014.

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Media Advisory – Canada’s biggest conference of career counsellors comes to Ottawa to discuss latest job, work trends

January 20, 2015By

Ottawa, Jan. 20, 2015 – Nearly 800 career development professionals will gather in Ottawa from Jan. 26-28, 2015 for the Cannexus National Career Development Conference. The largest event in the country for people in career counselling, employment and workforce development, delegates will explore the latest research and hot topics in the field.

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