BLOG

By Yi-Wen Liao

Mental health is a big issue for first-year undergraduate students adapting to university life in recent years. Although my role is as a career coach, I have found the purely coaching approach may not be sufficient because students face many more challenges nowadays. Therefore, they need far more supports and experiences sharing. The better way is to compose different kinds of elements from mentoring and coaching, consulting theory in the process. Before we empower others, we need to be authentic to understand narratives from our personal stories (George, Sims, McLean, & Mayer, 2007). As I practise more, I would rather name it as “conversation.” What I can do is to enrich conversations by providing a trusted and caring space for the flow of energy in conversation. I believe that although I have limitations because of my life experience and environment, I still can help in a way which brings love and care to enrich people ‘s lives.

The person in conversation with students can be described with the similarity to a teacher’s role in the educational field. In reflection-on practice, teachers build their confidence and capability in teaching through the systematic and rigorous reflection on their practices (Ghaye & Ghaye, 2011). Boud and Miller (1996) indicated that learning comes from experience and is socio-culturally and emotionally connected. In addition, without the attention to emotion and feelings, the result may lead to difficulty in learning (Boud & Miller, 1996).

In Holt’s book How children learn, children learn in a special way that is more suitable for their styles (2017). He found that due to the school system, people do not learn better than when they were in childhood. To trust children, we need to trust ourselves from the heart without worrying or fear (Holt, 2017). However, in the current education system, student’s achievement mainly refers to academic performance. The associated competition reinforces fears and worries. Gallegos Nava (2001) called it mechanistic education. It focuses on teaching them knowledge and skills by disciplines and developing their thoughts (Gallegos Nava, 2001). Nava also mentioned that behavioural changes are limited, mainly at the superficial level. In the contrary, holistic vision is founded by the nature of human beings integrating with the universe, the spiritual pursuit of wholeness and truths (Gallegos Nava , 2001). Nurturing the whole person is the core of holistic education (Miller, 2006). Miller concluded that the holistic education emphasizes the development of human’s intelligence, emotion, physics, social relationship, aesthetics and spirit. However, spiritual development is seldom addressed in the current education system (Miller, 2006).

Holt’s theory helped me to rethink my concerns in conversations with undergraduate students. Trust is the foundation for positive relationships (Holt, 2017). It starts with authentic leadership from coaches (George, et al., 2007). To be authentic, coaches needs to be honest and vulnerable to themselves in order to serve others.

Author Bio

Yi-Wen Liao is currently a graduate student in Education at the University of Prince Edward Island. As a career coach, she enjoys helping the younger generation maximize their full potential. She has worked in global professional firms as a human resources consultant in Mainland China and Taiwan for 20 years.

References

Boud, D. J. & Miller, Nod. (1996). Working with experience: animating learning. New York, NY: Routledge.

Gallegos Nava, R. (2001). Holistic education: Pedagogy of universal love. Brandon, VT: Foundation for Educational Renewal.

Ghaye, A. & Ghaye, K. (2011). Teaching and learning through critical reflective practice. New York, New York: Routledge.

Holt, J. (2017). How children learn (50th anniversary ed.). New York, NY: Da Capo Press. Miller, J. (2006). Educating for wisdom and compassion. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.

George, B., Sims, P., N. McLean, A. N., & Mayer, D. (2007) Discovering Your Authentic Leadership. Harvard Business Review, 85(2), 129-140.

By Alix J. Jansen

The COVID-19 pandemic is highlighting the cracks in Canada’s social safety net and revealing the various ways that social policies make it difficult for workforce development organizations to help those in need. Career development professionals do their best to help people navigate our changing labour market, but government policies can make it difficult for organizations to connect with people in need and help them retrain and find decent work.

In particular, it is deepening the inequalities that Canadians face when trying to navigate the job market that result from the ongoing link between eligibility for Employment Insurance and access to retraining programs.

People who have been shut out of full-time employment have long had access to sub-par benefits. Approximately 30 and 41% of Ontarians are actually eligible for EI (Bramwell, 2012, 402; Vosko, 2011, 33) and levels appear to be low throughout Canada. To be eligible for EI, a person must have worked sufficient hours in insurable employment and have not worked in at least seven days through no fault of their own – and be available for and actively seeking work (Employment and Social Development Canada, 2018).

Those working in non-standard employment relationships like contract-based work are excluded (though some can opt in and pay coverage premiums). This is particularly important considering given that misclassification of workers as contract workers rather than employees is a known problem.

People must also apply for and have received this support – a process that can be difficult and overwhelming and cause some people not to apply for supports they would be entitled to (Herd and Moynihan 2018).

Eligibility is also unevenly distributed across Ontarians: people aged 15-24, 55 and above, recent immigrants and rural residents are much less likely to be eligible and women are slightly less likely to be eligible than men – especially amongst self-employed workers. This means that Canada’ s welfare system exacerbates the inequalities in Canada’s labour market, where women, people of colour, and younger or older workers face discrimination and lower wages.

Contractors and gig workers are excluded and are only able to access much lower levels of income support provided by provincial and territorial social assistance packages. They are also excluded from being able to claim EI while pursuing higher education. Provincial assistance also comes with a smaller budget for short-term retraining and tends to serve populations who have even greater needs. In some provinces, EI-funded training services funded by Labour Market Development Agreements are made accessible to people who are not eligible for EI, but this should be standard. There is no need for workforce development policies to double down on the divide between those eligible for EI and those who have more patchy labour market histories – especially as the latter group likely has even higher needs to support to find decent work.

The Canada Emergency Response Benefit goes some way toward recognizing the inequality cemented in Canada’ s welfare system. But this payment is not permanent and it does not acknowledge the unequal access to support for retraining that stems from ineligibility for EI.

Canada’s training system needs to be decoupled from work history in order to effectively help Canada respond to the looming unemployment crisis that the COVID-19 Pandemic is causing. The current complex of federal, provincial, and municipal services is overly complex and can create confusion for users and providers (May, Sapotichne, and Workman 2006; Schneider and Ingram 1993; Jansen et al. 2019).

Ideally, all Canadians would be able to retrain in growing areas of the labour market like healthcare and tech while accessing income support, either through tertiary degrees or through shorter, targeted programs that link people with employers closely. Career development organizations do their best to help people struggle to secure work and the financial support they need to get by: it is time for Canada’s government to make their work easier by universalizing supports for people to retrain.

Author Bio

Alix Jansen is a PhD Candidate at the University of Toronto. She studies barriers to retraining for marginalized groups and is interviewing organizations and people seeking training to better understand these barriers. If you would like to be part of her research or have questions, contact her at alix.jansen@mail.utoronto.ca.

References

Bramwell, Allison. 2012. “Training Policy for the 21st Century: Decentralization and Workforce Development Programs for Unemployed Working Age Adults in Canada.” In Making EI Work: Research from the Mowat Centre Employment Insurance Task Force, edited by John Medow and Keith Banting. Queen’s Policy Study Series 89. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press.

Employment and Social Development Canada. 2018. “Section 1: Applying for Benefits.” Aem. 2018. https://www.canada.ca/en/employment-social-development/programs/ei/ei-list/reports/regular-benefits/apply.html#h2.2.

Herd, Pamela, and Donald P. Moynihan. 2018. Administrative Burden: Policymaking by Other Means. Russell Sage Foundation. https://www.russellsage.org/publications/administrative-burden.

Jansen, Alix J., Linda A. White, Elizabeth Dhuey, Daniel Foster, and Michal Perlman. 2019. “Training and Skills Development Policy Options for the Changing World of Work.” Canadian Public Policy 45 (4): 460–82. https://doi.org/10.3138/cpp.2019-024.

May, Peter J., Joshua Sapotichne, and Samuel Workman. 2006. “Policy Coherence and Policy Domains.” Policy Studies Journal 34 (3): 381–403. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1541-0072.2006.00178.x.

Schneider, Anne, and Helen Ingram. 1993. “Social Construction of Target Populations: Implications for Politics and Policy.” American Political Science Review 87 (2): 334–47. https://doi.org/10.2307/2939044.

Vosko, Leah F. 2011. “The Challenge of Expanding EI Coverage | The Mowat Centre.” Mowat Publication 23. Ontario: Mowat Centre. https://mowatcentre.ca/the-challenge-of-expanding-ei-coverage/.