Janet Groen

After the ink dries: doing collaborative international work in higher education

This article offers a contribution to the limited literature on internationalization as academic work. Using narrative inquiry incorporating a mode of research known as ‘car time’, the authors generate narratives of practice to analyse the day‐to‐day work involved in their international university collaboration. The article foreshadows the dialogic opportunities available to academic staff engaged in collaborative international work. This trust‐based approach to internationalization involves building and sustaining inter‐ and intra‐institutional relationships, catalytic events which ‘make things happen’, and learning from each other via common and divergent institutional practices. While cognizant of demands for increased regulation, the article argues for a broader consideration of the learning to be gained from such partnerships. Three things keep this partnership going long after the ink had dried on official agreements between institutions: a personal click, shared professional interests and a framework for institutional agreements and structures.

Paradoxical tensions in creating a teaching and learning space within a graduate education course on spirituality

Until recently, spirituality within a university setting was associated with religious studies faculties. Today, it has spilled over into other faculties, such as nursing, business, social work and education. Conferences, research and courses within these professional faculties are increasing as professors and students seek to make meaningful connections between their studies and important life questions. This paper is a reflective account of instructing a graduate course, entitled Spirituality in the Workplace in a faculty of education. Its design and implementation is analyzed in order to better understand this unique learning situation, and to determine how educators within the higher education environment can continue to craft learning opportunities that potentially foster spiritual transformation within learners. Parker Palmers (1998) six paradoxical tensions for creating a teaching and learning space are used as the guiding framework.

Humanities Professors on the Margins: Creating the Possibility for Transformative Learning

This article recounts the experiences of professors who taught entry level university humanities courses to adult learners on the margins of society and what their stories can tell the readers about a potentially transformative teaching and learning space. Based on interviews with 13 instructors in 3 programs, the study reveals that while the techniques of facilitative dialogue and gentle coaching are important in shifting learners from disengagement to engagement in the possibility of learning, it is the underlying stance of instructors’ mature authenticity and their desire to create and sustain trusting relationships with their students that is pivotal in cultivating the possibility of transformation for marginalized students within this program.

An insider’s view: reflections on teaching a graduate education course on Spirituality in the Workplace

This paper is a reflective account of instructing a graduate course, entitled Spirituality in the Workplace, in a Faculty of Education. Using the framework of instructor authenticity, the author moves back and forth between internal instructor dialogues and reflective discussion pieces to explore the unique opportunities and challenges inherent in teaching this course.

Spirituality within a Religious Workplace: Is It So Different?

Viewing spirituality through the lens of a religious workplace, a Catholic School Board, this paper considers whether the manifestations of spirituality within the workplace are significantly different between a secular workplace and a religious workplace. Using a qualitative research approach which compared the two contexts, the author concluded that, at the surface, the differences were minimal. Specifically, there is remarkable similarity as one considers the various ideals of a spiritually infused workplace, such as vocation, ethics, interconnectedness, and being responsible to our local and global community. However, by going deeper, one realizes that the underlying motivations and values for creating, cultivating and sustaining a spiritually infused workplace within a religious workplace come from a specifically agreed upon set of religious values, which cannot be claimed for secular workplaces.

Stepping Out: Collaborative Research across Disciplines.

Abstract This paper offers the experiences and insights of two faculty members, located in two separate disciplines, as they engaged in collaborative research. While knowledge created by stepping out and reaching across disciplines reflects the reality of an increasingly complex world, their experiences highlight both the benefits of a supportive collaborative partnership as well as the risks and discomfort experienced without tangible discipline support, when researchers stray too far from their home discipline. While transparency and attention to process is critical to all researchers engaged in collaborative partnership, its necessity is heightened when venturing beyond the territory of familiar disciplines.

Moving to a New Land: A Case Study of Secondary Teachers’ Experience of Online Teaching

In this paper, the authors seek, through the theoretical framework of situated cognition learning theory, to document and understand the experiences and views of teachers who are in their first year of instructing secondary students online. Using a case study methodology, the authors captured these secondary teachers’ perceptions of their most successful experiences in teaching online students, as well as their view of the challenges and difficulties they experienced in this transition. In turn, the authors wished to determine what supports are needed for secondary teachers to ease their transition to this new land. Three salient themes emerged through the analysis of data: interacting with students, interacting with and adapting curriculum, and pedagogical approaches and engaging in self-reflection on their role as teacher which led to deeper questions of establishing teacher – student relationships and effective e-pedagogy.

Let's Start at the Very Beginning: The Impact of Program Origins and Negotiated Community-University Partnerships on Canadian Radical Humanities Programs.

This article examines the community–university partnerships and the planning process of three Canadian Radical Humanities programs: programs that offer university entry-level humanities to adult learners on the margins of society. Examining these three iterations has revealed the significance of program origins, particularly the introduction of frame factors shaping student options and the potential for institutional change, and the importance of clarifying roles and expectations in community–university partnerships.

Restorying the present by revisiting the past: Unexpected moments of discovery and illumination through museum learning:

Two adult educators, guided by autoethnography as methodology, share the restorying of their own lifelong learning narratives and unexpected insights gained from having experienced the powerful potential of museum learning and culture. Having previously regarded museum visits as an experience that primarily tapped the intellectual, cognitive domain, the authors, drawing from experiencing the Pier 21 Museum in Halifax and the War Brides installation exhibit at the Glenbow Museum, Calgary, were thrust into multiple ways and dimensions of how we learn, how we view the world, and how we locate ourselves in the world. Shared stories illuminate the potential for museum education to animate, breathe life into and offer a deepened understanding of our own personal, lifelong learning narratives.

Inner and outer congruence: An academic’s quest to find spiritual wellness and health

ABSTRACT This article explores the role a meditative practice might play in enhancing the spiritual wellness and health of staff within higher education contexts. Drawing on her own reflective writings about her meditation practice, as well literature from spirituality in higher education, meditation, and adult learning, the author considers how one works toward leading a life of congruence; a life where meaning and purpose are tightly interwoven with intellect and action, and where compassion and care are infused with insight and knowledge.