Education Commons^™

A Curriculum Framework At Glsm, A Canadian Medical School, Jeff Bachiu

The Dissertation in Practice at Western University

Medical education has seen minor changes over the decades, but a dynamic movement towards competency-based medical education (CBME) has swept across the field in recent years. Organizing medical education curriculum to respond to these changes can be challenging due to many factors, in both content and context. The public rightly expects that graduating medical students be competent physicians, ready to deliver effective health care. This Organizational Improvement Plan (OIP) looks at a relatively new medical school’s lack of an outcomes-based curriculum framework. The Problem of Practice (PoP) is focused on the difficulty of moving the school toward the development of …

Interdisciplinary Explorations: Setting The Stage For Change Through Understanding Culture And Attending To Psychological Safety In An Ontario Community College, Louise Chatterton

The Dissertation in Practice at Western University

Central to this Organizational Improvement Plan is the desire to close the gap between a curriculum that is disciplinary-centric to one that is more interdisciplinary. This change will better prepare college graduates for the future skills required in the workplace where increasingly complex problems require interdisciplinary solutions. While this may, at first, appear to be solely about the curriculum, the problem is that moving from a disciplinary to an interdisciplinary mindset involves disturbing deeply rooted disciplinary boundaries and, in turn, challenging faculty identities. In order to influence the culture of College X towards interdisciplinarity, the cultural context of the institution …

Building Teacher Capacity To Personalize Learning For Students, Catherine Y. Shellenberg

The Dissertation in Practice at Western University

This Organizational Improvement Plan (OIP) proposes building teacher professional capacity and capital to meet the challenge of personalizing student learning by implementing an embedded professional learning plan. This plan will be responsive to individual teacher professional learning needs as well as evidence and research informed. This OIP is based on the belief that for change in student learning to occur, the change needs to happen at the classroom level with teachers. A shift in teacher practice requires alignment in the teacher’s values, beliefs and practices. To support this shift, a common understanding of personalizing learning needs to be established as …

Change Management, Quality Assurance And Race: Advancing Race-Based Equity In Canadian Higher Education By Leveraging Established Institutional Mechanisms, Nadia Mallay

The Dissertation in Practice at Western University

Higher education in Canada has been well regarded for decades. Academically rigorous programs and institutions graduate strong students while also attracting top local and global talent as employees to their institutional communities. However, the field of Critical Race Theory, among others, explicates that higher education institutions are not equitable for all bodies. Individuals with intersectionalities inclusive of the Black Diaspora continue to be excluded from academic success and success as employee stakeholders in higher education institutions. Critically, Black bodies continue to struggle with entry to higher education and means to economic success post-graduation, as well as lack of inclusivity to …

Advancing Employee Engagement With Internationalization Through Networked Leadership Approaches At A Canadian Community College, Inga Wheeler

The Dissertation in Practice at Western University

This organizational improvement plan, undergirded by social network theory, addresses the lack of engagement by many organizational members with an ambitious internationalization goal at Sky College (a pseudonym). The institutional climate is one in which day-to-day challenges prevail and motives for internationalization are questioned. Drawing on system and adaptive leadership, and within the functionalist paradigm, the case is made for advancing 4 factors to increase engagement with internationalization: a shared vision and understanding of internationalization, improving internal communication systems, fostering knowledge creation and sharing, and increasing connections in the network. The proposed solution is a 12-month series of focus on …

Managing The Tension: Balancing District Requirements And Local School Context In School Improvement Planning, Oliver S. Goodacre

The Dissertation in Practice at Western University

This Organization Improvement Plan (OIP) examines how a principal can implement school improvement planning processes that address both the requirements of a district and the needs of the individual school. The problem of practice identified that principals struggle with motivating teachers to engage in meaningful professional learning when implementing school improvement planning processes required by the district.

The complex nature of school environments is examined and the difficulties this poses for principals in leading change within schools is identified. Change is conceptualized as a non-linear, continuous process that is focused on the relationships between the teachers within a school and …

Indigenous Cultural Influenced Change Management, Mary Fuke

The Dissertation in Practice at Western University

Organization X is one of nine Indigenous post-secondary institutions in Ontario. For over 25 years the organization has been operating on funding from partnership and grant proposals that is renewed on a yearly basis. In 2017, Ontario recognized Indigenous Institutes as the “third pillar” of Ontario’s post-secondary landscape which is to be implemented through the Indigenous Advanced Education and Skills Council (IAESC) who provides the quality assurance framework for Indigenous institutions. This Organization Improvement Plan (OIP) explores the problem of linking Indigenous and western ideologies and epistemologies within a change management plan to successfully implement this change. The plan considers …