Student Services

While the academic world is certainly warming up to qualitative research, for some scholars and the public the arts remain a niche interest that, more than other methodologies, seems to be questioned in terms of its rigour and its influence in academia. Editors Darlene Clover and Kathy Sanford are prepared to take on this project, advocating for an infusion of arts-based programming in universities worldwide.

This paper aims to provide guidance to educators who wish to adopt arts-based approaches through theorizing the experience of its authors, three doctoral students, in facilitating a relational sculpturing session in the context of a class on globalization. The paper begins by defining arts-based teaching, pointing to its identified benefits and risks alongside an explanation of the process of relational sculpting. Next, it tells of and analyzes the authors' experiences in order to point to tentative guidelines for facilitating arts-based sessions. These guidelines are intended to serve both an ethical and educational function. From an ethical perspective, they work to ensure learner and instructor safety and, from a learning perspective, they increase the chances of meaningful learning. Many adult educators recognize arts-based approaches as holding rich potential to facilitate and foster embodied forms of learning, connecting learners in visceral and emotional ways with complex, abstract topics like globalization (Butterwick & Clover, 2013; Sanford & Mimick, 2013; Simola, 2012). Embodied experiential learning can add a pre-cognitive dimension to the material being studied; however, it is essential to approach this type of learning with great sensitivity and with intentional preparation to ensure the wellbeing, safety, and trust of those present. For instructors, adopting these approaches requires that they learn new, unfamiliar facilitation skills. It can also lead them to feel vulnerable in front of learners, since in guiding others through an arts-based experienced, instructors might find themselves negotiating unexpected emotional terrain. For students, arts-based approaches can provoke unexpected emotions. While arts-based approaches can foster significant learning that are difficult to access through traditional pedagogies, the risks must be acknowledged and attended to. Meaningful learning can be emotionally challenging, and as educators it is not our job to eliminate risk, but to engage " ideas and new imaginings…pushing beyond the familiar already-known and daring to experiment, taking risks, and making mistakes " (von Kotze & Small, 2013, p. 39). It is, however, our duty to determine the appropriate balance between risk that generates fruitful learning and risk that could lead to harmful stress for students and for ourselves. As educators, we must recognize that emotional and psychological safety is a priority (Butterwick & Clover, 2013; Hyland-Russell & Groen, 2013; Simola, 2012). By reflecting on our own facilitation experience and framing that within the literature, we can aspire to enact a rich but safe praxis. We are three doctoral students in the University of Calgary's Ed. D. program in the Adult Learning stream. During our most recent summer residency we had an opportunity to facilitate a

This qualitative arts-based study made use of poetic inquiry to analyze and represent the stories of non-Indigenous people recognized as allies of Indigenous peoples in Canada. I adopted a theoretical foundation in critical realism, focusing on the role of agency in the emergent realities of the participants’ ally work (Archer, 2002). I grounded the study in literatures that drew from multiple Indigenous perspectives on teaching, learning and knowledge; social justice education and awareness; and postcolonial theory and decolonization. Thematically, the areas of ally experience that interested me most were their actions, emotions, and how they related to others in the spaces they occupied. Using the ally interview transcripts as raw data, I created found poems that reflected those themes. Constructing the poems while engaging in analysis led me to attempt to decolonize language and names. Hence, I made use of a disruptive strategy to bring attention to the extent to which language reflects colonization. In the final chapter of the dissertation, I outlined implications for adult education theory and practice as suggested by the study. In addition, I made suggestions for actions that allies-in-the-making may take up and directions for future study.

This paper describes weekly tutorials led by a peer mentor which have been embedded into a one-semester Success Course to assist students transitioning to tertiary studies.  The activities and material for the tutorials are interdisciplinary and can be adapted to a variety of central themes for a learning community or cohort-based program.  Critical thinking and inquiry based learning exercises are integrated throughout the weekly meetings, and each session is designed to address a particular problem or bottleneck to learning. Peer mentors model individual responsibility and self-regulation and emphasize learning as a process rather than an end product. A series of small assignments with multiple opportunities for feedback, and high academic standards promotes increased confidence and skill levels.

Student Services support, including learning skills assistance, can be integral in empowering learners. First-year students are expected to be self-directed in their learning, yet may have neither been challenged nor experienced negative consequences for a lack of perseverance. Academic skills professionals can be partners with teaching faculty in student success by helping to build transferable learning skills, especially for high-fail introductory courses. In this paper, I report on supplementary workshops developed to target fundamental skills with course-specific examples. This partnership included incentivizing academic support with both carrots and sticks; instructors in introductory biology strongly urged students receiving D grades or below on the first test to approach Student Services for support, while sociology faculty incorporated workshop attendance into the introductory course with participation grades. Following such incentivizing of learning skills, workshop attendance increased by 45%. In both courses, first test scores and high school averages for students attending workshops did not differ from students not attending workshops. However, students who attended learning skills workshops had significantly higher course grades, persistence, sessional grade point averages (GPAs), and cumulative GPAs than students not attending workshops. Controlling for high school average, each learning skills workshop attended was associated with a 0.11 to 0.27 increase in sessional GPA on a 4.3 point scale.

Social skills training programs are often used as a behavioural intervention with elementary school-aged children; however, many students with high-functioning autism do not receive diagnoses until they reach adulthood. There is therefore a strong need for social skills training programs that can be provided as part of students’ accommodations in post-secondary schools. These programs will not only help students with their personal relationships with others, but may also have a strong effect on their students’ self-confidence and success in future employment. Although social skills are vitally important for one’s success in life, they are an area of accommodation that is often overlooked in relation to educating adults with high-functioning autism spectrum disorder (HFASD). Difficulties in verbal and nonverbal communication define autism spectrum disorder (Freitag et al., 2013; Hotton & Coles, 2016; Mostert, 2013); however, for those who are high-functioning, their education and acc...