A leader in online professional development for teachers in Ontario for more than 20 years, and more recently in British Columbia, the Continuing Teacher Education Office at Queen’s University is now expanding into the United States market.

It is increasingly mandatory in many states for teachers to complete Continuing Teacher and Leadership Education (CTLE) courses to maintain their licenses. Seeing a massive opportunity for growth, the CTE Office created courses with the United States teacher in mind, based around what is known as Common Core Standards. The CTE Office is now an approved CTLE sponsor in New York state.

As with the Ontario and B.C. programming, these new courses make use of the Faculty of Education’s instructional strengths and leadership in research, while providing an online platform that allows users to develop new skills, collect valuable resources, share ideas, and collaborate with a community of learners. Many comparable programs utilize Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), says Nathan Cheney, Business Developer in the Professional Studies Office. These courses provide the required content and, once complete, a certificate is awarded. In contrast, all Queen’s courses are instructor-led. The courses are supported by current research but also based in practice, designed with the working teacher in mind.

“This offers an opportunity to be different from a lot of the other professional development courses. All of our courses have up-to-date research that is written by experts in the field,” Cheney says.  “Our courses are written by teachers for teachers. These aren’t courses that are designed to give you overarching theory only. They are designed to be directly applicable to something the teachers can use in the classroom, which is an important feature.”

The first courses – Teaching Mathematics in Elementary Schools and Teaching English Language Learners – started being offered Nov. 12.

Another important component is that the Queen’s courses also create a “community of learners,” through open discussions with instructors as well as fellow teachers.

“In my opinion, the best thing about these courses is the discussion component. We’ll have 15 or 20 teachers in a class and in doing so they must interact with each other, which means they are setting up a community of learners, they are setting up a resource group,” Cheney says. “The courses are designed so that participants are sharing their resources as part of the discussion board. So not only are you walking away with the resources you get from the expert instructor, you are walking away with resources from all these other instructors who are in the class with you.”

As seen in the Ontario and B.C. courses these networks can continue long after the course is complete. The interactive nature of the courses also allows variety of perspectives to be voiced, says Jessica Della-Latta, Executive Director of Professional and Non-Credit Programs at the Faculty of Education.

“What’s great about the courses being online is you can get so many perspectives. You can have a seasoned inner city teacher and a new rural teacher sharing their point of view and experiences,” she says. “You get the richness of all these perspectives which creates the opportunity for problem-solving, creativity and new outlooks to challenges. In the Ontario and B.C. courses professional friendships develop and the mutual support that is so important within the course continues long after the course ends. It’s not only setting up an expert level course that is written and designed for them, it’s setting up an opportunity for them to have colleagues from across the country that they can lean on throughout their careers.”

For more information or to register, visit the CTE website. 

Every day impactful, cutting-edge research is being conducted at Queen’s and the university wants everyone to know about it.

Enter a new multi-faceted campaign on campus aimed at promoting and celebrating the groundbreaking work of the university’s researchers.

“Research is core to the foundation of Queen’s as an institution, yet much of the work takes place where it isn’t easily accessible to the public – in labs, archives, and in the field,” says Melinda Knox, Associate Director, Research Profile and Initiatives. “While many of our research promotion initiatives are aimed at external stakeholders, the goal of this campaign is to showcase the breadth and impact of our research to the Queen’s and Kingston communities, while at the same time adding a little more beauty to campus.”

At the heart of Queen’s, building banners celebrating award-winning research don Grant Hall and Stauffer library. Pole pennants have also been installed on the light posts along University Avenue, featuring images from the Art of Research photo contest. Each year the popular photo contest provides faculty, students, alumni, and staff the opportunity to showcase their research, scholarly, and artistic work. It also provides many amazing photos.

Together, the new banners cover a wide array of research – from arts and humanities to physics to cancer and health sciences to biodiversity and climate change.

The first image, Santa Fina, was taken by Una D’Elia, a faculty member in the Department of Art History and Art Conservation, at Musei Civici in San Gimignano, Italy. The striking image shows a marble bust of a saint by sculptor Pietro Torrigiani, a competitor of Michelangelo.

The second image, Leaving Home, features a spheroid of cancer cells embedded in a 3D protein matrix as seen through a microscope. Taken by Eric  Lian, a PhD  student in the Department of Pathology and Molecular Medicine, individual cells can be seen radiating away on all sides.

The third image, Razorbill, was captured by Brody Crosby, a Master’s student in the Department of Biology during fieldwork on seabirds in Witless Bay, Nfld. Mistakenly assuming the approaching researchers were its parents, the razorbill chick is captured as it begs for a meal.

The fourth image is a rendition of the universe, and captures the work of researchers elucidating the fundamental building blocks of the universe, shedding light on things we cannot see.

The Art of Research is also being featured in a travelling, pop-up photo exhibit currently being held on the first floor of Stauffer Library. Offering a large selection of photos from the last three years of the contest, the exhibit highlights the diversity of research happening across campus.

The photo exhibit will subsequently be on display in Grant Hall for Homecoming, Oct. 19-21, and then in the Lederman Law Library, Oct. 22-Nov. 5.

The exhibit is also available to campus partners throughout the year for events and display purposes.

For more information on research at Queen’s or the Art of Research photo contest, visit the website.

A member of the prestigious U15 Group of Canadian Research Universities, Queen’s has a long history of unmistakable discovery and innovation that has shaped our knowledge and helped address some of the world’s deepest mysteries and most pressing questions

We live in testing times. We also live in a time of globalization, immigration and the internationalization of schools and universities around the world. Our current obsession with school accountability and student learning outcomes has resulted in the increased use and abuse of test scores — in particular language test scores.

Language test scores are now an admission ticket for post-secondary education and for skilled immigrants trying to gain entry into new countries. Test scores serve as the key to learning opportunities and professional success, impacting millions of lives. They also play a crucial role in political, social and educational policies.

Despite the considerable consequences of language testing, what exactly do test scores indicate? What can we tell about someone and their achievement or professional capability from a single test score? What are the implications when bureaucrats and education officials misinterpret test scores when making policy decisions on immigration or attracting more international students?

In my role as director of the Assessment and Evaluation Group in the Faculty of Education at Queen’s University, I’ve been involved in research on how students are tested for language proficiency and the consequences of such testing.

Second language is essential

It’s an important topic because evidence shows that an ability to speak a second language can determine so many things about an immigrant’s future, including economic success, social integration and their overall ability to contribute to society. My research looks at the prevalence and impact of language testing. A key issue is how test scores are used or misused by policy makers.

We should not be using a single test score to make decisions that can have a huge impact on someone’s life. However, governments and organizations tend to do this because it is cheaper and they believe it offers a more clean-cut case on immigration, university entrance and professional certification.

According to the latest census data, Canada has more than 7.5 million foreign-born individuals who arrived as immigrants. That represents about 22 per cent of the population.

All skilled workers and professionals who wish to immigrate to Canada need to demonstrate their English or French language ability via a language test, no matter where in the world they come from. The results of their test scores determine whether they are permitted to settle and to practise as recertified professionals in Canada.

Increase in international students

There has been a rapid increase in the number of international students who wish to study at Canadian universities. The latest federal government data shows Canada had roughly 500,000 international students at the end of 2017. Canada’s international student population has nearly tripled over the past decade and now ranks fourth behind the United States, the United Kingdom and China. Canada retains many of these international students as skilled workers through Express Entry.

All international students are required to take a language test as part of the application process and their scores must meet the entrance requirements for Canadian universities.

It’s natural to assume anyone taking those tests would be nervous, anxious or even frustrated. That is what we call high-stakes testing, which affects the lives of millions of people, all over the world, every day.

An incomplete picture

For example, when the stakes are high, research suggests that test-takers’ motivation and anxiety are significant factors associated with their test performance. Judging someone’s test score without taking those factors into account presents an incomplete picture of the person taking the test.

Successfully evaluating someone’s English- or French-language abilities through various language tests has a direct impact on millions of lives of people who come to Canada to study and settle.

Education and government decision-makers should not rely solely on test scores when making decisions about admitting people to schools or the country. That’s why test validation — ensuring accurate uses and interpretations of the test scores — has become so important and has grown into a major field of research.

Our research at Queen’s is intended to raise public awareness of the intended and unintended consequences of how test scores are used and to make the case that policy-makers need better training on how to properly interpret scores.

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Liying Cheng is professor and director of the Assessment and Evaluation Group (AEG) at the Faculty of Education, Queen’s University. Her primary research interests are the impact of large-scale testing on instruction, the relationships between assessment and instruction, and the academic and professional acculturation of international and new immigrant students, workers, and professionals to Canada.

This article was originally published on The Conversation, which provides news and views from the academic and research community. Queen’s University is a founding partner. Queen's researchers, faculty, and students are regular contributors.

The Conversation is seeking new academic contributors. Researchers wishing to write articles should contact Melinda Knox, Associate Director, Research Profile and Initiatives, at knoxm@queensu.ca.