English for Academic Purposes Programs: Key Trends Across Canadian Universities

Because of the large number of post-secondary English for academic purposes (EAP) programs and the varying ways they are structured, it can be difficult to identify how a particular program fits within the overall landscape of university education. To identify general trends across Canada, the webpages for 74 EAP programs at 50 public English-medium universities were examined for key information related to each program. Data analysis included descriptive statistics as well as graphical representation. The results pointed to typical EAP programs that are independent units that offer non-credit courses with some credit options, have international tuition fees around $9,000 per semester, provide approximately 22 hours of instruction per week, and generally require IELTS scores over 5.0 or TOEFL iBT scores over 59 for entry. These results provide an avenue of comparison and indicate the need for future research to better understand how EAP programming is conceptualized in the Canadian context.

Supporting the Development of Informatics Competencies Among Senior Nurse Leaders in Canada

This poster will provide an overview of the various initiatives completed to support the development of informatics competencies among senior nurse leaders in Canada. These initiatives have included a literature review to uncover competencies of relevance to the Canadian context, and a Delphi study to achieve consensus on the competencies for Canada. Current and future plans will be discussed to translate these competencies into practice among senior nurse leaders.

Choosing Wisely Canada: Canadian Fertility and Andrology Society’s List of Top Items Physicians and Patients Should Question in Fertility Medicine

Purpose: To create a Choosing Wisely Canada list of the top 5 diagnostic and therapeutic interventions that should be questioned in Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility in Canada.Methods: The Canadian Fertility and Andrology Society (CFAS) National Working Group developed an initial list of recommendations of diagnostic and therapeutic interventions that are commonly used, but are not supported by evidence, and could expose patients to unnecessary harm. These were chosen based on their prevalence, cost, potential for harm, and quality of supporting evidence. A modified Delphi consensus was used over 5 rounds to generate ideas, review supporting evidence, assess clinical relevance, estimate recommendation impact and narrow the recommendations list to 5 items. Results: Fifty unique ideas were first proposed by the working group, and after 5 rounds including a survey of Canadian Fertility and Andrology Society (CFAS) members, the final list of recommendations was created, including topics related to unnecessary investigations and interventions for patients with infertility and recurrent pregnancy loss, and those undergoing IVF. In this article, we describe not only the Delphi process used to determine the list, but also provide a summary of the evidence behind each of the final recommendations. Conclusions: The list of 5 recommendations highlights opportunities to initiate conversations between clinicians and patients about the risks, benefits, harms and costs of unnecessary fertility treatments and procedures in a Canadian context.

Ensemble mentorship as a decolonising and relational practice in Canada

Inspired by collaborating on a shared vision of reconciliation, three authors explore ethical relationality and the practical ways in which their heterarchical ensemble mentorship serves to decolonise and advance a shared vision of reconciliation for university teaching and learning. As Indigenous and non-Indigenous educators, we are buoyed by those developing decolonising and Indigenising strategies in formerly colonised regions. Seen as a promising interruption to a neoliberal approach to education, the authors embrace the possibilities of imagining and creating an ethical space in universities where relationality is prioritised in service of social justice. While the complex nature of reconciliation within a Canadian context begets tension and highlights what are often conflicting value systems within academe, we maintain that innovations in teaching and learning are possible in what is now a globally disrupted terrain as students, faculty, administrators, and university leadership contend with the unknown, encounter collectivist Indigenous traditions, and tentatively explore decolonisation as an ethical avenue towards inclusive and empowering education. In imagining what is possible, we build upon Indigenous knowledge traditions and the work of leadership studies scholars to propose 'ensemble mentorship' between students and faculty as a collaborative and decolonising teaching and learning practice.

Sanctuary Cities and Covid-19: The Case of Canada

In Canada, urban centres have been especially hit by the Covid-19 pandemic and this public health crisis has generated particular risks for non-status and precarious migrants. Using official data and published research, this chapter explores how city sanctuary policies in Canada have addressed these pandemic risks and, more broadly, the future for Canadian sanctuary policies in the post-Covid-19 recovery. We highlight the specificities of sanctuary policies in the Canadian context and document that while cities have not rescinded these interventions during the pandemic, they also have not built on them when developing COVID-19 responses for urban residents. We propose that this demonstrates the need to maintain pressure for reforms that increase the resources and capacities of cities in Canada so that they can be in a better position to implement and institutionalise policies for non-status and precarious migrants.

Canadian Academics’ use of predatory journals

Introduction Predatory journals have been acknowledged as an increasing concern in the scholarly literature over the last decade, but research on the subject has been sparse. Research that has focused on predatory journals in the Canadian context has been even rarer, and limited to work focused on a single university. This study explores publishing trends in predatory journals by authors affiliated with Canadian Universities. Methods Articles published by authors at 30 Canadian universities, including all universities in the U15, were pulled from select predatory journals. Key data including author affiliation, article type, discipline, and grant information were extracted from the articles. Results All universities in the study were found to have publications in predatory journals. The health sciences accounted for 72% of the publications, and the sciences for 20%. Research articles accounted for 50% of the articles. Opinion, editorial, or commentary pieces accounted for 24% and 19% were review articles. Grant funding was indicated in 34% of the articles, with NSERC and CIHR being top funders. The research-intensive U15 universities were found to publish more in predatory journals than their non-U15 compatriots, even when the universities were of similar size. Discussion Canadian scholars were found to publish in predatory journals, particularly those scholars from the health sciences and research-intensive U15 universities. Grant funding was common, and often came from high profile funders like NSERC and CIHR. This exploratory suggests that policy and education initiatives may be warranted in Canadian contexts, especially in the health sciences and at research-intensive universities.

Campaigning in Quebec Municipal Elections: When the Party Defines Door to Door Canvassing as “The Right Way” to Campaign

Electoral campaigns are one of the key moments in political life. Yet, there is little Canadian work on this subject when it comes to municipal elections. However, the international literature on campaigning provides an opportunity for useful questions on the transformations of this aspect of local political life by bringing together political sociology and electoral sociology. That being said in this context, we present the results of an exploratory case study of campaigning in a municipal political party in a Canadian city, more specifically situated in the Province of Quebec. Municipal political parties are usually considered as electoral machines. It is therefore important to study in detail the way these organizations conduct election campaigns. More specifically, we are looking to explore how municipal political parties influence the campaign by providing electoral techniques. To achieve this, we closely examine the door to door canvassing strategy, which hints at what the party considers a “good campaigning” standard and helps us observe the behaviours of candidates and the different ways they fulfill the party’s requirements. It is therefore not a question of measuring the effectiveness of partisan electoral devices but of understanding how the party produces campaigning norms and puts them to work. The results presented here offer an original insight into the internal workings of a municipal political party—something that has never before been documented in the Canadian context. First, they help to open the black box that is municipal political parties and to better understand their internal modus operandi. Second, the results illustrate that election campaigning is still fundamentally based on one-on-one encounters.

Blatant Dehumanization is Not Influenced by Dual Identity Labels: Evidence from the Canadian Context

Blatant dehumanization has been shown to be prevalent in modern society. However, little work has explored the possible ways in which blatant dehumanization may be attenuated. The current study addresses this gap in the literature by exploring if activating a dual identity attenuates (or even erases) blatant dehumanization. To investigate these issues, Canadian participants completed the “Ascent of Man” scale, rating various groups in terms of their perceived evolutionary qualities. Half of our participants saw labels with the qualifier “-Canadians” attached, while the other half saw no such qualifier. Results showed that, regardless of whether the “-Canadians” label was provided, participants rated Filipinos, Christians, Arabs, Muslims, and Indigenous groups as significantly lower than Whites on the evolution scale. As such, provision of the additional group label “-Canadians” did not influence the manifestation of blatant dehumanization. We also found that ratings on the evolution scale significantly correlated with both Social Dominance Orientation and Empathic Concern levels, such that stronger adherence to current power structures and social hierarchies showed stronger blatant dehumanization, while those with a high pre-disposition for altruistic behaviours and emotions showed weaker blatant dehumanization. We discuss our results in the light of other research on blatant dehumanization and intergroup processes.