“Essential cogs in the innovation machine”: The discourse of innovation in Ontario educational reform

Teaching, Supervising, and Supporting PhD Students: Identifying Issues, Addressing Challenges, Sharing Strategies

“…Since then, we have seen deeper cuts to public funding for universities and students, imposition of quality assurance processes and reductive outcome measures, policy emphasis on timely completion, anxiety about what doctoral students will do after programs, pressure toward professionalization, and corporatization of university governance (Moffatt et al. ). According to Williams (), over the two decades from the 1980s to 2000s, while provincial governments’ contributions to university operating budgets declined from about 80 to 60 percent, university enrollment increased by 18 percent.…”

“…Innovation and productivity are often touted by authorities in Ontario as the answer to resolve incompatible goals of “gains in accessibility” and “improving the quality of higher education and the student experience in Ontario” on the one hand, and “creating savings” on the other” (Moffatt et al. :331). As the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations has warned, technocratic definitions of innovation and productivity are narrow and too often driven by the desire to reduce government investment in higher education and fail to account for the many important social and economic roles of the university (OCUFA :2).…”

“…For social science disciplines, these changes date back to the 1980s, when federal funding started to favor science, engineering, and medical programs in the name of tying knowledge to the market economy, leaving students in the social sciences and humanities with less access to financial support (Williams 2005). Since then, we have seen deeper cuts to public funding for universities and students, imposition of quality assurance processes and reductive outcome measures, policy emphasis on timely completion, anxiety about what doctoral students will do after programs, pressure toward professionalization, and corporatization of university governance (Moffatt et al 2016). According to Williams (2005), over the two decades from the 1980s to 2000s, while provincial governments' contributions to university operating budgets declined from about 80 to 60 percent, university enrollment increased by 18 percent.…”

“…Not surprisingly, one consequence of these changes is heavier workloads for faculty in the classroom as well as in the numbers of graduate supervisions. Faculty today, especially those in social science disciplines such as sociology, are faced with the impossible task of increasing productivity to deliver a quality education to more students with fewer resources (Moffatt et al 2016;OCUFA 2010). Particular to graduate education, we often have fewer colleagues to share supervisions as a result of new teachingstream hiring practices; we have less research funding available to train and support graduate students; and we have less time to provide the extra support needed by students who come into Sociology doctoral programs with increasingly varied academic and professional backgrounds.…”

Innovative methodologies between supply and demand

“…For example, Yeung (2010) called for the analysis of real educational needs and possibilities as opposed to the expectations of innovative methods, as well as, in general, a more humane and realistic approach in pro-innovation policies. Expectations are often set by seductive educational laws that do not take into account the complexity and contradictions within schools (Akin, 2016;Ellis et al, 2019;Moffatt et al, 2016;Simmie, 2014). Hence, there exist different notions of innovation used by educational communities (Cascón-Pereira et al, 2019) or, directly, the criticism of the prefabricated innovations that teachers must incorporate into their classes today (Altopiedi & Murillo-Estepa, 2010;Cañadel, 2018;Rivas et al, 2019).…”