Higher Education
Course Offerings

For complete list and details of Graduate Course Offerings click here (Registrar's Office).

The following list demonstrates the range of courses offered within the Higher Education Program.  Not all of the courses listed are offered in any given year.

TPS1801 H
The History of Higher Education in Canada: An Overview
An examination of selected themes in the history of Canadian higher education, including secularization, the experience of women, professionalization, student life and academic freedom.

TPS1802 Y
Theory in Higher Education
This course surveys different theoretical approaches to the study of higher education and knowledge construction focussing on key authors in each tradition.  Different theoretical perspectives in the higher education literature include the political economic, social psychological, critical (neomarxist, feminist, anti-racist, anti-colonial), and postmodern and poststructural, as well as writing based on scientific metaphors.  Students will begin to identify the often unarticulated theoretical assumptions of writing in higher education, as well as to examine how theory is used by various writers and researchers in this field.  The course is intended to assist students in choosing appropriate theoretical frameworks for their thesis or project research.

TPS1803 Y
Recurring Issues in Postsecondary Education
An examination of some of the many issues that have been characteristic of postsecondary education in the past and are likely to continue to be faced in the future.

TPS1805 H
The Community College
This course reviews the history and politics of the several categories of institutions that have borne the name "community college". Particular attention will be paid to the psychological, economic, and political assumptions that characterize the Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology in Ontario, past and present.

TPS1807 H
Strategic and Long-Range Planning for Postsecondary Systems
This course is designed to provide students with basic knowledge and skills in strategic planning as applied to college and university systems. Past and current efforts at planning for universities and community colleges at the provincial level in Ontario will be analysed and compared with counterpart activities in other jurisdictions of Canada and the United States. NOTE: This course with a systems focus complements TPS1811H, which has an institutional focus.

TPS1808 H
Research in Health Professional Education [RM]
This course addresses educational research approaches specifically in the health professions. It involves a critical examination of appropriate literature with respect to survey, qualitative, and quantitative research methods with the objective of enabling students to propose implementable research projects. NOTE: The course is designed for students enrolled in the M.Ed. specialization in health professional education.

TPS1809 H
Administration of Colleges and Universities
A study of the practice of management and administration in colleges and universities including: an examination of the processes of planning, organization, coordination, communication, control; decision-making practices; and the analysis of illustrative cases and present practices. The course will be organized mainly around case studies.

TPS1820 H
Special Topics in Higher Education: Applications in the Student Experience
This course will provide students an opportunity to apply knowledge, reflections and skills developed in the fall term course, "The Student Experience in Postsecondary Education", and their experiences working in areas related to student development and learning. Students will be required to engage in more in-depth critique of theories and scholarship focussing on student development and learning in postsecondary education; construct their own research projects; analyze data that speaks to the student experience in postsecondary education; and design and lead a course module on a theory and research-to-practice aspect of student learning and development. Portions of the course will follow the structure of Open Space Technology (Owen, 1997) which requires the co-creation of the course outline and approaches by students and the instructor.

TPS1820 H
Special Topics in Higher Education: The Student Experience in Postsecondary Education
This course will explore the theoretical and conceptual foundations of the student experience in postsecondary education. As well, we will study the nature of work in postsecondary education that supports students’ development and learning. Students in this course will review and critique published scholarship that addresses various components of the student experience. Students will work with (analyze and discuss) data from the National Survey of Student Engagement, an international survey that assesses the engagement of students along five domains that contribute to optimal learning in postsecondary education, and the Graduate and Professional Student Survey, as well as other assessment of the student experience, to better understand how to use data in making decisions to enhance the student experience. Students will create proposals, based on data and theory, to be submitted to campus units that will assist in those units enhancement of the student experience at the University of Toronto.

TPS1820 H
Special Topics in Higher Education: Issues in Policy Implementation and Institutional Change
This course will provide an opportunity to students to examine and reflect upon the complexity and dynamics of policy formulation, implementation, and institutional change. They will develop an understanding of the manner in which policy and reform objectives are received by the implementation agents at various levels; how the top-down guidelines are inevitably transformed by responses of the agents of change; and how processes of interpretation, negotiation, conflict, power politics, and compromise come into play in determining outcomes, intended and unintended. The course will entail examining these dynamics at different levels, progressively moving from the wider socio-political, cultural, and governance contexts within which policy is being formulated and institutional change envisaged, to the institutional responses to policy regimes, and down to the manner in which heads of departments and ‘street level’ agents manage and navigate the implementation.

TPS1820 H
Special Topics in Higher Education: Critical Pedagogies in Higher Education
This seminar critically explores the relationship between theory and practice in educational contexts. Poststructuralist accounts run throughout the seminar and specific attention is given to queer, postcolonial, and feminist pedagogies. A politics of identity is central to the course where we consider the various ways in which race, gender, sex, ability, sexuality, and class circulate in educational spaces. The vision of the course is threefold: expose current inequities in educational theories and practices; use a social justice framework to rework curriculum, teaching, and learning practices; and develop creative ways for thinking about critical pedagogies.

TPS1820 H
Special Topics in Higher Education: Research Universities in Contemporary Societies

TPS1820H <New> Fall 2011
Special Topics in Higher Education: Intersections of Bodies and Knowledge: Feminist Marxisms and Poststructuralisms - Dr. Jamie-Lynn Magnusson
The inspiration to develop this course comes from the many extraordinary women of colour who have changed how we think about education and its links to communities. In particular I wanted to develop a course that brought together writings that paid attention to feminist intersectional analysis, and that worked from marxian perspectives. However, working from a marxian perspective involves also understanding poststructuralist critique, and, as a materialist thinker, how to locate and work with key poststructuralist writers and their texts. This course is oriented to creating new knowledge and new curricula in the interest of democratizing educational spaces.

TPS1828 H
Evaluation in Higher Education
The course examines models, methods, and concerns. Several levels of evaluation will be looked at (student learning; evaluation of instructor and course; program and institutional evaluation). Students will be required to write one short and one long paper and be encouraged to participate in class discussions. During class there will be practice in planning evaluations.

TPS1836 H
Critical Analysis of Research in Higher Education (RM)
This course will focus on the critical analysis of interdisciplinary research conducted within the higher education context. Participants will begin with an exploration of the fundamental characteristics and underlying theories of quantitative, qualitative and mixed mode research methodologies, and the strengths and limitations of each in relation to issues relevant to higher education. Building on this foundation, the participants will analyze and critique publications and theses reporting higher education research. Recommendations and implications suggested in these documents will be critiqued with respect to their potential impact on decisions made by organizational leaders with respect to equity issues, policies and procedures. Finally, participants will develop a sound research proposal that could conceivably be conducted within the higher education context.

TPS1837 H
Environmental Health, Transformative Higher Education and Policy Change: Education Toward Social
In this course, environmental health is framed as a field of research, education, policy and advocacy endeavours that links the natural, health and social sciences with the worlds of the academy, community, business, economics, labour, governments and media. It includes physical, social, cultural, spiritual and societal relationships which are multidirectional and interlinked with the health and well being of all life. In the context of transformative higher education, the course will help students to develop critical thinking, investigative, analytical and practical skills to better understand the constraints of scientific certainty and uncertainty in today's complex world in order to address lifestyle as well as public policy changes. The issues are framed within the broad socioenvironmental perspectives on health promotion reflected in the goals of the Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion - strengthening community action, developing personal skills, creating supportive environments, helping in skills development to educate, enable, mediate and advocate. Readings will include selected works by Steingraber, Colborn, Hancock, Chu, Bertell, Davis, CELA/OCFPEHC, IJC, Van Esterik and Health Canada.

TPS1848 H
Innovative Curricula in Higher Education and the Professions
This course explores how educators in higher education and professional programs approach curriculum development from an innovative perspective. Curriculum theories, philosophic perspectives in the literature, and current realities in the classroom will be explored. Curriculum challenges with respect to access, quality and funding in higher education will be identified and analyzed, and innovative strategies for addressing these challenges will be generated.