A Triumph of Politics over Pedagogy? The Case of the Ontario Teacher Qualifying Test, 2000-2005
At a time when most American states have embedded an initial certification test into their teacher preparation programs, Canadian educational authorities are faced with a choice: to test or not. One province, Ontario, has experimented with a standardized entry-to-the- profession testing instrument. For three years, 2002-04, teacher candidates were required to take an externally-administered examination, on top of the normal Bachelor of Education requirements, prior to certification. The results were decidedly mixed: politically viable, but pedagogically questionable. Now, the debate has been re-opened, as a new government seeks a more effective form of entry-level assessment for aspiring teachers.
A new admission system model for teacher colleges
Purpose 
 
 
 
 
Aspects of intellectual competence would not be sufficient for quality teaching that requires a mix of intellectual and personal qualities. The purpose of this paper was to elicit personal attributes of teachers’ college applicants. 
 
 
 
 
Design/methodology/approach 
 
 
 
 
This qualitative case study consisted of 99 participants aged 20-24 years of average socio-economic and achievement backgrounds. The authors constructed five qualitative tools, in addition to the two existing standardized exams. Using techniques of the grounded theory, the authors sorted and synthesized the data through three-phase coding. 
 
 
 
 
Findings 
 
 
 
 
The authors elicited a general concept map of attributes, from which a personal attribute profile for each participant emerged. This model makes fine differentiations between individuals, providing a personal attribute profile pool of applicants useful for any admission committee and for empowering students’ strengths during studies. 
 
 
 
 
Research limitations/implications 
 
 
 
 
A solid database of non-cognitive attributes opens the door to further research, which will take into consideration multiple variables, such as student knowledge, beliefs and aptitudes. 
 
 
 
 
Practical implications 
 
 
 
 
Training teachers to apply research methodology into practice and limiting the length of tools make the mission possible, interesting and useful. Figuring out how to collect valid measures of such data about large numbers of college students would be a major challenge. 
 
 
 
 
Social implications 
 
 
 
 
As teachers occupy a central position in the educational enterprise, they become guardians of the country’s collective socio-cultural legacy. In the current context of teacher shortages, the authors offer a model that has the potential of improving recruitment of applicants for teaching and raising teacher quality. 
 
 
 
 
Originality/value 
 
 
 
 
No previous attempt that uses qualitative methodology for this purpose was found.
The denial of death and the out-of-the-body experience
The out-of-the-body experience is a phenomenon which continues to be reported and continues to be interpreted in many ways. It seems, however, that more attention is given to finding a spiritual base for this occurrence than a psychological understanding of it. This paper considers the psychological forces of denial as a suitable explanation for the OBE and suggests that these experiences may be understood as hallucinations caused by traumatic events rather than genuine previews of the afterlife. That is: “Do these people transcend their bodies and also time and space to acquire these experiences, or could it be that nothing has been transcended at all save the need to deny death and thus transcend its feared consequence, which is ‘not being’?”