For many institutions, to ignore your university’s ranking is to become invisible, a risky proposition in a competitive search for funding. But rankings tell us little if anything about the education, scholarship, or engagement with communities offered by a university. Drawing on a range of research and inquiry-based methods, Global University Rankings and the Politics of Knowledge exposes how universities became servants to the education industry and its impact.Conceptual...

Course Syllabi in Faculties of Education problematizes one of the least researched phenomena in teacher education, the design of course syllabi, using critical and decolonial approaches. This book looks at the struggles that scholars, policy makers, and educators from a diverse range of countries including Australia, Canada, India, Iran, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the USA, and Zambia face as they design course syllabi in higher education settings. The chapter authors argue th...

Higher Education Institutions simultaneously critique and participate in national and international rankings of universities. However, this creates a difficult situation since if universities do participate in rankings they acquiesce to a system based in media logics that has little to do with academic norms of research. If they do not participate in the rankings they risk losing public funding, students and donors in an increasingly competitive and globalized environment. This book delves...

Drag kings and sea monsters, switchblade travellers and teacup ghosts—these stories and poems are a mixture of the mundane and the bizarre. Here you’ll find true tales of a son’s death and a girl’s first heartbreak, stories that range from the minutely personal to the transcendently universal.Words are only words until the writer, like an alchemist, blends them with sweat and self-reckoning to create something out of the ordinary. A community of 62 writers combine their words in em...

Politicians and public managers utilize branding to communicate with the public as well as to position themselves within the ever-present media now so central to political and administrative life. They must further contend with stakeholders holding contradictory opinions about the nature of a problem, the desirable solutions , and the values at stake. Branding is used as a strategy to manage perceptions, motivate stakeholders, communicate clear messages in the media, and position policies ...

Everyone loves cats! What's not to love? In this book you will find 101 Hilarious jokes about the cats, and everything we enjoy laughing about our feline friends. Fill your days with laughter, give this book as a gift, or use it to entertain your loved ones. These punny jokes make great icebreakers and will lighten any mood. Great to use in a classroom, near events, or times when you just need a laugh.This collection of jokes is clean fun and family friendly, with no violence or of...

One of the CBC’s Best Books of the Year.A pregnancy test is taken at a wedding, a bad diagnosis leads a patient to a surprising outlook, and a civic holiday becomes a dystopian nightmare. By turns caustic, tender, and creepily hilarious, Sweet Affliction reveals the frailties, perversions, and resilience of Anna Leventhal’s cast of city-dwellers. Shiftless youths, a compulsive collector of cigarette butts, and a dying pet rat populate fifteen sharply-observed and d...

A concise introduction to crowdsourcing that goes beyond social media buzzwords to explain what crowdsourcing really is and how it works.Ever since the term “crowdsourcing” was coined in 2006 by Wired writer Jeff Howe, group activities ranging from the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary to the choosing of new colors for M&Ms have been labeled with this most buzz-generating of media buzzwords. In this accessible but authoritative account, grounded in...

Part of the popular Networked Cities series, Urban and Regional Technology Planning focuses on the practice of relational planning and the stimulation of local city-regional scale development planning in the context of the global knowledge economy and network society.Designed to offer scholars, practitioners, and decision makers studies on the ways of cities, technologies, and multiple forms of urban movement intersect and create the contemporary urban environment, Kenneth...

In the past ten years, Canadians have witnessed a renaissance in the delivery of government services. New service organizations are cropping up across the country and accomplishing extraordinary things. Efforts are being made to consult citizens on how to improve and integrate services. Considerable resources are being invested in measuring and showcasing performance improvement.This book probes the central dimensions of service reform efforts from a variety of perspectives and ans...

Grad Skool Rulz: Everything You Need to Know about Academia from Admissions to Tenure is for students in Ph.D. programs. These programs have a poor track record. Less than 50% of students who begin their Ph.D. program will leave with their degree. Many of those who graduate will needlessly spend a decade or more pursuing their degree.Grad Skool Rulz is designed to help you finish graduate school in a reasonable amount of time and successfully land that tenure track job. This book g...

Out of nowhere, three weeks ago, I picked up the phone to the sound of his soft, dewy inflection drawing out my name. My knees buckled, inflaming the itch at the back of my neck. He didn't have to identify himself. I knew.This man's hands encircled my hips like so many chains of love.Then he cleared his throat and said the thing: "I have AIDS."