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

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Notes

Educational policy has been central to the mission of OECD since the mid-1990s. In 2002 the Directorate for Education was formed with two core programs: the Centre for Educational Research and Innovation and the Education Policy Committee. The Association of Universities & Colleges of Canada and the HEQCO are members of the OECD Higher Education Program. The OECD, the Canadian government, and The Council of Ministers of Education Canada (chaired by the provincial Ministries of Education), work co-operatively, to construct expectations of knowledge creation in Canada. Such collaboration between national/regional institutional decision-makers and the international research and policy community is an increasingly common practice. They support neoliberal capitalism to maintain standardization and uniformity in order to ease the flow of capital necessary for member states to compete in a globalized economy (Coates 2012).

The COU, a membership organization of Ontario’s 20 publicly funded universities and the Royal Military College of Canada, facilitates discussion among members, advocates for issues pertaining to the universities, as well as coordinate shared services. One of COU’s purposes is to work closely with the provincial and federal governments to develop and improve public policies that help our universities deliver high-quality programs for students, and the research and innovation that impacts the social, cultural and economic well-being of Ontarians” (COU 2014). The Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations is an umbrella organization of twenty-eight member faculty associations representing 17,000 faculty members and academic librarians. It has dual focus of enhancing postsecondary education as well as advancing the interests of the confederation’s members (OCUFA 2014). The HEQCO, created in 2005, is an arm’s-length agency of the Government of Ontario that evaluates the postsecondary educational sector to provide policy recommendation to Ontario’s Minister of Training, Colleges and Universities evidence-based research about the postsecondary education system in Ontario is meant to enhance the access, quality, and accountability of Ontario’s colleges and universities (http://www.heqco.ca/en-CA/About%20Us/Pages/Home.as).