LIKE SO MANY FAMILIES and children around the world, Canadians are looking with relief to a more open, carefree summer and normal return to school later this year. But after 18 months of profound disruption, will “normal” be good enough? Are we on track to set all children up for success in a world that often seems more uncertain – and unequal – than ever before?
This article begins by examining how Canadian schools have fared during COVID-19 compared to those in other jurisdictions. We then turn to evidence-based ways that educators can ensure a better, stronger, and more equitable start in September 2021.
While students are less likely to contract or die from COVID, around the world their lives have been deeply disrupted by the pandemic. At its peak, schools serving 1.6 billion students were closed. Today, UNESCO’s global tracker shows that, a year into the crisis, “partial opening” is the norm. Overall, North American schools were closed in whole or in part for online learning for longer durations than experienced in most other parts of the world.
A sobering reality of the COVID-19 schooling experience is that even the best-resourced and highest-performing education systems in the world have heightened their tendency to privilege better-off children (UN Secretary General, 2020; OECD, 2020). Students from households with greater levels of connectivity, higher levels of parental education, greater availability of parental time for engagement, and in-home availability of books and materials have much better ability to access and benefit from distance learning.
In Canada as elsewhere, responses to COVID-19 have led to a patchwork of educational offerings. While students in Atlantic Canada and British Columbia have largely enjoyed face-to-face instruction, in other parts of Canada, students continue to experience periods of full-time or blended online learning from home. “Virtual schools” – intended as an emergency response – are a new feature of the landscape in Ontario and Alberta. Across the country, sports and extracurricular activities that build engagement and keep kids active have been paused.
Connectivity has not saved us. Access to broadband is not considered an essential service in Canada; coverage is both expensive and sometimes unavailable, especially in rural areas. Schools in some jurisdictions are still struggling to deliver appropriate devices to students. Stories abound of Canadian children who, one year into the pandemic, have limited bandwidth, are using old technologies, and are functioning without microphones or earphones. It is common to hear of kids whose attendance has dropped, who are disengaged, or who are missing from school altogether.
A growing body of large-scale international evidence shows that educational disruptions today and during other periods have caused impacts both on students’ academic achievement, and on their social and emotional well-being. Virtually all large-scale studies in OECD countries during COVID-19 (including from Belgium, the Netherlands, England, and the U.S.), have shown that students’ learning has fallen behind where it would have been for their age and grade levels in previous years. Overall, math scores have declined more than scores in literacy-related assessments and the youngest learners seem to have lost the most ground (Bailey, 2021; Education Endowment Foundation, n.d.).
For example, one U.S. study of over 400,000 students showed that the proportion of students starting Grade 1 two years or more behind grade level had risen from 27 percent to 40 percent. “As a result, a hypothetical school that needed to offer intensive intervention to 100 students in the fall of 2019 is faced with making up for the lost instruction for 148 students in 2020.”(mClass/Amplify, 2020).
Other studies from past crises and disruptions are even more concerning. These show that learning gaps can continue to grow even after schools return to normal (Andrabi et al., 2020). Further, school disruptions can have harsh cumulative effects, lowering chances of secondary completion and reducing labour market earnings of affected children many years later (Jaume & Willlen, 2019).
Perhaps most importantly, COVID-19 will not impact students equally. Recent studies show larger average gaps for relatively disadvantaged students, such as those living in low-income households or where parents have less education, or additional language learners. In the U.S., which tracks measures of racial inequality, Black and Hispanic students are also, on average, further behind. When surveyed during COVID-19, these are the same populations of learners who report facing a larger number of barriers and disruptions to their learning; who have lower access to technology; and who report fewer opportunities to get support from an adult at home or in the school (Chu & Lake, 2021).
In Canada, we know that all our kids are under strain. But we have little empirical evidence, beyond immediate experience, to tell us how our kids are doing overall, much less to spotlight where equity gaps are most severe. For the most part, large-scale provincial assessments and high-quality comparable surveys of student well-being are not available. Small-scale studies – such as one conducted recently in Alberta, and a recent report from the Toronto District School Board – show significant year-on-year gaps in early reading proficiency (Johnson, 2021; Alphonso, 2021). Education budgets and plans for the 2021 school year are being settled now, before school boards and higher educational institutions have begun to release data on school attendance, graduation, and applications to post-secondary education. Already, we can see that this lack of data on equity and other vulnerabilities is leading to a limited focus on educational recovery in planning and budget processes for 2021/2022. In this sense, Canadian educational systems may be flying blind.
Yet even before COVID-19, we knew that Canadian students from households in the bottom income quintile across Canada achieved the equivalent of one year less of schooling than students from households in the top income quintile. A recent study suggests that in many Canadian jurisdictions, the average student from a low-income household does not leave compulsory school with the skills needed to proceed to post-secondary education (Haek & Lefebvre, 2020).
In summary: International evidence and recent trends in Canada suggest that harms from COVID-19 will almost certainly exacerbate educational inequality. COVID-19 has disrupted learning and wellbeing for most students in Canada – but its impacts are unlikely to be evenly distributed.
Around the world, countries have responded to the educational needs created by COVID-19-related disruptions with programs and initiatives that aim to jump-start learning and support social and emotional well-being for those students most disadvantaged by the pandemic. For example:
These examples suggest a strong focus internationally on academic catch-up programs. We know less about what governments are doing to ensure that schools adjust to meet the social and emotional needs of kids, an area that research suggests is of great importance after the widespread trauma of the past year (Hough & Witte, 2021).
Apart from a few small or failed initiatives, it appears that Canadian policymakers are just beginning to think about how to redress the impacts of COVID-19 on student learning and well-being. Quebec recently announced a program to hire online tutors to support struggling students; while B.C. has announced a $23-million supplement for vulnerable learners that could cover tutoring, mental health support, or additional staff hiring.
In many parts of the country, community organizations have stepped in with academic and other kinds of support. But a federal program that promised to provide funding for university-level volunteers, with enormous potential for serving the needs of disadvantaged students, fell apart in the shadow of scandal, leaving the energies of tens of thousands of registered volunteers untapped.
It will take a whole-of-society effort to ensure Canadian students make a successful return to school in September 2021. We already know that the economic challenges faced by some households are intensifying, and that national and provincial budgets are likely to contract. Policymakers will need to focus on a few cost-effective ideas to guide their actions. Research points us in three main directions:
Summer learning programs – especially those that utilize trained teachers, structured pedagogy, enrichment experiences, and high levels of teacher-student engagement – have been shown to provide strong gains in learning (Alexander et al., 2016). Even modest efforts to promote learning over the summer months can be effective. For example, Harvard’s summer learning program mailed ten books to students over the summer, matched to students’ reading interests, with email/texts to parents. This simple program was shown to promote more than one month of gains in reading skills.
Tutoring – through one to one or small group instruction – is also highly effective, especially when based on sustained relationships between a tutor and student, and when using good-quality materials aligned to classroom instruction. Even programs offered by volunteers, peers, or family members, when trained, produce surprisingly strong outcomes for kids ranging from stronger academic performance to increased confidence and self-efficacy. Such programs need to be designed with equity in mind – but can also benefit from inclusion of all students in a grade level to reduce any negative stigma and ensure broader organizational commitment (Robinson et al., 2021).
Much more can be done to tilt our education systems toward greater equity post-COVID. We need our education leaders to plan beyond a return to the normal in September 2021. Promising strategies include: starting where kids are, rather than where they are supposed to be; leveraging the engagement of parents and communities; and providing new opportunities for kids to get up to grade level. Each of these holds a key to a successful return to school for Canadian students, regardless of social advantage.
Watch the full webinar related to this article:
Alexander, K., Pitcock, S., & Boulay, M. (Eds.). (2016). The summer slide: What we know and can do about summer learning loss. Teachers College Press.
Alphonso, C. (2021, March 26). Early years literacy has suffered: Signs of pandemic consequences from Canada’s largest school board. Globe and Mail. www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/toronto/article-early-years-literacy-has-suffered-signs-of-pandemic-consequences-from/
Andrabi, T., Daniels, B., & Das, J. (2020). Human capital accumulation and disasters: Evidence from the Pakistan earthquake of 2005. RISE Working Paper Series 20/039.
https://doi.org/10.35489/BSG-RISE-WP_2020/039
Bailey, J. (2021). Is it safe to re-open schools? An extensive review of the research. Center on Reinventing Public Education.
www.crpe.org/publications/it-safe-reopen-schools
Chu, L., & Lake, R. (2021). The kids are really (not) alright: A synthesis of COVID-19 student surveys. Center on Reinventing Public Education. www.crpe.org/sites/default/files/final_ep_student_survey_synthesis.pdf
Education Endowment Foundation. (n.d.). Best evidence on the impact of COVID on learning.
https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/covid-19-resources/best-evidence-on-impact-of-school-closures-on-the-attainment-gap/
Jaume, D., & Willén, A. (2019, October). The long-run effects of teacher strikes: Evidence from Argentina. Journal of Labor Economics, 37(4), 1097–1139.
Haeck, C., & Lefebvre, P. (2020). Trends in cognitive skill inequalities by socioeconomic status across Canada.
https://grch.esg.uqam.ca/wp-content/uploads/sites/82/Haeck_Lefebvre_GRCH_WP20-04_1-1.pdf
Hough, H., & Witte, J. (2021). Evidence-based practices for assessing students’ social and emotional well-being. EdResearch for Recovery Brief No. 13. https://annenberg.brown.edu/sites/default/files/EdResearch_for_Recovery_Brief_13.pdf
Johnson, L. (2021, March 12.) Alberta Education research aims to track learning loss during COVID-19. Edmonton Journal.
https://edmontonjournal.com/news/politics/alberta-education-research-aims-to-track-learning-loss-during-covid-19.
Murray, V., Jacobson, R., & Gross, B. (2021). Leveraging community partnerships for integrated student support, Ed Research for Recovery Brief 14. Brown University Annenberg Center.
mClass/Amplify. (2020). Instructional loss due to COVID-19 disruptions. Amplify Education.
https://amplify.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/mCLASS_Flyer_CovidBrief-LearningLoss_v8.pdf
OECD. (2020). Lessons for education from COVID-19.
www.oecd.org/education/lessons-for-education-from-covid-19-0a530888-en.htm
OECD. (2021). Canada coronavirus education country note.
http://www.oecd.org/education/Canada-coronavirus-education-country-note.pdf.
Robinson, C., Kraft, M., & Loeb, S. (2021). Accelerating student learning with high-dosage tutoring. EdResearch for Recovery, Brown University Annenberg Center. https://annenberg.brown.edu/sites/default/files/EdResearch_for_Recovery_Design_Principles_1.pdf
Srivastava, P., Cardini, A. et al. (2020). COVID-19 and the global education emergency: Planning systems for recovery and resilience [Policy brief] G-20 Insights.
www.g20-insights.org/policy_briefs/covid-19-and-the-global-education-emergency-planning-systems-for-recovery-and-resilience/
UN Secretary General. (2020). Policy brief: Education during COVID-19 and beyond [Policy brief]. United Nations.
www.un.org/sites/un2.un.org/files/sg_policy_brief_covid-19_and_education_august_2020.pdf
Winthrop, R. (2020). Can new forms of parent engagement be an education game changer post-COVID-19? The Brookings Institution.
www.brookings.edu/blog/education-plus-development/2020/10/21/can-new-forms-of-parent-engagement-be-an-education-game-changer-post-covid-19
Winthrop, R. (2020). COVID-19 and school closures: What can countries learn from past emergencies? The Brookings Institution.
https://www.brookings.edu/research/covid-19-and-school-closures-what-can-countries-learn-from-past-emergencies/
Wednesday, May 19 at 1pm ET on Zoom | One-hour webinar
Presented by Karen Mundy and Kelly Gallagher-Mackay
Like so many families and children around the world, Canadians are looking with relief to a more open, carefree summer and normal return to school later this year. But after 18 months of profound disruption – will ‘normal’ be good enough? Are we on track to set all children up for success in a world that often seems more uncertain – and unequal – than ever before?
This webinar, sponsored by online learning toolmaker IPEVO, will examine how Canadian schools have fared during COVID19 compared to those in other jurisdictions. We then turn to evidence-based ways that educators can ensure a better, stronger, and more equitable start in September 2021.
If you sign up to receive special offers by email from both the EdCan Network and IPEVO, your name will be added into a draw at the end of this webinar to get one of two IPEVO Document Cameras!
Karen Mundy is a Professor of Education Leadership and Policy at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto (OISE/UT). An expert on educational reform in lower-income countries, she is also an advocate and parent committed to improving educational equity in Canadian schools. She recently launched an academic support program that partners OISE volunteers with underserved students in the Toronto District School Board.
Kelly Gallagher-Mackay is an Assistant Professor at Wilfrid Laurier University. Past roles include Research Director at the Future Skills Centre and at People for Education, and Northern Director of Akitsiraq Law school in Nunavut. She has two kids in public school.
IPEVO is a design-driven company dedicated to creating teaching, learning, presentation, and communication tools for the connected world, with a focus on Document Cameras. IPEVO has been leading the communication and visual transmission industry for more than 10 years and it is the number one choice for educators across the globe.
Published by the EdCan Network in partnership with
On a global scale, we’re faced with complex societal and environmental challenges such as climate change, poverty, inequality and environmental degradation that we must address in order to achieve a more sustainable future for all. The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) lay out 17 action areas aimed at sustaining life (both human and non-human), ending poverty, and achieving social justice. These are the building blocks of global well-being.
For educators, the SDGs have enormous educational importance and potential. They offer cross-curricular relevancy and invaluable learning opportunities for students to discover their crucial role in solving local, regional, and global problems, starting in their own community. Simultaneously, education ministries, school districts and school communities will discover that engaging with the SDGs can support students in the important goal of acquiring the six pan-Canadian Global Competencies identified by the Council of Ministers of Education, Canada (CMEC), to equip them to thrive in and shape their world.
In this issue, we explore how educators can engage students to become active global citizens and authentically address global issues in empowering and hopeful ways.
Cover photo: courtesy MCIC
Whew. We made it through the winter. For many of you it has been, professionally and/or personally, the hardest winter ever. But with vaccination underway and warm weather ahead, we think we see light at the end of the COVID-19 tunnel.
After a year that forced educators to teach, or lead, reactively in response to a mountain of new challenges, we thought it might be a welcome change to look forward to a more aspirational approach to teaching and learning. Yes, there are ongoing and critical COVID issues. But we can also start thinking about how to re-engage students, build school community and make education the best training ground possible for our future leaders and citizens.
Taking on the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), whether as a school or as a class, is an exciting way to address all three of these goals. I like to think of this issue as a seed catalogue. The catalogue arrives when it’s still too cold to plant, but it conjures up big dreams for gardening season. We hope this issue will sow lots of ideas, and also lead you to the resources to develop them into a real plan. How great would it be to cover the curriculum in a way that engages students in real-world problems, encourages them to claim a stake in making the world a better place, and develops essential competencies in the process?
The authors in this issue are in the vanguard of integrating the SDGs into Canadian schooling, and part of an international network of educators who are helping to achieve these ambitious Agenda 2030 goals while providing their students with a positive, empowering opportunity to learn about and take action on global issues that are also urgent problems here at home, such as clean drinking water for Indigenous communities, homelessness, climate change, food insecurity, and racial inequities. See how other schools have taken on one or more of the goals in our article on UNESCO Schools, from our partners at CCUNESCO (p. 11). Or dive right into the features to learn about what the UN SDGs are, why they present such a great opportunity for educators, and how to integrate the SDGs into your classroom and school.
I hope this issue inspires educators, schools, and school boards to start planning how they might get involved in this world-changing initiative – and sow the seeds for a sustainable future.
Photo: courtesy MCIC
Read other articles from this issue
We want to know what you think. Send your comments and article proposals to editor@edcan.ca – or join the conversation by using #EdCan on Twitter and Facebook.
BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour) K-12 students and staff experience lower levels of wellbeing. Yet, a growing focus on wellbeing approaches such as mindfulness, social-emotional learning, trauma-informed practices, and self-regulation can have harmful effects on racialized students and educators and may lead to cultural appropriation (i.e. adopting aspects of a culture that’s not your own). These approaches to wellbeing often don’t take into consideration the unique experiences and perspectives of BIPOC students and staff.
Wellbeing is systemic. When wellbeing is understood as one individual’s experience, it fails to account for the harmful effects of systemic racism, White supremacy, and colonialism that create unwelcoming, exclusionary, and unsafe environments for BIPOC students. This approach absolves systems from taking any responsibility in creating and perpetuating harm, which could look like:
1) There is no one-size-fits-all approach. Place identity – such as race, gender, sexuality, abilities, social class, and faith – at the center of approaches to student and staff wellbeing.
2) Avoid taking individual approaches to wellbeing that place both the source and solution of wellbeing with individuals and instead take a more systemic approach. This includes identifying and disrupting structures and policies that have had disproportionate effects on access, opportunity, and outcomes for BIPOC students and staff.
3) Connect with students, staff, families, and communities in meaningful ways to understand the experiences of institutional harm (e.g. residential schools).
4) Embed multiple understandings and approaches of wellbeing that value the physical, social, emotional, cognitive, and spiritual needs of students and staff.
By not acknowledging the depth and breadth of systemic racism, we end up focusing on symptoms rather than the root causes of achievement and wellbeing, while expecting individual students and staff members to overcome the numerous structural barriers placed before them. When schools take a systemic approach, they instead identify and take action to change the ways in which student and staff wellbeing is impacted by anti-Black, anti-Indigenous, and other forms of racism. Every student and educator deserves to feel safe, valued, and know that they belong at school.
Anti-racism: the active identification and elimination of racism and intersecting forms of oppression, by changing systems, structures, policies, practices and attitudes, for the equitable redistribution of power and resources.
Streaming means that students are placed into groups defined by their ability levels. Students may be grouped by ability either for a subject (for example for mathematics or reading) or for all or almost all their instruction. Students’ assignment to an ability group may be temporary, changing during the year, or relatively permanent.
White supremacy refers to a political, economic and cultural system in which Whites overwhelmingly control power and material resources, conscious and unconscious ideas of White superiority and entitlement are widespread, and relations of White dominance and non-White subordination are daily re-enacted across a broad array of institutions and social settings (Ansley as cited in Gillborn, 2016, p. 48).
Colonialism: systems and practices that seek to impose the will of one people on another and to use the resources of the imposed people for the benefit of the imposer. Colonialism can operate within political, sociological, economic and cultural values and systems of a place even after occupation by colonizers has ended (Assante, 2006).
Dei, G.J.S. (2008). Schooling as community: Race, schooling, and the education of African youth. Journal of Black Studies, 38(3), 346-366.
Dion, S. (2014). The listening stone: Learning from the Ontario Ministry of Education’s First Nations, Métis and Inuit–focused collaborative inquiry 2013-2014. http://www.ontariodirectors.ca/downloads/Listening_Stone/Dion_LS_Final_Report%20Sept_10-2014-2.pdf
James, C. E. (2012). Students “at risk”: Stereotyping and the schooling of black boys. Urban Education, 47(2), 464-494.
James, C.E. & Turner, T. (2017). Towards race equity in education: The schooling of Black students in the Greater Toronto Area. https://edu.yorku.ca/files/2017/04/Towards-Race-Equity-in-Education-April-2017.pdf?x60002
Thompson, R. (2020, Sept. 29). Addressing trauma in the K-12 workplace: The impact of racial trauma on Black and non-white educators. https://www.edcan.ca/articles/addressing-racism-in-the-k-12-workplace/
COVID-19 shook up our ingrained ways of “doing education” and has pushed educators, students, and parents to their limits. It opened up new possibilities and revealed deep inequities. Now it’s time to get “back on track.” But which track? We asked two prominent Canadian educational thinkers to share their vision, both immediate and longer-term, for education in the post-pandemic. Read also “Shore Up the Foundations for Future-Proof Education,” by Paul W. Bennett.
Two recurring public pronouncements still ring out from the early days of the pandemic: “We’re all in this together,” and “Can’t wait for things to get back to normal.” Simply put, there is no way we should revert to the old normal. More people than ever now know what some already knew before COVID-19. There are deeply embedded obstacles in the way for far too many to participate equitably in what society has to offer. All in this together should be an aspiration, not a false claim of where we’ve been and where we are now. Getting back to normal? Really? When it comes to education, the curtain has been pulled back to clearly reveal that chronic challenges for too many students mean that a vastly new normal is necessary.
Any discussion about the future of education should begin with the end game, a conversation about its ultimate purpose(s). Any input that I offer is informed by my view that education should ensure that the future is healthier, safer, more just, and prosperous for the many rather than the elite few. We need to start with imagining that better future. How about this superb example:1
“Imagine it’s 2041 and a group of publicly educated 20-year-olds from across Ontario have been asked how they feel about the years they spent in school. The conversation is animated and positive. They say school made them feel like they belonged. It nurtured their compassion for themselves and others. It helped them grow from their mistakes. It welcomed their contributions. And it prepared them for a world of constant change. They say these things regardless of the school they attended, the colour of their skin, their sexual identity, the faith they practice, their physical or intellectual abilities, the teachers they had or the home they grew up in. Though they came from different places, their shared experience of education was one of caring, inclusion and excellence.”
When it comes to most of the complex issues of the day – climate change, health and well-being, racism, our democratic processes, and public communications that seem to divide rather than bring about consensus – education is always noted as the force for improvement. Former head of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Murray Sinclair, regarding the devastating and recurring consequences of residential schools, noted that “Education got us into this mess and education will get us out of it.” Let’s make sure it does!
At this point, we need widespread, diverse, and transparent conversations regarding the future of education. As suggested, people and organizations should start with their view of the end game. What follows is informed by mine.
Given my overarching aspiration for education as the driver for that better future, what should receive priority attention?
A big problem with government policymaking, including processes that have an impact on education, is that the lens for change is microscopic rather than telescopic. Put differently, policymaking too often suffers from what I call hardening of the categories. We will not be able to reach the promises of a new normal in education unless we ensure that critical issues such as income distribution and wage policies, sick leave, affordable housing, child care, and parental leave are part of a holistic and integrative approach by governments. We need governments to think and act horizontally when it comes to policy development and program development. Regarding child care, for example, many have advocated for decades that high-quality, developmentally enriching, non-profit and universal child care should be seen, developed, and implemented as an extension of our education systems.
The pandemic, by necessity, has loosened the constitutionally driven ownership of educational responsibilities by the provinces and territories with short-term cash infusions by the federal government to assist their local “partners” with COVID-related school health and safety issues. Unfortunately, Canada continues its lonely global existence as a country without a federal department of education. Naturally, education needs to serve local cultural and environmental differences, but shouldn’t it mean the same to be a student in Melville, Sask., St. John’s, Nfld., or Toronto? How is it possible that we do not have federal leadership when it comes to the most important nation-building lever for our better future? It’s time for a Canadian Royal Commission on Learning!
It is an understatement to acknowledge that educators, and all those who support them, are treasured essential servant leaders who can take us to that better place for the many. Leadership matters. And to all those who have responsibilities in and around our education systems, I will let Alfred Lord Tennyson have the last word:
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
‘Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Leading from the Inside Out
Hard-earned lessons from education, government and… baseball
By Charles Pascal
Onyx Publishing, December 2020
Photo: Adobe Stock
1Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board Bullying Prevention and Intervention Review Panel. (2021).
www.hwdsb.on.ca/about/safe-schools-review-panel
COVID-19 shook up our ingrained ways of “doing education” and has pushed educators, students, and parents to their limits. It opened up new possibilities and revealed deep inequities. Now it’s time to get “back on track.” But which track? We asked two prominent Canadian educational thinkers to share their vision, both immediate and longer-term, for education in the post-pandemic. Read also “With Education’s Better Future in Mind,” by Charles E. Pascal.
The global shock of the COVID-19 pandemic turned the K–12 education world upside down and then unleashed a succession of school disruptions. United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, speaking in August 2020, predicted that the effects of the pandemic were destined to become a “generational catastrophe” in education (UNESCO, 2020). Since then, the full extent of the learning slide affecting all students, and particularly the most disadvantaged, became more visible. Much like earlier studies generated in the Netherlands, the U.K., and the U.S., the first wave of Canadian research reports and surveys testify to the combined academic and psycho-social impacts on children and families (Bennett, 2021).
Seeing the impact of school disruptions first-hand in her home, Nancy Small, a Vancouver mother of two increasingly tuned-out school-age children, cut to the heart of the matter: “Our kids are falling behind.” While the educational damage varies along regional, economic, and racial lines, there has been – until recently— little evidence of a coherent or coordinated plan to close the gaping “learning gap” and get today’s students back on track (Alphonso, 2021).
The COVID-19 pandemic shocks have exposed the fragility of the modern, centralized, top-down bureaucratic education state, identified and analyzed in my book, The State of the System. The massive disruption has also revealed the limitations of system-bound school change theories, conceived as hybrid “pedagogical and political projects,”(Fullan, 2009, 2021), ill-equipped to address the immediate crisis in K–12 education.
Education visionaries, school change theorists, and their academic allies were quick to offer up familiar ideas dipped in COVID-19 and accompanied by a beguiling “build back better” narrative (Chapman & Bell, 2020). The post-pandemic future, in their imagined world, will be a clash of two mutually-exclusive visions: social equality and student well-being versus austerity and academic standards – good versus bad. This is, as you will begin to see, a false dichotomy and a misreading of our current educational predicament.
A far better point of departure is provided in the World Bank’s report, COVID-19 Pandemic Shocks to Education (World Bank, 2020), surveying the collateral damage affecting school systems around the world. The immediate impacts were easier to spot, such as the economic and social costs, greater inequalities in access, and school-level health and safety concerns. Less so is the longer-term impact of “learning loss” and its worst-case mutation, “learning poverty,” marked by the inability to read and understand a simple text by ten years of age.
Shoring up the foundations has become a matter of urgent necessity. If we are facing a “generational catastrophe,” it’s time to reframe the challenges facing K–12 education. Teaching children how to read and to be functional in mathematics are now fundamental to social justice in pandemic times. Well-intentioned trauma-informed educational interventions, such as relaxing grading standards, suspending provincial tests, or reverting to pass-fail summative assessments, run the risk of perpetuating the cycle of diminished expectations, falling unevenly on learning-challenged or marginalized students.
Critical thinking remains the holy grail of K–12 education, but it’s hard to envision without a grounding in domain-specific knowledge. Equipping students with the content knowledge to think critically about a full range of important issues (Willingham, 2019) does not exemplify an “academic obsession” but rather a commitment to seeking deeper understanding. Nor are student well-being and academic success necessarily in conflict. At their best, and in the vast majority of today’s classroom, they are rather mutually reinforcing.
Educators looking for a more effective catch-up strategy would be well advised to challenge the prevailing narrative for two vitally-important reasons: 1) the mistaken assumption that an academic focus and student well-being are somehow incompatible; and 2) the gross underestimation of the realities of the “COVID slide” and learning loss compromising the future success of today’s pandemic generation of students (Engzell et al., 2020).
Confronting the magnitude of the crisis and solving the puzzle of what to do next can be daunting, so it is better to focus on a few more immediate, practical strategies. Establishing a clear and consistent focus on closing the learning gap does yield a few quick and proven learning recovery strategies. Most of the initial recovery strategies originated in the U.S., driven largely by independent research institutes such as the North West Education Association, Brookings Institution, and McKinsey & Company (Bennett, 2021). Countries with more experience coping with periodic disruptions are faring better and most of the lessons are coming from their school systems (Alphonso, 2021), most notably the Netherlands and Central European nations.
Academically-focused, supportive school environments and strong teacher-student relationships speed recovery from learning loss. Three strategies that have proven more effective (McKinsey & Company, 2021) are:
Top-down educational leadership has run its course and system-bound solutions will not work. The pandemic shutdown and continuing disruptions exposed what German sociologist Max Weber aptly termed the “Iron Cage” – a bureaucratic structure that traps individuals in an invisible web of order, rationality, conformity, and control (Bennett, 2020). We came to see how dependent students, teachers, and families were on provincial and school district directives. School shutdowns, delayed starts, shifting schedules, and unclear teacher expectations left students and teachers on their own to work out radically different home learning terms of engagement.
Building back the shaken and damaged system will involve confronting squarely the fragility and limitations of top-down, bureaucratic K–12 education. Cage-busting leadership will be required to transform our schools into more autonomous social institutions that, first and foremost, serve students, families, and communities. Challenging the technocratic ethos and language of “learnification” (Biesta, 2019) will be liberating for teachers and reduce the language barrier separating educators from parents. “Learners” will, once again, be students, “learning environments” will be classrooms, and “facilitating learning” recognized as the practice of teaching. Systemic reform will involve undertaking two fundamental structural changes: 1) the restoration of teaching-centred classrooms, and 2) the transition to community-focused, family-centric schools (Bennett, 2020).
Futuristic visions of technology-driven whole-system reform have always evoked skepticism among regular classroom teachers. Sitting around their kitchen tables helping their children with pandemic home learning has opened the eyes of thousands of parents to the everyday realities of technology-driven “21st century learning” and laid bare student skill deficits in mathematics and literacy. That may well explain why Big Ed Tech, exemplified by Google, Microsoft, and Pearson International, is finally attracting more critical scrutiny (Reich, 2020).
Imagining a better educational future may be inspirational, but what students, teachers, and families really need is “future proof” learning (Kirschner & Stoyanov, 2018). That term, coined by leading cognitive science expert Paul A. Kirschner, provides a viable and much-needed alternative to pursuing holistic, ill-defined “21st century skills” or embracing competency-based student graduation standards. The best way forward in pandemic times is deceptively simple: set aside the “21st century skills” panaceas in favour of “the acquisition of knowledge, skills, and attitudes necessary to continue to learn in a stable and enduring way in a rapidly changing world.”
Future-proof education is soundly based upon the science of learning and evidence-based research rather than sociological change theories. Redesigning schools and professionalizing teachers in 21st century learning strategies look attractive, but they are unlikely to make much difference and may produce heavier teaching workloads without really addressing our current educational crisis.
Cognitive learning specialists provide us with a far more reliable guide to how learning happens and the critical importance of working memory in the whole process. What Kirschner proposes is a three-stage approach:
The COVID-19 shocks to education will continue to reverberate in Canada’s K–12 schools in the near future. It’s a rescue mission and one that needs to begin by shoring up the foundations and putting the pandemic generation back on the path to sound education in purposeful schools, and better prepared to lead meaningful, productive lives.
The State of the System
A reality check on Canada’s schools
By Paul W. Bennett
MQUP, September 2020
Photo: Adobe Stock
Alphonso, C. (2021, Feb. 16). The COVID-19 grading curve: Schools rethink expectations for students who have lost time. The Globe and Mail.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-the-covid-19-grading-curve-schools-rethink-expectations-for-students/
Bennett, P. W. (2021, Feb. 1). How will the education system help students to recover from
learning loss? IRPP Policy Options.
https://policyoptions.irpp.org/magazines/february-2021/how-will-the-education-system-help-students-overcome-covid-learning-loss/
Biesta, G. (2019). Should Teaching be (Re)discovered? Studies in Philosophy and Education, 38,549–553.
Chapman, C., & Bell, I. (2020). Building back better education systems: Equity and COVID-19, Journal of Educational Capital and Community, 5(3/4), 227–236.
Engzell, P., Frey, A. & Verhagen, M. (2020, Aug. 28). Pre-analysis plan for: Learning inequality during the COVID-19 pandemic. https://osf.io/download/5f995b4687b7df03233b06fe/
Fullan, M. (2021). The right drivers for whole system success. Centre for Strategic Education.
Hargreaves, A. (2020). Austerity and inequality; or prosperity for all? Educational policy directions beyond the pandemic. Educational Research for Policy and Practice, 20, 3–10.
Kirschner, P. A. & Stoyanov, S. (2018). Educating youth for nonexistent/not yet existing professions. Education Policy, 34(3).
Reich, J. (2020). Failure to disrupt: Why technology alone can’t transform education. Harvard University Press.
Willingham, D. T. (2020). How to teach critical thinking. NSW Department of Education.
World Bank. (2020). The COVID-19 pandemic: Shocks to education and policy responses. World Bank.
UNESCO. (2020, August 5). UN Secretary-General warns of education catastrophe, pointing to UNESCO estimate of 24 million learners at risk of dropping out. Press release No 2020–73.
When I think about the necessary steps to meet the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030, Indigenous rights and justice come to mind immediately. To me, it is clear that there can be no sustainable world without creating the conditions that allow Indigenous people to thrive.
Many of the objectives of the SDGs (such as a sustainable world for future generations to inherit, responsible practices of consumption, strong partnerships, etc.) already align with the values and practices of most Indigenous nations, which, according to a 2018 United Nations report, make up only five percent of the global population, but protect more than 80 percent of the world’s biodiversity (Raygorodetsky, 2018). Not only this, but the emphasis that the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development puts on reducing inequalities “is of particular relevance to Indigenous peoples, who are almost universally in situations of disadvantage vis-à-vis other segments of the population” (United Nations, 2018). In Canada, Indigenous people are grossly overrepresented in every area of inequity.
Despite these clear points of connection, I think for some people, and certainly for many environmentalists, policy-makers, and educators I have known, emphasizing Indigenous people’s role in the SDGs is approached as an afterthought rather than as a necessity. This line of thinking and inaction is something we must change, especially in Canada, as progress on the SDGs lags – incredibly so when it comes to the state of Indigenous communities.
This is not to say that there has been a complete failure in the conversation about Indigenous people and the SDGs. Indeed, in Canada’s 2018 Voluntary National Review of Implementation, Indigenous people were mentioned under the progress reports for almost every one of the SDGs to date (Global Affairs Canada, 2018). However, I have long maintained that the degree to which Indigenous people are centred in conversations about the SDGs is insufficient. Moreover, I believe the approaches Canada and Canadians have taken to collaborate with Indigenous people thus far, are the wrong ones.
As of 2019, the primary approach Canada had taken to addressing Indigenous concerns regarding the SDGs was to “invest in existing Indigenous-focused programming relevant to each SDG and aim for greater consultation and collaboration with Indigenous people in every sector” (Yesno, 2019). None of these approaches are transformational. Consultation and increased dollars are not enough to bring about the changes Indigenous communities deserve or the impact the 2030 Agenda seeks to achieve; these types of changes necessitate a restructuring of power and jurisdiction; a provision of tools and capacity so Indigenous people can chart their own paths to self-determination.
Why self-determination? Because Indigenous people cannot protect the land if it is always under threat of seizure. They cannot pursue sustainable development practices if threats of mining, damming, pipelines, and other forms of extraction loom without consent. Indigenous people already have the knowledge to uphold sustainable relationships between ourselves and the natural world; we had been in harmonious relationships with the environment for a millennia before colonization. It is hard to pursue those ways of living though, ones which would benefit all people living in Canada, when we have to fight for basic rights at the same time. This is where education plays a critical role. As current and future generations navigate sustainability crises into 2030 and beyond, it is important they, too, see Indigenous rights as central to a sustainable world.
One of young people’s greatest strengths, I believe, is their ability to seek and embrace radical change – a skill that can be increasingly challenging for people as they age. Transforming Canada’s relationship with Indigenous people in the ways I have described above is a truly radical and momentous change. It will take an entire coming generation fighting for, and believing in, this change in order for it to be realized. It is up to current generations of educators, parents, thought-leaders, and policy-makers to help them understand this, emphasize the importance of building strong relationships with Indigenous people, and ultimately, guide them in this fight.
The SDGs offer a great entry point for discussions about the specific ways Indigenous people are left behind in this country, and how that might be able to change. Discussing SDG 5: Gender Equality? Highlight Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG). There is a whole list of action items necessary to address this inequality. Tackling SDG 6: Clean Water and Sanitation? Identify the dozens of Indigenous communities who lack reliable, clean water and the many Indigenous voices finding ways to overcome this challenge. Let young people know that Indigenous people all around them are fighting for their future as well as our own.
I should note that there are individuals all over the country, including educators, who are leading by example and already sharing this information in and out of the classroom. I know this because I have been lucky enough to be taught and mentored by such people. For those who have the essential job of educating and shaping young people, and want to do more to bring Indigenous justice to their work, the resources are already there – they are just waiting for you to embrace them. (See OISE, 2001; Gamblin, 2019; Yellowhead Institute, 2019, for starters.)
Overall, Indigenous rights and justice, especially the right to self-determination, needs to be a major priority as we collectively tackle the SDGs and address what feels like an increasingly precarious world; not only because it’s the moral thing to do, but because it is a critical part of the path forward. It is long time we realize that, ultimately, there is no sustainable future without Indigenous rights, and that we all have a role to play in ensuring that these rights are realized.
The United Nations (2015) said it well when they stated: “The future of humanity and of our planet lies in our hands. It lies also in the hands of today’s younger generation who will pass the torch to future generations. The road to sustainable development is already mapped; it will be for all of us to ensure that the journey is successful and its gains irreversible.”
Indigenous people have long been ready to embark on that journey; it is my hope that we can work together so the next generations will be ready too.
Photo: Adobe Stock
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Gamblin, R. (2019, November 4). LAND BACK! What do we mean? 4 Rs Youth Movement.
http://4rsyouth.ca/land-back-what-do-we-mean
Global Affairs Canada. (2018). Canada’s implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (pp. 1–148). Government of Canada.
Deepening Knowledge Project.(2001). Best practices for teaching Aboriginal students. Ontario Institute for Studies in Education.
www.oise.utoronto.ca/deepeningknowledge/UserFiles/File/UploadedAmina_/Best_Practices_for_Teaching_Aboriginal_Students.pdf
Raygorodetsky, G. (2018, November 19). Can indigenous land stewardship protect biodiversity? National Geographic.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2018/11/can-indigenous-land-stewardship-protect-biodiversity-/
United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs. (2015). Transforming our world: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. United Nations.
https://sdgs.un.org/2030agenda
United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs. (2018). Indigenous Peoples and the 2030 Agenda. United Nations.
https://bit.ly/3qZZ8wm
Yellowhead Institute. (2019, October 29). Land Back: A Yellowhead Institute Red Paper
https://redpaper.yellowheadinstitute.org
Yesno, R. (2019, June 11). UNDRIP and the SDGs: There’s no sustainable future without Indigenous rights. Alliance2030.
https://alliance2030.ca/undrip-and-the-sdgs-theres-no-sustainable-future-without-indigenous-rights/
Join us for a special virtual event focusing on the increasing importance of supporting social-emotional learning (SEL) amidst a global pandemic. This event will feature Avon Maitland District School Board in Ontario, who will be sharing their experience implementing and measuring SEL using Peekapak resources. The flexibility of Peekapak’s SEL in either remote or in-class formats makes it easy for educators to implement. This event is intended to help school administrators support their educators, and it will be recorded and available to all those who register.
Toronto, February 11, 2021 —The EdCan Network is pleased to launch – in partnership with the Canadian Commission for UNESCO (CCUNESCO), – an awareness campaign highlighting how educators can engage students in meaningful learning using the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). More teachers and students will discover their role in solving local, regional, and global problems such as poverty, access to quality healthcare, gender equality, and access to inclusive, equitable quality education, to name a few. This extensive focus on how the SDGs can transform learning will include the release of a special issue of Education Canada Magazine dedicated to showcasing the educational importance and transformative impacts the SDGs can have on teaching practice and student learning.
“There’s no more opportune moment than now to showcase a movement of Canadian and international educators and organizations devoted to inspiring students to define their futures and make a difference in our world,” says Denise Andre, EdCan Network Chair, “Our network is delighted with this opportunity to collaborate with CCUNESCO to amplify the SDGs to spark deep learning across the country.”
‘’To build a better future for all, we need to mobilize the education sector, especially teachers and students, in order to achieve the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030. This sector has the unmatched possibility to raise awareness, develop the critical thinking skills of young people and serve as a powerful lever for changing behaviours and lifestyle habits. We are happy to partner with EdCan on this important campaign,’’ says Sébastien Goupil, Secretary-General, Canadian Commission for UNESCO.
From now until April, this campaign will deliver infographics, fact sheets, a professional learning discussion kit, and an online professional learning course that will be available to EdCan members. For educators, schools, and school districts looking to learn more about the SDGs or to share how they’ve successfully integrated the SDGs into their school communities, please visit: https://www.edcan.ca/magazine/spring-2021/ and follow @EdCanNet and @CCUNESCO for latest campaign updates.
About the EdCan Network
The EdCan Network has maintained its 129-year tradition as the only national, nonpartisan, bilingual organization representing 110,000 educators across Canada. Our role as an intermediary connects K-12 education systems across the country by producing and disseminating authoritative and evidence-based, yet accessible content that is trusted by educators, parents, and policymakers alike. EdCan aims to improve education policies that heighten equity and support deeper learning (i.e. a combination of the fundamental knowledge and practical basic skills all students need to succeed), and expanding the reach of educational resources in an effort to bridge the research-implementation gap. Learn more at www.edcan.ca or @EdCanNet.
About the Canadian Commission for UNESCO
The Canadian Commission for UNESCO (CCUNESCO) serves as a bridge between Canadians and the vital work of UNESCO—the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Through its networks and partners, the Commission promotes UNESCO values, priorities and programs in Canada and brings the voices of Canadian experts to the international stage. The Commission facilitates cooperation and knowledge mobilization in the fields of education, sciences, culture, communication and information to address some of the most complex challenges facing humanity. Its activities are guided by the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and other UNESCO priorities. CCUNESCO operates under the authority of the Canada Council for the Arts.
For more information contact:
Sarah Ranby
Research Analyst
EdCan Network
sranby@edcan.ca
Isabelle LeVert-Chiasson
Program Officer, Education and ASPnet National Coordinator
CCUENSCO
isabelle.levert-chiasson@ccunesco.ca
Image: United Nations
Sustainability gives purpose to education.1
THE IDEA of education for sustainable development is not entirely new. My introduction to it began in 2008, with a simple request. A group of students required a staff advisor in order to participate in the Plan International Canada program, Spread the Net. Co-founded by Rick Mercer and Belinda Stronach, Spread the Net was a friendly national fundraising initiative among K–20 institutions to engage communities in international development actions. As a science teacher, it was not lost on me that malaria had been eradicated in Canada for more than 60 years (70+ years today), yet it remained a challenge for some nations globally. Moreover, due to changing global climate systems, there was the potential for Canada to face similar challenges with malaria in the future.
Months later, I learned that the Spread the Net initiative was rooted in one of the United Nations’ eight international development goals, known as the Millennial Development Goals (MDGs). Spread the Net was my introduction to the world of education for sustainable development (ESD) and the work of the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) for global education. Because of this experience, my philosophy for “why I teach” broadened in scope from subject-specific curriculum expectations to a more global perspective: How will students apply this information to address the complexities of today and of the future?
On September 15, 2015 at the UN General Assembly, global leaders unanimously adopted Transforming Our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, a new set of progressive universal and transformative goals for global development. The new UN framework that superseded the MDGs was created so that nations could continue to reimagine and reshape the future, with one major difference – this framework had global significance and was positioned in a way that all nations could plan, act on, and measure their progress over a 15-year period. The resulting 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and 169 targets were developed with the input of people from all over the world to ensure they represented the needs of the global population. That is why the framework has come to be known in education circles as the Global Goals.
Building on the principle of “leaving no one behind,” the new Agenda emphasizes a holistic approach to achieving sustainable development for all. The 17 Global Goals for Sustainable Development are integrated and indivisible.
The 2030 Agenda is an ambitious plan in which education is mentioned 28 times across six goals (#1, #3, #5, #8, #12, and #13), in addition to Goal #4, which is dedicated solely to education. Education is positioned as both an enabler and a driver of capacity building toward achieving the SDGs.
But the SDGs also bring to education systems an exciting new model on which to scaffold teaching through the 17 cross-cutting themes that intersect all societies, all grade levels, and all disciplines. Using the 17 SDGs as lenses for teaching presents subject-matter content in a relevant context, helping students to apply what they are learning locally to global conditions and current events.
The appeal of the framework for me is the interconnected, interlinked nature of the goals. At first glance the SDG poster with the 17 tiles, vivid hues of primary colours, and skillfully arranged composite of squares to form a rectangle, looked simple. But it is not. No tile exists in isolation! Once I ventured behind each tile, exploring each indicator (measure of progress) and tangential connection, I realized that in its wholeness these 17 tiles represented life’s challenges and opportunities that could be investigated and discussed in varying magnitudes/scales, e.g. individual, community, region, country, continent, and the world. I had discovered concrete and flexible ways to actively engage learners in critical thinking and systems practice.
Consider the discipline of science, my playground. It is a powerful tool that learners can use to understand natural and social phenomena in their communities. These phenomena, usually distilled into discrete subject areas, are presented in the SDGs with all their beautiful real-world complexities and nuances. Learners are required to mobilize knowledges (from areas other than science) skills, and attitudes – including the pan-Canadian global competencies2 – to identify local problems and action solutions. Since the SDGs serve to spark the problem-finding, the solutions that arise can have global application.
The SDGs position the subject-specific knowledges in their true form: multifaceted, multilayered, and complex. When learners apply subject-specific knowledge in a context that is positioned in local realities, they are empowered to explore, analyze, and engage with their environment, both natural and human-made, and to strengthen skills (global competencies) that will enable them to tackle complex issues that are affecting their communities now and in future.
When I agreed to contribute to this publication, I knew that the narrative I would share could not be my story alone. This was an opportunity to serve as a knowledge broker for the SDGs. I decided to provide space for more voices to be heard and posted a call for contributors via a brief survey to the TeachSDGs Ambassador Slack platform. It did not take long for responses to come in – from Greece, Canada, Lebanon, Nigeria, the U.K., the U.S., United Arab Emirates, and France – a global community bound together by their belief in the power of education to transform the world. Formal and informal educators, former teachers, and an administrator responded to the call.
My first question centred on the benefits of membership in a global community of practitioners (Teacher SDGs Ambassadors). Here are just a few responses:
“Sharing of best practices with each other. Networking with like-minded people from across the world. Learning from a global community to help prepare students to think local and act global.” – Anita Singh, teacher at a Farm School, United Arab Emirates
“… collaborating with other educators on ideas to teach the SDGs.” – Doreen N. Myrie, teacher-educator, U.S.
“The main benefits are creating partnerships with each other to increase our implementation efficiency. These partnerships would be in different forms like sharing resources, expertise, affiliation, and all kinds of support.” – Jinan Karameh, school principal, Lebanon
“Access to a community of like-minded practitioners who share the same vision and ultimately the same goal. Sharing best practice. Kept informed with current initiatives and learning development opportunities.” – Tim Black, former teacher, France
Reading these comments, a proverb came to mind: “If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together.” Through the global collaboration and partnership enabled by the TeachSDGs Ambassador program, my voice, my work, and my contribution to education benefits many more individuals than I actually see, and every opportunity to collaborate serves to amplify the actions that support desirable practices in education.
In order to engage students, teachers must understand the purpose of learning – the collective why – for themselves and the students. Whether it be social studies, the arts, science, or math, teachers must consider:
The 17 Global Goals offer teachers myriad ways to educate students about global complexities through local contexts. Research on Education for Sustainable Development supports this approach for enhancing student self-esteem, character development, empathy, and empowerment. Framing the learning at the community level also provides students the chance to apply knowledge to authentic contexts. In addition, ESD pedagogies encourage teachers to consider more learner-centred approaches, enabling students to be self-governing in their learning. Schooling must now prioritize the development of competences for sustainability3 that support participatory action of students by identifying alignment between curricula and perspectives that the 17 Goals and 169 targets provide.
Since my induction into ESD, my role in education has shifted from classroom teacher to a curriculum developer working at the ministerial level. To demonstrate the potential for SDGs to positively impact education, I defer once again to the educators from the TeachSDGs community. I asked them to share their insights on how framing subjects through many perspectives of the UN SDGs empowers learners. Here are a few responses:
“When you bring the Global goals to a local level, and the students can make the connection with what you are learning and discussing in class and their life and lived experience, it is a powerful combination. If you can ignite a passion within a student to work to make a positive change in the world, what could be better?” – Mahfuza Rahman, teacher (Science) and technology coach, Canada
“Learners… realize the need for inclusive solutions (Leave No One Behind) and develop their critical thinking, innovation, and creativity trying to help the future of our planet.” – Stavroula Skiada, teacher (ICT), Greece
“Encourages broader thinking. Helps them [students] become global citizens and can inspire them [students] to take action as a global change-maker.” – Kirsten Thompson, former teacher, U.K.
“Learners are empowered to problem solve, to use their voice to teach others to make a change and a difference about issues that they care about. They are empowered to learn about cultures and see the value in learning about other cultures and the world.” – Lynn Thomas, teacher (English Literature), Canada
“Students see and experience the world as an interdependent ecosystem and acknowledge, create, and find their place in it.” – Julia Fliss, teacher (English Language Arts), U.S.
Kristen Thompson summed it up nicely when she reflected that framing subject matter through the many perspectives of the SDGs, “brings education to life for students by focusing on real-world issues.”
Currently, there are many challenges to embedding the Global Goals into our teaching practice – such as communication gaps within ministries and districts/school boards, competing interests and priorities within public education, and a lack of professional development opportunities for interested teachers on SDGs topics. But difficult is not impossible. An important driver for reorienting education is knowledge mobilization, sharing of resources, and professional learning support.
Since the inception of the Global Goals, a flood of resources have been created by ESD champions and developed by teachers to support related work on regional, national, and international levels. Schools that put the Global Goals at the centre of their approach to education are part of a greater whole. There are multiple on-ramps for individual teachers as well as school communities to get involved.
Wondering how you can start weaving the Global Goals into teaching and supporting a sustainability mindset for learning in school communities? Here are a few accessible suggestions:
My discovery of ESD and the 17 Global Goals has led me to bring a more holistic approach to my practice and served as a window to the world by opening my professional community to places and people in ways that I could have never imagined! Good news stories in the education sector (or at least the dissemination of them) are typically in short supply, and I hope that by sharing my story, readers will come to understand the many ways the Global Goals will provide learners – both teachers and students – with on-ramps to meaningful community-based learning that has global significance. Education in 2021 is glocal!
Information about the UN SDGs and their potential to positively impact teaching and learning is sorely required, especially now. September 2020 marked the five-year milestone of the 15-year action-oriented framework and launched the Decade of Action: a call to accelerate sustainable solutions to all the world’s biggest challenges by 2030. The clock is counting down. Let’s continue the good work of making the world a safe, just, and equitable place through education, for everyone.
Video: UNESCO: The Lab of Ideas, the Lab for Change!
Teach SDGs Manifesto: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1CUlNQpAd4YfwC8QjC1MK8qNQV3lUr67U/view
These are my go-to resources that I access regularly.
Banner Photo: Adobe Stock
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1 Source: G. Connelly, former Superintendent of Toronto Board of Education. Education for sustainable development is designed to raise students’ awareness of and encourage them to become actively engaged in working for a sustainable society.
2 Articulated by the Canadian Ministers of Education (CMEC) in 2016:
www.globalcompetencies.cmec.ca/global-competencies
3 Competencies for sustainability include systems and future-oriented thinking, normative competency, strategic competency, critical thinking, collaboration, integrated problem-solving, and knowledge about planetary phenomena.
4 A curriculum audit involves surveying courses offered to identify which units/topics currently include sustainability topics and mapping them to the 17 Goals (and 169 targets).
When we were offered the opportunity to partner with the EdCan Network on this special issue dedicated to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), we did not hesitate for a moment. When we look to translate our high ideals into concrete action, teachers are natural and key allies.
The Canadian Commission for UNESCO is the link between Canadians and the essential work of UNESCO – the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Through our members, networks, and partners, many of whom are directly linked to the education community, we play an active role in promoting UNESCO’s values, priorities, and programs in Canada. We also help to ensure that the voice of civil society is heard internationally, so that our good ideas and practices also benefit the rest of the world.
While it is states like Canada that are ultimately responsible for implementing the United Nations’ ambitious Agenda 2030, all of us need to commit to sustainable development. Ensuring that our economy and our society develop in a more sustainable and equitable way, while respecting the environment and the limited capacities of our planet, requires thinking globally and acting locally. And this is the extraordinary strength of the networks gradually built up by UNESCO over the decades: they encourage innovation and new forms of intellectual and moral cooperation among peoples, including the advancement of quality education that leaves no one behind, as called for in SDG 4.
Mobilizing the education sector, especially teachers, is critical to advancing the entire set of SDGs. This sector has the unmatched potential to raise awareness and develop the critical thinking skills of young people in relation to the greatest challenges facing our humanity, including the climate crisis. Indeed, the world of education can serve as a powerful lever for changing behaviours and lifestyle habits. The strength of schools also lies in their capacity to act in a very holistic manner, and even extend their reach beyond staff and students.
It is our wish that this issue will inspire you to learn more about SDGs and how you can help our world achieve them. Present and future generations share an interest in – and the right to – successful implementation of the goals.
Thank you in advance for your commitment, and I hope you enjoy reading these pages.
Sébastien Goupil
Secretary-General, Canadian Commission for UNESCO
Photo: Adobe Stock
Extraordinary times call for creative, resourceful solutions. The COVID-19 pandemic has challenged educators, students and parents alike. It has also shone a spotlight on the inequities that made school closures and distance learning especially hard on some students and families, and raised new equity issues that must be addressed as we move forward. Researchers and innovative educators share their evolving knowledge, learnings and insights to create an ongoing conversation about how we can deliver equitable, high-quality education for all students through this pandemic and into the future.
Photo : Adobe Stock
When the beginning of the pandemic closed schools and left district leaders like me in a constant state of disruption, I joined a small working group of EdCan Network staff and colleagues from our Advisory Council for an important virtual planning process. We engaged in a series of sessions to get to the heart of the impact that our Network can achieve to support K-12 educators across Canada. After many iterations, our creative team wholeheartedly endorsed the following three priorities to respond to the rapidly evolving opportunities and challenges that our education systems are currently facing:
These priorities were the focus of our virtual December 2020 EdCan Advisory Council Meeting. (The first ever gathering of the CEA was in 1891 in Montreal.) We will continue to explore how we can align our focus with supporting Ministries of Education, faculty, and school district leaders, principals, teachers, and staff throughout 2021 as we strive to increase the capacity, self-efficacy, and well-being of our 110,000 members, and through them, to heighten every student’s well-being and opportunities for meaningful learning to help them discover their purpose and path in life.
For more information about EdCan’s Theory of Change, Intended Impacts and Strategic Priorities, please visit: www.edcan.ca/aboutus
For a list of the education and philanthropic leaders who serve on EdCan’s Advisory Council, please visit: www.edcan.ca/council
First published in Education Canada, January 2021
The Power of Us enters the pandemic publishing parade with a compelling message that is both challenging and hopeful. Change consultant and author David Price makes a strong case for unseating traditional hierarchical ways of organizing our businesses, schools, and community organizations. That’s the challenge. But the hope lies in Price’s illustrative efforts to show us where in the world it is already happening.
The result of nearly three years of deep inquiry, The Power of Us draws us into a story of mass ingenuity, or what he refers to as people-powered innovation. Much more than just the sharing of ideas or organizing ourselves into cooperative clusters, it is the innovation that happens when groundswells of public activity, including inspiring examples of youth activism, meet up with organizations that understand and acknowledge that the traditional divisions between producer and consumer, artist and audience are quickly melting away. It’s what happens when companies start to see their users as co-creators, when the health-care sector starts to value highly invested patients as highly invested innovators, when schools begin to see their educators, parents, and students as co-learners, imbued with a sense of agency to make a difference outside the walls of the schoolhouse.
Price examines many of the familiar themes of change literature – ethos, structure, mindset, and leadership – through the lens of people power, supported by some very robust and compelling case studies written from the author’s own commitment (pre-pandemic) to travelling the world to find the organizations, companies, and schools that were actually showing up to their work differently. The generous summary of key points and take-aways at the end of each section invites the reader to look at their own practice and their own organizations through the lens of people powered innovation.
The COVID-19 pandemic forced David Price into rewrite mode, not because he was wrong, but because his ideas were so very right. COVID-19 is cast here, not as part of the scenery but as a main character, allowing The Power of Us to make a strong contribution to our rethinking of how we want to be in a post-pandemic world.
Photo: Dave Donald
First published in Education Canada, January 2021
Thread, 2020. ISBN: 9781800191181
“Ring out the old, ring in the new,” goes Tennyson’s poem, “Ring Out Wild Bells.”
Many of us were only too happy to ring out 2020, or maybe give it a firm boot out the door. With COVID-19 vaccines rolling out, we hope for a better year ahead.
But what are we ringing in – the new and better, or the same old? After a year of disruption, the longing to return to the status quo is completely understandable. But if that’s all we do in our schools, it’s an opportunity lost. This year brought us many lessons, including wider awareness of the pervasiveness of systemic racism. We saw both the drawbacks and the potential of online learning, and we also saw how less privileged and higher-needs students suffered disproportionately from the loss of in-person classes. Some students became frustrated and disengaged – but others thrived as they became free to follow their own interests without the social stresses of a classroom. All these experiences and more should lead us to question just what school could and should be as we move beyond the COVID-19 Era.
Through fall/winter 2020, and culminating in this magazine, we tracked the learning that was emerging from the struggle to adapt an education system to pandemic conditions and still provide quality, equitable education (read the whole series on our website). One standout for me was Vidya Shah’s article (p. 15) showing how we can (and why we must) work towards greater equity in education during and beyond the pandemic.
It’s important to acknowledge the huge effort and serious stress that educators at every level of the system have shouldered during this crisis. But now we have a chance to look forward, to ring in the new. In our spring issue, EdCan will explore how the UN Sustainable Development Goals can be used to engage students with global and local issues and help them acquire essential competencies. And in June, we invite contributors to share their vision for the (near) future of education. How can we create a schooling experience that truly prepares today’s students to build tomorrow’s world?
Photo: Adobe Stock
First published in Education Canada, January 2021
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The McConnell Foundation has been supporting workplace wellbeing in K-12 education through its WellAhead initiative since 2017. In early 2020, it brought together relevant thought-leaders to consider how to make measurable improvements in the wellbeing of K-12 education staff across Canada. A Design Team was formed to develop a preliminary concept based on that initial thinking.¹ The Design Team then engaged with education stakeholders to get their feedback on the concept, and learn from their experience.
The stakeholders who participated generously shared their time, expertise, and encouragement, including pitfalls to avoid, opportunities to strengthen the approaches, and perspectives that had not previously been considered. Their feedback contributes to developing approaches that fit their environments, and accurately reflect their needs and preferences — which will ultimately lead to a greater impact.
¹Charlie Naylor (Independent Consultant), Felicia Ochs (Wellness Coordinator, Parkland School Division), André Rebeiz (Research Manager, EdCan), Tammy Shubat (Director of Programs, Ophea), and Kim Weatherby (School Health Promotion Consultant).
I want to be clear about two things. The first is that everyone within the education system has made herculean efforts to keep kids safe, maintain positive environments, and in the midst of all this still cultivate the conditions for learning. Teachers, educational assistants, bus drivers, custodians, clinicians, library technicians, secretaries – all have done what is needed and beyond.
By way of example, music educators have adjusted countless times, redesigning their entire practice on a moment’s notice. Physical education teachers continue to take their learners outdoors for high-intensity experiences that are critical to wellness. These are just a few of the ways educators have pushed the boundaries of their expertise.
Second, teaching children remotely – whether that is for four days or two weeks, half of them in and half out, hybrid, hyflex, or hub-based – is really difficult. It requires expertise, an ability to work with families, and a fundamental shift in design. Simply teaching online does not equate to learning, and in some cases can be deemed miseducative. Moving worksheets online isn’t remote learning. It’s just worksheets online.
British researcher and consultant Dylan Wiliam makes the claim, supported by cognitive science, that the single most important factor in a child’s learning is the quality of the teacher and the day-to-day interactions that child and adult have. Not class size. Not the design of the classroom space. Not the amount of technology strapped to the wall. Not even the curriculum.
What counts is the expertise of teachers – teachers who spend countless hours designing deep learning experiences to engage their learners, to cause cognitive dissonance, and to fundamentally cause learning. And this comes in all sorts of forms. From traditional teachers at the front of the class, to project-based-learning teachers, and to those who weave back and forth with ease, a teacher’s expertise in teaching is what counts in learning.
COVID has certainly challenged this. With Senior Years learners attending every second day in most of our school divisions, and Early and Middle Years students having to leave for periods of time when cases occur, educators’ expertise has been put to the test. Their ability to replicate what they do in the classroom has been stunted, fractured – perhaps even sabotaged – by a virus that has shown no mercy.
And despite all these challenges, our teachers have persevered.
We have seen that success in the micro and macro adjustments educators make toward deep remote learning derives from three design assumptions. These assumptions rely in turn on the experience, research, critical thought, and desire to collaborate on the part of educators. Again, teachers are engaged in this work, despite the masks, the plexiglass, and the many unknowns.
The first of these assumptions is that what is done in the classroom cannot be replicated. We know the best learning happens in the classroom, on the land, at the internship, or in the lab. With the potential of face-to-face learners, learners connected online in the moment, and learners who need to learn in an asynchronous way, the expertise of a teacher can be stretched and distorted. In these cases, educators have reconceptualized their time. We have learned that an educator’s online time is best spent with small groups and individuals, and engaged in conferencing, coaching, planning, and feedback. Our teachers have expertly designed stations where learners rotate from asynchronous blocks of providing each other with feedback, to a small-group discussion with the teacher, and then time to read, reflect, and design significant projects.
The second assumption of deep remote learning is that the educator knows the curriculum well. Our educators see the curriculum dripping from the buildings and trees when they walk down the street. There are no limits for them. They read ferociously, they are engaged in the community, and they always seek to bring their passion into the classroom. They are able to bring curriculum areas together in powerful transdisciplinary projects that ask learners to engage in adult work – that is work that obliterates silos and domains and work that forces us to wrestle with the unknowns about the human experience.
The final assumption on which deep remote learning is predicated upon is the critical relationship that the educator has not only with the child, but with the family. We have seen this in the Kindergarten teacher who reads with her learners from the front door or in the backyard. We have seen this in the Middle Years educator who knows the circumstances of each of his children and is able to engage with each of them through the choice in reading and writing workshops. We have also observed this through the Seniors Years educator who follows the golden rule when teaching in a pandemic: less is more. There are countless examples of teachers who pull back and bring to light what Parker Palmer deems “the grace of great things.” Big questions, big struggles, big ideas, big history.
All educators are making quick cuts in muddy fields as they react to where their learners are – physically, emotionally, and cognitively. To meet the needs of learners, educators across the system demonstrate what matters: expertise. Expertise in design, expertise in passion, and expertise in love.
We need to nurture and support this expertise as we move further into the abyss that is COVID-19.
Photo: Adobe Stock