Quebec students finish at the head of the class when it comes to mathematics. On the Pan-Canadian Assessment Program (PCAP) tests of Grade 8 students, written in June 2016 and released in early May 2018, it happened once again.1 Students from Quebec finished first in Mathematics (541), 40 points above the Canadian mean score and a gain of 26 points over the past six years.
Quebec’s position as our national leader in mathematics achievement has solidified on every comparative test over the past 30 years. How and why Quebec students continue to dominate and, in effect, pull up Canada’s international math rankings deserves far more public discussion. Every time math results are announced, it generates a flurry of interest, but relatively little in-depth analysis of the contributing factors.
Since the first International Assessment of Educational Progress (IAEP) back in 1988, and in the next four national and international mathematics tests up to 2000, Quebec’s students generally outperformed students from other Canadian provinces at Grades 4, 8 and 11.2 That pattern has continued right up to the present and was demonstrated impressively on the most recent Program of International Student Assessment (PISA 2015), where Quebec 15-year-olds scored 544, ranking among the top countries in the world.
One enterprising venture, launched in 2000 by the B.C. Ministry of Education under Deputy Minister Charles Ungerleider, did tackle the question by comparing British Columbia’s and Quebec’s mathematics curricula. That comparative research project identified significant curricular differences between the two provinces, but the resulting B.C. reform initiative ran aground on what University of Victoria researchers Helen Raptis and Laurie Baxter aptly described as the “jagged shores of top-down educational reform.”3
The reasons for Quebec dominance in K-12 mathematics performance are coming into sharper relief. The initial B.C. Ministry of Education research project exposed and explained the curricular and pedagogical factors, but subject specialists, including both university mathematics specialists and mathematics education professors, have gradually filled in the missing pieces. Mathematics education faculty with experience in Quebec and elsewhere help to complete the picture.
The scope and sequence of the math curriculum is clearer, demonstrating an acceptance of the need for integration and progression of skills. “The way math is presented makes the difference,”4 says Genevieve Boulet, a Mathematics Education professor at Mount St. Vincent University who has prior experience preparing mathematics teachers at Quebec’s University of Sherbrooke.
The Quebec Ministry of Education curriculum, adopted in 1980, set the pattern. In teacher education and in the classroom, much more emphasis was placed upon building sound foundations before progressing to problem solving. Quebec’s Grade 4 objectives made explicit reference to the ability to develop speed and accuracy in mental and written calculation and to multiply larger numbers as well as to perform reverse operations. Curriculum guidelines emphasize subject mastery, particularly in algebra, and tend, in Grade 11, to be more explicit about making connections with previously learned material.
Fewer topics tend to be covered at each grade level, but in more depth than in B.C. and other Canadian provinces. In Grade 4, students are generally introduced, right away, to numbers/operations and the curriculum unit on measurement focuses on mastering three topics – length, area, and volume – instead of a smattering of six or seven topics. Secondary school in Quebec begins in Grade 7 (secondaire I) and ends in Grade 11 (secondaire V) and, given the organizational model, that means students are more likely to be taught by mathematics subject specialists. Senior mathematics courses, such as Mathematics 536 (Advanced), Mathematics 526 (Transitional) and Mathematics 514 (Basic), were once explicitly focused on “cognitive growth and the development of basic skills,” covering a range of topics at different depths.5 Recent curriculum changes, instituted in 2017 under the “Diversified Basic Education” program, presented the renamed courses as three streams, each preparing students for different pathways, aligned with post-secondary CGEP programs. The revised Quebec Program of Study cast Mathematics within a broader “Areas of Learning” model, but the prescribed knowledge and provincial examination questions remained consistent with past practice.6
Teacher preparation programs in Quebec universities are four years long, providing students with double the amount of time to master mathematics as part of their teaching repertoire – a particular advantage for elementary teachers. In Quebec faculties of education, prospective elementary school math teachers must take as many as 225 hours of university courses in math education; in other provinces, they receive as little as 39 hours.7
Teacher-guided or didactic instruction has been one of the Quebec teaching program’s strengths. Annie Savard, a McGill University education professor, points out that Quebec teachers have a clearer understanding of “didactic” instruction, a concept championed in France and French-speaking countries.8 They are taught to differentiate between teaching and learning. “Knowing the content of the course isn’t enough,” Savard says. “You need what we call didactic [teaching]. You need to unpack the content to make it accessible to students.” Four-year programs afford education professors more time to expose teacher candidates to the latest research on cognitive psychology, which challenges the efficacy of child-led exploratory approaches to the subject.9
Students in Quebec still write provincial examinations and achieving a pass in mathematics is a requirement to secure a graduation (Secondaire V) diploma. Back in 1992, Quebec mathematics examinations were a core component of a very extensive set of ministry examinations, numbering two dozen, and administered in Grades 9 (Sec III), 10 (Sec IV), and 11 (Sec V). Since 2011-12, most Canadian provinces, except Quebec, have moved to either eliminate Grade 12 graduation examinations, reduce their weighting, or make them optional. In the case of B.C., the Grade 12 provincial was cancelled in 2012-13 and in Alberta the equivalent examination now carries a much-reduced weighting in final grades. In June of 2018, Quebec continued to hold final provincial exams, albeit fewer and more limited to Mathematics and the two official languages. Retaining exams has a way of keeping students focused to the end of the year; removing them has been linked to both grade inflation and the lowering of standards.10
Academic achievement in mathematics has remained a system-wide priority and, despite recent initiatives to improve graduation rates, there is much less emphasis in Quebec on pushing every student through to high school graduation. From 1980 to the early 2000s, the Quebec mathematics curricula was explicitly designed to prepare students for mastery of the subject, either to “prepare for further study” or to instill a “mathematical way of thinking” – reflecting the focus on subject matter. The comparable B.C. curriculum for 1987, for example, stated that mathematics was aimed at enabling students to “function in the workplace.” Already, by the 1980s, the teaching of B.C. mathematics was seen to encompass sound reasoning, problem-solving ability, communications skills, and the use of technology.11 This curriculum fragmentation never really came to dominate the Quebec secondary mathematics program.
Quebec’s education system remains that of “a province unlike the others.” Since the first IAEP study on the achievement of 13-year-olds, ministry officials have been keenly aware that the three provinces with the best student results, Quebec, Alberta and B.C., all had the lowest graduation rates. Raising the passing grade from 50 to 60 across Quebec in 1986-87 had a direct impact upon high school completion rates. But student achievement indicators, particularly in mathematics, still drove education policy and, until recently, unlike other provinces, student preparedness remained a higher priority than raising graduation rates.12
SCHOOL SYSTEMS are, after all, products of the societies in which they reside. While Canadian provinces outside Quebec are greatly influenced by North American pedagogy and curricula, Quebec schooling is the creature of a largely French educational milieu.13 Teaching philosophy, methods and curriculum continues to be driven more by the French tradition, exemplified in mastery of subject knowledge, didactic pedagogy, and a uniquely different conception of student intellectual development. Socio-historical factors weigh far more heavily than is recognized in explaining why Quebec continues to set the pace in Mathematics achievement.
First published in Education Canada, December 2018
1 Council of Ministers of Education Canada, Pan-Canadian Assessment Program, PCAP 2016: Report on the Pan-Canadian Assessment of Reading, Mathematics and Science (Toronto: CMEC, May 2018), Table 2.1, 36.
2 Anna Stokke, What to Do about Canada’s Declining Math Scores, C.D. Howe Institute Commentary No. 427 (Toronto: C.D. Howe Institute, May 2015), p.
3 Helen Raptis and Laurie Baxter, “Analysis of an abandoned Reform Initiative: The case of Mathematics in British Columbia,” Canadian Journal of Educational Administration and Policy 49 (January 26, 2006).
4 Genevieve Boulet, Mount Saint Vincent University, Personal Interview, May 3, 2018. See also “Nova Scotia math curriculum ‘doesn’t make any sense’: education expert,” CBC News Nova Scotia (May 2, 2018).
5 Program of Study, Mathematics, Mathematics 536 (Quebec, 1997), 2.
6 Program of Study, Mathematics, Mathematics, Science and Technology (Quebec, 2017), 4-16 and 31-64.
7 Kate Hammer and Caroline Alphonso, “Tests Show Provincial Differences in Math, Reading, Science Education,” The Globe and Mail (October 7, 2014).
8 “It Adds Up: The eason students’ math scores are higher in Quebec than the rest of Canada,” The National Post (Canadian Press) (September 6, 2017).
9 See Daniel Ansari, “The Computing Brain,” in Mind, Brain and Education: Neuroscience implications for the classroom, ed. D. Souza (Bloomington, Indiana: Solution Tree Press, 2010) 201-227; and Daniel T. Willingham, “Is It True That Some People Just Can’t Do Math?” American Educator (Winter 2009-2010): 1-7.
10 Jim Dueck, Education’s Flashpoints: Upside down or set up to fail (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015), 100-103.
11 Charlie Smith, “Battling B.C.’s Math Education Crisis,” the Georgia Straight (October 31, 2012).
12 Robert Maheu, “Education Indicators in Quebec,” Canadian Journal of Education 20, No. 1 (1995): 56-64.
13 Chad Gaffield, “Children’s Lives and Academic Achievement in Canada and the United States,” Comparative Education Review 38, No. 1 (February, 1994): 53-58.
For further background on the Quebec socio-cultural context, see Norman Henchey and Donald Burgess, Between Past and Future: Quebec education in transition (Calgary: Detselig Enterprises, 1987).
Rural and remote communities struggle to attract and keep teachers. A new program at the Werklund School of Education aims to fill that gap by allowing students from these communities to earn their teaching credentials without leaving home.
The geographical area of Canada is vast and expansive, with much of the population residing along the Canada/U.S. border. And yet, rural Canadians comprise approximately 25 percent of all Canadians, and many live in the far-reaching northern and remote areas of Canada. This is unsurprising and longstanding, yet it presents particular challenges for serving these areas well, particularly related to teaching.
Various financial incentives are commonly provided to attract more certified teachers to rural and remote areas. These may include financial student bursaries so long as they commit to a designated period of time teaching in the rural school district, subsidized accommodation, or travel to and from urban and rural areas. In other cases, urban teacher education programs create satellite campuses to have a more far-reaching applicant pool of individuals interested in pursuing an education degree. Both strategies have been met with limited and mediocre success. In the first instance, financial incentives to draw individuals into the community commonly result in a high turnover of teachers once the contract and financial commitment has been met. Satellite campuses struggle to maintain these programs as a financially viable and sustainable model. Given the financial costs associated with keeping programs open in satellite campuses and further ensuring that there is sufficient faculty expertise to teach in them, individuals in satellite campuses are normally required to attend two years at the urban campus (creating a 2 +2 model).
There are increasing calls for post-secondary teacher education programs to consider how to attract individuals who already live in rural areas and who are committed to the long-term vitality of the community. For instance, the Northern Alberta Development Report (2010) spoke to the need for “home grown teachers”: teachers who come from and will stay in the rural community to which they belong.
Yet, this task is not as easy as first perceived. Generally, it is difficult to attract individuals from the rural community to attend an on-campus program or even satellite campus, given the financial and logistical strain that this may place on students. Students may find the costs of moving to a city, or driving to a satellite campus on a regular basis, too much strain to bear. If students do decide to move to an urban-based teacher education program, the trend is that the vast majority of them never return to their rural community. In this way, the very intent to attract these individuals to university may further undermine the vitality of the rural community.
Given this dilemma, alternative models are being explored and implemented to attract individuals to become rural teachers who will become long-standing professionals in their own communities. This article considers a new program offered in Alberta since 2015 that has seen some optimistic initial results.
In July 2015, the Werklund School of Education, University of Calgary welcomed the first cohort of students into a newly designed Community-Based Bachelor of Education program. This program allows students to complete their entire Bachelor of Education degree in a model that blends face-to-face, on-campus instruction in the summer with online courses in the fall and winter. This is combined with field experience placements in their rural communities, working alongside mentor partner teachers and principals in these areas. This allows students to remain in their local rural communities for the vast majority of the duration of their studies.
The Community-Based Bachelor of Education at Werklund allows students the best of both worlds. Each summer, students come to the University of Calgary for two weeks in July to meet their instructors and the other students in their cohort in person. During these two weeks, students not only begin their courses but they have access to academic, career and student supports provided by a dedicated team of faculty and support staff. Most importantly, however, students in these two weeks are offered the opportunity to develop collaborative relationships with those in their cohort and with their instructors, ensuring they feel connected to one another and to the Werklund School of Education.
The intensive two weeks of on-campus instruction creates a bond among students, who work together throughout the day in their courses and experience the residency component as a cohort. The timing of the courses (July) is purposeful, as many students have children. The summer holidays allow for more flexibility to find childcare for those two weeks, and yet the time away from their children is not overwhelming.
When students return home at the end of their two-week summer residency, they begin the online component of their program. The Education courses students take online are designed to be interactive and collaborative, allowing students the same kind of experience they would receive in an on-campus course. The courses are not self-directed and do not follow an online correspondence model; instead, the courses have a balance between asynchronous learning and synchronous online instruction, along with purposeful pedagogical and curricular relevance to teaching in rural areas.
Field experiences in their local communities provide the contextual experiential learning and students are mentored by educators in those communities. The students have real and meaningful rural teaching experiences that are attentive to the local and cultural norms and values of the community. This provides more student teachers with an opportunity to gain experience in rural schools, opportunities that have traditionally been scarce within urban-based teacher education programs. It provides mentorship opportunities for exemplary rural teachers and principals who have a nuanced understanding of the needs and opportunities for rural students, and empowers those rural communities to support their own continued professional learning in their communities.
Over the last three years, the program has been tracking the nature of the students who are enrolling in the program to see whether the program is attracting students from rural and remote areas of the province. Thus far, the indicators prove promising. The overwhelming majority of students who have enrolled in the program to date are women between the ages of 35 and 50. The places where these students reside have truly hit the most northern and remote regions of the province: near the border between Alberta and Northwest Territories, the boreal forests in northern Alberta, the mountainous regions to the west of the province, the rural valleys in the eastern and southern regions, and Indigenous Treaty 7 and 8 territories. Over 90 percent of these students have worked in schools in some capacity, with the majority working as educational assistants or occupational therapists. This is noteworthy. One Indigenous Elder commented that educational assistants are often the life blood of the school. Teachers and principals come and go, but it is the educational assistants who tend to remain in the same rural schools, providing the institutional memory of the school, and the continuity and stability for the children.
The life stories of students who enrol in this program are telling. It is clear that they have a strong desire to become a certified teacher, but given their personal circumstances, would not have been able to drive to a satellite or urban campus. Almost all have children and most work to support the family. A full-time residency-based teacher education program was simply not an option.
Given the mature demographic of the students, who lead complex lives supporting their children and their families in these rural communities, attentiveness to when the courses were offered was of paramount importance. Unlike most programs that offer on-campus instruction during the day, fall and winter courses are offered in early evening time slots of 4:30 or 6:30 p.m. This allows individuals to work during the day, pick up their children from school, drop them off to their after-school activities should they require, or make supper. The timing of the courses also allows students to ensure that they have adequate Internet connectivity by staying at a school, library, or other institution, should their own house not have consistent Internet service – as is commonly the case in the mountains, valleys, and remote areas of the province.
Students create strong bonds during the summer, and feel a strong sense of communal belonging and commitment to each other.
Feedback from students indicates that initial concerns about potential isolation when doing the program “remotely” has thus far been a non-issue. Students create strong bonds during the summer, and given their overlapping stories, they feel a strong sense of communal belonging and commitment to each other. As many students note, when they take the leap of faith to enrol in the program, they feel the weight of their success on their shoulders. It is not just a personal journey to become a certified teacher; they tell us that they feel their children, families and communities are rooting for them to accomplish this goal. This creates a double-edged sword. In one way, they feel supported by their community to undertake this degree, but they also feel pressure to not let the community down should they struggle in their studies.
Given that this is a common theme among students who are desperate to succeed in becoming certified teachers, it is not uncommon for students to call up their fellow classmates to find out how their sick child is doing, how the harvest went, or how they have been juggling their family and work life with the program. In this way, students who had previously attempted to attend university in the city feel an incredible attachment to other students that they had not felt attending large lectures on campus. In many respects, there is a true sense of family, of getting through the program with the support of their classmates and their local community.
The nature of the blended program does present challenges. Despite advances to ensure secure Internet provision, the valleys, mountains and remote areas of the province make it difficult for some students to have a consistent online connection. This impedes the kinds of online activities that might otherwise be incorporated, restricting us to more limited activities that are less taxing. For instance, having all the students with their thumbprint pictures to be “seen” while holding an online class would bounce many students off-line. In this case, instructors are limited to audio, which lessens the ability to watch for body language among the students.
The traditional university structure also creates unintended barriers for students who learn from a distance and online. Students’ tuition often covers access to gyms, dental plans, or other student supports. Yet, commonly, those services are limited to those who are within proximity to the campus. Students may not opt out of the costs associated with these university fees, and yet derive little benefit.
Similarly, bursaries and awards are generally structured for students who have full-time status on one campus. Those students who may take courses from more than one institution, as in the case of this program, may be excluded from these financial supports as they do not meet the criteria that has been set for taking courses from one institution.
These difficulties point to a lag in the institutional structures of the universities in terms of student supports that can be provided online, or by phone, rather than having to walk into a particular office or centre. This not only hinders the students in this blended program, but it calls attention to the need for more flexible supports to increase access for students who lead complex lives beyond the campus.
Despite these challenges, there is a cautious optimism that this model may create more access to students in remote areas to foster qualified certified teachers who are committed to teaching in their local rural schools. Rural school superintendents and Indigenous communities are hopeful that they can encourage individuals who have already demonstrated a passion for supporting their schools and communities, to take the step in becoming certified teachers. At the time of this article, the first graduating class from this Community-Based Bachelor of Education will enter the teaching profession, and most have received teaching contracts in these rural areas.
It is not known whether these teachers will become the long-standing educational professionals in the community. Time will show whether the program makes a significant change to the perennial turnover and shortage of teachers in rural areas. However, we are cautiously optimistic that this may provide a tipping point in redressing this challenge.
Photo: iStock
First published in Education Canada, September 2018
The changing demands on the teaching profession require a serious rethink to our approach to teacher preparation – perhaps most importantly, from a focus on teaching to a focus on learning.
Each year I have the opportunity to meet a new class of aspiring teachers. I ask the teacher candidates, “What is a teacher’s particular expertise?” Almost without hesitation a number of them answer, “Teaching.”
“Really,” I respond. “And physicians are expert in physicianing, and lawyers are expert in lawyering?”
The answer to the question, “What is a teacher’s particular expertise?” is not as straightforward as it might first appear. Similar to other professional disciplines, the professional landscape for initial teacher education is in a continual state of flux. Impacted by often competing forces – global, political, economic, technological, social, linguistic, and cultural – the institution of schooling in Canada has evolved and changed over the past 150 years, both regionally and nationally. And it continues to evolve.
From the mid-1840s to today, local control of teacher certification was assumed first by colonial and then provincial authorities. Normal schools were established in the late 1800s and early 1900s in Canada to “standardize both instructional content and teaching methods to ensure quality.”1 Teacher education has evolved from requiring a few months of formal education to requiring a university degree. There was a time when it was sufficient for a teacher candidate to hold a few years of high school and good moral standing to obtain a teacher certificate. Seen as agents-of-the-state, teachers were initially trained to meet the basic need for functional literacy and numeracy, create a common citizenry, and establish a suitable workforce for an emerging industrial economy.2 This teacher training was generally undertaken at a normal school requiring applicants to provide certificates of good moral standing and records to verify that the individual completed high school. Today, teacher candidates in Canada undertake four or more years of university study. Many teacher candidates hold a four-year bachelor’s degree prior to entering a Bachelor of Education degree program. Some take a five-year concurrent Bachelor of Education program alongside a bachelor’s degree in another faculty. Still others complete a four-year Bachelor of Education degree program.
In addition to an increase in the years of university education required by teacher candidates, Alcon indicates there have been common trends across teacher education programs globally.
A rise in academic standards for entry into teacher education; an expectation that teacher educators should be researchers as well as teachers; a widening scope for teacher education from early childhood to post-secondary; an assumption that teachers need professional and academic development; and changes to concepts of professionalism, accountability and standards.3
These trends have also impacted initial and ongoing teacher education in Canada. In sharp contrast to the 1950s, when only two percent of Canadians aged 15 and over had university qualifications, the expectation today is that all young people will have the qualifications to carry on to post-secondary education. Teacher education programs across Canada have increased their academic standards in various ways over the years. Some universities have increased the length of time required to obtain a bachelor’s degree in education. Others have created master’s programs for after-degree teacher candidates. Most, if not all, have increased entry requirements into teacher education. In addition to the rising expectations for teacher education, at least one provincial government has introduced new standards for teachers, leaders, and superintendents. While universities strive for teacher education programs that cohere with contemporary research in the field, they must also ensure these programs meet the provincially regulated requirements so graduating teacher candidates are eligible to apply for teacher certification. The tension created by rising provincial expectations and global trends, combined with the need for universities to also ground their teacher education programs in contemporary research in the areas of learning, curriculum, pedagogy, diversity, etc., can be daunting.
While it is important to establish the various historical, global, local, political, and economic forces that impact teacher education, it is also essential that faculties of education across Canada take a serious look to determine how these shifts are reflected within their programs. Those involved in teacher education should remember that shifts, in fact, are not a problem and are instead indicative of how education, as a living practice, is alert to the issues of what is called for in initial teacher education. Moreover, because of education’s relationship with the young and the newness of the demands they bring with them and that shape their lives, such responsiveness is itself part of the nature of education as a living, intergenerational project. Echoing a phrase from the late Dr. William Doll, “keeping knowledge alive” is therefore in the very nature of education itself. Understanding teacher education with an eye to this inevitability is the key to understanding the challenge and opportunity for those responsible for designing and redesigning teacher education programs for our contemporary society.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, teacher education emerged to meet the needs of an agrarian and industrial society – hierarchical, bureaucratic, and highly segmented. The shift called for in contemporary teacher education requires us to design teacher education that effectively addresses the needs of our time. The shift is from a focus on teaching, teaching strategies, and classroom management, to a focus on learning that includes:
For the most part, tinkering won’t work. A pattern of minor revisions and changes have created teacher education programs in which overall programmatic cohesion is lost.
Shifts from a teaching-focused program to a learning-focused program might at first appear fairly straightforward. In an attempt to respond to the pressing need to re-examine teacher education, a common approach is to tinker at the edges of existing programs by adding new courses, increasing time in field experience or moving the placement of field experience, or adjusting the credit structure in order to make room for the new courses. Such tinkering can be observed in the addition of courses such as Indigenous education, inclusion, diversity, and assessment, which are frequently added while at the same time clinging on to all the courses previously offered. As a result fewer hours (and fewer credits) are assigned to each course and students must complete more courses to meet the requirements of the degree.
While each of these changes to existing programs has met with varying degrees of success, it is also true that for the most part, tinkering won’t work. A pattern of minor revisions and changes have created teacher education programs in which overall programmatic cohesion is now lost. Instead, students take a bit of this and a bit of that, recreating an assembly-line image and its premise of fragmentation and isolation. Some teacher education programs have become incoherent combinations of old and new forms and ways, frequently pitting faculty member against faculty member, with each arguing for the value and necessity of a particular course and vying for time within an already overburdened curriculum. Alternatively, a program may try to appease everyone by creating a teacher education program with a few core courses, on which all faculty members can agree, and a series of options and electives. While giving the initial appearances of responding to the new landscape, such responses do not adequately address the shift that is needed. Against such a backdrop, teacher candidates are left with no choice but to make sense of the entire endeavour on their own – constructing their own knowledge and meaning out of a series of disconnected courses. And as strange as that might appear at first glance, there is a hint here of trying to put the initiative and involvement of individual students, which had been previously effaced, back into the educational mix. However, if the presumption of a teacher education curriculum constituted by a series of unrelated and disconnected courses is left in place, efforts at responsive changes to teacher education will eventually collapse.
Within each of these efforts at changes to teacher education programs, there is what could be called a “future wanting to emerge.” Each of the responses is a genuine and well-intended effort to make the difference that will provide teacher candidates with a coherent teacher education program appropriate to meet the challenges and opportunities of a 21st century society. However, a serious and deliberate rethinking of the entire endeavour is needed, one that examines the underlying set of assumptions that underpin many teacher education programs. Currently many of the attempts to change curriculum, pedagogies, or time leave undisturbed the need for a more radical change to teacher education. A few of these assumptions include:
More frequently than not, these unexamined assumptions silently drive reactionary responses underground. Left in place, they serve to undermine and sideline the ability to pose the question, “What might constitute a vibrant, coherent 21st century contemporary teacher education program?”
The recent rise of ideas of ecological interdependence, sustainability, living systems, learning systems, knowledge as dynamic, and the like provide an analogy for how to reimagine the enterprise of teacher education for a contemporary society. These ideas require those involved in redesign efforts to be attentive to the obligations toward dynamically evolving social, cultural, and ecological circumstances. Ecology offers a way of thinking about things and systems that does not begin with isolated bits and pieces, but with webs of relationships. These relationships are not simply contextual of individual things but constitutive of them. So a particular life form, for example, is not simply “surrounded” by other things in an “environment” but is constituted, formed and shaped by those surroundings.
In the educational context, too frequently a response to this emerging understanding of interdependence is to add courses on sustainability, diversity, and/or inclusion, which get inserted into the curriculum of teacher education as simply one more thing to be covered. However, when understood as constitutive of the environment itself, mechanical efficiencies give way to systemic complexities and open the space for new understandings and the emergence of new organizing principles on which to create teacher education programs.
The Association of Canadian Deans of Education released a revised Accord on Teacher Education in 2017. This Accord is based on a vision for teacher education in Canada “that fosters skilled professional educators who cultivate knowledge, critical thinking, and responsible action among learners, in order to foster an inclusive and equitable society.”4 The Accord is based on three principles:
The Accord “asserts that effective teacher education programs demonstrate the transformative power of learning for individuals and communities.”5 I suggest that those charged with teacher education in universities attend not only to the various contexts impacting contemporary education, but also examine the assumptions about learning that underpin many teacher education programs.
Within many universities, teacher education programs are undergoing processes of revision, renewal, and redesign to adapt to ever-changing conditions. As we consider the transformations required for a contemporary teacher education program, we need to acknowledge two things: 1) As a society, we have been in this place before; and 2) no one is to blame for the current need to change. The world has once again changed, and teacher education needs to be “set right anew.”6 Within teacher education, we need to once again direct our efforts by asking, what does a teacher candidate need to know, do, and be in a diverse, inclusive, and equitable society where the demands to create highly educated youth are at the top of everyone’s agenda?
Returning to a question that I asked at the beginning of this paper, “What is a teacher’s particular expertise?” Teachers are experts in learning. As experts in learning, students in initial teacher education programs need to know how to create the conditions within which rich powerful learning emerges, flourishes, strengthens, and deepens. They need to know how to adapt their teaching in response to learning. They need to understand that learning occurs in formal and informal environments and settings. Teachers who know how to learn, are inspired to continue learning, and collaborate with each other, know that learning individually and collectively is essential in today’s world. To meet this challenge and seize this opportunity, teacher education programs need to go about the work of creating highly connected, collaborative, and intellectually robust contemporary programs that are sharply focused on learning for teacher candidates.
Photo: Mary Kate MacIsaac / Werklund School of Education
First published in Education Canada, September 2018
Notes
1 H. Raptis, “The Canadian Landscape: Provinces, territories, nations, and identities,” in The Curriculum History of Canadian Teacher Education, ed. T. Christou (Routledge, 2017), 7-22.
2 A. Sears and M. Hirschkorn, “The Controlling Hand: Canadian teacher education in a global context,” in The Curriculum History of Canadian Teacher Education, ed. T. Christou (Routledge, 2017), 241-258.
3 N. Alcorn, “Teacher Education in New Zealand 1974–2014,” Journal of Education for Teaching 40, no.5 (2014): 456.
4 Accord on Teacher Education (Association of Canadian Deans of Education, 2017, 1.
5 Ibid., 2.
6 H. Arendt, “The Crisis in Education,” in Between Past and Present: Eight exercises in political thought (New York: Penguin Books, 1969), 192-3.
Dr. Sharon Friesen is a professor and the President of the Galileo Educational Network at the University of Calgary’s Werklund School of Education. Stephen Hurley sat down with the renowned scholar to discuss nationwide revisions and redesigns to teacher education programs, including where we’re headed next. For new and future teachers – including all you history buffs out there – this one’s for you!
A Future Wanting to Emerge: Challenging assumptions about teacher education
Research confirms that healthier students make better learners. The term quality physical education is used to describe programs that are catered to a student’s age, skill level, culture and unique needs. They include 90 minutes of physical activity per week, fostering students’ well-being and improving their academic success. However, instructional time for quality phys-ed programs around the world are being decreased to prioritize other subject areas (especially math, science, social studies and English) in hopes to achieve higher academic achievement. However, several studies have identified a significant relationship between physical activity and academic achievement. Research also demonstrates that phys-ed does not have negative impacts on student success and that it offers the following physical, social, emotional and cognitive benefits:
Quality phys-ed helps students understand how exercise helps them to develop a healthy lifestyle, gain a variety of skills that help them to participate in a variety of physical activities and enjoy an active lifestyle.
Quality phys-ed provides students with the opportunity to socialize with others and learn different skills such as communication, tolerance, trust, empathy and respect for others. They also learn positive team skills including cooperation, leadership, cohesion and responsibility. Students who play sports or participate in other physical activities experience a variety of emotions and learn how to better cope in stressful, challenging or painful situations.
Quality phys-ed can be associated with improved mental health, since increased activity provides psychological benefits including reduced stress, anxiety and depression. It also helps students develop strategies to manage their emotions and increases their self-esteem.
Research tends to show that increased blood flow produced by physical activity may stimulate the brain and boost mental performance. Avoiding inactivity may also increase energy and concentration in the classroom.
Therefore, decreasing time for quality phys-ed to allow more instructional time for core curricular subjects – including math, science, social studies and English – is counterproductive, given its positive benefits on health outcomes and school achievement.
PHE Canada (2018). Quality daily physical education. Retrieved from https://phecanada.ca/activate/qdpe
Ontario Ministry of Education. (2005). Healthy schools daily physical activity in schools grades 1‐3. Retrieved from http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/teachers/dpa1-3.pdf
Ardoy, D. N., Fernández‐Rodríguez, J. M., Jiménez‐Pavón, D., Castillo, R., Ruiz, J. R., & Ortega, F. B. (2014). A Physical Education trial improves adolescents’ cognitive performance and academic achievement: The EDUFIT study. Scandinavian journal of medicine & science in sports, 24(1).
Bailey, R., Armour, K., Kirk, D., Jess, M., Pickup, I., Sandford, R., & Education, B. P. (2009). The educational benefits claimed for physical education and school sport: An academic review. Research papers in education, 24(1), 1-27.
Beane, J.A. (1990). Affect in the curriculum: Toward democracy, dignity, and diversity. Columbia: Teachers College Press.
Bedard, C., Bremer, E., Campbell, W., & Cairney, J. (2017). Evaluation of a direct-instruction intervention to improve movement and pre-literacy skills among young children: A within-subject repeated measures design. Frontiers in pediatrics, 5, 298.
Hellison, D.R., N. Cutforth, J. Kallusky, T. Martinek, M. Parker, and J. Stiel. (2000). Youth development and physical activity: Linking universities and communities. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics.
Ho, F. K. W., Louie, L. H. T., Wong, W. H. S., Chan, K. L., Tiwari, A., Chow, C. B., & Cheung, Y. F. (2017). A sports-based youth development program, teen mental health, and physical fitness: An RCT. Pediatrics, e20171543.
Keeley, T. J., & Fox, K. R. (2009). The impact of physical activity and fitness on academic achievement and cognitive performance in children. International Review of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 2(2), 198-214.
Kohl III, H. W., & Cook, H. D. (Eds.). (2013). Educating the student body: Taking physical activity and physical education to school. National Academies Press.
Rasberry, C. N., Lee, S. M., Robin, L., Laris, B. A., Russell, L. A., Coyle, K. K., & Nihiser, A. J. (2011). The association between school-based physical activity, including physical education, and academic performance: a systematic review of the literature. Preventive medicine, 52, S10-S20.
Sallis, J. F., McKenzie, T. L., Kolody, B., Lewis, M., Marshall, S., & Rosengard, P. (1999). Effects of health-related physical education on academic achievement: Project SPARK. Research quarterly for exercise and sport, 70(2), 127-134.
Strong WB, Malina RM, Blimkie CJ, Daniels SR, Dishman RK, Gutin B, Hergenroeder AC, Must A, Nixon PA, Pivarnik JM, Rowland T, Trost S, & Trudeau F (2005). Evidence based physical activity for school-age youth. Journal of Pediatrics. 146(6):732–737.
Trudeau, F., & Shephard, R. J. (2008). Physical education, school physical activity, school sports and academic performance. International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity, 5(1), 10.
Beane, J. A. (1990). Affect in the curriculum: Toward democracy, dignity, and diversity. Columbia University, New York, NY: Teachers College Press.
The theme selected for this issue of Education Canada resonates with Kativik Ilisarniliriniq,1 the school board of Nunavik. Weaved into our current activities, the goal of delivering Indigenized educational services and programs to Inuit learners animates our organization at all levels, from its elected representatives to pedagogical experts, teachers and school administrators.
Kativik Ilisarniliriniq was created in 1975, under a land claims settlement known as the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement (JBNQA). Negotiated after a major hydroelectric project in the James Bay received opposition from the Inuit of Nunavik, the James Bay Cree, and other Aboriginal groups, the agreement is a protected treaty under the Constitution of Canada.
The school board embodies Inuit-controlled education. Indeed, under the JBNQA, Kativik Ilisarniliriniq can exercise unique powers to develop programs and curriculum aimed at enabling Inuit students to preserve their language, culture and identity. Providing students with access to learning based on Inuit values, culture, language, history, worldview, and approaches to pedagogy is therefore at the core of our mission and vision.
As an organization, we approach education from a holistic perspective. The services we deliver – as well as the curriculum and programs we develop – are rooted in the Inuit definition of Inuguiniq, an education process that seeks to develop the human being as a whole through direct engagement with the environment and the community. This is clearly reflected in the school board’s 2016-2023 Strategic Plan.
Applied to curriculum development work, these fundamental principles have led the school board to innovate and rethink its curriculum development framework. Rather than looking for areas where Indigenous content could be inserted into existing provincial programs, we used an Inuit perspective to incorporate the Quebec Education Plan (and other global or Euro-centric approaches to education), into a framework driven by Inuit worldview, Inuit pedagogy, and Inuit values.
The resulting curricular framework builds on Inuit heritage: thousands of years of environmental and architectural knowledge, sustainable communities, and a sophisticated language and culture. Recently presented at the Inuit Education Summit, a conference organized by the International Circumpolar Council (ICC), this approach was validated by the strong support it received from the Inuit representatives of ICC member countries.
A curricular framework built on Inuit heritage truly aligns to the recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). I believe it also presents the Quebec government, through its Ministry of Education, with a unique opportunity to demonstrate leadership in working alongside Kativik Ilisarniliriniq to implement the TRC recommendations that relate to education.
Concretely, when applied to Science and Technology, using a curricular framework built on Inuit heritage has paved the way to the development of programs such as Inuit Environmental Science. Grounded in Inuit culture and land knowledge, the program aims to teach the conceptual and skills-based competencies that will allow Nunavik youth to meet and even exceed the requirements for the Quebec Ministry of Education Science and Technology Cycle One and Two and Environmental Science and Technology Progressions of Learning.
The program structures learning around seasons, with units tying lessons to the Arctic fauna, flora and environment, as illustrated in Figure 1. The program is currently being introduced for review for accreditation by the Ministry of Education.
As the school board pursues its effort to “Indigenize/Inuitize” the education services, programs and curriculum it offers, support from the Quebec Ministry of Education is essential. The Idle No More movement, the work of the TRC and its recommendations, as well as the increased media attention that Indigenous issues have attracted since the last federal elections all contribute to an environment in which there is a more acute awareness of the necessity to do things differently for reconciliation to become a reality.
As it currently stands, the Canadian public education system does not provide learners, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, with much in terms of knowledge related to “the history and legacy of residential schools, Treaties, and Aboriginal rights, as well as the historical and contemporary contributions of Aboriginal peoples to Canadian society.”2
While the situation varies from province to province, Quebec is not exempt of what the Director General of the First Nations Education Council Lise Bastien describes as “systemic ignorance.”3 This ignorance also reinforces the profound colonialization that we still have to extricate from our education system and mentality.
This point is important as it has a direct impact on the school board, and on the challenges we face as we seek the accreditation of programs and curricula built on Inuit heritage. Indeed, within the non-Aboriginal population, there is little awareness and understanding of Inuit rights enshrined in the JBNQA, and of who we are as Inuit; the government officials and ministry employees we work with are no exception to that. In this regard, it should be noted that the dialogue recently re-established between Kativik Ilisarniliriniq and the Quebec Ministry of Education also contributes to awareness-raising about Indigenous education, and is in itself a process conducive to reconciliation.
In terms of curriculum development, the Nunavik population is small and Inuit expert resources are scarce. In the case of non-Inuit expert resources in Canada, few are familiar with Inuit and Indigenous worldview and pedagogical approaches. This poses challenges that should be acknowledged; as an employer, we must be able to offer competitive work conditions to these experts who are in demand.
As mentioned above, the Quebec education system does not provide learners with much in terms of knowledge related to the historical and contemporary contributions of Indigenous peoples. As the school board caters to Inuit students and learners, filling this gap has been a priority for us.
In this regard, the following initiatives should be mentioned as best practices: 1) a new Nunavik History Program; 2) the launch of Nunavik Sivunitsavut (Nunavik Our Future, in Inuktitut); 3) the teacher training program implemented in partnership with McGill University.
Currently in progress, the development of a Nunavik History Program was undertaken in collaboration with the Avataq Cultural Institute. The program bridges the school board’s regular and adult education sectors. It consists of 12 modules and will cover the period of 1600 to 2016.
The launch of the new Quebec history program in 2017 only reinforced the school board’s determination to pursue the development of its own program. While a step in the right direction, the new program contains little content related to the Inuit in Quebec. In no way does it respond adequately to Nunavik youth’s desire for knowledge about their history and identity as Inuit.
In addition, it is also important to recognize that the Indigenous educational content offered to non-Indigenous Canadians through the public education system (as well as the lack of such content) will continue to have tremendous repercussions on the Inuit of Nunavik. The school board (and other Nunavik organizations) would benefit from provincial education systems that offer more Indigenous and Inuit educational content. This would have a positive impact on our workforce if, in the future, the professionals we recruit outside Nunavik were to arrive with knowledge about Indigenous peoples in Canada, and a better understanding of the Arctic context and communities in which they are working.
Nunavik Sivunitsavut is inspired by the successful Ottawa-based Nunavut Sivuniksavut, that has been around for 30 years. Hosted at the Avataq Cultural Institute in Montreal, the initiative offers a one-year college-level experience to adults who hold a Secondary Studies Diploma. The courses, the knowledge and the skills student acquire are rooted in the Inuit culture, language and identity.
For each course completed, students obtain college credit from John Abbott College (our accreditation partner). The credit accumulated can count towards any college or CEGEP program in Quebec. The Nunavik Sivunitsavut team is currently formed of six teachers, two of whom are Inuit from Nunavik. Nunavik and Inuit experts are frequent guests in our classrooms and we are grateful to all those who have generously shared their knowledge with students.
Nunavik Sivunitsavut enriches the options available to Nunavik youth at the college level in Quebec. As our first cohort indicates, the initiative is well positioned to have a positive impact on student perseverance at the post-secondary level. Our hope is that it will contribute to increase the number of Nunavimmiut4 holding college and university level education, so that more Inuit can benefit from professional and economic opportunities in Nunavik.
Nunavik is a huge territory and there are not many opportunities for youth from different communities to meet and exchange with one another. At Nunavik Sivunitsavut, students share a strong learning experience through which a common sense of Inuit identity emerges. Students from the same cohort will very likely meet again in future roles or professional positions. From that perspective, Nunavik Sivunitsavut can also foster future partnerships and collaborations in the region.
Ensuring the transmission of Inuit values, culture, and language through an education system where Inuit employees form only 51.49 percent of the workforce is challenging. At the moment, the school board employs 462 teachers, of which 36.4 percent are Inuit (168 Inuit teachers) and 40 percent of them hold a teaching certification issued by the Quebec Ministry of Education.
To increase access to the profession of educator, Kativik Ilisarniliriniq offers a Teacher Certification program and professional development programs to its Inuit teachers, Inuit teacher trainees and Inuit school administrators.
The program is implemented in partnership with McGill University. All courses are taught in Inuktitut, by Inuit instructors working alongside with McGill consultants. Since 1978, a total of 182 Inuit teachers have graduated from this program. As such, it has contributed to and continues to play an important role in building pedagogical expertise in Nunavik.
The recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission are valuable in many ways. In fact, they support Kativik Ilisarniliriniq in the exercise of the unique powers conferred to it by the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement. They also validate the approach that characterizes our program development work. Most importantly, they highlight the opportunities currently available to us (as well as our interlocutors within the Ministry of Education) that can be seized to refocus the conversation on the educational needs of our communities. In this regard, and as discussed here, many initiatives are already well underway!
Photo: Marie-Andrée Delisle-Alaku/Kativik Ilisarniliriniq
First published in Education Canada, June 2018
1 Kativik Ilisarniliriniq means Kativik School Board in Inuktitut.
2 Guiding principle number 10. See: Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada: Calls to Action, 2015.
3 Coined by Lise Bastien, Director General of the First Nations Education Council, the term “systemic ignorance” has since been widely used to describe the general lack of knowledge non-Indigenous Canadians display about Indigenous people in Canada, their language, culture, current realities and identity. Bastien first used the term when advocating for inclusion of content on Indigenous people in the province’s pedagogical material and curriculum as well as for the inclusion of content developed from an indigenous perspective. See: Jessica Nadeau, Plaidoyer pour une présence accrue de la culture autochtone, Le Devoir, November 29, 2016.
4 The term Nunavimmiut is an Inuktitut word. It is used to designate “the residents of Nunavik.” Currently, the Inuit represent approximately 85 percent of the Nunavik population (Statistics Canada, Fact Sheet for Nunavik, March 29, 2016).
A THIN FOG hung above the restless water of Alaska’s Alexander Archipelago, veiling the mountains as they stood rooted in the ocean’s deep fjords. I had driven this route since the beginning of the school year nearly two months before. Timing the drive perfectly, I would arrive at the first bus stop, far up the finger-like inlet, at just the right moment to meet the two children who lived there at the end of their scamper from their front door, greeting them with my best bus-driver’s smile.
That morning, I noticed that I had arrived early at the widened shoulder a mile or two before that first, daily rendezvous. Wheeling the 11 ½-meter behemoth off of the highway, I chose to wait out my ten extra minutes here, where I could meditate on the rising sun and the scattering of the morning mists. Throughout Southeast Alaska the highways are chipped from the mountainsides along the water’s edge, and it was here, next to the perpetually rolling waves, that I now paused.
A sudden motion just off shore caught my eye. A deep, churning whirlpool pierced the surface of the waters. In a moment I was out of the bus and had hopped to a large boulder that rose above the rolling waves. No sooner had I landed than the black and white form of a killer whale drove three meters into the air beside me. Four meters out, the surface crashed with the fall of the returning whale. Immediately, I was aware of the pod, skimming, slicing and surfacing before me, to my right, to my left. Across the channel a second pod chased salmon in ritual feasting.
“Five minutes since I stopped…” I thought. “Perhaps I could collect the children early and return.” The engine fired; yes, the boy and his little sister (seven and five) headed out the door early as they saw the bus approaching.
As I was also completing a practicum in their school, I had seen these two children, who greeted me early each morning with such warmth, later in the day, dissolving into the social fabric of the school, silently disappearing. Conversations with the students themselves, their teachers and their parents revealed the deeper challenges they felt as they struggled to accommodate both traditional Tlingit values and the foreign expectations of formal academia. Their father was a world-renowned carver of Tlingit totems, some of which stood in European museums. Now his children, as well, were attempting to stand strong in their school.
“Why are we stopping here?”
“You’ll see. Look out there!”
“What is it?”
“It’s the orca. They have come here to eat.”
“Can we get out? What do they eat? Where are they going? How fast can an orca swim…?”
As the bus filled that day, I saw the two children melting again into silence, but as I glanced in my mirror from time to time, I saw a sparkle in their eyes, and I knew orcas played there.1 Over the course of the intervening 30 years, my work both in Alaska and on the Canadian prairies has taught me much about the value of land-based education. I have had the great privilege of sitting with many Elders, gaining insight into land-based learning as traditionally practiced and understood by the Tsimshian, Tlingit, Haida, Dene, Anishinaabe, Dakota, and Cree nations.
Settler societies around the world create educational institutions that function to perpetuate the philosophical understandings of the dominant culture. Consequently, they do a disservice to learners who are thereby deprived of broader understandings of the world. In the Canadian context, for example, children (Indigenous and non-Indigenous alike) might learn facts pertaining to the biology and habitat of killer whales, but they would not gain an understanding of the intricacies of relationship within the circle of creation.
The colonial, pedagogical structures within which educators are obliged to operate, both in terms of curriculum and instructional practice, consistently stand in stark contrast to understandings of the world that are rooted in diverse, Indigenous, philosophical perspectives. Teachers are required to hold forth in classrooms that are far removed from lessons that can be learned on the land. They are to teach classes of 25 or more with limited time for students and still less for those who are the silent ones. The inculcation of outcomes often supersedes real learning, and these outcomes reflect perspectives that have not been reconciled with philosophical truths found in Indigenous worldviews. Furthermore, learning on the land from the teachers one finds there is, all too often, discredited and deemed to be irrelevant and unquantifiable. Indigenous Elders, however, tell us that profound lessons can be learned from all whom we find on the land, including those of the winged, finned, plant, four and six-legged nations.
The educational machinery established by dominant, colonial culture exists to continue the larger societal systems. The enfranchised will remain enfranchised, and the marginalized will not escape marginalization in successive generations without a genuine process of reconciliation where alternative world-views are not only appreciated but embraced.
Of key concern, then, are questions of validation: are there not invaluable lessons being missed by all students when the lessons of the land, so familiar to traditional Indigenous individuals, are ignored? Stemming from this central philosophical concern arise other, practical considerations. For example, in what ways can the accomplishments and learning that take place on the land be validated, and how do we teach students to listen to the many teachers within the circle of creation?
Traditional land-based learning presents in two distinct categories: learning that is imparted by Elders and/or traditional knowledge keepers in the community, and learning that derives from the land itself. Teachings received on and from the land fashion both conceptualizations of the world and moral understandings pertaining to self-conduct in the world. In support of this dynamic form of education, the Coalition for the Advancement of Indigenous, Land-Based Education (CAILBE) was originated in Canada and is now an international coalition built around the revitalization of traditional, Indigenous ways of learning on and from the land. With adherents from around the world and members in seven nations (Australia, Brazil, Canada, New Zealand, Nigeria, Sweden and the U.S.), CAILBE is dedicated to promoting governmental and institutional changes that result in the acknowledgement of Indigenous understandings regarding LBE and to assisting individual teachers in the development and inclusion of traditional LBE experiences for their students. This work is accomplished not through direct political action but through the empowerment of educators to take part in engineering real and lasting change. CAILBE has grown rapidly since its inception in June of 2016. CAILBE members have made a commitment to infuse the work that they are already doing with promotion of LBE and the philosophical perspectives that underlie it. Members with initiatives, questions or academic presentations are guided and supported by this international association.
Dr. Richard Manning, CAILBE member from the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, NZ, has observed, “The last century of compulsory schooling has rendered young people disconnected from their… local ecologies of place.”2 If it is to be intuitive, land-based education (LBE) must begin early in life, frequently in the context of family structures and activities. Teachers seeking to implement Indigenous, land-based learning strategies have found that many students from almost every environment (not just “city kids”) lack these early, land-based learning experiences and must be given guidance in their first encounters with learning on the land.
Certainly, many teachers attempt to incorporate fieldtrips into the delivery of curricular outcomes. Although this is laudable, it does not reflect the realities of those who have learned deeply from the land. To pass through the natural environment on an excursion related to, for example, a science class, does not equate to this type of Indigenous, land-based learning. By contrast, in progressive models, students are taught the basic foundations of traditional LBE. (See Gakina Awiya Biindigeg below.)
Those who learn on the land must first develop a sense of respect for all the teachings that may be found there. Cree Elder Gerald Morgan frequently asks the students he teaches on the land if they have seen anything as they travelled to meet him in the bush. Very often they give a negative response, meaning that they have seen nothing that they consider noteworthy (e.g. moose, eagles, bears). Morgan then asks if they saw no trees, no sparrows, no rocks. He goes on to explain that the greatest lessons are often brought by the smallest of teachers. We are so schooled in hierarchical thinking of European origin that we fail to appreciate the smallest of these teachers.
Students who seek to learn on the land must also know how to wait long there. Lessons do not become a part of who we are until we consider deeply the implications for the way we walk in this world. In the same way that students must listen and observe closely to comprehend that which is being conveyed by a teacher in a classroom, so, too, learning on the land requires that keen attention be given in order to understand the lessons imparted there.
The goal of LBE within a great many Indigenous communities around the world is that each student learns to take his or her place in the circles of creation and community in a good way. This is the essence of the Anishinaabe/Cree teaching of pimatisiwin (walking in a good manner).3 To take our place well in the circle involves being in harmonious relationship with all others in the circle and with the Great Mystery (i.e. Creator) at the circle’s centre. We come to understand that all our relations in the circle can show what they have learned about these things, and, as respected teachers, they can guide us into better ways of being in the world as we learn from them on the land.
Dr. Maggie Walter, CAILBE member and University of Tasmania professor, describes Indigenous connection to the land in personal terms: “I am a descendant of the Trawlwoolway in Tasmania. The nation takes up the north east corner of Tasmania and is distinguished by wonderful white beaches, open wooded country and plentiful plant and animal resource around which our traditional people’s lifestyles were based. Not many of us live in the area these days – it is a relatively sparsely populated part of Tasmania – but if you travel there you can see the signs of our people’s occupation everywhere – in the midden lines in the sands and the shells along the beaches. You don’t have to be Aboriginal to understand our connection to country or to feel the continued presence of our ancestors in this place.”4
Clearly a significant paradigm shift must take place for land-based learning to be given weight in the schooling systems of settler societies. Some, such as Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, question whether this can be done at all.5 The argument here is that land-based learning and colonial educational practices are too disparate to be reconciled and that, should an individual seek to be educated on the land, the better course of action is to jettison any hope of incorporating this into the accredited procedures of education in mainstream schooling.
On the other hand, recent trends in pedagogy in Canada and elsewhere have begun to explore differentiated ways of learning. These efforts represent positive steps toward recognizing, validating and normalizing the learning of students in traditional ways on the land. A groundswell of support for change, of which CAILBE is merely one manifestation, is seeking to alter the direction of current practices in education. As with most philosophical shifts, one must think in terms of generations rather than in terms of years. For this reason CAILBE members recognize that the greatest need is to present educational experiences to coming generations that reflect Indigenous understandings and values. The central aims are that Indigenous ideals become valued at a level that is at least on par with those of the larger settler-societies and that, as part of this shift, time be allotted for Indigenous land-based learning. As this becomes a reality, LBE could potentially become a transformative force in the development of all students.
The revitalization of Indigenous, land-based education may, in some jurisdictions, involve the creation of alternate, accredited tracks toward graduation in which Indigenous philosophy and LBE are central. At the very least, a greater openness to the involvement of traditional knowledge keepers in the imparting of understanding to students must be forthcoming. Legislative enactment of policy and law governing education most often supports and finances those systems deemed to be efficient in confirming the status quo; nevertheless, it is at this legislative level that change must, eventually, come. Therefore, those who understand the importance of traditional LBE must raise a collective voice, both by joining organizations such as CAILBE and by infusing their current practices in education with an appreciation for Indigenous values and world-views, including ways of knowing and learning on the land.
The Gakina Awiya Biindigeg student group at Springfield Collegiate Institute in Oakbank, Manitoba, is one example of a progressive land-based learning program. For over a decade students who participated in this optional programming were regularly taken onto the land to learn from Elders and traditional people. The scope of this learning was extremely broad and included traditional values and teachings derived from the experiences encountered while in a variety of remote locations. Students were shown how to relate to the various teachers that are encountered on the land (e.g. the four-legged, many-legged, finned, winged), enabling them to learn directly from these teachers during independent ventures onto the land. When Elders felt that a student was ready s/he would be put out onto the land for a vision quest or other ceremony. Through the avenue of Manitoba’s cultural exploration credit, students were enabled to use this traditional learning towards graduation.
Photo: iStock
First published in Education Canada, June 2018
1 The young boy mentioned in this story has now grown and has followed in his father’s footsteps as a carver. The young girl is a library assistant who has, among other things, initiated a children’s garden at the local public library where she works.
2 Richard Manning, Place, Power and Pedagogy: A Critical Analysis of the Status of Te Ātiawa Histories of Place in Port Nicholson Block Secondary Schools and the Possible Application of Place-Based Education Models ((PhD thesis, 2009): 56.
3 The late Dr. Mary Young elaborates on this concept in her book Pimatisiwin: Walking in a Good Way: A Narrative Inquiry into Language as Identity, (Winnipeg: Pemmican Publications, Inc., 2009).
4 Maggie Walter, “Meet the Presenter: Maggie Walter, Indigenous Studies,” Open 2 Study (August, 2014). https://blog.open2study.com/post/meet-presenter-maggie-walter-indigenous-studies
5 Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, “Land as Pedagogy: Nishnaabeg intelligence and rebellious transformation,” Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society. 3, no. 3 (2014). http://decolonization.org/index.php/des/article/view/22170
In an effort to implement the recommendations for education contained in the final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, provincial school systems are developing curricula that incorporates Indigenous perspectives respectfully and accurately for all students. But non-Indigenous educators, who’ve had limited learning experiences in their own schooling about Indigenous cultures, histories and issues, are now grappling with the fear of “getting it wrong” for their students. But a B.C.-based learning community model in Kelowna demonstrates how non-Indigenous educators can envelop students in a network of Indigenous teachers, adult advocates and the wider community to curtail Indigenous student dropout rates while immersing non-Indigenous students in Traditional Knowledge.
The Indigenous graduation rate has risen from 66% to 77% in six years at Mount Boucherie Secondary in West Kelowna, B.C, which has a high percentage of students with Indigenous ancestry. Educators have attested that culture is medicine, and that immersing students in land-based activities, First Nations-centred courses, the local Okanagan language and traditional drumming and talking circles has given them a sense of pride and a will to succeed.
This report provides practical examples complete with video testimonials from students and teachers on how the Academy of Indigenous Studies has built lasting relationships with local First Nations communities – demonstrating how existing provincial course offerings can be leveraged to create a for-credit learning track that allows Indigenous and non-Indigenous students to learn about Indigenous cultures throughout their entire high school journeys.
“We have well-intentioned, non-Indigenous educators across the country who are afraid of not teaching this material respectfully and authentically,” says Darren Googoo, Chair of the EdCan Network, a pan-Canadian collective of education leaders. “But doing nothing is also wrong, and this approach allows educators to effectively mobilize reconciliation in their schools right now.”
To access the full report and videos, please visit: www.edcan.ca/academy-report
This case study report provides practical examples on how the Academy of Indigenous Studies has built lasting relationships with local First Nations communities – demonstrating how existing provincial course offerings can be leveraged to create a for-credit learning track that allows Indigenous and non-Indigenous students to learn about Indigenous cultures throughout their entire high school journeys.
This B.C.-based learning community model in Kelowna demonstrates how non-Indigenous educators can envelop students in a network of Indigenous teachers, adult advocates and the wider community to curtail Indigenous student dropout rates while immersing non-Indigenous students in Traditional Knowledge.
Non-Indigenous educators in urban high schools can leverage this step-by-step report to create their own unique programs in consultation and collaboration with local Indigenous communities.
We’ve also put together a series of student and educator video testimonials demonstrating how “culture is medicine” that gives students a sense of pride and a will to succeed.
The transformative changes coming to schools across Canada in the wake of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s (TRC) “calls to action” bring lots of opportunity for discussion around key issues. For example, what structural changes need to be implemented? What innovative frameworks have already proven useful? What are some of the pathways educators and educational authorities are following to work with communities, nurture the Learning Spirit for youth, and create curricula that “bring together” different cultural ways of being, knowing, and doing? What ways might be helpful to bring diverse energies into balance such that the inevitable negatives are meaningfully heard, consensus reached, and positive educational changes fostered?
In this article, we share a few such understandings. Our three voices are woven as a conversational discussion, plus we’ve included some of Elder Murdena’s understandings (unfortunately, her health precludes active involvement). We hope our discussion will help encourage many more both in and outside the classroom, given that learning is a lifelong journey with both formal and informal educational opportunities.
ALBERT: My strong intact Mi’kmaw Spirit enabled me to endure fierce, pervasive cruelty at residential school. Today, our school environments are profoundly different but our Indigenous youth still need to know who they are, where they come from, and how to speak their Ancestors’ language. Why? Because when you force someone to abandon their ways of knowing, their ways of seeing the world, you literally destroy their Spirit and once that Spirit is destroyed it is very, very difficult to embrace anything – academically or through sports or through arts or through anything – because that person is never whole. To have a whole person, their Spirit, their physical being, their emotions, and their intellectual being… all have to be intact and work in a very harmonious way.
CAROLA: At Mi’kmaw Kina’matnewey (MK),1 the Mi’kmaw educational authority in Nova Scotia, we understand this and are using Elder Albert’s guiding principle of Etuaptmumk / Two-Eyed Seeing (E/TES, see definition in this issue’s Network Voices, p. 6). It’s a co-learning journey for all because it’s a new approach. My role on the team is to develop and implement literacy programming while supporting teachers as they continue building their instructional strategies in literacy. I do this in a way that’s consistent with MK’s goal of “ensuring that our students see themselves reflected in the curriculum as essential to creating a strong literacy foundation.” There are so many different dimensions we need to consider, such as creating culturally safe environments, revisiting policies on a regular basis and in inclusive ways to ensure reconnecting with authentic cultural understandings, providing genuine cultural resources, renewing curricular content to address current (student) needs, and creating meaningful networking opportunities for everyone.
CHERYL: Here in Unama’ki – Cape Breton Island – Murdena Marshall had early understandings of these critical dimensions for post-secondary science. In the 1990s, she pushed for an E/TES-guided approach for post-secondary science education and thus we created the then-unique pathway, namely the Toqwa’tu’kl Kjijitaqnn / Integrative Science (TK/IS) program within a four-year undergraduate degree at Cape Breton University. The intent was to make post-secondary science more relevant and attractive for Mi’kmaw students. It functioned from 1999 to the late 2000s; there’s lots of information on the website2 and Carola was one of our early students.
CAROLA: Because of that program and the many traditional teachings I learned from Elders such as the late Gwen Bear, from Tobique First Nation in New Brunswick, and from my mom, Serena Francis, who is a retired language teacher in Elsipogtog First Nation in N.B., I know first-hand that the educational approach of Etuaptmumk / Two-Eyed Seeing can be truly empowering. At MK we are working with community Elders and educators to create foundational understandings for developing curricula whereby we will centre our Mi’kmaw ways of being and doing, and for which Elder Jane Meader from Membertou First Nation in N.S. has provided written understandings.3
Our team recognizes the need to change the way science stories are told and an excellent example in this regard is Muin and the Seven Bird Hunters. It’s an inspiring piece of Two-Eyed Seeing, where collaboration and co-learning are exemplified. This almost forgotten Mi’kmaw story of the north night sky was revived by Elder Lillian Marshall of Potlotek First Nation. Among many things, her work revealed rich Mi’kmaw Knowledge about patterns in the sky, showed the congruency of Western science with this Mi’kmaw Knowledge, and then went further by showing how the holistic Mi’kmaw science interconnects sky knowledge with the behaviour of birds and the actions of the L’nu’k (Mi’kmaw people). The project is an excellent example of what happens when respect for two knowledge systems occurs. Elder Lillian had been working for years to revive the story. But it was the UNESCO-designated International Year of Astronomy in 2009 that finally enabled completion of the work as her energies came together with those of Elder Murdena and other Mi’kmaw Elders, plus knowledgeable and supportive individuals in the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada and creative individuals on Cheryl’s Integrative Science research team at Cape Breton University. Their collaborative work resulted in a video and a children’s storybook4 and clearly showed how we can change the way we tell our science knowledge stories so that they are culturally inclusive, accurate, authentic, and respectful. This is exactly what the guiding principle of E/TES encourages.
CHERYL: Having taught in the TK/IS program, I am convinced its approach to teaching science by “bringing together Indigenous and Western scientific knowledges and ways of knowing” could benefit all science students, from all communities and ethnicities. Yet I know negative energies abound: some critics are racist, others poorly-informed or fearful. An excellent learning example for us came in February 2014, when the new federal legislation “Bill C-33 First Nations Control of First Nations Education” was under consideration and, in its regard, The Globe and Mail columnist Jeffrey Simpson commented that “… the big loser will be students, whose knowledge of basic science, math and other subjects will be so infused with cultural appropriateness by these theorists as to handicap them, rather than assist them, in wider Canadian society.”5 Elder Albert responded with a letter to the editor.
ALBERT: My letter emphasized that E/TES is not easy and that we need to embark on a co-learning journey in which our two paradigms will be put on the table to be scrutinized. We need to honestly be able to say that the essence, the S/spirit of our two ways, has been respected as we work to balance the energies of those ways; we need to put the two together. My letter had to be short. More recently, we have started pondering how we might better deal with negative energies and disagreements. And thus, we now emphasize that co-learning needs to embed capacity for i’l’oqaptmu’k, meaning “to revisit to renew, to maintain movement in the direction Spirit intended.” Differences of opinion or conflict are inevitable, so we need ways for the energies of the various parties to reach consensus. I asked my friend, artist Gerald Gloade from the Mi’kmaw community of Millbrook, to create an image of a Two Bowl Peace Pipe (see picture) to help us ponder how, within a sacred coming together, the negative energies could be burned off as they go through the pipe for purification towards consensus and our energies find balance. Our Mi’kmaw language also provides insights: Kisutmajikmeans “they decided to talk.” Kisutmauk means “we come to consensus so we can move forward because we have taken in these natural energies” (from the land, water, air, and Spirit). And Kisutasik means “consensus has been reached.” This is really the essence of co-learning because we can’t work on the basis of assumptions or hearsay. We need to take time to listen to each other rather than merely talking about each other. Lots of deep dialogue, deep co-learning, and hard work are required for E/TES and all four domains of being human, namely the physical, emotional, intellectual, and Spiritual, have to be involved.
A co-learning journey is necessary for this ‘together approach’ to be successful because, as in every journey, challenges exist: in our mindsets, points of view and perspectives, and approaches to teaching.
CAROLA: “Putting our knowledges together” most definitely needs to be done in appropriate ways. For example, within a typical mainstream framework there will generally be a focus on cognitive or intellectual development. As a Mi’kmaw person, however, I would begin with Spiritual development at the heart, interconnected with the emotional domain in ways that follow our Elders’ teachings and guidance. A co-learning journey is necessary for this “together approach” to be successful because, as in every journey, challenges exist: in our mindsets, points of view and perspectives, and approaches to teaching. Also and very importantly, what is called “Indigenous” has to come from genuine Indigenous voice, community, Spirit, and knowledge.
CHERYL: Years ago, Murdena created a model to emphasize the system nature of Mi’kmaw Knowledge and we’ve adapted it to help serve co-learning and knowledge scrutinization (see Figure 1). Murdena’s model has four concentric circles although, she says, traditionally there would be no intentional layering because stories were used to transmit knowledge in a holistic way. She indicates Mi’kmaw Knowledge and Western Science can share empirical observations of the physical attributes of, for example, a plant and its habitat (see outermost circles for both models in the diagram). In Mi’kmaw Knowledge, the middle circles of personal connection and respect are reciprocal, plus all four circles are interconnective. Sacred knowledge is innermost, can only truly be understood within the Mi’kmaw language, and generally cannot and should not be translated. Western Science relies on mathematical language and our model for it lacks middle circles because subjectivity is intentionally diminished. For Mi’kmaw Knowledge, “the Knowledge Holder / the knower” is an integral participant within the knowledge. In the Western science model, “the knower” stands outside the circles to emphasize objectivity.
ALBERT: These simple models are worth thousands more words… here I want to highlight that Mi’kmaw Knowledge is collective and thus any one Knowledge Holder has only a small piece, and also that our knowledge is alive and thus both physical and Spiritual with our language continually reminding us of our responsibilities.
CHERYL: In the Toqwa’tu’kl Kjijitaqnn / Integrative Science program, we worked within the broadened view of science as “dynamic, pattern-based knowledge shared through stories about our interactions with and within nature” for the Indigenous and Western sciences. Curricula evolved as we explored common ground (outermost circles in the knowledge models) while acknowledging and respecting differences (remaining circles). TK/IS eventually collapsed in the face of financial and political stresses. Nonetheless, it saw considerable student success and I will always say that community facilitators and tutors6 along with Elders and educators working together with mainstream allies were key… a “we together” approach.
CAROLA: At Mi’kmaw Kina’matnewey, we are learning with and from Elders in the many Traditional Districts in Mi’kma’ki. We are listening to their stories and envisioning how to put these into curricula woven within our Mi’kmaw Principles of Learning. We are at the beginning of this exciting journey to reconnect with our collective understandings as to how young people can best learn and to try to begin to grow these understandings within formal educational settings. In early elementary programming, Elders identified the importance of outdoor and experiential learning. The MK Board of Directors recognized the value of play and inquiry in learning. This administrative /community support is critical to successfully implementing change. This approach to learning, of framing learning experiences in real-life contexts through exploration via play, is one excellent way to teach our students. Teachers from Preschool to Grade 2 are receiving intensive training on ways to incorporate play-based, inquiry-based learning in their teaching. As we move forward our goal has to be: Toqikutimk / Together We Are Growing.
ALBERT: Again, I wish to say: E/TES is not easy. And so, we need to understand that sometimes our most important job is to plant seeds for the future, for the youth, knowing seeds germinate when the time is right. We must also accept that Indigenous communities need to generate their own understandings around re-awakening their own Indigenous Knowledge – this is what MK’s project through Carola and others is doing – and this takes time. We are entering an era in which what we once had and then came to consider as obsolete, is now coming back. This is especially true in regards to our traditional understandings that richly woven kinship relationships and interconnectivity are what make our natural world. The remembering and relearning will require much transformation of understanding – we will need to invite our Tribal Consciousness back into our daily lives so we are guided as to the way we initially were, and we will need to do a lot of inner reflection. We have for too long been in a period of disconnect from our natural world and from our traditional ways. We have lost a lot of the stories that would normally flow as to our responsibilities in sustaining ourselves as part and parcel of the whole. Education is key, for all of us.
I also want to emphasize that there are words in our language that would be more appropriate to use in place of the English phrases “Indigenous Knowledge” or “Traditional Knowledge.” For “Mi’kmaw Knowledge,” Murdena and I have suggested Ta’ntelo’lti’k meaning “the way we L’nu’k are.”7All Indigenous Nations have their own languages, their own words.
CAROLA: Nurturing the Learning Spirit of our students has to be central to everything we do and many of us firmly believe language is one key. For example, we can look to the community of Eskasoni, which has had an immersion program at the elementary school for at least 18 years. A research project that examined their program revealed the trend towards better educational success for Mi’kmaw students whose formal educational years began with immersion in our Mi’kmaw language.8
CHERYL: Murdena has always said, “We must bring Ta’ntelo’lti’k / Mi’kmaw Knowledge into the present so that everything becomes meaningful in our lives and communities. Our Mi’kmaw Knowledge was not meant to stay in the past; it is not static.9Like all things alive, it grows and changes… it is dynamic.”
CAROLA: We know that MK educational support helps foster our Mi’kmaw communities. In working with our communities and schools, we have seen high rates of graduation from high school.10Young people who know who they are and where they come from and who are connected with their Ancestors’ language, with Elders, with Ta’ntelo’lti’k / Mi’kmaw Knowledge, and with their community and Nation… find themselves woven into a multi-dimensional network of understandings that will help them find success in their chosen careers. This, in turn, helps to enrich our communities in ways that we can only begin to imagine. Our communities will grow. We all benefit.
ALBERT: Elders want to work with projects such as MK’s through Carola and others to ensure the accuracy, authenticity, and sacredness of the Mi’kmaw Knowledge being included. This is the validation by peer-review that we Elders insist must be an integral part of all efforts today involving Indigenous Knowledges. In 2009-2011, Elders from across Atlantic Canada worked together to provide formal recommendations in this regard. These are known as the “Elders Eight Recommendations for Honouring Traditional Knowledge”11and were supported by the Atlantic Chiefs in September 2011. I have great hope these recommendations will soon begin to be acknowledged and acted upon as the Elders intended… especially within educational institutions.
ALBERT, CAROLA AND CHERYL: We need to work together to do this. Indigenous Elders and Knowledge Holders are as interested in knowledge integrity as are mainstream academics and researchers. We need to do this in and for our classrooms, institutions, organizations, communities, Nations… across Canada. The educational need is deep and it is broad. Msit No’kmaq.
Illustration: Gerald Gloade
First published in Education Canada, June 2018
1 http://kinu.ca/introducing-mikmaw-kinamatnewey
2 www.integrativescience.ca
3 http://kinu.ca/document/mikmaw-ways-being-and-knowing
4 www.integrativescience.ca/uploads/activities/BACKGROUND-making-video-Muin-Seven-Bird-Hunters-IYA-binder.pdf
5 Jeffrey Simpson, “Money Alone Can’t Fix Aboriginal Education,” The Globe and Mail (Feb. 21, 2014). www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/aboriginal-education-needs-money-and-more/article17008070
6 Student support was provided by the Mi’kmaw Science Advantage Program, better known as MSAP. This included tutors during 1999-2002 and recruitment facilitation in 1999-2002 plus 2003-2005.
7 www.integrativescience.ca/uploads/articles/2010June-Marshall-Bartlett-Integrative-Science-Two-Eyed-Seeing-environment-Mi’kmaq.pdf
8 www.apcfnc.ca/images/uploads/FinalReport-BestPracticesandChallengesinMikmaqandMaliseet-WolastoqiLanguageImmersionProgramsFinal.pdf
9 C. Bartlett, M. Marshall, and A. Marshall, “Two-Eyed Seeing and other Lessons Learned Within a Co-learning Journey of Bringing Together Indigenous and Mainstream Knowledges and Ways of Knowing,” Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences 2, no. 4 (2012): 331-340.
10 http://kinu.ca/introducing-mikmaw-kinamatnewey
11 www.apcfnc.ca/images/uploads/ResearchSummary-HonouringTraditionalKnowledgeResearchSummary.pdf
Five-year-old Nancy is busy with clay. At first the chunk she pulls off is too hard to shape, but she’s learned to warm and knead it until it’s softer. She rolls it into a long cylinder and coils the tapering “bug” to attach to her leaf. Then she pulls off two larger bits of green clay to make more leaves for her growing tree. “Too big,” she mutters, and pulls them off again. She cuts one of the balls in half and tries again, this time using her fingers to spread the clay into a thin leaf shape perfect for her imaginary tree.
Play is often described as “the work of childhood.” While the idea of play eludes any single definition, the thread that unites various types of childhood play is pure and simple pleasure. It is its own reward and is self-reinforcing.
In this short article, we make a pitch for a greater focus on fine motor control through guided exploratory play in the Kindergarten program, emphasizing the importance of direct tactile experiences – handling and manipulating objects or materials in the real world in real time. This type of play fulfills several important goals of early childhood learning. First, body-object interaction (BOI) supports the development of stable, internalized models for learning the world: its shape, size, speed, distance, texture, structure, and whole-part relationships, for example. Concepts of shape and size are key to alphabet recognition and the type of reasoning that is foundational for early numeracy understandings in Grades 1 and 2.
Second, guided physical play promotes fine motor control. The Kindergarten years are the time to afford opportunities for play with tweezers, popsicle sticks, crayons, markers, and clothes pegs to strengthen the muscles and the neuropathways for the demands of written literacy, beginning just around the corner!
Finally, BOI develops the associated vocabulary as children learn to name and describe their interactions with the material world.1 Children with nimble fingers are found to have a larger developed lexicon of concrete objects, and interestingly, of more abstract concepts, too. Suggate and Stoeger suggest that “embodied cognition” enjoys a processing advantage, and that the connections between cognition, language and physical contact with the material world provide distinct benefits to youngsters who have had rich opportunities for these types of experiences in early life.
Figure 1: Writing Sample
We find plenty of evidence, however, that Canada’s young children are generally not sufficiently engaged in this type of play prior to their arrival in Kindergarten. The Early Development Instrument (EDI) analyzes Pan Canadian data on five-year-old children on five domains.2Outcomes indicate fewer than 50 percent of Canada’s young children are developing as they should along all five domains of early development. The ParticipACTION 2016 Report Card reports that only nine percent of Canada’s young children are getting the recommended amount of daily exercise, and increased numbers are not getting enough sleep.3 Our own work with Grade 2 children who are gifted revealed their overall lack of readiness for the demands of early written literacy learning, as noted in their distinct, belaboured printing efforts.4 (See Figure 1: Writing Sample.) Our intervention of explicit printing instruction using a programmatic, developmentally progressive approach can, we found, change the slope of the educational trajectory. However, remedial or “catch up” teaching is more difficult and time consuming than “just right teaching” might have been in the sensitive window of time in Kindergarten and Grade 1. Hence our motivation to focus on guided physical play at a much earlier stage in the educational experiences of young students.
Figure 2: Matrix of Types of Play
We position various types of play by way of a framework we have organized around two continua: from child-initiated and directed to adult-initiated and directed; and from unstructured to structured play. (See Figure 2: Matrix of Types of Play.) We locate guided play in the mid-zone of the lower right quadrant, and define it as:
Purposefully designed activities and tasks that we think will be engaging and fun, are directed to some learning goal, and reflect a sense of pedagogical intent. Children’s motivation, curiosity, desire for mastery and their choices for how they interact with the materials are elements of the design. Children are actively involved in advancing embodied cognition and neuro-motor skills relevant and necessary to early language and literacy learning.
The research literature on play-based learning places a much heavier emphasis on inquiry, pretend, imaginative, discovery, fantasy, creative, and socio-dramatic play that is child driven, all types of play that would be located in the upper left quadrant. We advocate for a more balanced approach in the Kindergarten program.
Inspired by Montessori’s5 ideas about the role of the prepared environment and the importance of the materials children play and work with, we suggest the following 11 activities as a starting point to our colleagues in the field who might also be thinking of re-aligning their Kindergarten program. The possibilities are limited only by a teacher’s imagination, though!
The human hand is complex and versatile – elegantly and exquisitely unparalleled in design to do the work of gripping, grabbing, holding, folding, pushing, pulling, punching, kneading, threading, stacking, rolling, throwing, squeezing and squishing.6Through our sense of touch and our tactile connection to the world, we learn the world and engage with it, constructing the stable internal models that are necessary for numeracy and literacy development. These experiences need to be mediated through elaborative and collaborative talk between adult and children. As educators, we are responsible for preparing children for literacy and numeracy learning by engaging little fingers in guided play that lies at the intersection of cognitive, linguistic and neuro-motor integration: embodied cognition. Guided play can make this mandate fun, exciting and productive.
Photo: iStock
First published in Education Canada, March 2018
1 Sebastian Suggate and Heidrun Stoeger, “Do Nimble Hands Make for Nimble Lexicons? Fine motor skills predict vocabulary of embodied vocabulary items,” First Language 34, no. 3 (2014): 244-261. http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0142723714535768
2 Magdalena Janus and Caroline Reid-Westoby, “Monitoring the Development of all Children: The Early Development Instrument,” Early Childhood Matters 125 (2016): 40-46.
3 ParticipACTION Canada, “Are Canadian Kids too Tired to Move?” The ParticipACTION Report Card on Physical Activity for Children and Youth (2016). https://www.participaction.com/sites/default/files/downloads/2016%20ParticipACTION%20Report%20Card%20-%20Full%20Report.pdf
4 Hetty Roessingh and Michelle Bence, “Intervening in Early Written Literacy Development for Gifted Children in Grade 2: Insights from an action research project,” Journal for the Education of the Gifted 40, no. 2 (2017): 168-196. http://journals.sagepub.com/eprint/Qh7ZS5zKKStQgesK4ibZ/full
5 Angeline Lillard, “Playful Learning and Montessori Education,” American Journal of Play 5, no.2 (2013): 157-186. www.journalofplay.org/sites/www.journalofplay.org/files/pdf-articles/5-2-article-play-learning-and-montessori-education_0.pdf
6 Jerry Bergman, “The Human Hand: Perfectly designed,” Creation Research Society Quarterly 50 (2013): 25-30. www.creationresearch.org/members-only/crsq/50/50_1/CRSQ%20Summer%202013%20Bergman.pdf
Philosophy is also about learning how to think, instead of what to think.
A GRADE 2 CLASS has been studying outer space in science, and their teacher really wants to get them engaged and thinking beyond models of the solar system and comparisons of temperature and gravitational pull on other planets. She breaks out the crayons and paper, and asks them to draw what they think life on other planets might look like. Then, they all sit down together to share. Instead of just showing their work, the teacher asks each student to imagine that their alien is visiting planet Earth, and is very curious about humans. Each student is asked to think of something they’d like to tell the alien, something that they think is really important to know about the people of Earth. She jots down their answers on a piece of chart paper, and by the end of the sharing session, they’ve brainstormed a list of things that make a human. They revisit the list as the year goes on – as they study other terrestrial life forms, as they read storybooks, as they write in their journals, and as they explore who they are themselves. Without ever mentioning Plato or Socrates, this teacher has brought philosophy into her classroom.
Philosophy may not be part of the regular elementary curriculum in most Canadian provinces, but that doesn’t mean it can’t play a supporting role. This ancient practice yields incredible benefits for young learners, including numerous applications to 21st century learning. With a little preparation, educators can use big questions and logical thinking to engage and inspire a wide variety of learners across the curriculum.
This isn’t a trivial question, given that philosophers themselves have been trying to answer for some time. Philosophy can be described as the practice of asking open-ended “why” questions that have more than one answer. These are questions about human nature, the universe, our relationships with others, and the way we see ourselves fitting into the world. Philosophy is also about learning how to think, instead of what to think. It proposes a set of guidelines for logical thinking, and asks that thinkers welcome new perspectives. Above all, philosophy requires that we evaluate any answer carefully before accepting it.
The “big question” portion of philosophy comes naturally to most of us, especially when we’re young (as most parents will attest). The second part, however, takes discipline and practice, and develops skills that are helpful both academically and personally.
Philosophy can be a straightforward and effective way to develop 21st century skills, including critical thinking, problem solving and communication. These skills are on every learner’s to-do list, but they can be a challenge to teach and evaluate. Happily, philosophy lends itself to just about any subject area, with cross-curricular applications.
The benefits of philosophy go beyond academic growth. It fosters personal development, character education, and empathy. It’s a useful tool in anti-bullying initiatives, the promotion of diversity, and is a vital part of a whole-child approach to education. Through philosophy, children gain a better understanding of why they feel the way they feel, and why they relate to others the way they do. They discuss concepts like power, leadership, responsibility, and setting an example through one’s actions.
Most importantly, philosophy is interesting to children! It poses questions that have been asked for thousands of years, and that continue to be asked by just about every small child out there. Even very young learners find philosophy intriguing, and want to be involved in inquiry and discussion.
Any philosophical endeavour in the classroom should begin with establishing guidelines for good thinking. With younger learners, it’s easy for conversation to become more about being heard and being right than being rational. As a starting point, ask students what they think a good thinker would do, and brainstorm a list as a class. The principles for appropriate classroom behaviour, such as allowing everyone a chance to speak and avoiding name-calling, also apply to philosophical discussion. You’ll also need to emphasize that saying, “I don’t know” is fine, but saying, “just because” is not. Philosophers always explain why they think what they think.
With the right strategies and tools, philosophy questions can be introduced into the classroom as early as kindergarten. In any elementary classroom, philosophy can and should go beyond simple discussions, and be presented through hands-on activities. Don’t be afraid to break inquiry into small, short activities, and revisit the same questions throughout the year.
Throughout all of this, the most important part is to make a safe space for learners to explain the “why” behind their answers. Go beyond rote learning, and insist that learners avoid descending into “any idea is fine” “just because,” or any other logical fallacy. It’s a bit of work to get kids to learn how to think, instead of what to think, but it’s worth it. The skills and attitudes they learn in doing philosophy will help them be more independent, innovative, open-minded, and generally more successful in reaching the outcomes of all subject areas at school. Beyond this, it will encourage a bond between classmates, and with teachers. Learners can feel confident that even when complex, open-ended questions are posed, their teachers won’t shy away from them. And in hearing their teachers admit “I don’t know. What do you think? Let’s talk about it,” learners are also presented with an inquisitive, open-minded role model for inquiry.
Photo: iStock
First published in Education Canada, March 2018
I work at the secondary level with students who have been suspended or expelled from regular programming. These are students who have been moved from their home school and assigned to me, for either the short- or long-term. In doing so they sometimes get to continue the courses that they started, but in other cases those courses have to be shifted because of the resources of our classroom.
One of the things that I learned early on is that you have to make friends with everyone. Before I went into Alternative Education (Alt Ed), I taught hospitality and special education, and both of those had very specific departments and very specific support systems. So I didn’t have to look too far beyond the next desk to borrow resources and get help. When I made the shift to Alt Ed, it was like we needed running shoes! The students bring the courses with them and part of my focus is on finding the resources to help them get through those courses. So we had to move around to different departments, sit in on classes, learn how to teach new concepts.
I now have to pay attention to a lot of little moving pieces in the board. There are different initiatives, policies, resources and people to learn about and understand. I have had to develop a knowledge of community liaisons, law enforcement officials, superintendents, principals… and then there’s the home school and whatever their rules of engagement are. So I’ve become Chris Cluff, the connector of dots!
This is really important, because when students are shifting between the home school and my site, some of them may feel that the system has forgotten them entirely. So when we’re working through that transition process, I’m watching and listening to see whether or not they understand fully the circumstances that have brought them to me, but also what opportunities are still on the horizon for them.
I also find that I’m far more focused on helping the families behind the student. I’ve gotten closer and closer to really honest, wholehearted conversations with families. And that communication continues after the student has transitioned away from us. It’s an open communication process that goes beyond the intake table.
It becomes portable, so that the student and their family can leave us and have pretty cool conversations back at their school. We spend a lot of time preparing them: Who are you going to talk to? What’s the next resource you need? What are the courses you should be set up for? Do you have your volunteer hours? Have you written your literacy test? Someone mentioned it’s like they’re showing up with some source code because they can speak in an informed way toward the next move. They don’t have to spend a lot of time describing what they want. They can say what they want.
There’s not a test, but there is a cost!
We can come at the concept of micro-credentialing from three directions. One way is through the world of business. In business and large corporations, micro-credentialing is a kind of upgrading of your skills once you get hired in a place. So, you could develop other skillsets, take other training opportunities and, in many cases, that type of micro-credentialing affords you better pay or a better position.
When you swing it more towards education, then you start to see the use of something called a badge system. You’re not necessarily making any more money for what you’re learning, but you’re getting some sort of emblem or some sort of notation that you’ve achieved a next level in something. It can create a kind of a “buzz” in someone to keep learning. It’s very much based on gamification.
And the third space – and this is where my particular interest lies – is where, instead of talking about a badge, we talk about school accreditation. Currently in Ontario, secondary school students need to earn 30 credits – 18 compulsory and 12 elective – in order to graduate, and they’re set within a pretty rigid operating system, mainly defined by the number of hours spent in a course.
So that’s a really manageable and accessible idea and a great way to lead people into this concept. How would this approach to earning credentials impact the particular students that you’re working with?
Here’s something that I’ve asked students in the alternative education context in which I teach. “If you could achieve a credit in something that you’ve done outside of class, what would be ‘accreditable?’” One of the first things that comes up is sports: “Well, I’ve been playing sports forever. I’m on a rep hockey team…” And that leads me to think about “opportunizing” that type of credit. For example, I had a student who had participated in three levels of Scouts and had transitioned into a leadership position. Could that be worth a partial credit in Civics or Leadership?
The reason it becomes interesting to me is that when I look at the full list of the credits that have been earned by a student, it’s often elective credits that are missing. The compulsory credits tend to get picked up pretty quick but when I’m trying to get those elective credits rolling, its strikes me that if credits could be obtained in an alternative fashion it would benefit these students. And if they could be tied to things that they are already feeling success in, then why don’t we go there?
Curriculum doesn’t have to be bound by periods or semesters. It doesn’t even have to be bound by existing course offerings.
There is precedence to start this conversation. Right now, there is something called High Performance Athletics where students can get co-op credits for basically being on a rep team. There are conditions there, in that you have to have a certain number of practice and performance hours within a semester but, ostensibly, you’re getting credit for playing a sport.
So, we’re comfortable there. We understand this. I’ll go back to your question about some of the things that I see by being in my current context and I mentioned being able to step back and observe the education ecosystem. So when I go into the conversations, I like to talk about the High Performance Athletic programs. I like to talk about tech courses and how they might be able to do fractional credits. I’ll jump into the fact that Civics and Career courses are already half-credits. Before I get into the logistics of what this change would mean, I’m still trying to find the spaces where this conversation can land and have a few people feel comfortable enough to have it.
But, you know, I’m not sure if you can notice that from within your department and so, even though there is precedence, it still becomes a fairly big paradigm challenge. It’s interesting, when you go out to the edges – to the fringe – like I have and you look back, it is sometimes hard to share that view with other people. The existing operating system of education has such gravitas – it offers a very persuasive and intoxicating point of view. It is hard to get outside that bubble.
For me, it has been beginning to see the system of education as something other than a rigid structure. It’s a LEGO house. It has strength and stability if you leave it exactly how it is. You can put it on a shelf and leave it there. But the great thing about a LEGO house is that you can pull it apart and reconfigure it. So this understanding has put me on the path of thinking about curriculum in a very different fashion. It doesn’t have to be bound by periods or semesters. It doesn’t even have to be bound by existing course offerings. And if you can account for the student learning and for the fulfillment of the expectations, it can cross years and modalities.
One of the really big assumptions that this challenges is that every student is the same, every course is the same and that there is a way to make it more “the same” – both students and curriculum. Instead, the idea of micro-credentialing leads towards truly personalized education.
There’s a ceiling that it would crash through; I think it would be transformational if it were given serious resources and time! You seem to be pegging the idea of signals to the present in terms of what we need to be paying attention to. But, I’m taking this as a communication from the future that is saying, “How did they not know that they should have taken one step forward? How did they not see that, despite the logistical challenges, students were screaming out for something more individualized, more responsive and they wanted ownership over their learning?”
I think that all of the pieces are, in a way, laid out right now. And there’s a dissonance to them – they’re creating quite a bit of tension. In the same school, you have International Baccalaureate and Advanced Placement programs, enrichment and co-op programs and, more recently, these conversations about personalized education. What is it being said here that we’re not paying attention to?
Illustration: Dave Donald
First published in Education Canada, March 2018
An engaging buzz begins to move throughout the building as the narrow hallways fill with people. Familiar music played over the public address system signals a change of energy and the smell of homemade grilled cheese sandwiches and popcorn begins to waft through the air. Strategically placed members of the local constabulary ensure a sense of order and safety, while elected officials seize the opportunity to connect with their constituents. The local bank opens for the day as merchants make final preparations before opening their doors to eagerly waiting customers.
A scene from the local shopping mall? You might think so. In this case, however, as surprising as it might sound, it’s Market Day at Aspen Heights Elementary School in Red Deer, Alberta. It’s the day of the week when student-run enterprises, not-for-profits and services open their doors to the public. And it’s the day when members of the community – students, staff, parents and sponsors – come to support and participate in Canada’s only MicroSociety school.
Nearly ten years ago, two Aspen Heights teachers, Milt Williams and Allan Baile, were concerned about the level of apathy that seemed to be building among students, as well as a sense that more could be done to engage the parent community. After researching programs that might help address these challenges, they landed on MicroSociety, a U.S-based not-for-profit founded on the belief that, if we want to educate today’s children to be able to run the world, we have to give them a world to run. And that’s exactly what the Aspen Heights MicroSociety does.
A MicroSociety is a living, breathing, fully-functioning community, facilitated by adults but organized and run by young people. An annually-elected government allows students to create the laws and ordinances that will govern the community, while the Royal Aspen Mounted Police have the authority to issue tickets and fines and, in more serious cases, move grievances through an internal court system.
At Aspen Heights, students are free to develop their own ideas for new initiatives, learning how to create the business models, not-for-profits and social services to bring those ideas to life. In the context of their enterprises, they develop new products, hire staff, learn to maintain financial records, pay taxes and even buy and sell stocks.
At the start of each year, all students are required to attend MicroUniversity, where they learn the business skills that they will need to carry on their work throughout the year. Business and service owners hold job fairs, accept resumes and conduct interviews with prospective workers.
For students, half of the six hours per week dedicated to MicroSociety is spent developing products, meeting with their employees and taking care of any enterprise-related issues. The other half is spent participating in Market Day, either as shoppers or business operators.
A look down the main corridor of Aspen Heights reveals that these students have considered much of what is needed to ensure that their community is thriving. The bank converts Canadian dollars to Stingers, the official currency of Aspen Heights. The smoothie bar is always busy, as is the Penguin Ave. Café. The Ace Theatre offers students a chance to relax, enjoy some popcorn and take in an episode of their favourite TV program. There’s a wellness centre, a bottle recycling depot and Helping Hands – a charitable outreach program. On the sustainability side, some students spend their time learning about hydroponic gardening, while others raise the urban chickens that provide fresh eggs for the school’s breakfast program.
Some may look at what is happening at Aspen Heights as an impressive and engaging simulation, while others may wonder how it’s possible to find time in a busy schedule to make this work.
For the students, staff and parents at Aspen Heights, it is clear that this is not preparation for some life beyond graduation. This is life – very real life! It’s what draws them to this place every morning and it’s what captures their imagination when away from school. Business owners think about how to improve their products and services. Employees consider how they might strengthen their skillset.
And teachers look at what is happening in the MicroSociety to help inform their curriculum. Amanda Williams, a Grade 2 teacher at Aspen Heights, appreciates how the model connects the entire school, regardless of age, grade and ability. But, like her colleagues, she also watches for opportunities to ensure that her classroom program resonates with what students are doing in the MicroSociety community. “You work with it, you plan with it, you get involved,” says Williams as she warns against seeing MicroSociety as an extra-curricular initiative. Instead, it becomes a powerful context for learning both inside and outside the classroom.
Current coordinator Allan Baille passionately underlines the point that this is not a simulation. For Baille, MicroSociety begins with a very engaging invitation and challenge: “Let’s bring the community to us and not have these walls be the limit of the education of our students.” And that invitation has become a game changer for Aspen Heights. Students who, in the past, may have been apathetic about coming to school are voting with their feet, leading to some of the highest attendance numbers in the entire division. Parents, once reluctant to come into the school, are now seeing Aspen Heights as part of their identity and their life.
A parent satisfaction rating of 97 percent speaks volumes about how MicroSociety has transformed this community. And the willingness of outside businesses and organizations to support what is happening at the school brings the idea of partnership to a whole new level.
There is no doubt that students graduating from Aspen Heights after six years of life in this MicroSociety will have an enviable array of business skills and competencies. They will have a keen sense of what it means to live in the world as creative thinkers, risk takers and problem solvers. They will have the capacity to communicate their ideas more effectively and with greater confidence. But they will also have experienced the learning that begins when you get out from behind your desk and get involved in something that really matters.
Photo: EdCan Network
First published in Education Canada, December 2017
Aspen Heights Elementary School (Red Deer Public Schools)
Red Deer, Alta.
Imagine a school where children experience math by having jobs, paying taxes and running businesses that sell everything from smoothies to clothing to dreamcatchers; a place where students study logic and law by taking their peers to court and fining them in the school’s currency; a place where kids come to understand politics by drawing up their own constitution, and drafting their own bills and laws; a place where these laws are enforced by the Royal Aspen Micro Police (RAMP). Imagine a school where citizenship is not just a character pillar that is talked about, but a continuous experience in playing with the building blocks of modern society. The Aspen Heights MicroSociety is just such a place. MicroSociety is embedded into the daily program of this K-5 school and is learning-by-doing at its finest. It’s a thriving, modern-day, mini-country – complete with an elected government, entrepreneurial hub, non-profit organizations, consumer marketplace, courts, police, university/college and community gathering spaces – created and managed by students and facilitated by teachers and community mentors. By making informed decisions in a safe and caring environment, students gain insight into what to expect in the real world of business and finance while honing their financial literacy, service learning, environmental awareness, community involvement, cultural appreciation and their health and wellness.
We all wonder where we fit in and how we can find community. This narrative is particularly resonant for queer and trans identifying youth, who often struggle to find community and belonging in their home and school lives.
Through our PhD work and our experiences working with LGBTQ+ (Lesbian, Gay, Trans, Queer/Questioning, and Others) youth, we have witnessed the importance of finding community and belonging. As LGBTQ+ educators ourselves, we have not only practical experience working with queer and trans students, but lived experience. And while we are passionate about creating more inclusive classrooms for all students, we are also aware that the current politic is still very white and gender normative.
We are often asked, “How do you create safe and inclusive classrooms for queer and trans youth?” While considering this, we need to first think about who we consider queer and trans. The LGBTQ+ communities are incredibly diverse in terms of intersecting identities, and it is important that our work as educators reflect this.
Homonormativity: What does it mean?
Ahmed, a queer Muslim youth looking for belonging and acceptance, attended his school’s Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) hoping to find community. The group was largely white students, who were dismissive of Islam and told Ahmed that his religion was homophobic. Ahmed, feeling less than welcome, decided to leave the group and find his own community outside of the mainstream queer and trans movement.
Eliza, who identifies as trans but keeps that private at school, confided to the GSA teacher-advisor that “I want to be able to talk about who I am, but I’m not gay, and I worry that if I come to the GSA people will figure out why I’m there.” Hearing that the students involved are mostly gay and lesbian didn’t assuage her concerns. Students of various gender identities, racial backgrounds, abilities, and other identities fall within the LGBTQ+ spectrum. Still, much of queer and trans activism focuses on white gay and lesbian, or homonormative, representations of LGBTQ+ individuals.
Homonormativity is the valuing of white, gender-normative representations of queer1 and trans people to the exclusion of queer and trans people of colour and those who do not fit rigid gender norms.2 Homonormativity valorizes marriage as the ultimate goal for queer and trans individuals, as per the slogan “We’re just like you, except for what we do in bed,” and presents a narrow model of both who can be gay, and what it means to be gay. In schools, this can be seen in the mostly white representations of LGBTQ+ individuals in children’s literature, for example.
How can teachers be cognizant of homonormativity while considering queer and trans issues at school? Simple! We need to think beyond white and gender-normative representations of queerness, and move beyond the nuclear family model of “two moms, or two dads” in conversations with students. Queer and trans communities are diverse and require representation that acknowledges the intersections of various identities and locations, such as class, race, gender, nationality, disability, etc.
There are concrete steps school staff can take to create a more welcoming and inclusive space for all queer and trans students.
Begin in the elementary years
Adam’s elementary teacher experience demonstrates the importance of incorporating queer and trans content into the school routine while directly addressing homophobia and transphobia at a young age. Developmentally, preschool aged children are building their understanding of categories – including which ones they belong in – and this often leads to gender policing. Young children replicate the norms they are exposed to and Adam has seen young children regulate chosen toys, colours, games, and stickers based on gender. The educator’s duty is help children make choices based on individual interest instead of gender identity or social norms. Gendered norms may seem to be an innocent concept at this age, but they significantly limit and harm many students.
Children are identifying as queer and trans in elementary settings, and at younger ages than ever. Working with the Gender-Based Violence Prevention team in the Toronto District School Board, j often works with children as young as four who have a very clear understanding of their gender as different from what was expected of them. The rise of GSAs in middle schools speaks to student needs. It is important that all students know that people of all sexual orientations, gender identities, and gender expressions are welcomed and celebrated in schools.
Build inclusive GSAs
The name Gay-Straight Alliance was coined 25 years ago, and while once radical now needs to include a broader range of identities. Encourage students to consider more inclusive names, like Gender and Sexuality Alliance, Pride, a Rainbow Alliance, or others, and gently help them understand the implications of the names they are considering. j recalls: “One of the groups I was working with decided that instead of being a Gay-Straight-Alliance, they would call themselves GLOW, for Gay, Lesbian or Whatever. It took some work to help them see how being referred to as a ‘whatever’ might not be welcoming for some students.”
Seek out diverse resources
j observes, “White teachers often suggest that homophobia comes from people of colour. Truthfully, no one community holds the monopoly on homophobia, or on inclusion – homophobia is present in all communities, as are pockets of celebration. When I began supporting GSAs in Halton, many of the teachers who became teacher-advisors to GSAs were teachers of colour, because they were the people already engaged in equity work.”
Seek out resources for and by Black people, Indigenous people, and people of colour. When the LGBTQ images, books and movies we use in schools are predominantly white, we perpetuate the false stereotypes that being queer or trans is a white thing, and that communities of colour are more homophobic than white communities. In seeking to decolonize education, it’s also important to recognize two-spirit identities.3
Specifically address gender diversity
Many trans students j has worked with have shared that while teachers may have encouraged them to attend the school’s GSA, their GSA did not address gender identity or gender expression. Further, they feared attending would out them as trans. Addressing gender identity will make your school safer for trans students, femme boys, butch girls, and everyone else. Become familiar with gender non-binary and androgynous identities and what those students need.
Recognize coming out as an option, not a goal
“Coming out,” or the experiencing of identifying yourself as a sexual or gender minority, is often forwarded by mainstream LGBTQ+ politics as the “end goal” or desirable destination for queer and trans youth. While coming out can be an empowering experience, for some, particularly queer and trans youth of colour, coming out presents itself with a myriad of cultural, religious, and familial barriers that can be challenging for family dynamics.4 Trans students who have previously transitioned may feel that “coming out” will put them at risk for violence and transphobia, and that keeping their trans status private is what allows them to live most authentically. Anti-black racism and/or femmephobia in LGBTQ+ spaces,5 and the devaluation of gender and emotional expression that is deemed feminine,6 particularly for gay and queer men,7 are other factors that can make coming out feel unsafe.
To ensure students’ individual identities are respected and they do not feel pressured to “come out,” make sure that privacy and openness are both talked about as valid.
Conclusion
For GSAs to be vital emancipatory student groups, they need to be places of possibility and transformability for all students. Homonormativity limits who can find belonging; pushing back against homonormativity creates new possibilities, and ways for GSAs to partner with other equity-focused student groups. Finally, while it remains important for students to have spaces to organize, learn together, and support each other, GSAs cannot replace the institutional work that all schools must take on. Inclusive GSAs that challenge homonormativity are one part, but not the only work we need to do.
En Bref : Les jeunes qui s’identifient comme étant transgenres et allosexuels(queer) ont souvent du mal à se faire accepter dans leur vie familiale et scolaire. Ce malaise est d’autant plus grand pour les jeunes autochtones, noirs et de couleur. Cet article examine comment les écoles peuvent créer un espace plus accueillant et inclusif pour tous les élèves transgenres et allosexuels.
Illustration: Dave Donald
First published in Education Canada, June 2017
1 For the purposes of this paper, we are utilizing the term “queer” to encompass all individuals who identify within the LGBTQ+ spectrum.
2 Jayson Flores, “Let’s Make 2017 a Year About Fighting Homonormativity,” Pride, last modified December 21, 2016. www.pride.com/queer/2016/12/16/lets-make-2017-year-about-fighting-homonormativity
3 Maddalena Genovese, Davina Rousell, and The Two Spirit Circle of Edmonton Society, “Safe and Caring Schools for Two Spirit Youth,” The Society for Safe and Caring Schools & Communities, 2016. www.safeandcaring.ca/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Two-Spirited-Web-Booklet.pdf
4 Vivek Shraya, “Have You Told Your Parents?” BuzzFeed News, last modified September 28, 2016. www.buzzfeed.com/vivekshraya/have-you-told-your-parents
5 Cicely-Belle Blain, “Four Reasons Why Queer Spaces don’t Feel Welcoming to Many Black Queer People,” Daily Xtra, February 3, 2017. www.dailyxtra.com/vancouver/news-and-ideas/opinion/four-reasons-queer-spaces-don%E2%80%99t-feel-welcoming-many-black-queer-people-214505
6 Brynne Tannehill, “6 Ways Femmephobia is Harming LGBTQIA+ Communities,” Everyday Feminism, February 26, 2016. http://everydayfeminism.com/2016/02/femmephobia-queer-community
7 Brandon Miller and Elizabeth Behm-Morawitz, “‘Masculine Guys Only’: The effects of femmephobic mobile dating application profiles on partner selection for men who have sex with men,” Computers in Human Behavior 62 (2016): 176-185.
When my children first entered school I didn’t give much thought to the impact pornography would have on their lives. Then one day we found the images: hardcore pornography, full penetration. That led to the first of many talks with our children.
What I had overlooked was what a huge game-changer the Internet has been for the porn industry. What once took effort for the consumer to procure is now available in unlimited amounts, to anyone, at any age. You don’t even have to seek it out – it finds you through embedded gaming links, pop-up ads, and unsolicited emails.
As parents and educators, we’ve been slow to catch up to the impact of what has been referred to as the new drug. It took a recent conversation with my third son to really open my eyes to how we could be addressing this issue better at school, as well as in our homes.
I had just got off the phone with a friend. She was concerned about her children’s access to pornography, but wondered if bringing it up with them could backfire and make them more curious.
I decided to seek expert advice – I asked my kids.
I explained the dilemma to my seventeen-year-old first. I told him parents often worry that just talking about pornography with their kids will inspire them to seek it out. Did he think it was a valid concern?
“Not really,” he said, as he fixed himself another PB&J. “Parents should definitely talk to their kids about it. No offense, Mom, but it would have been a lot easier on me if you had given me some idea of what was out there before I was eleven. The first time I found porn on our computer was because of something I overheard kids talking about. I was curious, so I looked it up when I got home from school. I had no idea what I was getting into.”
This was a little upsetting to hear, but didn’t surprise me. What he added next did catch my attention:
“Plus, that same year we talked about porn in Health. My teacher said we’d come across it soon, if we hadn’t already. He said that a lot of people use porn to masturbate and we shouldn’t feel bad if we did… We didn’t talk much more about it.”
Pause.
“But it kind of made me feel pressure to experiment. You know, like it wasn’t normal if I didn’t use porn that way.”
I’ll be honest; this did not sit well with me. But was I right to be concerned? So many people think that using pornography is a natural part of sexual development. I needed to dig deeper for answers.
It didn’t take much research to discover that the majority of today’s porn is problematic in many ways. In fact, I now feel convinced that children’s frequent exposure to pornography can be detrimental to their mental health and may actually hinder sexual development. Here are just a few of my concerns:
• Mounting research demonstrates that the brain’s response to pornography is similar to that of addictive drugs. It is this response that compels individuals to continue seeking more stimulation.
• As with smoking, alcohol and drug consumption, the adolescent brain is especially vulnerable to compulsive behaviours associated with using porn.
• Almost ninety percent of mainstream sexually explicit content features violence towards women. Kids come away with the message that you’re supposed to be violent when you are intimate with somebody.
• Pornography also encourages gender stereotypes and promotes the rape-myth culture that puts our young women at risk.
• Erectile dysfunction in healthy young males has increased nearly 1,000 percent (yes, that’s one thousand) in the last 20 years. Many attribute this dramatic increase to Internet porn use.
• There are strong correlations between the porn industry and the rise of human trafficking globally and domestically.
Back to my son’s experience at school. Shouldn’t this information have been included in the discussion on pornography? If our objective is to help students to integrate the information they receive in the classroom to their own “personal health choices”1 then we should address addiction, violence and human trafficking when we talk about pornography.
Students need to know that using pornography has the potential for negative health consequences. We need a curriculum that gives our students the whole health story on porn.
Photo: iStock
First published in Education Canada, June 2017
1 www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/curriculum/elementary/health1to8.pdf
I volunteer at an English class held at our local settlement agency. In our community, as in many others, this past year has seen the arrival of a number of refugees from Syria. Many of them have no English at all, and some are not literate in their first language.
I can hardly grasp the enormity of the challenge facing them, as they start from scratch in a world where just about everything is different: the language, the alphabet system, the food, the social customs. In an interesting modern twist, the common denominator is the cell phone, brokered by language apps like Google Translate.
The chance to give their kids a good education is of huge importance to many families who come here. But that doesn’t make it any easier to leave their children in the hands of strangers with whom they can barely communicate, in a school system they don’t understand. As educators, we need to be sensitive not only to the needs of the newcomer children coming into our schools, but to their families as well. For this issue on welcoming newcomer students, I spoke with a family who arrived three years ago from Peru. Esther, the mom, shared with me some of the anxieties she experienced in their first months, and how small gestures of welcome “gave us hope that we can be part of this community.” (p. 16).
An understanding of best practices for supporting newcomer students is emerging, and two of our authors are on the leading edge of this endeavour, especially with regard to students who arrive as refugees. Caroline Lai worked with her staff at the Surrey Schools English Language Learner Welcome Centre to paint a compelling picture of one student whose past experience includes having to flee two different homes and becoming a soldier when he was just 15. The authors explain the importance of providing a “soft landing into Canada” with their program, which gives students from a refugee background a chance to feel safe and begin to re-orient (p. 10). Jan Stewart discusses how we can create trauma-sensitive schools, and takes us inside an extraordinary Winnipeg school where the principal has set out to create a compassionate community where all students “can be safe, feel cared for, and be open to learning.” (p. 20).
Finally, I’d like to thank the Surrey Schools English Language Learner Welcome Centre for guiding us in the creation of the “10 Best Practices” list you will find on p. 13. It is available as a free printable poster on our website: cea-ace.ca/newcomers. A French version is also available: cea-ace.ca/immigrants. Please share it with your colleagues!
Photo: Dave Donald
First published in Education Canada, March 2017
Write to us!
We want to know what you think. Send your letters or article proposals to editor@cea-ace.ca, or post your comments about individual articles on the online version of Education Canada at: www.cea-ace.ca/educationcanada
In Teaching the Whole Teen, Poliner and Benson effectively explore how the teen learner is unique and how we, as educators, can best support the development of the whole teen. In this work, the authors suggest a conceptual framework referred to as the Resiliency Research Framework as a vision, rather than a checklist of competencies, for the positive development of the whole teen. This framework identifies social competence, problem solving, autonomy and developing aspirations as skills that require ongoing exposure, practice, coaching, demonstration and application. “If you really want to listen patiently, understand perspectives, collaborate on projects, and motivate yourself toward a goal you care about, you’ll be practicing all your life. On the upside, every interaction and event is an opportunity for that practice.” (p.33)
The emphasis of this book, then, is on the experiences and practices that support teens in developing these skills, within the context of caring adults, high expectations with high support, and meaningful participation. These everyday practices are incorporated into teacher language, routines, rituals and instructional moments. Instructional tools, such as handouts, templates for students and planning templates for teachers, are provided throughout the text to support educators as they implement these practices. The authors also provide readings to share with parents and guardians, emphasizing that teaching the whole teen is a shared responsibility. Throughout the text, the authors successfully connect research and practice in such a way that an educator will feel well informed. As an educator, I find these practices, tools and the research to be highly pragmatic and I anticipate returning to this resource time and again for inspiration.
Of particular importance, the authors stress that the school environment matters enormously for whole teen development. As such, I believe this book could be a significant launching point for professional learning communities looking to redesign their approaches to teaching and learning in the hopes of impacting the overall culture of the school.
Photo: Dave Donald
First published in Education Canada, March 2016
Corwin, 2017 ISBN 978-1-5063-3588-9