Archive
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Cdn EdWire – New Quebec Government Stirs Up Multiple Education Controversies
Comments Off on Cdn EdWire – New Quebec Government Stirs Up Multiple Education ControversiesQuebec’s plan for education slammed – Winnipeg Free Press
PQ wants to trim English classes, boost sovereignty studies – CBC
Private schools trying to count learning-challenged students – Montreal Gazette
OTHER NEWS
Quebec study of post-reform students yields disappointing results – Montreal Gazette
Progress slow with high-school dropout rate – Montreal GazetteOntario slammed for outdated sex ed and mental health curriculum – Toronto Star
Divisions could share new facilities
Ontario Catholic groups slam education minister for appearing to call anti-abortion views ‘misogynistic’ – National Post
CBE plan for corporate naming inside schools sparks debate – Calgary Herald
BC Education Plan Linked to Private Corporations – The Tyee
Partnership between education ministry and not-for-profit with billionaire partners raises concerns.Quebec private schools willing to accept more challenged students – Montreal Gazette
Quebec Education Minister Marie Malavoy defends history course proposal – Montreal Gazette
France proposes homework ban, should Canada do the same? – CBC
Province ponders regional schools – Winnipeg Free Press
Education Director laments over the TDSB’s hard year, looks to the future – Globe and Mail
National study to quiz teachers on homophobia – Winnipeg Free Press
EDUBLOG HIGHLIGHTS
Let’s Figure This Out– The Principal of Change
I watched as Bruce Dixon spoke to a group of leaders. To be honest, I had only kind of heard of him before though his name has popped up in blogs, twitter, etc. As he was introduced, one of the statements about him was, “he has been pushing for 21st century learning for 23 years”, and I kind of laughed it off.And then he spoke and I was blown away. To be honest, he really pushed my own thinking as well on what I do in my role.
He talked about the “elephants in the room” and one was the lack of access for students with technology and the pressure of time that we have, yet only providing kids time on a computer for an hour a week. He spoke passionately about the ubiquitous access that students need to a tool that is necessary in our world today. If you look around at most conferences, every teacher has some device that they use, whether it is a computer, tablet, or smartphone. Go into the classroom though, and you will be lucky if you see that as the norm...Read more
On Obama, Dinner and being Superintendent – Culture of Yes
On being superintendent – having been appointed to this position three years ago, and now just completing my second full year in the role, I do find the position is a bit what one makes of it, and there are so many ways to “do it right”. I have seen others in the role who are masters of the community, attending events at arts clubs, chambers of commerce, community centres and many other community events. And, this is important work, because it raises the profile and interests of a school district. One still needs to pick and choose how they will spend their time.My focus is really getting the learning right in classrooms, so classrooms over community has sometimes been the priority. And, to be honest, I have had no problem with working hard, I do want to be sure that my own family sees me some evenings. Yes, I nod my head knowingly at presentations to parents where we discuss the importance of family dinners and other similar connections, knowing full well, that at that moment, I’m doing the very opposite this. I have had to make choices to forgo evening opportunities, and redefining the role of superintendent, aligned with those values. I also do realize what I attend speaks to what I say is important – so these decisions are always taken carefully...Read more
Standardized test scores are like a broken clock – For the Love of Learning
Many Albertans might take these standardized test score results as prima facia evidence that things are well. Many Albertans may be satisfied with this information and confidently move on with their regularly scheduled day, thinking that Alberta schools are not only doing well, but they are improving.What if we are wrong? What if these scores are giving us false confidence? What if standardized test scores aren’t telling us what we think they are telling us?…Read more
Just Put the Puck In the Net – The Value of Student and Teacher Goal Setting – At the Principal’s Office
Hockey is a simple game really with one ultimate goal: put the puck in the net more times than the opposing team does. Everyone knows the goal, everyone helps get to the goal, and everyone knows when the goal has been achieved. The tricky part is in the strategies; many great coaches and hockey-minds have developed hundreds of different strategies to reach the goal. There is no one right definitive way, in fact there are many factors that good coaches will take into consideration before choosing the right strategy. No strategy works with all people all the time.So is the game of education. There is one ultimate goal, or is there? Last time I checked I found numerous different curriculum areas, each with dozens of goals, that changed every year. How is any one every to know the goal?….Read more
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Parents Learn about Inquiry-based Learning
Comments Off on Parents Learn about Inquiry-based Learning“Inquiry honours process and product”: this was Neil Stephenson’s message to Rockridge parents last Thursday night. Stephenson’s, Delta’s Principal of Innovation and Inquiry, talk went almost an hour overtime due to discussion with the engaged parents in attendance. In the end, we left with a message that good inquiry is a very teacher directed phenomena. It’s not “let them loose” – it’s a context of meaningful and engaging work.
This message reassured the parents who had voiced concerns around giving students too much freedom in their learning. “What about the facts?”, they asked. “At some point kids need to just be told stuff or else they won’t have knowledge to think critically about.”
Stephenson’s position is that there is a place for direct-teaching in an inquiry-based classroom. Parents visibly relaxed after he said that.
Inquiry takes critical thinking to a deeper level than knowledge transmission can offer. It means our students will become more independent, curious learners – a crucially important goal because we don’t know what kind of world they will emerge into as adults.
Thank you to Neil Stephenson for engaging with Rockridge parents; you gave us a good foundation on which to build further conversation. Thank you to the parents who attended for your thoughtful questions and curiosity. The evening reminded me that we must all experience and direct this shift in education together as students, teachers and parents.
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Plugging The Gap or Gapping the Plug
Comments Off on Plugging The Gap or Gapping the PlugFor the past several years, a good deal of the discourse in educational change circles has focused on teacher quality: how to recognize it, how to improve it, and how it might become more pervasive in all Canadian schools. The conversations have branched off in many directions to include the best ways to assess teacher quality, the idea of merit pay to encourage and reward successful teaching, evidenced-based best practices and how to, in the end, ensure quality throughout the entire system. Much of the conversation has been directed at closing the gap between effective and ineffective teaching by, in a very real sense, standardizing professional practice.
I know that I’m not alone in welcoming the opportunity to have stronger conversations about what constitutes effective teaching, and I believe that it’s extremely important that these conversations take place at all levels of the system. Lately, though, I’ve been thinking a great deal about the energy that I know to be at the heart of the teaching and learning dynamic. It’s an energy that has been evident through our work on the Teaching The Way We Aspire to Teach project, and it’s an energy that is very evident when we talk to students about their memorable learning experiences.
But I’m not sure that the spark that ignites the learning process is always accounted for when we try to integrate our research about effective teaching into the accepted canon of practice. It could be that our metaphor of plugging the gap needs to be tempered with another image. In thinking about my own practice, and the teaching moments that I remember as being particularly powerful, I can point to a type of tension that served to hold open a space between what I understood the system expected of me and what I felt was needed at that particular time and place. It was in this space that the creative energy that has sustained me as a teacher for nearly 30 years was nurtured. But it wasn’t just about me; in talking to students—even many years later—it was in this space that the creative energy of my students was also ignited.
My mechanic tells to me that, with spark plugs, the key to proper firing lies in getting the space between the center and side electrodes just right. If the space is too narrow or too wide the spark that ignites the air/fuel mixture will not occur at an optimal level, if at all. The precision-driven process of gapping the plug is an attempt to get that space right.
Hmmm…
I’m carrying this metaphor with me throughout the week, and I would love it if you could join me in thinking about this a little more.
As a teacher do you feel that you have adequate space to spark the type of energy that you would like to see in your own classroom? As a parent, are your children excited by the learning that is occurring in their school? As an administrator, do you have the tools and resources that you need to gap the plugs that drive your learning community?
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Physical reactions to “no marks” announcement
Comments Off on Physical reactions to “no marks” announcementLast week, as I was about to launch into a lesson that introduces assessment for learning structures into my classroom, I noticed a flash drive camera sitting at the corner of my desk.
As I moved to address my English 8 learners, I noticed my hand move to the camera. While I spoke to my class, my thumb pressed record – the result is a teacher’s eye-view of Grade 8 students figuring out how to build clear and specific criteria, peer coach, self assess and peer assess.
The video also captures their expressions in response to the big announcement mid-way through: “I won’t be giving you marks this year.” Although I announce this fact every year, I have never recorded it. I was delighted to find that the video captured many expressions I didn’t notice while giving the lesson.
For example, on the actual day, I did not see Joanne’s reaction: her face retained a careful blankness for a beat after the announcement, then she jerked back as if she had just been (gently) slapped in the face, her eyes bugging out before regaining her careful composure.
I also hadn’t noticed Mike’s face until I watched the film and saw his quiet reaction. Prior to the announcement he had been standing at the back of the room, picking at his hands, wearing his ball cap on backwards, looking around every once in awhile. After the announcement, he looked straight at me – his expression suggesting that he was trying to gauge how much he can trust me – and his hands fell, relaxed, to his sides.
A couple seconds later, one boy whooped in appreciation, breaking the tension. A few students looked stressed. These, I am told from last year’s records, are the “strong” students. These students’ hands shot up: “What about report cards?”
Well, what about them? The authors of the Canadian Education Association’s report on intellectual engagement ask this question too: “many students do well (i.e., get high marks) in their courses without being intellectually engaged, leaving us to wonder instead: What do marks and current classroom-level assessments actually measure?”
Answer? Often, institutional engagement: a desire to attend classes, complete homework, participate in class, and have a good attitude about the whole arrangement. Measurements of actual learning are included as well, but a lot less so than many of us would like to believe.
For the typical “A” student, removing marks forces them to look beyond their familiar 93% – or whatever it may be. Feedback in place of marks forces the high performing students to find a steady confidence in an understanding of their strengths and weaknesses rather than a confidence that they can play the game of school (institutional engagement).
For traditionally lower performing students, removing marks from the learning situation, as the expression on Mike’s face in the video shows, lifts a burdensome expectation of failure or underperformance and results in quiet expressions of hope. Now that’s an environment for learning.
NOTE: This post was inspired by the recent CEA What did you do in school today? Report.
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Flip This Class!
Comments Off on Flip This Class!Supporters applaud the space that the Flipped Classroom provides for deeper and more engaged learning. Critics express concern that the concept de-values the importance of the act of teaching, and puts too much pressure on students to learn required material outside of the classroom–the very place where it should be taking place. After talking to Carolyn Durley and Quinn Barreth, two Canadian teachers that are working with the idea of the Flipped Classroom in their own schools, I was most excited by the fact that these teachers were being given both the permission and the space to engage in the innovative play that, I believe, is going to move schools out of the conceptual and practical ruts that prevent real change and transformation.
The version of the Flipped Classroom that is now capturing the imaginations of educators across the continent and around the world began about 5 years ago when two Colorado teachers were looking for a way to ensure that students who physically missed their science classes didn’t “miss the learning”. By creating a series of lesson videos that could be accessed outside class time, Jonathan Bergmann and Aaron Sams enabled absent students to, in essence, be in class while at home, albeit after the fact. Although taping lectures and lessons has been going on for years in post-secondary institutions, excitement for what this could mean for elementary and secondary education has grown, amplified by advances in access to and quality of technology.
Discussion around the Flipped Classroom has forced us to think about and challenge many of the assumptions that we make about school, about teaching and learning, and about the relationship between teacher, student and the content being learned. The conversation is not without controversy or objections. We’ll talk about some of these in future posts, not only in the context of the Flip, but in terms of what these points of contention can mean for the transformation discourse that is starting to gain some traction.
In listening back to the Teaching Out Loud Podcast featuring the voices of Carolyn and Quinn, however, I couldn’t help but smile at the enthusiasm and energy with which they talked about what they were doing. Although their Flip initiatives are substantially different in terms of age of students and the way that the Flip works in their classroom, one can’t help but pick up on the pioneering spirit that flows through their conversation. They know that they are entering new territory here, and they know that they are in a time where they, themselves, are playing with new ideas, working them, reworking them and redesigning their practice along the way.
This is not a case of adopting a best practice that everyone in their district is now expected to use. This is not a case of blindly jumping on a bandwagon and hoping for the best. Nor is it a case of one teacher flying solo on something that they think might work. Instead, the collective of teachers that are part of the Flipped Classroom movement, from what I can tell, are trying to bring an idea that makes sense to them to life in their own teaching practice. They are massaging it, changing it, talking to others about it and, in the process, exciting the imaginations of other educators.
There’s no telling where the Flipped Classroom movement will be ten years from now, but the spirit of educational entrepreneurship that I see bubbling up in the places where it’s being tried is hopeful. It’s a spirit of adventure that leverages creativity and innovation to bring the principles of differentiation and success for all students to life.
And, for me, that’s precisely what we need to happening in the 21st century schoolhouse!
You can hear Carolyn Durley and Quinn Barreth discussing how they are flipping their classrooms in the latest Teaching Out Loud podcast.
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Cdn EdWire – Ontario a Hotbed of Education Controversy
Comments Off on Cdn EdWire – Ontario a Hotbed of Education ControversyStock letter asks school to warn when sensitive subjects arise – Toronto Star
Related Editorials
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Undoing School
Comments Off on Undoing SchoolIt was a chilly and very windy day in May, 1994 when I first began to become aware of the difference between schooling and education. I had taken my grade 6/7 class to the Canada’s Wonderland amusement park for their annual “Math and Physics” Day, hoping to somehow get them excited about something more than just being at Canada’s Wonderland! My friend, Roger Kenyon, and I were huddled in one of the very busy eateries on site, trying to warm ourselves with a morning cup of coffee. We had settled down at a table with a group of Grade 12 math students who were busy manipulating numbers on one of the many pages in the official Math and Physics Day student guide. I was fascinated by the intensity and speed at which they were performing their calculations. Being someone that was never very successful in my high school math and science courses, I’ve always held in awe those that demonstrate a sense of ease with formulae, number-crunching and abstract proofs.
“You guys are good pretty good at that,” I commented.
“We’re all “A” students,” one of the students offered.
“Oh, so you really know what you’re doing.”
“No,” another student said, “We’ve just learned the formulas (sic)!”
Well, that began a brief but powerful conversation with the students about their math classes and how, after being shown the formulae, they simply had to figure out how to “fill in the blanks.”
Now, I’m not naive enough to believe that you can get an A in an upper level math class without some level of understanding—likely more understanding than these particular students were willing to admit—but perhaps this was my first encounter with the idea of doing school.
A new series of reports has just been released by the CEA, based on their widely recognized initiative, What Did you Do In School Today?. The first of these, which examines the relationship between various dimensions of student engagement and academic success, poses some sobering questions about the connection between institutional engagement and school marks.
The research indicates that, despite best efforts of many jurisdictions to recognize that behaviours like attendance, effort and homework (p.7) don’t actually reveal a whole lot about understanding or depth of knowledge, review of actual practice indicates that use of these to determine academic success (at least in terms of marks) is still quite common. Although effort is a strong indicator of intellectual engagement, it seems to be overshadowed by evidence that institutional compliance trumps a whole lot of other things when it comes to school success.
Despite the rallying cries that have emerged over the past decade—cries for more authentic assessment and more focus on depth of understanding—it appears that the practice of following the rules of school may still be the most effective way to get good marks.
In my opening story, the students I met had learned that they could do well in math if they learned how to plug in the numbers. Doing math was different than understanding math. And, although my Canada’s Wonderland experience took place nearly 20 years ago, the WDYDIST research suggests to me that things may not be changing at the pace that we would want.
Traditional thinking and the actions that go along with that thinking are both very stubborn things, requiring critical examination of current practice and the sometimes invisible assumptions that hold them in place. That said, we know that there are efforts being made across the country to challenge and change both policy and practice, allowing us to move from doing school to, in a sense, undoing school.
So, in your experience, how are traditional ways of getting marks being supplemented, if not replaced, by other measures of success? How are the marks that we’re assigning to students becoming more authentic reflections of what they know and are able to do?
Is the idea of marks too closely attached to the idea of doing school to affect any sort of realistic change?
Will our desire to have students go beyond merely doing school require that, as educators, parents and policy-makers we first undo school, taking it apart in ways that allow us to examine, challenge, critique and rebuild?
The new reports from the WDYDIST project are important explorations of one of the key dimensions of school transformation. I look forward to further conversation and perspectives!
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Does a PLC Need Research?
Comments Off on Does a PLC Need Research?In the recent CEA/CTF report Teaching the Way We Aspire to Teach, access to research was reported to be the least important factor that teachers said would enable them to better teach in the way they aspired. Why did they put so little stock in research? In an era of increasingly complex classrooms and escalating expectations for inclusive practices with high rates of achievement, are teachers not clamouring for insights into how best to broaden the ways in which students can engage in and demonstrate their learning, how to ensure that they can all read well, how to structure an authentic inquiry, how to use technology to personalize learning, how to teach critical thinking, how to develop self-regulation and so on?
Nothing in the report suggests that teachers do not want to know these things and I can only assume that they do, but evidently they don’t think educational research will provide them with the answers. What they do ask for is more time to collaborate and more “relevant and engaging professional learning opportunities.” Since research ranks so low this would seem to indicate that they expect to learn most from each other and to find “relevant” learning opportunities with fellow practitioners rather than researchers. There is no doubt that professionals can learn a lot from each other, but if they only turn to each other will the profession be reduced to a craft based on folklore? Can it advance, as it must in order to better prepare students for a complex and rapidly evolving future filled with uncertainty and vexing challenges, without the benefit of formal research? Would any other profession do that?
In his classic 1975 study, Schoolteacher: A Sociological Study, Dan Lortie reported that partly due to the way public schooling is organized and partly due to the personalities that were attracted to it, the culture of teaching was “cellular” and characterized by “individualism,” “conservatism” and “presentism.” Teachers, he observed, preferred to work alone without the intrusion of administrators or even colleagues, preferred established classroom practices that worked for them regardless of research findings, tended to avoid change and were so busily focused on the students with whom they were currently working that they did not take a long-term perspective on either their own development or the profession. Times have changed significantly since then, but school culture less so. There is much more collaboration, particularly in support of students with special needs, but I don’t think one could yet call it a new norm; teachers generally still have more trust in their gut feelings about what “works” than more objective student outcome data or research results; and the intensity of school life has increased so that it is generally even harder for them to find time and attention for long-term projects or the “big picture” beyond the classroom.
John Hattie suggests other reasons that research is not more central to teaching in his 2009 book, Visible Learning: A synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses relating to achievement. He notes a tendency amongst teachers to “over reliance on anecdotes, dressing up one’s beliefs in the trappings of science or pedagogical language and jargon, making bold claims, relying on one’s past experiences rather than others’ experiences [and] claiming that one’s own experience is sufficient evidence” (p. 252). The result is that almost everything can be claimed to “work” in some sense, but Hattie points out that it is not sufficient to do something that works, one should be doing what works best. To assist he offers a massive meta-analysis of research and identifies the methods that have been shown to have the greatest impact on learning.
However, he also cautions against using these results naively, citing Michael Scriven’s observation that “various correlates of school outcomes, say the use of advance organizers, the maintenance of eye contact, or high time on task, should not be confused with good teaching. While these may indeed be correlates of learning, it is still the case that good teaching may include none of these attributes.” (p. 3) For example, Hattie’s analysis shows that the factor under control of a teacher that has the greatest positive effect on student achievement is providing more feedback, but he cautions that, “one should not immediately start providing more feedback and then await the magical increases in achievement … increasing the amount of feedback in order to have a positive effect on student achievement [also] requires a change in the conception of what it means to be a teacher … [and] necessitates a different way of interacting with and respecting students.” (p. 4) As this example illustrates, particular techniques are part of an overall learning context in which the gestalt is more significant than any one factor in isolation.
Teaching is such a complex activity and so strongly affected by context that research demonstrating that an intervention works in some context, or even many contexts, cannot simply be adopted; it must be adapted to some degree. Research must be interpreted intelligently and used strategically along with a teacher’s unique understanding of students’ interests, needs and abilities to strengthen the overall learning environment. Therefore, a teacher needs to know not only that something works but also why it works, and research does not usually provide this causal information because the teaching and learning process is simply too complex and not sufficiently understood to posit generalizable causal claims
Consequently, an essential part of a teacher’s professionalism is being able to select from practices that research has shown to be effective those that are most helpful in a particular context and for particular students. This is an Art and in this Art the practical wisdom of teachers is at least as useful as research results; that is, however,when we are talking about the considered consensus of the teaching profession, but not necessarily when we are talking about the experiences or opinions of individual teachers.
Thus, designing effective learning environments and instructional strategies for particular students can certainly benefit from collaboration under the right circumstances. In The Wisdom of Crowds, James Surowiecki argues that the collective wisdom of groups is greater than the expertise of any individual if, and only if, the groups consist of independent thinkers with a diversity of relevant specialized knowledge and a means of aggregating their thinking to reach a decision (but not necessarily a consensus). This, in addition to personal support, is what I believe Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) provide when they are working well. They have to avoid group-think, self-referencing, complacency, complaining and the many other pitfalls that rob groups of their potential power, but when they work right they provide a forum in which individual teachers combine their personal experience and understandings of research to act more wisely and effectively than any individual teachers could alone. The PLC, of course, has to be functioning as described above; there is nothing automatic about the benefits of teachers talking to each other.
With respect to the question posed in this blog – Does a PLC Need Research? – the more research knowledge a PLC has to complement its collective experience, the more power its members have to design effective learning environments and strategies. PLCs alleviate the “cellular” nature of teachers’ experience both by putting them in touch with each other and by strengthening their connection to the profession as a whole, including its research, through a pooling of knowledge. Those who read professional journals, participate in university courses or attend inservice events can bring that knowledge back to the group for information, interpretation and creative application.
Teacher collaboration and co-learning is a potentially powerful force for building individual and collective capacity, but if the discourse is not informed by research its potential is liable to be severely limited. PLCs, therefore, should ensure not only that their discussions are well-structured but also that they are well-informed by research.
Next post: The EdCamp Explosion: Is crowdsourcing pro-d really a good idea?
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Embedded Inquiry
Comments Off on Embedded InquiryYou know how when you have an epiphany and then wonder how you could have ever not known that thing you just realized? That happened to me today while I was speaking with Chris Pedersen, a colleague at Rockridge. He had just told me about his lesson when it hit me: embedded inquiry – that’s what works.
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Cdn EdWire – Back-to-school Issues-a-plenty
Comments Off on Cdn EdWire – Back-to-school Issues-a-plentyHow to help your kids succeed? Talk, talk, talk – Globe and Mail
One more reason why your kids should eat breakfast – Globe and Mail
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Changing the Conversations about Education
Comments Off on Changing the Conversations about EducationIt’s back-to-school time across Canada, that annual phenomenon that signals the transition from a more relaxed sense of time and routine, to something a little more disciplined, regular and, in most Canadian locales, a little cooler. Even if you don’t have children in the formal school system, media coverage of the usual back-to-school issues remind us of the approaching change of season: dressing your children for the first day of school, healthy lunches, first day anxiety, transitions between various levels of system and how best to communicate with your child’s teacher. Recently, new threads have been woven into the back-to-school narrative: the use of social media, online learning and managing the stress of overscheduled parents and children.
But, once the annual flurry of media attention to schools during this highly energized season of return settles down, I always find myself being more than a little disappointed when I realize that these public conversations about school change haven’t appeared to have broken any new ground. To be sure, the blogosphere and the expanding social media landscape is growing in terms of the number of teachers, administrators, parents and community members who have become dedicated to pushing the edges on the educational discourse in this country, but many of these conversations remain hidden from wide public view. I can’t help but think that the time is ripe for a spirit of convergence between traditional media and the growing world of web-based publishing!
Could it be time for mainstream to meet Twitter stream?
Imagine what might happen if:
- our local and national newspapers included a permanent Education link on their front page menu banners;
- in addition to articles written by staff reporters and feature authors, a blogroll of web-based content was available in the sidebars of online newspapers;
- selected blog content were regularly aggregated into the body of online news sites;
- a live Twitter feed of education-related content became part of mainstream news sources;
- a portal to relevant educational research was available in traditional online news sources;
- a bookshelf of education-related books were included and discussed on a regular basis.
In short, imagine what might happen if we were able to create a type of discursive confluence where the main stream” of educational narrative across Canada could be fed and refreshed by the newer social media streams (and tributaries) that are forming in other places on the web.
I believe that gradually (albeit, slowly) we might begin to see a change in the types of conversations that take place in the public spaces around the country about schooling, education, teaching and learning.
You know something? If we got started now, we might be able to see some of that change in time for next year’s back-to-school season!
Next: Just what might those deeper questions be?
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Capturing Canadians’ Views on Change in Education
Comments Off on Capturing Canadians’ Views on Change in EducationOver the years, the Canadian Education Association (CEA) has explored many different questions with Canadians through our national surveys. This year, we wanted to examine Canadians’ views on innovation in education, and get a sense of your appetite for change in public education.
An online survey was conducted in March 2012 and 493 people responded from across the country. This pan-Canadian sampling shares what our educators think about the need for change, how they would grade our public education system, and what their top priorities are for public education in Canada.
Click here for detailed survey results, including respondent and provincial breakdowns.
1. 73% of respondents felt that there was a need for change
CEA and a contracted research firm asked respondents what they felt the degree of need for change was in Canadian public education. The need for change is greatest in B.C. (96%), the Atlantic Region (88%), Alberta (85%). The need for change appears to be less intense in Ontario.2. Grading Canadian public schools with a “B”
We asked respondents to grade their public schools (junior KD to Grade 12) in their community/province with an A,B,C,D, or Fail. Just under half of all respondents gave a grade of “B” to the public schools in their community (47%) and province (42%). In general, communities received slightly higher grades than provinces. Respondents from Ontario and B.C. were more likely to assign grades of A or B, compared to respondents from the other provinces.3. On the need for new ways of doing things
When asked how much need there was, if any, to find new ways of doing things with respect to a variety of ongoing challenges in education, nearly all respondents agreed that “handling differences in student abilities”, “linking schools to outside learning”, and “helping students learn in high school classrooms” were considered to be the top priorities.Interestingly, “Using technology in the classroom” was the most polarizing item (with relatively larger proportions on both sides of the scale), indicating that while many strongly believe that this must be an area of focus, others are not as convinced (or not as comfortable with the idea).
4. Prioritizing the biggest challenges in public education
When respondents were asked to rate their level of agreement or disagreement on the challenges facing public education today, B.C. and Alberta (where appetite for change is strongest) were most likely to agree with a variety of statements such as “Student engagement and keeping pace with rapid world change” are key challenges in education today.”Share your thoughts by leaving a comment on this blog:
- What’s your take on these results?
- What innovative practice and programs are working in your schools?
- What is the biggest challenge facing your schools in 2012-2013?
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Schools as A Place of Relationship
Comments Off on Schools as A Place of RelationshipIf you were to ask young people preparing to return to school over the next couple of weeks what they were looking forward to the most about “going back”, I suspect that the number one answer would be, “I’m looking forward to seeing my friends.” A close second might be, “I’m anxious to see my teachers”. There is no more energetic place to be than on a schoolyard or in a cafeteria on that first day back to school! And you know something? It’s not only the students that anticipate this time of reconnection. It didn’t take long for me to realize that those first days where teachers wandered back into school in order to prepare for the coming year were not very productive from a “getting things done” perspective. Instead, they were filled with hallway conversations, sharing of summer stories and photos and general catching up on things. A time of connection and reconnection.
Schools are many things to many people but I think that it’s important to remind ourselves (frequently) that schools are primarily a place of relationship. I know that might sound odd to the 21st century ear, but it’s something that I have come to believe.
Relationship is at the heart of the teaching/learning dynamic; it’s at the heart of the engagement puzzle and it is situated right at the heart of most of the other issues that schools are called upon to address. Acknowledging the importance of relationship is the first step; actively nurturing it is another.
One of the threads that was woven through the recently released CEA/CTF study, Teaching the Way We Aspire to Teach: Now and in the Future, was, in fact, relationship and just how important it was to the visions that teachers had for the work that they do. Relationship was seen to cut across many of the other dimensions addressed in the study’s findings including the way that teachers worked with colleagues, parents, school leadership, the students within their class and the wider community.
And when we asked teachers to tell stories of when they felt they were at their best, almost all of what we heard was grounded in a sense of strong, positive relationship. One teacher talked about getting down on his hands and knees, crawling under a desk and sitting with a student who tended to spend a good deal of his day in that position. Another spoke of how making a phone call to each parent at the beginning of the school year set such a positive tone, not only among the parent community, but among the students as well. Yet another recalled how students would return to her classroom at the end of the day, “just to talk”.
At the same time, teachers told us of the things that they believed would help them to be able to teach the way that they aspire to teach more often, many of which could be seen through the relationship lens: being able to have time and space to develop strong and positive relationships with colleagues, time to plan together, freedom to develop learning environments that were more responsive to the needs of students, flexibility to craft schedules and timetables that allowed for richer and more robust learning experiences, the ability to take the time to “be” with students and colleagues without feeling that something is “not being covered”!
Schools are places designed for learning; there is no disputing that. But I sense that we may be losing sight of one of the prime mediators of learning: relationship.
As we move back into our schools over the next couple of weeks, and as labour negotiations take a more central place in the conversations around board room, staff room and family dinner tables in many Canadian jurisdictions, I’m hoping that the very positive stories that we encountered in the Teaching the Way We Aspire work might serve to both temper and inspire the conversations—and the relationships!
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Cdn EdWire – Threat to Recruit Strippers from High School has Legs
Comments Off on Cdn EdWire – Threat to Recruit Strippers from High School has Legs
Adult entertainment lobby group threatens to recruit strippers at Vancouver schools – Vancouver Province
Calgary advocates slam plan to recruit strippers in city high schools – Metro Calgary
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Teachers as Nodes in a Network
Comments Off on Teachers as Nodes in a NetworkThe joint study recently published by the Canadian Education Association and Canadian Teachers’ Federation entitled Teaching the Way We Aspire to Teach, Now and in the Future should give hope to everyone who cares about education in Canada. We, Canadian teachers, are not an embittered, alienated bunch, but rather, deeply compassionate and highly committed professionals who have their students’ growth as their first priority. I was not surprised to read these findings. Nor was I dismayed by some of the real obstacles to aspirational teaching published in the report: insufficient resources, unsupportive school leadership, lack of collaboration with colleagues and the ever present challenge of finding time. Why not dismayed?
I am not illogically optimistic but I am solidly hopeful for the future of teaching and learning in Canada. Why? One word – networks.
Three books have changed the way I look at the art and science of teaching and learning (as well as numerous bloggers and Twitter friends). Connected by Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler, Too Big to Know by David Weinberger and Linked by Albert-Laszlo Barabasi taught me about the nature and power of networks. In Connected, I learned about how ideas move across networks and how only three degrees separate me from anyone else. Attitudes, beliefs and even lifestyles of someone I do not know will have an impact on my life. In Too Big to Know, I learned how the web is changing the shape of knowledge itself. Information has been liberated from the prison of the page and answers are only a link away. In Linked, I learned about the properties of networks and came to see them as an evolutionary force shaping both biological and social systems. So what does any of this have to do with how Canadian teachers feel about their craft? The answer comes in the shape of another question.
What would happen if teachers looked at the education system, failings and all, as a network and as themselves as nodes in that network? How would that change their daily routines, attitudes and beliefs about what is possible for their students in the classroom? I am guessing that the change would be nothing short of the proverbial paradigmatic shift.
Of course this new self-image (“I am a network node”) would not be an answer to all of the obstacles that teachers face, but it would be an important starting point from which to begin the change the ‘system’ needs.
Consider the following picture: Ms. Linkedin arrives at school by 7:30am for her 8:00am class. She is prepared to answer her students questions on last night’s lesson posted on the class wiki because their homework was to write their questions on a shared Google doc. This took no more than 10 minutes of her time and allowed her to adjust the morning’s lesson to accommodate for their questions. (The lesson was a video she flipped using the TED Ed site.) A departmental meeting is planned for her first spare of the day and as head, she has reduced the meeting time by half by collaborating asynchronistically on a Google doc. During lunch, Ms. Linkedin takes ten minutes to read a few tweets from her #edchat Twitter stream and to contribute a few of her own. The afternoon is smooth partly because of a great idea she gleaned from her Personal Learning Network (PLN) about assigning different roles in group work and now the class is humming with excitement. At the day’s end, Ms. Linkedin leaves deeply satisfied, partly because of her students’ enthusiasm and partly because of a parent’s compliment about the good work she is doing, evident by the open class wiki.
I could go on but I think the point has been made. In this network in which we live and work, we are not invisible and we are not alone. Change and growth are inevitable and networks are the mechanism by which they happen. We are not alone nor are we powerless against an inflexible and outdated system. If we ‘grow’ our networks and connect to a like-minded learners, we will achieve more aspirational teaching than ever before. Become the node in the network and watch the change happen.
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Teaching the Way We Aspire to Teach
Comments Off on Teaching the Way We Aspire to TeachWe live in a period where a scientific perspective on school reform has come to dominate the education discourse in this country. You know the drill: find the best research-based knowledge about teaching and learning and work to move it into the practice of each and every teacher. After all, if it works, it works!
It’s this perspective that has grounded and inspired much of the work with which most school districts across Canada have busied themselves over the past decade or more. It’s not necessarily wrong; in fact, its a very hopeful step to developing a more enhanced sense of professionalism. But, as a perspective, it’s incomplete. I fear that, in an effort to get to what is knowable, usable, and replicable about teaching and learning, we’ve pushed to the side the fact that schools exist in a highly nuanced and richly woven context where goals, interests and measures of quality collide on a daily basis. Some of these conflicts are very recognizable, but others are hidden deep in the DNA of this place we call school.
There is a sense in which Teaching the Way We Aspire to Teach: Now and In the Future is an attempt to explore more deeply what has been sidelined by our love affair with the rational. The stories of excellence and hope that we heard as we moved across the country did not, in any way, discount the importance of trying to discover what could be known and shared about teaching and learning. What we did discover, however, was a strong understanding among Canadian educators that their professional lives were more than a collection of replicable bits and pieces that could be amalgamated into something called teaching.
Most teachers will tell you that the approaches and strategies that have worked with one group of students may not have worked as well with another group. Heck, I have even found that things that have been pure magic in September have fallen flat with the same group in November.
And that’s precisely the point! Effective teaching practice is not something that can be extracted from one context, packaged and easily inserted into another. Unless we’re willing to acknowledge that the context is just as important as the strategy, we’re missing a incredibly powerful opportunity.
It is my hope that Teaching the Way We Aspire to Teach will open up a whole new set of conversations across the country. In shifting some of the focus away from effective practice as a finished product, I hope that we can shine light on the conditions that support and contribute to good teaching and learning.
But it’s challenging work. On the one hand, it’s not always easy to get a handle on context. I believe that the commitment we made to begin with personal stories of excellence set us on the right track, but we may need other tools to help us better understand those stories.
On the other hand, this work may not sit well with those who are equally committed to viewing education as a type of rational system that is primarily known and explained through a set of scientific tools and methods.
To say that there is middle ground is not a negative thing. It is an acknowledgement of the fact that, while we will never get it totally right, a multi-facted perspective is the best way to come closer to the teachers we aspire to be, and the system that we aspire to have.
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Deep Breaths
Comments Off on Deep BreathsAspirations are the building blocks of life; literally and metaphorically- each breath we take sustains us and allows us to accomplish all that we do- the mundane and the glorious. It was the very meaning of this word that caught my eye as I skimmed the Twittersphere in early July and came across the report Teaching the Way We Aspire to Teach, a joint endeavour of the CEA and CTF. My attention was fixed on the word aspire because it is a word that is not currently used much our public education context, and it makes me wonder if that is one reason why we seem to be a little stuck these days.
When I began my teaching career 20 years ago I had a fully formed set of aspirations of the teacher I wanted to be; informed by the experiences I had working alongside a lifetime’s worth of teachers-as well as the many media role models I encountered, ranging from Mr. Kotter to Robin Williams in the Dead Poet’s Society.
When I began my teaching career 20 years ago I had a fully formed set of aspirations of the teacher I wanted to be; informed by the experiences I had working alongside a lifetime’s worth of teachers-as well as the many media role models I encountered, ranging from Mr. Kotter to Robin Williams in the Dead Poet’s Society. In spite of a career that has spanned a plethora of social, political, pedagogical and technological changes, I hold these aspirations close and measure my work against these self-generated criteria, even now in my role as a school principal.
It is as a principal that I poured through the report, with a critical eye. We have navigated some tricky terrain over the past 20 years and made some significant gains in learning outcomes for students, especially those children whose needs are most pressing. My concern was that this report would in some way undermine this progress. No need to worry- it turns out that, based upon this research, classroom teachers want what we all want:
- the time to apply their craft in a creative and engaging matter
- the trust that, given time and resources, they will make decisions that are student-focused
- the opportunity to work together to develop, define and refine their professional practice
It’s important that those of us who lead and care about public schools to listen to the voices of our teachers and engage in a conversation that supports them to work towards their aspirations. Richard Elmore recently commented that, “…you have to know your own interests before you can pretend to represent someone else’s interests. I take that to mean that no one voice should prevail when we discuss our schools- whether we are a parent, policy maker, politician, principal, teacher or student. In the school I lead, I’m committed to having this conversation and am grateful to the CEA and CTF for creating this report as I believe that the aspirations of our teachers, students and families are critical to the next level of work we will need to engage in together. We’ll pour through the report together and spend some time talking about it.
Like the word ‘aspire’, our public schools are paradoxical too; they both mirror and sustain our democracy in mundane and glorious ways. It is our teachers who shape and define the lives that our children will lead and we must heed their voices; just as we must heed the voices of those who populate, fund and direct our schools, it’s a messy, but necessary, reality.
Like the word ‘aspire’, our public schools are paradoxical too; they both mirror and sustain our democracy in mundane and glorious ways. It is our teachers who shape and define the lives that our children will lead and we must heed their voices; just as we must heed the voices of those who populate, fund and direct our schools, it’s a messy, but necessary, reality.
Look for more posts on this as I document and share these conversations along the way.
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Two Heads are Better Than One – Except in School
Comments Off on Two Heads are Better Than One – Except in SchoolFifty years ago – even twenty years ago – it was not so abundantly clear that the Earth and its resources were finite and that the biosphere and the ethnosphere[1] were both richly interconnected systems. Now this reality is undeniable and the implications are legion in every aspect of our existence.
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Reminder: Teaching is a Soulful Experience that Transforms Kids
Comments Off on Reminder: Teaching is a Soulful Experience that Transforms KidsI had the pleasure, along with my colleague @Stephen_Hurley, to facilitate several teacher focus groups across Canada to understand the support they need to teach at their best. This was part of joint research project of CEA and the Canadian Teachers’ Federation called Teaching the Way You Aspire the Teach – Now and in the Future. It is a reflection of where the teacher psyche is today in our classrooms, and provides some ideas of what we need to do to improve the situation for both our teachers and their students.
Provincial/territorial and local teachers’ organizations from Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Yukon, Manitoba, Alberta, Ontario, and Quebec played a major role in the organization and the recruitment of focus group participants. As much as possible, the organizers attempted to ensure a mix of teachers for each focus group, (e.g. early and later career, elementary and secondary school, geographic, and gender mix). It’s important to note that these teachers were all volunteers lending their voices to this research.
Using an Appreciative Inquiry method we teased out their aspirations as teaching professionals. This was a different type of context than what they were used to. I first explained the research to ‘disarm’ them. As a fellow educator, Stephen quickly built their trust and what emerged after 15 minutes of skepticism and complaints about the way things were was a powerful unfiltered personal context that is reflected in the teacher comments inserted into the report.
What struck me by the time we got to the third focus group held in the Yukon – which included some very frustrated educators – was just how quickly the tension shifted once we focused on their best teachable moments, and teachers revealed such a profound sense of humility for the enormous impact they have on young people’s lives. They just thought it was a natural process that kids would work with them on a daily basis and simply took for granted that it was their caring personalities that have the kids gravitating to them. It brought me back to my own teaching days when kids would come and talk to me at the end of class because they saw characteristics in me that I couldn’t see in myself. These exchanges affected me deeply at the time, but sadly they were just an afterthought.
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When you take time to reflect on your best teaching moments, you realize that the outcome of your teaching affects your soul. You’re in the process of transforming kids, and very few professionals on the planet have the opportunity to do this.
During the focus groups, this reflection brought the teachers full circle on why they got into teaching – and it wasn’t because they wanted to adhere to assessment rubrics and follow the board’s curriculum policies. The same goes for principals. They didn’t get into leading a school because they wanted to balance a budget, enact board policies, and handle complaints from parents. Educators want to make a difference in the lives of their students. So why does it seem that in our public education systems, we have lost our way; our path; and our organizational wisdom?
Our focus groups revealed just how much teachers work in such good faith and are trying their best, but they often feel powerless amid the barrage of provincial curricula and assessment policies, accountability regimes, and they had a general dissatisfaction with existing pre-service and in-service education.
Smart organizations are structured in such a way that allow for bright thoughtful caring people to do what they do in a very clear coherent way and have a strong voice for improvement. As far as I’m concerned, the structures of public education inhibit creativity for the sake of control and structure.
This is why I see Teachers’ Aspirations research as a platform to get educators to stop and reflect. Is this really what we want to do with our kids now that we know better? Maybe 20 to 30 years ago, we didn’t know better, but now we do, so let’s get on with it!
After 35 years in education, I can honestly say that the teacher voices I heard across the country have changed the way I think about teaching and how caring for students predominate their beliefs and actions. As a society, we tend to either forget or ignore this. Many teachers said that this was the best PD session they had ever had, so let’s do it again and again! The process for listening to teachers and validating their work can now be built to scale to broaden this discussion, and even expand it towards administrators.
So take few moments to share your thoughts on our report, and/or your best teachable moments with us.
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Are We Teaching the Way We Aspire to Teach
Comments Off on Are We Teaching the Way We Aspire to TeachI’m in Halifax with Ron Canuel and Christa Freiler where, later today, we will be presenting the recently completed CEA/CTF report, Teaching the Way We Aspire to Teach: Now and in the Future, to delegates at the Canadian Teachers Federation President’s Forum.
The report is the culmination of more than 2 years of planning and consultation with teachers from across Canada around what some might consider to be a rather curious set of questions: Are you teaching the way you aspire to teach? What are the conditions that would enable you to teach the way you dream of teaching on a more regular basis?
Increasingly, teachers across the country find themselves part of a profession that has become more prescriptive in terms of what must be taught, how it is to be taught, and the methods that will be used determine whether it has been taught effectively. Yet for the last several months, we have moved across the country attempting to weave another thread into the narrative of how teachers see themselves and the work that they do
Interestingly enough, whenever we’ve told other educators that our goal is to, in a very positive way, explore the space that exists between the teacher they dream of being and the teacher that they feel they’re sometimes forced to be, the reaction has been pretty much the same: a brief pause, followed by an expression of recognition and, in most cases a knowing smile.
It’s the type of question that is designed to engage the imagination and it has been in those moments of deep engagement where we have been able to recognize that the hope for this profession does not lie in some outside mandate, some as yet undiscovered teaching strategy, in a book or a program. Instead, I’m convinced that the most positive sign of transformation in this country lies in the hopes and dreams of the teaching professionals that walk into classrooms every day.
From the Yukon to Halifax we heard from teachers who expressed a sense of excitement about the questions, eagerly and poignantly articulating a vision that was grounded in their own stories of excellence, and the desire to be able to live those stories more often. Not only were teachers able to express their visions in powerful ways, but they were able to point to very specific conditions that, they believe, will help us realize that vision.
Over the summer, I will be digging a little deeper into the work of the project—the approaches that we used and the themes that emerged from the many stories collected. For now, I’ll leave you with the invitation with which we began each of our focus group sessions:
Think of a time in your life as a teacher, an administrator, a parent where you felt you were at your best—a time when you said to yourself, “Yes! This is what it’s all about.” Try to remember as many details as you can about that story, and feel free to share it—here or elsewhere.
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