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• Viewpoint: The Key to John

  December 10, 2010 9:07 PM Comments Off on Viewpoint: The Key to John

  I have always been haunted by the memory of one of my former students sitting alone in a school office. The image remains frozen in my mind. With book in hand, he waits for his mother to pick him up for an afternoon appointment with his doctor. His book is closed – it is the same title he has been carrying to school for months, opening and closing during silent reading, mouthing the words that elude his full comprehension. John is a special educational student, a fluent reader who does not understand the meaning in the books he has read.

  The book seems a magic key to him. It will unlock the door to his future, where his mother holds the expectation that John will graduate from school and someday enter a college or university, fulfilling his promise for a bright future. As his teacher, I will continue encouraging the use of strategies that will help him read between the lines and draw a deeper meaning from his book. John will continue to see no further than the details in the story.

  I understand now that if John held the key to his own success, I was the lock.

  I understand now that if John held the key to his own success, I was the lock. In my desire to awaken a greater reader in John, I imposed obstacles in the form of academic goals that were beyond his grasp. My commitment to curriculum duped me into thinking that scholarly excellence was the main objective to my teaching profession. So I was just teaching John the skills of reading as opposed to reinforcing the joy he had already found in reading.

  What are teachers if we fail to recognize the whole student? We provide tight restrictions in our curriculum, as if academic content were the panacea for a happy and fulfilling life. We set barriers for students – assignments upon assignment, test upon test – demanding they compete with their peers for the highest possible marks, and set high academic standards so that failure makes “weaker” students feel like pariahs among their peers. In our desire to isolate the intellect, we abandon the human essence of character, our ability to be fully human, the capacity to be adjusted in our intellectual and emotional needs – and to those of others living within our communities.

  Here is the report card comment I should have presented to John: John has consistently demonstrated strong organizational skills in class, ready for each lesson and eager to participate. His independent working skills continue to exceed expectation, showing a student willing to learn new concepts at every given opportunity. John places a lot of pressure on himself to succeed in his academic endeavours. He is encouraged to seek help whenever his academic work is challenging so that he may experience greater success. During peer projects, students enjoy working with John, given his ability to work hard and cooperatively with every member in our classroom. 

  It is a comment I never gave John because report cards concentrate primarily on academic results; held in less esteem is the measure of character through which we determine our ability to be productive and happy individuals. My fear is that, if we only succeed in academic work, we aspire to less in ourselves, becoming as it were, mechanical cogs in the machinery of society.

  If schools are to cultivate a better society, curriculum needs to move beyond the academic. Where is the expectation for who I am in this world? What is my purpose? What is my goal? What is my responsibility? These questions initiate a challenge that urges us to build a bridge between understanding the world and understanding our place in it. Limiting a student’s success to the intellect is based on the same reasoning that kept me from writing the report card comment I should have written for John.

  I could not entirely surmise what motivated John as a student, but I have a suspicion that he burdened himself with the aspiration to excel in his academic subjects: pressure for high grades from his parents, a self-image based on pleasing them, a feeling of inadequacy among his peers. My own wish to optimize his academic abilities may have urged him to accomplish what was beyond his capabilities. Despite his limitations, John tapped into his own natural abilities with patience and a diligence to detail. Those qualities, and his interpersonal skills with peers and teachers at school, were often overlooked because they weren’t part of the curriculum. It is to John’s credit that, in spite of ourselves, we didn’t undermine his motivation to grow as an individual inside our educational system.

  If schools are to cultivate a better society, curriculum needs to move beyond the academic. Where is the expectation for who am I in this world? What is my purpose? What is my goal? What is my responsibility?

  I am not suggesting we move away from the academic component of curriculum, but rather that we expand the definition of curriculum so that it may be inclusive enough to bear all students within a complex society facing challenges in its future. As technology takes over more and more of our learning and our lives, we have to ask: Is the key to our hi-tech future any more sound than the key we left John holding in the office with the book he did not fully comprehend?

  I have lost track of John over the years. I find myself wondering: Did he sit through his Grade 8 graduation as an observer, watching his peers receive awards beyond his expectations? Did secondary education further alienate him from school, subjecting him to a litany of rotary classes where teachers have even less contact with students?

  In my career as a teacher, I have learned many lessons. The most important has been to look beyond the official curriculum document. Is the student with the quiet demeanour avoiding eye contact because he or she is a target of bullying? Is the student who acts out in a classroom frustrated by the academic workload that is either too easy or difficult? John is always there for me – a scathing indictment of the inadequacy of curriculum, which failed to give credit for all the efforts, skills, and behaviour already in his possession.

  John will one day leave school and take up an occupation judged by our educational standards to be inferior to jobs requiring a university degree – reflecting an elitism that perpetuates a myth about its own high regard and threatens to undermine our diverse democracy.

  Thanks to John, I am no longer a teacher of a subject, but a teacher of students. Through his initiative alone, he has set a standard of excellence to which all our curriculum documents have yet to catch up.

  EN BREF – Que sont les enseignants si nous omettons de reconnaître l’élève dans sa globalité? Nous restreignons sévèrement le curriculum, comme si le contenu scolaire était la panacée assurant une vie heureuse et enrichissante. Nous posons des obstacles aux élèves – travail par-dessus travail, examen sur examen – exigeant qu’ils luttent contre leurs pairs pour obtenir les meilleurs notes possible et nous établissons des normes scolaires élevées, de sorte que les élèves « plus faibles » qui échouent se sentent rejetés par leurs pairs. Dans notre désir d’isoler l’intellect, nous abandonnons l’essence humaine du caractère, notre capacité d’être totalement humains, la capacité de nous adapter à nos besoins intellectuels et émotionnels – et à ceux d’autres personnes dans nos collectivités.

• PISA 2009: Let’s not underestimate the importance of equity in education

  December 8, 2010 8:46 PM Comments Off on PISA 2009: Let’s not underestimate the importance of equity in education

  A major ‘good news’ story behind the latest PISA results is that Canada continues to be marked by high achievement and high equity in education. This means that the impact of socio-economic status is relatively small, and the gap between the high achievers and low achievers is also small, compared to most other countries.  This is the distinguishing feature of Canada’s education system and, arguably, more important to the social and economic future of young people and Canada as a whole than small changes in overall standing (i.e. whether we are 3^rd, 4^th or 5^th).

  Why is equity in education so important?   First, because it means that, generally-speaking, all children in Canada benefit from good schools and good educations, regardless of their family’s socio-economic status or immigration status.  Why this is important for children is obvious since it affects their current educational experiences and their future prospects.

  Second, and perhaps less obvious, educational equity is important because it relates to the overall equality in a society. We now know that equality benefits everyone in a society, not just those at the bottom.  In their  book, “The Spirit Level: Why Equality Is Better For Everyone”, Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett demonstrate that health and social outcomes are considerably worse in more unequal countries. They found that this is true for physical health, mental health, drug abuse, education, imprisonment, obesity, social mobility, trust and community life, violence, teenage pregnancies, and child well-being.  They conclude that, the smaller the social and economic inequality between people, the better it is for everyone.

  How do we explain Canada’s high level of educational equity?  A common answer, particularly when contrasting Canada with the United States, is that it is a combination of factors, perhaps most importantly  because  we have better income programs, social safety net, and health care system.  Last week UNICEF released a report that shed some new light on this explanation. “The Children Left Behind” looked at inequality in child well-being in three areas: material well being (includes family income and housing); educational achievement; and physical health.  The results were mixed.  In material well-being, Canada ranked 17^th out of 24; in health, 9^th out of 24; and in education, 3^rd out of 24.  The educational finding prompted the UNICEF spokesperson to observe ”we are doing something right”.  Significantly, it is our education system and our schools that are doing something right, since Canada’s record when it comes to income, health and housing inequality, as well as child and family poverty rates, is considerably less stellar.

  So, what ARE we doing right?

  The Children Left Behind

  PISA 2009 Results

  The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better

• Up With Reporting

  December 7, 2010 9:05 PM Comments Off on Up With Reporting

  If students, or their parents, wait anxiously for their first report card each year to know how they are doing, there is something seriously wrong. Report cards should simply be a formal confirmation of what everyone already knows because they have been getting informative feedback from their teacher and self-assessing throughout the term.

   Assessment and evaluation are not synonyms. Assessment is the gathering of information about what students know and are learning, and how and what they are thinking. It is descriptive, not judgmental, and is intended to provide feedback to the teacher and the student. Assessment should be continuous and interwoven with instruction. Evaluation is a judgment, based on the comparison of assessment information to an expected standard, about the quality of a student’s demonstrated learning. It occurs periodically for the purposes of formal reporting. Evaluation serves a purpose but it does little to benefit learning.

   Assessment takes many forms, beginning with the moment to moment observations that a teacher makes about student thinking as they interact with them and also includes review of assignments and marking of quizzes and tests. The things that teachers notice in day-to-day interaction with students provide the richest source of information and the most useful one for purposes of feedback that the teacher can use to adjust the pace and content of instruction, and that the student can use to better understand his or her learning and how to improve it. Planning for instruction should include frequent opportunities for teachers to informally assess student thinking and for students to self-assess. Quizzes and tests have a role to play but are inadequate on their own.

   Embedded assessment and feedback is an essential part of instruction. If instruction were simply one-way it could be done using a video by a skilled lecturer. The professionalism of teaching comes in creating interactive learning activities that adapt to student responses and thus serve the unique learning abilities and needs of the particular learners in the class. Computers can deliver great lectures, but they are not yet capable of the keen observation, informed intuition and tactful guidance that a skilled teacher can provide in interaction with students.

   Continuous descriptive, constructive and encouraging feedback to students, both formal and informal, is the reporting that really benefits learning, not the report card. That should be merely a consolidation and confirmation of what has already been said.

   The change from assessment of learning to assessment for learning is happening across Canada. If you are making this change, or if your child’s teacher is making this change, tell me how its going and what you find works. Or perhaps you don’t agree with this change. If not, tell me why.

• Teaching Out Loud

  December 3, 2010 8:51 PM Comments Off on Teaching Out Loud

  You’re invited to check out Teaching Out Loud, CEA’s new podcast initiative. It’s an initiative designed to raise the voices of passionate and innovative teachers across Canada.

  
  

   I know from personal experience that teachers are often spoken about, spoken for but, we’re not often spoken to when it comes to conversations about policy, ideology, and what happens on a day-to-day basis in our schools. Yet the voice of the teacher is so vital to any discussion about educational transformation and change.

  
  

  So, each month, Teaching Out Loud will focus on another thread in the complex educational tapestry, featuring the voices of real teachers from across Canada. You’re invited to participate by listening to the podcast and then dropping in here to join the conversation! Think of the podcast as a story starter, and this blogspace as the next step in the writing process.

  
  

  This month, Teaching Out Loud begins with some questions for all teachers, each of them centering on the main theme:

  
  

  “So, what brings you here?”

  
  

  What influenced your decision to become a teacher? Were there specific experiences that you had that got you thinking about a teaching career? Were there people in your life that inspired you to consider the profession? Are the things that initially brought you to teaching the things that keep you coming back?

  
  

  You know, in a great deal of the public discourse about the teaching profession, teachers are often presented as this huge monolithic organism–one that thinks in one way, moves in one way and reacts in one way. Those of us spend any time hanging around schools know that nothing could be farther from the truth. I’m hoping that, in featuring the voices of individuals, Teaching Out Loud might help to challenge this idea and help to create some a new space for expression.

  
  

  So, let’s get it started! Listen to the very first episode of Teaching Out Loud as I speak with teachers David Wees, Julia Rheaume and Auni Boghossian. Then tell us your story!

  
  

  Remember, a lot can happen when you’re Teaching Out Loud!

• Down With Letter Grades

  December 2, 2010 4:30 PM Comments Off on Down With Letter Grades

  Student report cards as commonly written do far more harm than good. We would all be better off without them. Students would be more focussed on learning, parents would be better informed and educators would be more appropriately accountable.

   Letter grades are at the root of the disservice that report cards do because meaningful information about learning cannot be reduced to a letter grade. (Don’t even get me started on the ridiculous idea that anyone’s learning can be assessed to an accuracy of 1%.) Nonetheless, policy requires that teachers produce them, and then parents and students attribute unintended meanings according to their own assumptions. Many believe that letter grades indicate a student’s position in the class relative to the average – “A” being well above average and therefore a matter of pride, whereas anything less than “C” is cause for concern – despite the fact that comparative assessment is contrary to best practice and grading policies across Canada.

   Consider a student who writes a cogent and convincing expository essay but is careless with conventions such as spelling and sentence structure. S/he might be given a “B” due to those shortcomings, and a student whose writing adheres strictly to the conventions but whose thoughts are not as well organized and expressed might also get a “B.” These students are as different as chalk and cheese, but the letter grade make them look similar.

   What should a student do in order to improve his or her letter grade? Just try harder? A letter grade conveys no information at all about current strengths or learning needs, and thus leaves enormous room for both student and parent to make misleading interpretations. Letter grades sort but they don’t report.

   There are clearly superior ways of reporting on student learning. They are well-known and widely – but not commonly – practiced. Student-led reporting based on portfolios of student work, for example, can be a richly informative process. If a formal written report is required, including the intended learning outcomes and providing descriptive feedback based on those outcomes is far more informative than just a letter grade and yet even when such information is provided students and parents tend to skip right over it to get to the letter grade in the mistaken belief that tells the real story.

   There are, of course, logistical challenges to anecdotal reporting and educators need to learn how to use plain language for it to be effective, but when the current approach is clearly inadequate surely it is worth tackling those challenges. So why don’t we? 

   Or perhaps you are making changes to improve report cards, or you are receiving effective report cards. If so, let me know what is working for you.

  
  

• We’re Changing Our School

  November 29, 2010 7:08 PM Comments Off on We’re Changing Our School

  A few months ago Max Cooke and I had a chance to discuss student voice in the education sector. It is an idea that’s swept across the country, but maybe without us fully noticing its potential as a “game changer” in our school systems. We shared our thoughts in the latest edition of Education Canada and I was excited to see Carmen Meyett’s comments about our article and the work the student council at Quinte Secondary School is doing to become leaders in listening to and responding to what is important to their peers.

  In her comments Carmen asks an important question: How are you making sure the student voice is heard? I’d like to take Carmen’s question a few steps further: What are you going to do with students’ ideas and opinions once you’ve heard them? Are we sure we’re not missing a critical part of the puzzle of change if we consult with students and leave all of the decision-making to educators?

  CEA recently had a chance to bring these questions to students and educators at the York Region District School Board’s annual Quest for Student Achievement Conference. In our presentation – Students: Agents of Change – we talked about the differences between student voice and student involvement and with help from nine students at Sir Robert Borden Junior High School in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia we got to the important question: What difference does it make when students and teachers both have meaningful roles in decision making?

  This short video – created from an hour-long focus group with the school’s student leadership team – illustrates how thoughtful leadership from staff and students at a school can have an impact on school culture and learning environments. This is a video that needs little introduction because the students say it all and as you’ll see at the end leave us to think about our role in creating meaningful opportunities not just for voice, but involvement and leadership. 

  Students Speak About the Benefits of Student Voice and Involvement from Jodene Dunleavy on Vimeo.

• Passion and Purpose in Public Schools

  November 16, 2010 3:07 PM Comments Off on Passion and Purpose in Public Schools

  I would like to talk about passion and public education.

  I’m not sure if your experience is similar to mine, but I can’t recall ever having a dispassionate conversation about schools—the way they are, the way they used to be, or the way they could be as the result of reform or transformation. And this sense of passionate response has only been heightened by the release of several documentaries on the state of public education, mainly in the United States.

  But it’s not passion for quality schools that I’m talking about. It’s passion in quality schools that has been on my mind of late. It’s an idea that has been front and centre for me for a while as I have struggled with others to revitalize the experience of school through a more artistic approach to teaching and learning. It’s an idea that re-emerged for me this past weekend as I sat down to watch yet another educational documentary, this one focusing mainly on the current state of education in the U.K.

   In a sense, We Are the People We’ve Been Waiting For, (2009) provides a type of counter-narrative to the stories of broken, dysfunctional schools found in Davis Guggenheim’s Waiting for Superman. In We Are The People, the film’s author, Sir Ken Robinson, makes it clear that the vital question is not about how we fix our broken schools, but about how we develop a whole new approach—a whole new model—for education. After all, why try to fix something that is no longer the right tool for the job?

   At the heart of We Are the People, is a call to create for our young people a place where, in addition to learning the skills and knowledge that they need to become participating citizens, they can also discover a sense of passion and a sense of purpose, not just for school, but for life—their life!

   As I watched the film, I couldn’t help but think back to my own schooling. You know, in retrospect, I discovered one of my life’s great passions in Grade Five; I was ten years old. It was 1968 and the education landscape in Ontario was starting to look a little bit different. That September, I was placed in the new open concept wing of the school that I had been attending since Kindergarten. I arrived on the first day to discover that desks had been replaced by work tables, wall-to-wall carpets had been installed over the tile floors and, most intriguing for me, record players had been replaced with cassette tape recorders, each with an external microphone!    

  To say that this new technology was a game-changer for me would be an understatement. Instead of spending the day with foolscap paper as the main medium of communication, I was given the freedom to use the cassette recorder whenever I wanted; I was permitted to use it to record my own voice and present class work and assignments. Heck, I even did my grade five speech on the invention of the cassette tape recorder. It wasn’t long before I had basically claimed the machine as my own.

  Once I had been successful in convincing my parents that I needed a tape recorder that actually belonged to me, I could usually be found in my room creating my own radio programs, novelty musical montages and news broadcasts.

  Throughout the rest of my schooling, I looked for opportunities to hang out in places where recording technology was being used. I joined the A.V. team at my junior high, participated in the closed-circuit coverage of a federal election in secondary school and continued to look for ways to integrate the technology into my own class work.

  When it came time to apply for post-secondary institutions, my first choice was the Radio and Television program at Ryerson Polytechnical Institute. My parents refused to consider this as an alternative because Ryerson was not considered a real university. So, I trundled off to the local campus of the University of Toronto every day for three years and eventually applied to the Faculty of Education.

  People will often ask me why I didn’t apply to join the University radio station. My reason is always the same: I was afraid I wasn’t good enough. I realize now that, while school did a good job of trying to teach me the basics of math (!) and language, it wasn’t a place where my intense interest in this alternative form of communication could be nurtured and grown. That’s not what school was all about.

  While I’ve had a very fulfilling career in education, I know that my true passion was revealed to me in Grade Five. It happened quite serendipitously, quite by accident. It is only now, some 42 years later that I’m actually beginning to live it!

  So, how is this story connected with our current conversation on educational transformation?  Well, it’s not at all connected with the push towards higher achievement as reflected in test scores or graduation rates. And it’s not connected with the cry to fix schools so that they more effectively deliver the type of education for which they were originally created. And it may not even be connected with the mandate to prepare every student for a post-secondary education.

  It is, however, a story that speaks to me about schools becoming a place where passion and life can be discovered, explored and supported. It speaks about expanding, not narrowing possibilities for learners. It hints at engagement not just as something we do to students, but as something that becomes part of the energy of schools—something that enables learners to find what might continue to turn them on as they continue to move through life.

  I do recognize that many secondary schools are now doing a much better job at providing programs that would have allowed me to play with my passion a little more. Our current research on engagement, however, does indicate that much of this is still considered extra and not part of the really important work of schools.

  We Are The People We’ve Been Waiting For asks us to weave a different narrative thread into our story of school—one that re-defines school as a place that is equally concerned with what learners hope for after graduation, rather than just graduation, itself.

  Ironically, this evening, I will be sitting in my newly completed basement studio recording my the first episode of a new CEA podcast series, Teacher Voices. At 10:00 p.m. the door will close, the On Air sign will be activated (a gift from my wife) and I will be, for the first time in my life, living out that passion that was stirred up in Grade Five.

   Way more to talk about here, but I’ll pose a few questions.

  Do you think that it is the role of schools to nurture this sense of passion and possibility, or are we suggesting something that is simply beyond the reach of a school’s mission?

  Are you part of a school community that is on the road to this type of transformative thinking? Do you know of a school vision that embraces these values?

  As always, we would love to hear from you!

   

• Engaging Learning in the 21st Century

  November 15, 2010 4:58 PM Comments Off on Engaging Learning in the 21st Century

  On November 17, 18 and 19 CEA will facilitate 2 workshops at York Region’s Quest Conference: Engaging Learning in the 21st Century. We look forward to sharing what we have learned about student engagement through What did you do in school today? in our presentations on Students as Agents of Change and CEA’s Multidimensional Model of Student Engagement: From Theory to Practice. Denise Rose (Superintendent) and Lisa Blackstock (Director of Staff Development) from the Foothills School Division in Alberta will be co-facilitating the second workshop with Penny Milton.

  This year CEA was also invited to submit an article to the Quest Journal 2010 – our article The Search for Competence in the 21st Century is now available to read through the online journal at https://www.leadingedgelearningcenter.com/. We welcome your comments on the article and our presentations, which will be posted here in the next couple of weeks. 

• Think Twice, Measure Once

  November 13, 2010 12:28 AM Comments Off on Think Twice, Measure Once

  Carpenters are well advised to measure twice and cut once because premature cuts can waste time and valuable materials. Similarly, educators should think twice and measure once because ill-conceived measurements can both distract and distort.

   What one chooses to measure generally becomes the focus of time and attention, often to the exclusion of other topics.  Thus, if one chooses to measure achievement in literacy and numeracy other subjects such as science, social studies, the Arts and Technology tend to take a back seat, let alone the more subtle issues of social-emotional learning and character development that are critical to a quality education.

   The distraction caused by a narrow focus for measurement may also distort outcomes if what is measured does not represent the full array of literacy and numeracy objectives.  For example, literacy tests usually include impromptu writing but not planned and edited writing, which is arguably a more important skill.  They also generally omit oral communication which is critical for employment, citizenship and life in general.

   Although no responsible educator would “teach to the test,” it is virtually guaranteed that the things that are measured and reported will become the focus of attention and that other things will be relegated to the margins.  This unintended consequence within schools is compounded in the community when the available data is misused to generate supposed quality indices of limited scope and questionable meaning.  A prime example of this disservice is the “Report Card” published by the Fraser Institute in many provinces, which is granted far too much attention and credibility, thus misinforming the public and confusing the important discussion about improving educational quality.

   The decision to measure some outcome must be made with full recognition of the potential for distraction and distortion.  This is not a reason to forego measurement of outcomes, but it is a reason to employ an array of indicators that span the full range of important outcomes and to ensure responsible, representative reporting and use of the data.  Simply proceeding with what is easiest to measure is counterproductive because of ‘collateral damage’ due to the distraction and distortion this causes.

   Educational assessment is a complex business and it is expensive to do it well.  However, it is also essential.  Since it is impossible to imagine funding a census assessment (i.e., all aspects for all students) that adequately represents the full range of important educational outcomes, a sampling approach that delves more deeply by using subtle and sophisticated measures (including qualitative techniques such as case studies and direct classroom observations) is the only credible way to monitor system performance and provide data that is useful for improvement.  Unfortunately, while this is the most productive approach for educational purposes, it does not serve the perceived need in some quarters to provide all parents with an independent measure of their child’s learning.

   Educational discourse and school improvement clearly requires an evidential foundation, but it is important that the evidence be collected in ways that adequately reflect outcomes.  A good assessment program begins with well-understood questions and intentions, which are the foundation for a sophisticated program of evidence gathering, interpretation and constructive use.  It does not simply measure what is easiest or draw excessive inferences from what happens to be available.

• Don’t Let Data Drive Your Dialogue

  November 5, 2010 12:13 AM Comments Off on Don’t Let Data Drive Your Dialogue

  “Figures often beguile me, particularly when I have the arranging of them myself; in which case the remark attributed to Disraeli would often apply with justice and force: ‘There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.’” – Mark Twain

  Why should our dialogue be “driven” by data? I certainly understand that data can provide a provocation, challenge, affirmation or contradiction that sparks dialogue – but why should it “drive” that dialogue? Data itself has no meaning, until it is organized and displayed in charts or graphs that can be interpreted, usually in multiple ways. These interpretations may usefully inform our dialogue, decisions and subsequent actions so data definitely can be valuable, but it often seems to be granted undue reverence simply because it is numerical. Although insight can derive from analysis of data, equally it can arise out of intuition and, in fact, I wonder if some analyses are not actually rationalizations subconsciously imposed on data to justify intuitive speculations.

  The notion of “data-driven dialogue” was introduced to counter the perception of an excessive reliance on unjustified opinion and personal preference in educational discourse. I think this correction was required and believe there is more work to be done to reduce the aversion to data that still exists for some. However, evidence can take many forms and wisdom has many roots. All should be valued. Numerical data is only one form.

  Some not only revere numerical data but argue that data is only useful if it is derived from the self-declared “gold standard” of randomized controlled trial methodology – for example, the American government’s What’s Working Clearinghouse has this bias. This fanaticism arises from a hyper-rational perspective on human experience. Positivist science can be highly informative, but I cannot imagine why one would not also welcome the insights that have been distilled from experience through more qualitative processes.

  At the school level, richer insights will arise through triangulation based on multiple methods than through any one avenue alone. Data should be used to inform our dialogue at every opportunity but it does not speak for itself. Data is created through an imperfect and incomplete recording and codification of experience and only acquires meaning through fallible human interpretation.  

  It is in this interpretive process and in the subsequent discussion of what to do about what one has learned that dialogue is required, and this dialogue is the process through which understanding is constructed and commitment to action develops. Data informs the dialogue but does not determine its outcomes. The insights, questions and perspectives that teachers bring to the interpretive process are the source of its power and consequence as much as the data that instigates the dialogue.

  So let’s not let data drive us, but also let’s not denigrate it. Professional dialogue is more powerful when it is informed by evidence of all sorts, including numerical data, as well as the intuition and wisdom of experience.

• Teachers Need Feedback Too

  October 31, 2010 7:54 PM Comments Off on Teachers Need Feedback Too

  Just as teachers assess their students’ learning and provide feedback about it, so too should students assess their teacher and provide feedback.

  This is not a quest for popularity, or even approval, but rather the common sense response to a teacher’s duty to enable learning, not simply present information. Since communication occurs in the listener, one has to seek feedback in order to know what is being communicated and how. Students’ perception is the reality within which a teacher works.

  So how might one ask students to provide feedback? Actually, you don’t even have to ask. Their moment-to- moment and day-to-day response is generally highly informative, except that you have to disentangle it from the heavy overburden of compliance and approval seeking that permeates school life, and the social norms that often mask students’ true feelings, especially in adolescence.

  However, its also useful to make an explicit request for feedback. This signals your desire to be supportive, yields useful information and creates an opportunity to catch serious issues early in the year. I found the following simple questions, answered anonymously, to be be very informative after a month or so.

  • In general, how are you feeling about the course so far? [Likert Scale]
  • Is there anything you think I should … to help you learn better? – Stop [Open Ended], Start [Open Ended], Continue [Open Ended], or Change [Open Ended]
  • How satisfied are you with your own effort and engagement so far? [Likert Scale]
  • Is there anything in particular you think I should know? [Open Ended]

  Having asked for feedback, it is important to report the results to your students along with any comments on the results, particularly any adjustments you intend to make. Generally, I found a range of responses that invited some explanation about why I did what I did, but only relatively minor adjustments to procedures. Occasionally, however, I learned something more substantial, and perhaps even challenging. Sometimes, I got a distressing response from an individual student that I would have liked to follow-up on but since the responses were anonymous my only option was to reinforce for all students my previous invitation to see me individually if they had any questions or concerns.

   Whatever the particular response, this was a very productive exercise that helped to establish open communication with my students and helped me to be a better teacher.

• What are the levers for more equitable school systems

  October 29, 2010 3:10 PM Comments Off on What are the levers for more equitable school systems

  I left this week’s CEA/SCOPE public forum, Achieving Equity in Education: What Can Schools Do? thinking about levers. If you think back to your elementary science classes, you’ll remember that levers are a type of simple machine that, when added to a system, will multiply the effort used in order to lift a load.

  As SCOPE’s Prudence L. Carter, one of the panelists at the forum, began her opening remarks about equity in education, she posed the question, “What are the levers that allow us to move towards greater equity?” She went on to explore the question by suggesting four: standards, reliable data systems, teacher quality, and effective strategies for low performers.

  The idea is that, if we continue to integrate appropriate sources of leverage into our school systems, then all students, especially those marginalized by virtue of race, gender, socio-economic status, and special learning needs will be raised to new and acceptable levels of success.

  When you begin to explore the metaphor of leverage a little deeper, a few important details begin to emerge—details that could have a great impact on how we view the role of the school in the achievement of equity.

  First, a lever is necessarily a very rigid object. In fact, its value comes from its inherent lack of flexibility.

  Implication: Whatever levers we decide are going to allow us to do the work of public schooling more effectively and efficiently must have a certain rigorous quality to them. They need to be well-considered, well-researched, and very well-implemented. Once we decide to use a lever within the system, we have to commit to using it!

  Second, a fulcrum is a point around which the whole system turns. Without a fulcrum, your lever is really just a big stick. Oh, you can still use it within your system, but it is likely to become more of a disciplinary tool to keep things in line, then it is for any mechanical advantage.

  Implication: I’m not convinced that current public school systems are centrally focused on the marginalized. We’ve done a good job of writing policies, programs and protocols that talk about our fundamental commitment to all students, but those who are immersed in equity issues know that equity policy does not easily translate into equitable practice. There is still a huge gap in what we write and how we think and act when it comes to those who have been traditionally disadvantaged by schooling.

  Finally, in a physical system it matters a great deal where the fulcrum is placed. Greater advantage will be gained if the fulcrum is closer to that which is to be elevated than it is to the source of effort.

  Implication: If we are going to really get serious about our  success for all mantras, we must ensure that the majority of our resources remain close to those whom we serve. Spending too much time and money on things unconnected with the day-to-day lives of our students will always result in loss of energy throughout the entire system.

  In her latest blog entry on this topic, Penny Milton made a very poignant observation:

  While more affluent children may be successful in spite of their school experience children from poorer homes or neighbourhoods are more likely to depend on schools for their academic success. (emphasis added)

  It’s time to ensure that our fulcrum is well-defined—that point around which our entire school system revolves. If we get it right for the young people who depend on schools for their academic success, then we are most certainly going to get it right for everyone.

  So, some questions that might further this part of the conversation:

  What do you see as the levers that will help us do the necessary work needed to elevate the success of all students? Do you believe that the four identified by Prudence L. Carter are sufficient?

  Is it your experience that public schools are really focused on the needs of all students, or do we rest on the laurels of those who may be successful in spite of their school experience?

  Do you have comments on the use of the leverage metaphor when talking about equity?

  We’re walking on important ground here. Your ideas, observations and input are always appreciated.

  Next entry: I think that it’s important to look at the some of the non-school levers that might be able to help us create a more integrated, “wrap-around” system of learning for entire communities. What might some of those levers be? Your advance thinking on this question is welcome!

• What’s Stopping Us?

  October 21, 2010 12:58 PM Comments Off on What’s Stopping Us?

  It’s Thursday afternoon in a school in Brampton, Ontario. The dismissal bell has rung, and staff members are anxiously waiting in the school library for the arrival of the principal who has called what has been billed as an extremely important meeting—a command performance!
  
  “I’ve got news for you,” the principal declared as he entered the room and sat down. Our ears naturally perked up. 
  
  “We’ve got to change. The world around us is changing and we have to change with it. We need a paradigm shift in the way we think about the work we do!”
  
  And then he paused.
  
  That’s all I remember about that meeting—except the date: February…1990!
  
  In the weeks that followed, we engaged in lively discussions about new practices, student-centered learning, real-world problem solving and authentic tasks and assessments. Not everyone agreed with the new programs that were being introduced, but the school, the district and the province seemed to be pushing forward.
  
  Yet today, some 20 years later, new generations of teachers continue to beat a path to a largely unchanged and unmoved schoolhouse. Curious, isn’t it? Maybe not!
  
  In my last entry, I presented a list of criteria that could help us develop powerful and engaging learning tasks. Someone on my current staff saw the blog post and approached me this week with a rather poignant remark: “This is a great list, but we’ve been talking about this stuff for so long. Why aren’t we there yet?”
  
  There is something stubbornly resistant about this place we call school. But what, exactly, is at the heart of this resistance. I used to think that the solution to the dilemma lay in getting people motivated and excited about new ideas.
  
  But now I spend a good deal of my time thinking that there are more fundamental factors at play here. My new question:
  
  If we have a sense of what the criteria for quality learning environments are, what are the things that we bump up against when we’re trying to develop these experiences at the classroom and school level?
  
  In my own experience, I see several things that contribute to our current state of inertia when it comes to transformation. In this entry, I have chosen to focus on three of the “dissuaders” that I have encountered over the past three or four years.
  
  First, the accountability movement that also began in our schools about 20 years ago (huh!) has actually narrowed our vision of what schools could be for our learners by forcing educators to focus primarily on things that can be easily measured. A charged-up, uber-excited group of teachers in September can quickly turn into a panicked and rather staid set of individuals as the deadline for the first set of report cards approaches. In the past several years, I have found it increasingly difficult to report on student progress using the rather narrow band of success defined by our current reporting system.
  
  And let’s face it: many teachers are governed by yearly reporting cycles. If there is a mismatch between how we teach and how we are forced to report on what we teach, guess which one is going to win out? When push comes to pull, the tiny assessment boxes on the report card rule every time!
  
  Point One: We need assessment, evaluation as well as reporting tools and cycles that are more reflective of the transformative practice that we want to encourage in our schools. We need to expand our notion of accountability to include much more than what can be tested.
  
  Second, the architectural design of our school facilities goes a long way to controlling what actually happens within them on a consistent basis. Most school design is still based on the idea that learning takes place in small, isolated rooms with a single door. Despite a brief period in the late 60’s and early 70’s when walls started coming down in favour of more open learning spaces, this compartmentalized approach to design has been one of the most recognizable features of schools.
  
  Not only are teachers limited to just a few possibilities when it comes to arrangement of learners and furniture, the potential of opening up classrooms to other resources: physical or human is also limited by size and space. Oddly enough, I’m finding that, instead of getting larger and more spacious, many new schools that I visit have even smaller classroom spaces, smaller library, and smaller common areas for collaborative meeting of staff, students and parents outside the confines of the classroom.
  
  Point Two: The way that we imagine learning space will have a great influence on whether our visions of transformation will occur. We need transformation-minded teachers, learners and others to be part of design teams and committees, not just in the early stages, but throughout the entire planning and building process! (Do they make extra small hard-hats?)
  
  Finally, we are still forced to think of schooling in terms of separate distinct curriculum areas. Many jurisdictions produce separate curriculum documents, written by separate curriculum teams and rolled out of district offices by separate groups of curriculum consultants. The chances of developing powerful and engaging integrated tasks at the classroom level is diminished by the way that this strict discipline-bound approach forces educators to envision their curriculum design.
  
  Oh there are some advantages afforded by our current model of doing school. It  allows for easier scheduling of staff and learners, a more efficient balancing of time throughout the day, as well as the development of neat and tidy sets of data for—you guessed it—report cards.
  
  The world that is meant to be the subject of our school-based investigations is, itself, a pretty complex place. And the life that we live within that world is becoming increasingly connected and integrated. We can no longer expect learners to be prepared to be a confident contributor to that world unless the learning experiences in which they are immersed throughout their schooling are somehow reflective of that complexity. And in order to do this, we need a curriculum that reflects the deeper relationships between and among the learning expectations that we develop and the documents that we write!
  
  Point Three: A stronger focus on connective curriculum and interdisciplinary thinking must accompany any attempts to really transform the work of our classrooms. The most creative and imaginative teachers, despite their best intentions, will still declare the challenges they face in bringing to life a curriculum that is composed in silos.
  
  So, there are my three entry points into the conversation about some of the challenges that we face in bringing our ideas for quality learning environments to life. But you have likely encountered your own points of resistance.
  
  What do you see as the primary point of resistance in your own school experience? What are some of the ways that you have met and even overcome these challenges? Where is the most work needed if we are going to foster the development of quality learning environments for all students?

  
  

  Take a chance—post a response!

• Is a Teacher a Friendly Critic or Critical Friend?

  October 20, 2010 8:31 PM Comments Off on Is a Teacher a Friendly Critic or Critical Friend?

  Supportive relationships between teachers and students create safety and provide encouragement but they are not uncritical.  In fact, constructive feedback – in both directions – is an essential feature of a healthy relationship, but the manner and spirit of that feedback determines whether it enhances or undermines the relationship.

  Students should see their teacher as a critical friend, not a friendly critic. The distinction is important because feedback not only provides information about current learning but also contributes to students’ emerging sense of self-efficacy as a learner, which affects their inclination to engage in future learning.  Therefore, encouragement should be in the foreground and correction comes later.  In learning, fluency precedes accuracy.

  Students decide, generally sub-consciously, about whether and how to engage with an activity based on a sort of cost-benefit analysis and one of the “costs” to be considered is the likelihood of failure. If a student does not feel that s/he has a reasonable likelihood of success then s/he will generally find reasons and ways not to engage, even if the task itself is attractive.

  The following recommendations for building confidence in students are based on self-efficacy theory, which holds that the underlying motivators of human action are perceptions of personal control and competence.  (Motivation in education: theory, research and applications, Chapter 3, by Pintrich & Schunk, 1996) 

  • Help students develop their self-perceptions of competence within a content domain. Provide assistance in areas of difficulty, but focus on constructive, encouraging and specific feedback about what students can do rather than what they cannot do.

  • Help students to maintain relatively accurate but high expectations and self-efficacy beliefs, and to avoid the impression of incompetence. Towards this end, use formative assessment frequently to provide descriptive feedback and supportive suggestions, and make much more limited use of summative evaluation and critique.

  • Because students’ perceptions of competence develop not just from accurate feedback from the teacher, but through actual success on challenging academic tasks, assignments should be relatively challenging but reasonable.

  • Minimize the amount of relative achievement information that is publicly available to students.  Do not use comparative evaluation.

  • Foster the belief that competence or ability is a changeable, controllable aspect of development rather than a question of innate talent or intelligence. Focus on encouragement rather than praise and stress the merits of effort and persistence.

  Supportive relationships with students are based on a commitment to student learning and faith in their ability to learn, but also includes constructive feedback about learning that provides helpful guidance and builds a realistic but confident sense of self-efficacy.

• Editor’s Note

  6:25 PM Comments Off on Editor’s Note

  In her Endnote column of the upcoming Theme issue of Education Canada, Penny Milton notes that preparation for retirement as CEO of the Canadian Education Association is a prime time for reflection. Her approaching retirement is giving me cause to reflect as well – on more than two decades of shared interests, intersecting commitments, and friendship.

  I’ve had the good fortune to work with Penny in several capacities since the early 1990s, most recently as editor of this magazine for the past ten years. In every situation, I have been in awe of her ability to size up and analyze the ideas or issues before her. But a sharp mind is only as valuable as the tasks it sets for itself. Penny’s passion for young people has been the hallmark of her career. She has been unflagging in her dedication to public education – not as a system, but as a vehicle for reaching, teaching, and understanding Canada’s young people, and as our best hope for a more equitable, compassionate society.

  Penny’s creative, flexible, non-dogmatic approach has brought together educators and thinkers from across the political and ideological spectrum – both in Canada and abroad. Her boundless confidence in young people themselves has empowered them to share their own truths about schools and learning in many contexts, including in the pages of this magazine.

  All this is true, and others will repeat it in other words. But as Penny prepares to leave her role as CEO of CEA and as Executive Editor of Education Canada, I am most conscious of the personal support she has provided to me, as editor. I will miss her forthright advice, her vast network of contacts, her keen eye for the relevant, her willingness to brainstorm at the drop of a hat. I will even miss that feeling – at the end of a conversation – that I really couldn’t process ideas a fast as she could generate them!

  I’m sure I speak for all of us involved in the production of this magazine when I say thank you and bonne chance, Penny. Stay in touch with us.

• Wanted: Quality Learning Environments

  October 10, 2010 12:34 AM Comments Off on Wanted: Quality Learning Environments

  Let me begin by acknowledging the elephant that has been lurking in the room for sometime now:

  Schools are not the best place for kids!

  A rather odd statement I know, but look at it this way: If we were to take everything we know about cognitive, emotional and social development, about how people learn and under what conditions and we used that to develop a place where children could be nurtured into a life of happiness and meaningful participation, do you think it would look anything like the schools of today?

  Most people recognize that there is a wide gap between the schools that we need for the 21st century and the schools that we currently have. Although the problem of how best to bridge the gap is a complex one, and even a little scary at times, we have to start somewhere and we have to start soon.

  In the next couple of entries, I would like to do some thinking out loud about a possible starting point that has been recognized by many as the one that holds great promise.

  ---

  If the movie Waiting for Superman presented me with any ideas worth pursuing, it was the one that claims that schools are really about the adults. I’ll massage that point a little and say that, from my experience, our schools are really designed for teaching and not for learning.

  Don’t believe me? Take a closer look at the current education reform discourse that is being used in our schools. So much emphasis is being placed on effective teaching practice: strategies and approaches that teachers can use on their students that will, if performed correctly, result in higher achievement. (My own home bookshelf boasts 32 books on “strategies that work”—all of them written within the last 5 years.) The most popular courses at faculties of education are the ones that deal with effective classroom (read student)  management techniques. Lesson plan templates are strongly geared to the things that teachers are going to do to students in order to get them to learn. Professional development programs in many jurisdictions are limited to those approaches and methods approved by ministries of education and school districts.

  And last year, a ministry-appointed trainer came in and presented teachers at our school with a scripted literacy program to use with our students during the first 20 days of school! It was at that point that I realized that the elephant in the room was actually sitting squarely on the school improvement agenda, and we weren’t going to be moving anywhere very quickly!

  It was then that I began to realize that we need a narrative turn in the story that we tell ourselves about school and I believe that the most important thread in this new story is this:  these buildings to which we force our children to come day after day, year after year are really about them and not us. Our public schools need to become primarily places of learning, not teaching. In schools, the word student and all of the metaphorical implications with which it has become infused, needs to be replaced by something that will force us to pay attention to the needs, challenges and possibilities of the young people that walk into our midst each day. For now, let’s consider the word learner.

  In redefining what we mean by effective, successful schools our starting point should be a serious examination of the heart of the school experience: the type of “work” in which learners are engaged on a daily basis.

  Imagine if all educators–not just teachers–committed significantly more time to designing the tasks and experiences in which learners were going to be engaged than we did to writing the lesson plans, preparing for tests, marking work, and trying to rush through curriculum expectations. Imagine if deep and transferable learning were the new standard for achievement and success. Imagine if learner engagement was an essential criterion for evaluating teacher effectiveness, more essential than test scores.

  So, how do we begin to make our imaginings come to life?

  Well, I think we can begin by trying to think back on those times when our classrooms really hummed—a time when learners were turned on so much that the recess bell seemed like a rude interruption. For those of you who are not educators in the formal sense, you may recall times in your own schooling where you just couldn’t wait to get to school in the morning, or you didn’t want to leave in the afternoon.

  I’ve thought about those times in my own educational career and I’ve come up with a list of ten criteria that might get the conversation going. Here goes!

  You know you’re really on to something when:

  1. the activity connects with the world of the learner; it is engaging because they can relate to it.
  2. the activity comes from the learner’s own input; it is engaging because they helped to design it
  3. the activity is based on the freedom to choose; it is engaging because they selected it
  4. the activity is meaningful; it is engaging because they feel that they are contributing something to their school, their community or the world
  5.  the activity is challenging; it is engaging because there is a real problem to be solved
  6. the activity draws the outside world in; it is engaging because it is rooted in the non-school world
  7. the activity is awe-inspiring; it is engaging because it encourages learners to look at their world in a different way
  8. the activity is interesting; it is engaging because it forces the learner to say “huh!”
  9. the activity is interdisciplinary; it is engaging because it involves ideas from a variety of traditionally separate curriculum areas
  10. the activity is expansive; it is engaging because it offers the opportunity for further investigation and learning

   I realize that, in this brief space, I’ve just begun to explore the question of what makes for a powerful, high-quality learning environment. But it’s a start!

  I would love to get your input on the list—things that could be added, taken away, expressed in a different way. I would also like to hear about those experiences that you’ve had where learning has been particularly powerful. What made it memorable?

  I believe that, despite the complexity of our current situation, we can begin to design and create schools that are full of life, of excitement and wonder. I’m hoping that something about this issue might capture your imagination and allow us to continue the conversation.

  Stephen Hurley
  stephen.hurley@sympatico.ca

• Preparing The Classroom Garden

  October 7, 2010 7:52 PM Comments Off on Preparing The Classroom Garden

  In my last post I referred you to Sir Ken Robinson’s TED Talk of 2006.  This year he followed up with a call for revolution in education: “We have to recognize that human flourishing is not a mechanical process, it’s an organic process. And you cannot predict the outcome of human development; all you can do, like a farmer, is create the conditions under which they will begin to flourish.”

  Now much as I respect Sir Ken, I cannot agree.  That statement is just too passive and does not acknowledge the power and responsibility that teachers have for actively shaping student experience and proactively nurturing learning.  However, I do agree that ‘human flourishing’ – and learning – is much more organic than mechanistic.  So, as we begin a new school year, what can we do to prepare the educational garden for a bumper crop of learners?

  The Critical Thinking Consortium (http://www.tc2.ca/wp/) asserts that powerful learning depends on supportive relationships, enabling resources, stimulating opportunities and helpful guidance. Let’s start with relationships.

  Supportive relationships – between students and students, students and teachers, students and parents, and teachers and parents – are an important foundation for learning. Creating supportive relationships in the classroom is the first task of teaching.

  So what about that old maxim – Don’t smile until Christmas. To be blunt, it’s nonsense, a remnant of an outdated and unprofessional orientation to “teaching as telling” that required “classroom management” to ensure attentiveness to delivered wisdom rather than the creation of a classroom culture that promotes engagement for constructed understanding.

  Learning is a partnership based on a relationship and few relationships take hold if nobody smiles. So, go ahead, smile. Let’s not confuse sternness with strength. Your students need to know that their teacher is serious about their learning and committed to it, and to them. Simply laying down a bunch of rules does not give them this message.

  Classrooms don’t work best when controlled by the teacher, they work best when well structured by the teacher – which largely obviates the need for control. Classroom structure is the scaffolding that a teacher provides to enable learning. The teacher has to take the lead in creating classroom structures that facilitate smooth operations so that engagement in learning is not impeded, but this is best done in collaboration with students through an appreciative process of identifying what works and spreading it, rather than focussing on what does not work and trying to suppress it.

  I am embarrassed to say that 37 years ago when I faced my first Junior Secondary class I had this backwards and so I gave my best “you’re in the army now” speech on day one to an entirely unimpressed young audience that had heard it all before. I now know that was both unwise and unproductive. Just as you catch more flies with honey, learning proceeds best in response to invitations, not exhortations or demands.

• Equity in Our Schools

  September 29, 2010 6:36 PM Comments Off on Equity in Our Schools

  We shall never cease from exploration
  And the end of all our exploring
  Will be to arrive at the place we started
  And know it for the very first time
  —  from Little Gidding by  T. S. Eliot

  By the time Davis Guggenheim’s latest documentary, Waiting for Superman, opens this month in cities across the United States and Canada it will have already done much of the work that it set out to do. The film has managed to get people talking in passionate and energetic ways around some of the key questions related to school reform. By pulling at our hearts, Guggenheim causes us to care about the issues being presented. By pulling at some of the threads that make up the complex fabric known as public education, he invites us to think deeply about how and where real change can occur.

  It would be convenient and quite easy for Canadian viewers to dismiss the challenges and issues presented in Superman as an American problem. After all, Canada ranks close to the top in the very assessments used in the film to underline the ineffectiveness of public schools in the U.S.!

  But, when you begin to strip away the contextual layers of the film, and get to the major questions being presented, you are soon faced with issues that are important to any modern school system. It is this set of issues that we would like this discussion series to be about.

  Canada’s institutions are rooted in values of equity, fairness and accessibility. Whether we’re talking health care, education, or political participation, we pride ourselves on the vision that all Canadians have a right to receive the full benefits of citizenship, regardless of class, creed, or cultural background.

  It seems both reasonable and important, therefore, that any honest discussion about Canada’s schools needs to begin with that vision of equity and how close we are to making it a reality:

  Do all Canadian students have equitable access to quality education?

  This is where relying too heavily on the massaged and aggregated data presented in local, national and international test scores can lead us astray. Oh sure, test results can provide some sense of general direction—a weathervane, if you will—but they certainly don’t tell the complete story and, in fact, may mask some of the underlying inequities with which certain groups and individuals are faced on a daily basis.

  The lens of equity causes us to shift our gaze from the central averages of a phenomenon to its outer edges—and that is precisely where we find those who are marginalized and left out! Here’s some of what we are forced to recognize when we begin to use our equity question as a lens to look at Canadian schools:

  • 25 % of students not graduating after five successive years of high school in Canada’s largest school board are from Aboriginal, Black, Hispanic, Portuguese and Middle Eastern background. The board also admits that these same groups are more likely to exhibit attendance problems and are more likely to be suspended from school.

  • Canada’s Aboriginal youth now represent one of the fastest growing demographics in Canada, yet they are still faced with a drop-out rate that is three times higher than that of non-Aboriginal groups. Closing the gap between the educational attainment of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal students has actually slowed in the past few years.

  • While Canadian policies around students with exceptionalities have improved over the past 20 years, actual school practices and attitudes have not been altered to the extent where true inclusion—honouring and embracing the needs of all students—is a natural part of many school cultures.

  • Canadian schools do better than many others in the world when it comes to mitigating the effect of socio-economic status on school success, but there is still a significant gap between the educational experiences, levels of engagement and the achievement of rich and poor in this country.

  There are, of course, other areas of inequity that could (and likely should) be mentioned, but I would like to suggest that these four should be regarded as bellwethers when we talk about educational equity in Canada. It’s fine to speak about excellence when it comes to our public schools, but unless equity becomes a foundational criterion when judging what excellence looks like, we have missed an essential mark. Students who are marginalized and excluded from receiving quality education as young people also run the risk of being excluded from the benefits of full participation in the life and work of society adults.

  It occurs to me that the tie that binds all of these areas together is transformation. These are not issues that can be dealt with by imposing short-term solutions. nor can they be addressed by simply tinkering with our current way of doing things. True equity can only be achieved by a commitment to a radical change in the way that we design schools—philosophically, conceptually and even architecturally!

  So, here’s your invitation to participate in the conversation. What is your take on the equity question as it relates to Canadian education? How are these issues of inequity currently being addressed in Canada? What more can be done to ensure that the vision of equity becomes are reality? What changes in perspective are necessary in order to bring issues of equity into the mainstream conversation about transformation?

  We need a wide variety of perspectives here to enhance and deepen our understanding around these questions and we look forward to a rich and vibrant discussion!

• CEA Contributes Canadian Context to American Education Documentary, Waiting for Superman

  September 17, 2010 10:11 PM Comments Off on CEA Contributes Canadian Context to American Education Documentary, Waiting for Superman

  Waiting for Superman is a call to action for better American schools. An accompanying website has been developed to inform viewers about the performance of American public education system in order to mobilize a movement for change. The film, produced and directed by the same people who brought us An Inconvenient Truth, will be released in Toronto in October 2010.

  CEA has collaborated with Paramount Pictures Canada to provide key statistics for the Canadian section of the film’s website so Canadian viewers and media will have Canada-specific information available where viewers can learn more about the Canadian context.

  Click here to access these statistics.

  Coming soon on the new CEA website: The story behind these statistics.

  You can view the trailer and learn more about Waiting for Superman at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbCZB_sy6Ws

• Ron Canuel Appointed as CEA’s New Chief Executive Officer

  9:58 PM Comments Off on Ron Canuel Appointed as CEA’s New Chief Executive Officer

  (more…)

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