What would it take to support all students and be a part of their academic and social success? How can we advocate for our students? Isn’t education a tool for social justice? Around the world, students in the same classroom are not necessarily receiving the same learning opportunities. Teaching practices, assessment processes, curriculum delivery, as well as exclusive practices and racism, may in some measure deprive students of the support they need to develop their skills and competencies. How can teachers promote equity among their students? In a multi-ethnic context, teachers are called on to support immigrant and refugee students in their cultural, linguistic, and academic integration. Thus, teachers have to adjust their practices and adapt their actions to develop a supportive environment for all students, regardless of their culture. Considering this challenging context, our project, which takes place in Québec, the French-speaking province in Canada, aims to analyze stories of practice in which teachers were asked to narrate a situation they faced in class with an immigrant or refugee student. Two stories were chosen for analysis because of their potential to illustrate – through the teachers’ “conversation with the situation” process (Schön, 1987) – how they adapted their practices to improve learning opportunities for their students. The actions listed below could be used as tools for teachers’ professional development.
Stéphanie, a classroom teacher, has years of teaching experience in many schools in Québec. The story she narrated took place in a multi-ethnic, public French primary school located in Montréal. Stéphanie told the story of Mohamed, a newly arrived immigrant Grade 6 student who had not yet mastered French, the language of instruction. According to her, the student was experiencing a trauma. She said that he was “very closed and isolated, and going through emotional issues.” Academically, Stéphanie declared that “though Mohamed had difficulty in reading and writing, he didn’t have a specific learning disability.” Stéphanie stressed the importance of diversifying her intervention strategies to support her students in general, and for Mohamed specifically. To do this, she took four actions.
Stéphanie considered it important to understand the reality of her students and to bond with them in order to accompany them in their learning process. She said, “We have to do everything to understand where the difficulties of our students come from. I frequently ask them to tell me about themselves, their migratory journey and their mother tongue.” For her, this “may guide the intervention process.” In Mohamed’s case, she tried to get to know more about him and how he was doing in school. She believed that “he certainly has got emotional wounds.” She added that she understood that Mohamed was “a strong and able student in his native language and then, all of a sudden, had found himself failing in school here.” This awareness can help the teacher adjust her practices to address the student’s academic and emotional needs.
Stéphanie valued her students’ backgrounds; she used tools that were anchored in their culture and language to support them. She asked Mohamed to write his texts in his original language: “I tried to value him in his native language, even if I was not sure of his competence. My goal was to reduce his cognitive load and give him the chance to demonstrate his writing skills.” She was also concerned about motivating him: “I told myself that by doing this, he would find this feeling of personal efficacy that is so important for motivation.” She also changed her practices to address his needs: “I realized that certain collaborative practices did not work for Mohamed, so I decided to work individually with him, and that worked,” she explained. “In reading practices, I used to break down the task for him and allowed him to work on his own and not in a team.” In this way, recognizing the student’s culture and language as an asset facilitates their integration process.
Stéphanie continued to work with Mohamed, believing that with the right support he would succeed: “I was sure that this student had everything he needed to succeed, even if his results at the start of the year were very weak,” she noted. Although his other teachers didn’t agree with her, she stuck to her decision to support him. She mentioned that “other teachers at the school believed that Mohammed had a behaviour and attitude problem.” She reported in her story that she believed, rather, that there was something that made him unhappy, and that he needed time. She talked to her colleagues in an effort to convince them: “I informed my colleagues about what he had experienced, and I asked them, by the same token, to be patient with him.”
Stéphanie acted to engage other stakeholders in supporting Mohamed. Not only did she collaborate with the school’s speech therapist in an attempt to facilitate the student’s learning process, but she also changed the usual practice: “Mohamed did not want to work individually with her. I think it was difficult for him to accept the fact that he needed individual help. So, we decided not to force him to work with her outside the classroom. When she came to the class, she offered help, but indirectly, which he accepted.” By respecting his feelings, Stéphanie created a safe emotional environment for Mohamed.
Maggie, a music teacher, had been teaching music for seven years in mono-ethnic schools before moving to a multi-ethnic school context. When we interviewed her, she told us about a challenge she faced when she had just been transferred to a largely multi-ethnic public French primary school located in Montréal. This is the story of her mixed group of Grade 5/6 students, who were “very resistant to what I taught them.” She reported: “Whenever I entered this class, I encountered a kind of rebellion.” Maggie mentioned that of the class of 27 children, 25 were immigrant students. She admitted that she was “shocked” when she first saw this very large concentration of immigrant students. Music class, she found, didn’t “interest the students at all.” She added that she “felt some pressure as I was losing control.” Thus she decided to adjust her practices to adapt to the new situation. She also reported that this “was a big evolution” for her in her career, and described it as “making a great journey.” Our analysis of Maggie’s story revealed the actions she took and the changes she made in her own practice in response to students’ needs and interests:
As she was at the beginning of her career, Maggie disclosed that she “relied a lot on the school program.” She explained that she had “to teach the students to sing, create, and perform musical works.” Because of the students’ resistance, she decided to widen the scope of her lessons to include American music: “I told myself that young people liked it, but it didn’t really work with them,” she said. So she resolved to act differently to motivate them: “I decided to change my approach. I asked the students about the music they liked and what it meant to them.” She then went even further, by asking them to teach her the music. She stated that after many inducements, “they finally started to mobilize; they introduced me to their music, and the girls taught me how to dance. They were excited to do so.” She related this change in their attitude to her actions: “I realized that because I had chosen to open up to them, they started to be less defensive with me.” By the end of the year, Maggie was able to assess them: “This change didn’t stop me from evaluating them. I had covered my program, but in a different way. I remained the teacher and they, the students, while having a lot of fun,” she said. As noted, this adjustment didn’t prevent her from fulfilling her initial aim to meet the requirements of the program.
Maggie was concerned about engaging her students to create a positive class environment. She said: “It is important to maintain positive class management. We had to find what pleased them. For them, it was the pleasure of learning, and for me, the pleasure of teaching them in a participative class atmosphere.” This conviction led her to take action: “I really had to take a big step toward them to try to bring them toward me,” she recalled. Maggie noticed that the class environment became: “more pleasant and positive when she was more open.” As Anderson (2016) stated, students need to feel connected to the class to improve their learning. This is what Maggie did by giving them the choice and the voice to learn about the music they liked.
Maggie mentioned that it was really important for her to build the teacher-student relationship. She reported the necessity of “taking time to sit with the students for a chat.” She advised teachers to “ask your students to tell you about themselves and open up to them to get to know them better, be curious about what they like, ask them questions and tell them about you, too. This is how the bond is created. ” She insisted that the basis of everything is for the students to “feel that you are interested in them and that you are there for them. You must take the time to get to know each other, to share good times. I also think that you have to love your students. They feel it when we love them and then they don’t want to disappoint us. ” Developing such a dialogue helps teachers to understand students’ existing knowledge, situation, and problems (Kincheloe et al., 2011), so they can act effectively.
Establishing a culture of equity necessitates a real adjustment, not only in practices but also in positions and beliefs. Maggie mentioned this in her story about herself and her students: “You had to go beyond their music, our music, or our values, their values. We managed to meet, but for that, I was the one who made the first move. It really changed the classroom environment.” She admitted that this shift in her practices and beliefs wasn’t a simple formula: “I knew I had to go through their culture, but I was afraid. I didn’t know their music. I was not sure how to do it. Then, I realized that I am not losing my identity, I am teaching.” She added that she “had to keep this attitude of openness.” She stressed the importance of integrating cultural elements from her students’ background. By doing so, Maggie reconstructed her professional and personal identity and her comfort with diversity grew.
Teachers need to reflect on their practices and modify them according to the class context. As Maggie said, “I believe that as a teacher, I have to be able to analyze my actions.” She added, “This experience has changed the way I think about immigration and diversity. It allowed me to ask myself a lot of questions. I will never see diversity the same way again.” This subsequently has influenced her teaching: “It has changed the way I teach. I had to have a new approach by beginning to get to know the students, before introducing the program. When I [later] worked in another multi-ethnic school, I had a positive experience.” By the same token, Anderson (2016) stated that reflection is key to growing as a professional. This allows teachers to bridge the gap between their practice and their students’ needs.
THE NINE ACTIONS that emerged from the teachers’ stories of practice were the result of a lengthy process of inner negotiation and decisions teachers made in light of many contextual factors. Teaching for equity is a long journey. To make changes to their practices, teachers and educators must engage in a process of self-awareness. In this way, a school culture can be reconstructed that gives all students an equal opportunity to pursue their way.
1 Intervenir en contexte de diversité ethnoculturelle : se raconter. Un projet de reconstruction et de théorisation de récits de pratique d’enseignants, by G. Audet, G. Lafortune and M. Potvin (2018–2021), was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC).
Anderson, M. (2016). Learning to choose. Choosing to learn. ASCD.
Kincheloe, J., McLaren, P., & Steinberg, S. (2011). Critical pedagogy and qualitative approach. In N. Denzin & Y. Lincoln (Eds.), The Sage handbook of qualitative research (pp. 163–178). Sage Publications.
Schön, D. A. (1987). Educating the reflective practitioner. Jossey Bass.
If there is anything that we have learned over the course of COVID-19 and the constant shifting from in-person to remote, etc., it’s the importance of a positive classroom community. This is established when all students feel valued, safe, and represented in their classroom, and students are actively taking risks and making mistakes.
Every classroom is going to look different, because every teacher and student group is different; what works for one educator is not going to be the same for others – and that’s OK! It’s important to reflect on your strengths and what you bring to your own classroom, and build from there.
In an ideal world, face-to-face interactions are a key component to building community; students get to see and interact with their teacher and peers, and become comfortable in the classroom setting. The strategies we share below are meant to provide ideas on how you can leverage tech tools to support this class bonding.
Please remember that building community is not a one-and-done activity; it takes real effort and continuous commitment to build and foster positive relationships throughout the course of the school year.
Why is community so important? Classroom community is a fundamental building block upon which everything is based. Positive relationships foster safe, inclusive, and effective learning environments.
First, a positive community encourages communication. Communication allows students to get comfortable with their peers, to build friendships, and to gain confidence using their voice in the classroom. It also allows students and teachers to communicate more openly about expectations, struggles, and how to improve.
From there, community leads to more effective collaboration. This is a skill that is important for students in all courses, but will also be important for their future.
Community also supports social and emotional learning. It’s important for students to build healthy attitudes toward their self-identity, to learn how to manage their emotions and behaviours, and to develop a sense of empathy for themselves and others.
Finally, one of the most important reasons for building community is the creation of a safe and inclusive learning environment. By recognizing milestones and highlighting the many cultures and strengths in their classrooms, educators can create a space where students feel valued and able to share their ideas, their learning, etc., without feeling judged or ridiculed by their peers or teacher.
Now let’s talk about technology tools that you can use to support community building in your classroom. No matter which tools you choose, consider tools that allow students to see and/or hear you and each other. This helps students to connect with you as their teacher, and with their peers. Think of the saying “a picture is worth a thousand words” – when you include yourself in a video, students can see facial expressions and hear intonation, without having to interpret that from text only.
Be sure to protect students and their identities. Check privacy policies, and try to avoid having students use tools that gather a lot of personal data. If your board has rules about technology use for students, make sure that you are verifying each tool to ensure students are protected.
Please note that there are many different tools that are quite similar. We have included tools that we use regularly.
You can record a combination of voice, screen, and/or webcam. Tools include Screencastify, Loom, Explain Everything, Screencast-o-matic, and WeVideo.
These tools allow you to record audio notes in Google Workspace (Docs, Slides, Forms, Gmail) and beyond. You can achieve this with Mote and Google Read&Write’s Voice Comment feature.
Real-time messaging apps are more similar to the way that students communicate in real life. Tools include Remind, Slack, Discord, Google Chat or the chat feature built into your LMS.
These are collaborative tools that can be leveraged in the classroom. Examples of these tools are Microsoft (Office) 365 (Word, PowerPoint) and Google Workspace (Docs, Slides, Drawings).
These tools can be used to gather information. Surveys can be created using a variety of tools, such as Microsoft Forms, Survey Monkey, and Google Forms.
This is a great tool for collaborating in real time. Similar tools include: Google Jamboard, whiteboard.fi, whiteboard.chat, as well as the Microsoft Whiteboard.
Video conferencing tools have become a staple in virtual classrooms. Take advantage of additional features within these tools such as polls, Q&A, and breakout rooms to build your classroom community.
An LMS is a centralized hub where students can access content, submit assignments, and more. Examples of an LMS are: Google Classroom, Brightspace by D2L, Schoology, Canvas, etc.
As you start off your school year, remember that community building does not happen overnight. Teachers must continue to make an effort throughout the course or school year to ensure that all students feel safe and comfortable in the classroom. Taking just a few minutes every day can lead to positive student outcomes, as well as stronger and more positive student-teacher relationships.
Photo: iStock
First published in Education Canada, September 2021
This department is generously sponsored by IPEVO
www.ipevo.com
Emotion regulation requires noticing and naming emotions as they arise (e.g. joy, excitement, frustration, anger), understanding the impact these emotions have in our body, thoughts, behaviour and expressions, knowing what causes us to feel the way we do, and having strategies to navigate our way through them. Research demonstrates that emotion regulation is a skill that can be taught and developed across the lifespan.
It’s important to help learners notice and name their emotions. For example, you can help students identify book characters’ emotions and then link those to their own experience using guiding questions like: how is the character feeling? Why do you think they feel this way? What might they do to change how they feel? What would you do?
It’s helpful to teach a wide range of emotion regulation strategies, including mindful breathing, progressive muscle relaxation, positive self-talk and positive reappraisal (i.e. reframing a negative perspective about something and changing it into a positive one). Start by teaching strategies that are accessible in the moment (like mindful breathing) and that students already know. Explain what the strategy is and why/how/when it might be used.
Practice the strategies when students are “cool” and not “hot.” When anyone is emotionally activated, it’s difficult to think rationally. In a classroom, this might include integrating a daily mindful practice during circle time or class meetings. This practice helps students feel familiar with the strategy and builds neural pathways, making the strategies more accessible when needed.
Integrate support for emotional regulation into day-to-day life (e.g. if a conflict arises, you can help learners draw on strategies they have been learning). Students can also be provided with spaces where they can go to “cool off” if needed. It’s important for children and youth to have autonomy to choose and use strategies that they are comfortable with that meet their particular needs.
It’s important to be mindful of how our behaviours provide implicit instruction and influence student’s skill development. It can be helpful for adults to narrate some of the regulation processes so that children can see/hear how they handle emotions. In a challenging situation, it’s also critical that adults use strategies themselves to stay calm so that they are available to help others respond to the situation effectively.
Parents and teachers play a critical role in supporting and teaching students the skills and strategies needed for emotion regulation. Research has shown that when students are able to successfully regulate their own emotions, they tend to experience improved health and wellbeing, greater emotional resilience (i.e. the ability to recover from stressful situations), more positive interactions with peers, and more success at home and school.
Barrett, L. F., Gross, J., Christensen, T. C., & Benvenuto, M. (2001). Knowing what you’re feeling and knowing what to do about it: Mapping the relation between emotion differentiation and emotion regulation. Cognition and Emotion, 15, 713–724. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/ 02699930143000239
Building Emotion Skills at Home: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5b8b251189c172835f9398e1/t/5c04497988251b931be5e9aa/1543784825343/Practicing+Emotional+Intelligence.pdf
CASEL (general): casel.org
CASEL (lesson examples): https://www.casel.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Sample-Teaching-Activities-to-Support-Core-Competencies-8-20-17.pdf
Edutopia (general/SEL): https://www.edutopia.org/social-emotional-learning
Graziano, P. A., Reavis, R. D., Keane, S. P., & Calkins, S. D. (2007). The role of emotion regulation in children’s early academic success. Journal of School Psychology, 45, 3–19. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jsp.2006.09 .002
Greater Good Parenting: https://ggsc.berkeley.edu/parenting
Greater Good (general/educators: https://ggsc.berkeley.edu
Greater Good (SEL/emotion regulation): https://ggie.berkeley.edu/student-well-being/sel-for-students-self-awareness-and-self-management/sel-for-students-emotion-regulation/
Gross, J. J. (1998). The emerging field of emotion regulation: An integrative review. Review of General Psychology, 2, 271–299. http://dx.doi .org/10.1037/1089-2680.2.3.271
Ivcevic, Z., & Brackett, M. (2014). Predicting school success: Comparing conscientiousness, grit, and emotion regulation ability. Journal of Research in Personality, 52, 29 –36. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2014.06 .005
Jennings, P. A., & Greenberg, M. T. (2009). The prosocial classroom: Teacher social and emotional competence in relation to student and classroom outcomes. Review of Educational Research, 79, 491–525. http://dx.doi.org/10.3102/0034654308325693
Marroquín, B., Tennen, H., & Stanton, A. L. (2017). Coping, emotion regulation, and well-being: Intrapersonal and interpersonal processes. (pp. 253-274). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-58763-9_14
Stanton, A. L. (2011). Regulating emotions during stressful experiences: The adaptive utility of coping through emotional approach. In S. Folkman (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of stress, health and coping (pp. 369-386). New York: Oxford University Press.
In recent years, schools have become more interested in outdoor education for a number of reasons. Outdoor education can help students learn to appreciate nature and its biodiversity in nearby settings before being introduced to the seriousness of environmental issues (e.g. pollution and deforestation). These familiar outdoor spaces are rich learning environments where teachers can incorporate content in a concrete way to make what is learned in school more meaningful. For example, students can study biodiversity by discovering the species that surround them, use buildings to put mathematical concepts into practice, or identify problems in their community to develop a project.
To properly plan an outdoor activity, it’s essential to set a clear educational intention for each outing (e.g. have students explore the diversity of arthropods that live in environments near school).
To ensure that students know what to do outside, it’s important to define your expectations by providing clear instructions, and/or by modelling the expected behaviours.
Respect your level of comfort. It’s best to start with shorter challenges the first few times (e.g. a 15-minute outing) before gradually adding new elements with each outing.
To maximize the impact of outdoor activities, it’s important that they are integrated into and complement the activities taking place indoors (e.g. prepare an observation sheet for students to record their observations of arthropods and then have them compare their observations with their classmates when they return to class).
Although the adoption of new educational practices requires a period of adaptation, trust your experience, your adaptability and your desire to teach outside.
While outdoor education allows students to learn differently, this practice also includes many other benefits. When natural outdoor environments are integrated into teaching and learning, they can foster students’ cognitive, social, and physical development. In particular, research shows that outdoor education decreases sedentary behaviours and encourages students to be more physically active, improves their attention and motivation, and reduces stress levels.
Will the post-pandemic world return to a past version of itself or will there be a new story with changed values? The Story Model (Drake et al., 1992) is a transdisciplinary way for students and teachers to explore these questions, and address change and the “unimaginable” future. At a time of deep uncertainty, it is crucial to offer students two things: an approach to interpret the world they live in now, and a way to nurture their hope and personal agency for their future.
No matter what changes, two fundamental questions of education will remain: What is important for students to know, do, and be in the 21st century? And how is education best delivered? We cannot reliably predict the “know” of essential content, but it’s clear that artificial intelligence will play a role (Hey, Siri).
What should students be able to do? There is general global consensus that learning 21st-century skills is essential (OECD, 2020). The Councils of Ministers of Education, Canada (CMEC) identify these skills as:
How do we want students to be? While attitudes, values, and behaviour are influenced by cultural norms, in Canada we want students to develop a good work ethic, and to be flexible, open-minded, and committed to being good citizens.
How is the curriculum best delivered? In a post-pandemic world, we anticipate an expansion of technological skills, integrated curriculum, project-based learning, design thinking, and personalized and collaborative learning.
The Story Model (see Figure 1) is aligned with our view of future education and can be integrated into curriculum in any subject area. It is the perfect vehicle for a collaborative multidisciplinary project and is particularly useful to explore “wicked problems.” The UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (sdgs.un.org/goals) are examples of wicked problems. Ending poverty, achieving zero hunger, and addressing climate change are problems so complex and intertwined that they can seem overwhelming and unsolvable. The Story Model’s emphasis on individual and collective agency for positive change counters despair and motivates action in the face of such problems.
Humans make meaning through narrative (Binder, 2011; Vygotsky, 1978). Individuals “story” their lives to make sense of them, interpreting experiences to create a story that has a perceived past and an anticipated future. Groups, cultures, and nations also have stories. Stories are filled with emotion and conflict. Embedded values influence decisions. The Story Model makes these stories and values explicit. Alone or collaboratively, people can consciously choose to change the storyline if they do not like its direction. We can create a new story to live by.
1. Explore a topic. Students work with the Story Model graphic (Figure 1) to explore a relevant, engaging topic through the four interwoven layers that frame the model: personal, cultural, global, and universal. Topics such as pollution, the Olympics, beauty products, hockey, video games, and racism can be studied at different levels of complexity throughout the grade spectrum. Let’s use the topic of blue jeans to consider each frame.
The personal narrative is the first lens of knowing. Canadian students, familiar with this popular fashion item, can write or tell a story about wearing or wanting to wear jeans. A personal connection increases engagement and highlights the relevance of the topic.
The second lens is the cultural story. Each student lives within at least one cultural story, be it ethnic, religious, social class, and so on. Some cultures may disapprove of jeans, whereas jeans are almost a uniform in others. Critical reflection helps deconstruct these cultural stories and their often taken-for-granted values.
The third lens is the global story. The popularity of blue jeans has significant global repercussions for ecology, labour, and the economy, to name a few. Cotton cultivation and manufacturing consume vast quantities of water, produce toxic pollution, and exploit labour. Multinational companies advertise, transport, and sell globally. When Canadians purchase their jeans at a local mall, they tap into a huge international network worth $100.25 billion US in 2020 (Shahbandeh, 2020).
The universal story connects us as humans. We all experience human needs and hold values. Humans everywhere value survival, health, and social belonging (Maslow, 1954). Yet, these universal human rights are threatened by the fashion industry.
2. Analyze the present story. Individually or in groups, students analyze the present story of their topic(s) by situating it within a transdisciplinary real-world web (Figure 2) that has been designed by the teacher, the student, or both together. The categories on the web are flexible; for example, the web in Figure 2 is missing politics/ government, global connections, and the arts. Perhaps they would appear on the web you design. The key idea is that categories are broad and rooted in real-world context. For younger children, the web would contain fewer words and words that are more familiar to them. For example, the word economy becomes money; equity becomes fairness; law becomes rules; technology becomes computers.
An effective web ultimately pushes any topic into the global realm. It also extends any topic from a disciplinary to a transdisciplinary context. Students use each category on their web to identify what they already know. They supplement their knowledge with research. Frequently, they consult with other students to make connections among categories. Systems thinking can be made visible by drawing connecting lines on a paper transdisciplinary real-world web or mind-mapping on the computer. Completing this exercise shows that in the real world, every category on the web is interconnected.
3. Identify the old story and its values. Next, students consider the present story in light of the past, their personal stories, and the transdisciplinary real-world web. The present story contains elements of the past. What are the historic roots? What explicit values of the old story persist? Old story values of the jeans story would include industrialization and capitalist values. Are there positive parts of the old story that are still useful? For example, students might enjoy the comfort of jeans. However, learning that their manufacture has environmental repercussions and economic disparities invites critical thinking.
4. Create a new story. Applying the Story Model graphic, students envision different futures. The model proposes two (or more) divergent paths for the future: either a projected story as a continuation of the old story or a preferred story as an imagined idealized alternative. The projected story would continue an industrial worldview with values such as profit, competition, greed and power. The preferred path will be an idealistic (and possibly unrealistic) story. This path might include eco-friendly manufacturing, and safe, secure working conditions based on different values such as sustainability, social justice, collaboration, and empathy.
Students critically evaluate the old and present stories and look for ways to reconcile them with their idealistic future story. The future story needs to consider the interdependence of multiple categories in the dynamic, transdisciplinary real-world web. Creating a new story evolves in an iterative, creative way, focused on interwoven questions (Figure 3).
The new story is not an either/or choice; it is more of a selective synthesis, a “both/and” resolution. Martin (2007) defined this process as integrative thinking – generating a solution that contains elements of the opposing ideas but is superior to either one. Central to the process is the question: “How can we accomplish [this] while also accomplishing [that]? As students grapple with a possible answer, more and more complications arise. The question “but what about…?” always defeats a simple, superficial solution.
Returning to the blue jeans example, one tension between seemingly opposing positions is profit versus health. How can we have a thriving denim/blue jeans industry while also having a healthy environment and healthy workers? The resolution must resolve around a collective and sustainable option, which is what we are seeing with the green initiatives (water reuse, fair wage practices, use of natural dyes) of major companies that have responded to collective consumer activism (Farra, 2020; Sarkar, 2020).
5. Commit to “my” story. As a “final” step, students develop a values-based personal action plan to actualize their new story. They might purchase sustainably made jeans, endorse eco-responsible companies on their blogs, repurpose used denim, and so on.
Education (research, schools), media, and legislation propel a new story forward. The seatbelt is a good example of a formerly new story that is a taken-for-granted one today. The acceptance of seatbelts happened when people learned how they enhanced personal safety and when laws were created to penalize people who did not wear them. Emerging new stories are LBGTQ2+ equity, integration of AI, legalization of marijuana, and mainstream adoption of alternative power sources.
A new story does not stay “new” for long; it becomes the status quo from which another new tension arises. Thus, students come to understand the importance of lifelong reflective critique of the status quo. In an uncertain world, they see that action is the antidote for despair – that the individual has influence. Look at Greta.
The model can be simplified in multiple ways and combinations to suit various ages.
For the richest experience, apply both the Story Model and the web; students can follow specific steps to move from “old” to “new” story.
To learn how the Story Model was used in a Grade 9 Science class, read the article “A New Story in Grade 9 Science,” by Susan M. Drake, Bruce Hemphill, and Ron Chappell: https://greenteacher.com/the-story-model-empowering-students-to-design-their-future
1 Adapted from Drake, S. M., Bebbington, J., Laksman et al. (1992). Developing an integrated curriculum using the story model. OISE Press.
CMEC. Global Competencies.
www.cmec.ca/682/global_competencies.html
Drake, S. M., Bebbington, J., Laksman, S. et al. (1992). Developing an integrated curriculum using the story model. OISE Press.
Binder, M. J. (2011). Remembering why: The role of story in educational research. In Education, 17(2).
https://ineducation.ca/ineducation/article/view/82/357
Farra, E. (2020, April 24). These are the 10 sustainable denim brands you should know about now. Vogue.
www.vogue.com/article/best-sustainable-denim-brands
Martin, R. (2007). The opposable mind: How successful leaders win through integrative thinking. Harvard Business School Press.
Maslow, A. (1954). Motivation and personality. Harper & Row.
OECD. (2020). OECD Future of education and skills 2030.
www.oecd.org/education/2030-project/about
Sarkar, P. (2020, July 29). Making denim & jeans [in a] more sustainable way – initiatives by top apparel brands. Online Clothing Study.
https://www.onlineclothingstudy.com/2020/07/making-denim-jeans-more-sustainable-way.html
Shahbandeh, M. (2020). Global denim market – Statistics & facts. Statista.
www.statista.com/topics/5959/denim-market-worldwide
Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind and society. Harvard University Press.
Over the past two decades, classroom assessment for formative purposes has taken centre stage in curriculum policies, assessment standards, and professional learning conversations across Canada. Educators have increasingly embraced and implemented formative assessment approaches under the umbrella of assessment for learning. This endorsement of formative assessment is unsurprising as it has been shown to improve student achievement, metacognition, and motivation (Hattie, 2013) and to aid in promoting more equitable outcomes for lower-achieving students (Black & Wiliam, 2009). As a result, assessment is now more integrated within teaching and learning in Canadian classrooms than ever before, fostering an assessment culture that prioritizes ongoing feedback and the growth mindset (Shepard, 2019).
In this article, we ask: Is the ongoing pandemic and related disruptions to Canadian education threatening the positive assessment culture we’ve worked so hard to create? Classroom teachers have been thrust into online or blended learning contexts, often with little notice and preparation, forcing them to reimagine and transform their instructional and assessment practices in real time. While summative assessment remains a required component of schooling, many teachers are challenged by how to adapt formative assessment practices for online and blended learning contexts. With screens now interfacing so much of our interactions with students, the teaching profession faces pressing questions such as: How can we effectively engage assessment for learning with our students when learning is mediated by technology? How do we maintain the spirit of formative assessment when we don’t “see” or “hear” our students as much as we used to, if at all? and How do we avoid reverting to an emphasis on summative assessment in our online and blended classrooms?
Indeed, emerging research confirms these concerns. A recent report by Doucet and his colleagues (2020) highlights five key assessment-related challenges currently experienced by educators around the world:
While there is cause for optimism that these global challenges in K–12 education will dissipate, it is likely that current conditions will persist for some time and that elements of online or blended learning will take on greater precedence in future classrooms. As we collectively pivot and adapt our approaches to assessment in online and blended learning contexts, it is critical that classroom teachers, school and system leaders, policymakers, researchers, and teacher educators come together to rethink how we assess in online and blended K–12 learning. The changes we make now will not only serve our current students but also inform how we integrate technology in assessment after the pandemic subsides. In this vein, we offer three foundational tenets to help us move forward together to continue to foster a productive assessment culture – whether in online, blended, or face-to-face classrooms.
In rethinking how we assess online, it is essential to remember that we need not start from scratch. Instead, we can look beyond the surface of tried-and-true assessments to their underlying first principles and focus on: the learning we need to assess from our students (purpose), how students may demonstrate their learning (process), and what it is that we might do with that assessment information (use). In keeping an assessment’s purpose, process, and use top of mind, we are better positioned to incorporate technological tools that enable the assessment – whether in a face-to-face, blended, or online learning context. For instance, technology has now made it easy to capture how an idea or a product has evolved over time. Students can save multiple iterations of their work easily and with minimal burden, and easily share their work with others for feedback. Adopting these new technological options serves to strengthen the validity of the assessment by generating richer and more numerous observations of the learning, allowing for better triangulation of student assessment data. While there is no shortage of technological tools and applications that support assessment for learning in K–12 learning – which can be overwhelming in and of itself – emphasizing first principles allows us to confidently select the tool that best aligns with our assessment’s purpose, process, and use.
The shift to online and blended learning has created new professional challenges for educators and led to new stresses for students and families. Now more than ever, we must keep students’ needs, interests, and well-being at the centre of all teaching and assessment activities. Whether face-to-face, blended, or online, we can use assessment for learning to build relationships with our students and support their sense of inclusion. Leveraging one of the greatest strengths of assessment for learning – its capacity to build community – is essential in this time of prolonged isolation. Engaging students in peer feedback processes through group work, collaborative problem-solving activities, breakout rooms, or discussion boards can be a productive place to start. In addition, ongoing teacher-student conversations provide opportunities to celebrate successes, provide feedback, and show our students care and compassion. This supports not only their growth as learners but also their development as individuals. Further, allowing multiple opportunities for students to engage in self-assessment and reflection can serve to support their self-regulation and mental health. And importantly, aside from providing feedback on learning itself, assessment for learning can enable teachers’ ongoing communication with students and their parents/guardians to ensure students have access to the necessary infrastructure to support their learning and address potential equity or social-emotional issues students might be facing.
As we experience and reflect on the sudden and widespread shift to online and blended classrooms, we must continue to learn together about how assessment supports our teaching and our students’ learning and well-being. In the decade prior to the pandemic, educators were increasingly exploring and using various new technologies in the classroom to support teaching, learning, and assessment. However, the pandemic has forced our hand as a profession, requiring widespread adoption of technology in all aspects of our teaching practice, including assessment (Doucet et al., 2020). So, while systematic professional learning about assessment was already essential prior to 2020, the global pandemic has magnified the need to help classroom teachers develop new strategies and leverage technology to support both formative and summative assessment in online and blended contexts. As a result, it is critical that educators across classrooms, schools, boards, regions, and provinces engage in various forms of professional learning and inquiry – whether through self-directed learning, collaborative professional inquiry, professional webinars, social media networks, or formal coursework. We are all learning at a rapid pace that has been forced upon us by circumstances beyond our control, but we can use this opportunity to grow and develop as individuals and as a profession. We particularly encourage a system-wide approach to professional learning within boards and engagement with online professional learning networks such as the Canadian Assessment for Learning Network1 (CAfLN) so that educators may generate relevant and appropriate insights to their local contexts.
While education is constantly evolving and changing, the global pandemic has intensified the need to adapt how we teach and assess our students to better support their learning, development, and well-being. As a profession, we have been forced to change, expand, and redefine the assessments we were doing face to face into online and blended learning contexts. We must acknowledge the steep learning curve we are experiencing as a profession and prioritize open and honest communication among all stakeholders involved – students, teachers, school leaders, system leaders, policymakers, parents/guardians, other professionals, researchers, and teacher educators. We must also pause to celebrate our successes and progress to date in forging new territory in K–12 assessment amid a challenging time. Moreover, we must continue to allocate time, resources, and supports as we continue to learn and grow in our understanding and practice of assessment.
The pandemic has altered many things in our world, but it has not eradicated what we know about the value and importance of assessment for learning and our shared desire to sustain a productive assessment culture in schools and classrooms. Nor has it changed the spirit of assessment, which is captured by the etymology of the word assess itself: to “sit beside” our learners and support their learning. At the end of the day, we need to continue to come together as an education community to use research-based practices to collectively navigate online assessment and promote a positive assessment culture that transcends context.
1 Canadian Assessment for Learning Network: www.cafln.ca
Black, P., & Wiliam, D. (2009). Developing the theory of formative assessment. Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability, 21, 5–31.
Doucet, A., Netolicky, D., Timmers, K., et al. (2020). Thinking about pedagogy in an unfolding pandemic: An independent report on approaches to distance learning during COVID19 school closures to inform Education International and UNESCO. Education International.
https://issuu.com/educationinternational/docs/2020_research_covid-19_eng
Hattie, J. (2013). Visible learning: A synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses relating to achievement. Routledge.
Shepard, L. (2019). Classroom assessment to support teaching and learning. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 683(1), 183–200.
Digital technologies have taken a more prominent role in Canadian classrooms in recent years, but COVID-19 has pushed technology centre stage, requiring educators and students to strengthen their digital skills and potentially reconsider their traditional roles.
In April of 2021, the Information and Communications Technology Council (ICTC) released a new study, 21st Century Digital Skills: Competencies, innovations and curriculum in Canada, which examines, among other things, the top technical and human skills (or “soft skills”) required by educators and students.
As the 2020/21 school year winds down and planning for the fall begins, uncertainty remains around the vaccine rollout and the coming term. What will the coming school year like? A return to in-class instruction, remote learning, or a mixture of both (hybrid learning)? What is certain is that the demand for digital skills will continue to grow.
When used skillfully as part of an educator’s toolkit, edtech possesses the ability to strengthen student engagement while encouraging academic success. The rise of technology in classrooms is surfacing new pedagogical best practices that encourage better collaboration, improved interactivity, and greater flexibility for educators and their students. These methods and their accompanying skills are likely to have long-lasting implications for educators who have adopted both in-class and online teaching responsibilities.
The 21st Century Digital Skills report, which draws on a series of interviews from subject matter experts across Canada, highlights the changing role of the K–12 educator to that of a “facilitator” of learning, which is a fundamental departure from the long-standing “sage on the stage” paradigm. As indicated by interview respondents, educational technologies have quickened the pace of this transition while also challenging outdated policies surrounding the use of cell phones and other technologies in the classroom.
This shift calls on educators to cultivate new technical skills, but it also requires strong “human skills.” Study interviewees also noted that human skills (which was preferred to the term “soft skills,” and includes critical thinking, creativity, and adaptability) are not vulnerable to the impacts of automation, artificial intelligence, or technology obsolescence.
These skills and competencies are reaching new and more nuanced levels as technology deepens considerations around, for example, critical thinking and media literacy. As one educator in the study stated:
With summer approaching, teachers who are interested in improving their technical skills can take advantage of a wide array of online courses in digital technologies, which include media literacy.
An analysis of study interviews identified the following list of both technical and human skills, ranked in descending order by frequency of mentions:
Digital literacy Typically refers to competency in using core technologies (this can range from the use of search engines, office productivity software, basic operating system functions, up to database usage, coding, and computational thinking) and involves the ability to find, evaluate, create, and share content online. As the world increasingly adopts digital technologies, higher standards of digital literacy are needed to fully participate. Educators can work to improve their digital literacy through various available online training resources, by participating on various platforms, and as part of professional learning communities.
Information/media literacy This involves understanding how and why a media message is constructed – as well as its impact. In addition to accessing media and information, there is also the need to be able to analyze it critically, evaluate different media, and to ultimately be able to use it effectively. Educators can find a variety of media literacy resources, curriculum guides, lesson plans, and video tutorials through provincial teaching accreditation bodies (e.g. Ontario College of Teachers) teacher associations, individual school boards or online at places such as mediasmarts.ca.
Learning Management Systems (LMS) fluency and awareness As teachers are increasingly required to use LMS environments such as Moodle and D2L to deliver teaching materials, receive assignments, and communicate with students and parents, it is crucial they feel comfortable navigating this software. In addition to training provided by school districts, there are professional development conferences, web tutorials, and online courses through Coursera or edX.
Digital engagement Although “engagement” is typically understood to be linked to interpersonal communication, this term was often used by the educators we interviewed in discussing retention rates and maintaining student attention while using learning management systems or social media platforms such as Tik Tok, Snapchat, etc. It is not necessary for educators to become avid users of these social media platforms, but it is helpful for them to have an awareness of these growing trends and how they fit into the larger digital ecosystem.
Data and analytics competencies Digitization has greatly increased the amount of data available to decision makers, and this leads to increased interest in the use of analytics to make better “evidence-based decisions” and identify patterns that were not previously apparent. This is definitely the case in business and government, but it is also increasingly relevant in education. Increasingly, learning management systems are integrating data analytics for personalized learning insights as well as data dashboards (Gunawardena, 2017). There is a growing field of data analytics training at postsecondary institutions as well as online courses for classroom teachers.1
Technology use in the classroom today varies greatly among educators, their schools, regions, and even provinces, but best practices have emerged. Study interviewees and education experts have highlighted the following:
While digital skills and new technology tools are important – and teachers need to receive both training and support to effectively work with these technologies – the subject experts consulted for ICTC’s 21st Century Digital Skills study noted that digital tools are part of a much larger educational transition. In this evolution, educators facilitate student development based on their individual needs and interests to help keep pace with a rapidly changing world.
Photo: iStock
First published in Education Canada, June 2021
The 21st Century Digital Skills report also includes a focus on educator training and support, an exploration of the top technical, academic, and human skills required of K–12 students, and examples of innovative technologies being leveraged in Canadian classrooms.
1 See, for example, www.edx.org/course/analytics-for-the-classroom-teacher
Gunawardena, A. (2017). Brief survey of analytics in K12 and higher education. International Journal on Innovations in Online Education. doi: 10.1615/IntJInnovOnlineEdu.v1.i1.80
This department is generously sponsored by IPEVO
www.ipevo.com
We were at the mercy of the pandemic. Powerless. The pandemic stripped teachers from what we knew or believed was good teaching and learning. We had to make choices to regain this power. The pandemic served as a catalyst for change and forced educators to exercise their agency and think critically about what’s really important to teach and learn – with less time and more barriers. Getting through the curriculum seemed like an impossible task… and it was.
One way to regain our power as educators was to let go. We had to let go of our routines and expectations. What we used to do in the classroom could not be done during the pandemic. We had to figure out how to create learning experiences that were engaging, yet wholeheartedly embraced learning intentions that best reflected the curriculum. Not everyone was in class and some students were learning online. Deciding to let go of what was is a choice.
Understanding that we have choice as educators is key to our freedom to create and design experiences that meet the learning needs of the students in our classroom – and also meet our learning needs as educators. Teaching during a pandemic inherently involves a steep learning curve that we’ve had to tackle whether we like it or not.
Wishing away the pandemic or hoping that all schools would close and go online are not outcomes within our control. Choosing to let go and reconsider what teaching and learning looks during the pandemic is within our control. Exercising our professional autonomy and making decisions that best suit the learners in our classroom is our agency as educators. As educators, we are collectively questioning what we can do to make teaching and learning viable for our students: to meet them where they are, make learning fun, and stay loyal to the curriculum.
As a teacher educator, I have the privilege of peeking into K–12 schools to observe teacher candidates, but also to imagine what is possible in teaching and learning during COVID times. I saw classes ranging from five students, to classes split into morning and afternoon cohorts, to full classrooms. I loved watching classes that were held outside. Students in a multi-graded class would gather and sit under the “poetree,” in the snow, to read, listen, share, and create poetry together.
In another class, where there were very few students, the lesson focused on movement and play-based activities to learn how to sound out words and spell. Students were encouraged to get up and move around the room to find words about food (their favourite topic), and they could choose to work in partners or independently. Students were engaged, on-task, and worked at their own rate. The words hidden around the room were inclusive and students had choice in what words they found, how they would sound out the words, and how they would practise spelling the words.
By letting go and embracing our autonomy and agency as designers of learning, we can create learning experiences for students so that they are able to develop and exercise their agency by having choice within the learning activity. Students, in turn, will feel empowered. They take ownership of their learning. They can choose how they learn, who they learn with, and what they produce. The driving force to this kind of learning is the why that’s embedded.
In British Columbia, the provincial curriculum has three Core Competencies: Communication, Thinking, and Personal/Social. These core competencies are developed and embedded in the learning. Students are learning how to communicate, collaborate, and think critically, creatively, and reflectively. They are also developing social responsibility, cultural awareness, and positive personal identity, which serve as underpinnings to what is being taught and why it’s important.
The Core Competencies not only connect and interconnect different subject areas into more meaningful and purposeful interdisciplinary learning experiences that are holistic and experiential; they also prioritize the humanness of learning back into education. The mastery of content is no longer the goal. Instead, content serves as the vehicle for learning. Curricular competencies are introduced, developed, and honed. And context and community matter.
When we focus on the competencies, we not only free ourselves from the burden of singular outputs and striving to create a high level of sameness amongst our learners, we empower students to personalize their learning, make choices about their learning, and
be the agents of their learning and achievement. Joy becomes part of the learning experience. Learning with others and co-constructing knowledge and criteria become the norm for students.
In a Grade 3–6 class, the primary focus was to make their math thinking visible. The topic was estimating. The class started out with a jar of dominoes and students estimated how many were in it. The lesson moved onto working in small groups at locations around the classroom, where each group collaboratively make their thinking and learning visible on whiteboards.
With each problem projected, the students became more engaged. The learning environment was inclusive, collaborative, and dynamic. Students had the freedom to move, discuss, and solve.
Throughout the math lesson, students were practising their numeracy skills, understanding of math facts, and number estimating. They were also developing their skills in communication, collaboration, and thinking. The Core Competencies were central to this learning experience, which enabled the teacher to facilitate the learning while also having students choose how they would approach the problem, work in small groups, and mutually agree or negotiate an answer.
The lesson concluded with students returning to the jar of dominoes to see if they would change their original estimation based on what they had just learned and collectively experienced in small groups. Some students chose to keep their answer while others opted to change. In the end, they counted the dominoes in the jar to see how close their estimation was to the actual answer. There were cheers, smiles, and a few groans once the answer was revealed.
The students provided feedback to the teacher at the end of the lesson by holding one to four fingers up to their chest to reveal their level of confidence and understanding of estimation. The students also offered many opportunities during the lesson for the teacher to assess how they were doing with the learning. One could assess the noise level in the room (a.k.a. the hum) when students broke off into small groups. One could look at the thinking made visible on the white boards. One could see how they well they estimated the number of dominoes in the jar, before and after.
What I appreciated most about this lesson was not only that the educator created a learning experience that provided many choices for students to engage in the learning, but that there were also many different opportunities and ways to assess student learning and progress, and multiple ways for students to demonstrate their learning throughout the lesson. Assessment is not limited to the traditional pen and paper, and what was important was more than the answer.
The global pandemic stopped everyone in their practice and allowed us to take a moment to reflect, reassess, and recalibrate. What is working, what’s not working, and what is worth keeping? I invite you to reflect on these questions and self-assess how you have pivoted during the pandemic and what you would consider keeping in your practice or return back to.
To regain our sense of power during the pandemic and beyond is to understand and exercise our agency as educators and feel good about letting go of some of what we previously did – because doing so allows us to get to the heart of teaching and learning. We want to create, design, and facilitate learning experiences where students feel empowered because they have agency to choose within flexible and reflexive frameworks and guidelines that you determine and provide.
Trust your professional judgment. Take a risk. Break (your) rules and be vulnerable to the uncertainty of not doing things in the same way you have known or experienced. Go outside with your class. Be intentional with the learning. Notice and wonder. What are the students learning? What’s working? What’s not working? Tweak it and try again. Try assessing students in ways that empower them, include their input and voice; this can be done in a variety of ways.
We must break away from the industrial model of mass education. COVID-19 separated us and now we pine to be together as a community and learn together as a community. We want and need to bring back humanity, strive for learning that is student-centred, competency-based, personalized, and interdisciplinary. The pandemic kept us home, which helps us to value being local, learning from our community, and learning more about local Indigenous knowledge and perspectives.
Be vulnerable. Let go. Be the agent of your learning. Choose what will work best for your students as it relates to the curriculum. Less is more. We are choosing what is best for our students to learn, meeting them where they are, and focusing on quality over quantity. Enable and encourage students to be the agents of their learning. We can empower ourselves and also the students by giving them voice, choice, community, and context.
What we hope for post-pandemic is for teachers to embrace their professional autonomy to create learning experiences for students that give them opportunities to exercise their own agency. We want students to love learning, feel in control of their learning, and understand the intrinsic good of learning. When we achieve this, students will extend their learning, take risks, and be vulnerable. They will develop their competencies and sense of self as they construct and co-construct deeper understandings of their identity, of others, and of the environment.
Photo: iStock
First published in Education Canada, June 2021
Play: It’s a word most people use without much forethought. We have all engaged in play at some point in our life, so we know what it is, right? Yet this seemingly simple word is more complex than we first imagined.
Picture a young child playing with blocks. The child uses the blocks to build a tower. As the child adds blocks to the top of the tower, it becomes less stable and eventually tumbles to the floor. At this point, the child either becomes frustrated and gives up or perseveres and tries again. If block building persists, it is highly unlikely that the child will instinctively establish the wide tower base needed for stability; prior knowledge about structures would be needed for this. You see, in young children most child-directed play involves what they already know; it is assimilative in nature (Piaget, 1962). This brings into question the widely held belief that children must be learning if they are playing. Perhaps, but how can they learn new, more challenging concepts by using knowledge and skills they already possess?
To distinguish regular play from educational play, The Council of Ministers of Education, Canada (CMEC) uses the term “play-based learning,” which is “intentional” and “purposeful” play (CMEC, 2012). Play-based learning is seen as different from regular play because it has specific learning objectives, requiring educators to structure the learning within play. There are three main ways educators can structure play to promote new learning:
There is growing awareness of the importance of developing strong early math skills in young children. Not only is math learning cumulative, but early math skills predict future math and academic achievement (Duncan et al., 2007). However, many primary teachers and early childhood educators lack knowledge about early math education and development (Youmans et al., 2018), do not feel comfortable teaching math (Germeroth & Sarama, 2017), and may be afraid to interfere in children’s play (Pyle & Danniels, 2016). There is clearly a need for early math-focused training that is tailored to suit the needs of classroom educators.
Children’s spontaneous play can involve explicit math content, like numbers and patterns. However, it is unlikely that new math learning will occur without intentional instruction. To support early math development, educators of young children need to plan for and prioritize math learning (Ginsburg et al., 2008). This can be done by “mathematizing” the learning environment with playful materials, tools, and activities that support math understanding (Clements & Sarama, 2013). Ultimately, structured play is ideal for building a solid early math foundation because it capitalizes on children’s natural curiosity, while incorporating targeted learning objectives. Educators can effectively promote early math learning by structuring math play in three key ways:
1. Use playful math tasks to introduce vocabulary and ideas. One of the most important steps educators can take to mathematize play is to introduce materials and tools that promote mathematical understanding (e.g. pattern blocks, pentominoes, relational rods, linking cubes, number paths, tens frames). After students have a chance to explore a material, educators should present a playful task and engage in meaningful interactions with their students (e.g. encourage the use of math vocabulary, ask questions that prompt student thinking and help them communicate their understanding).
For example, pattern block puzzles (shown above) can be used to build children’s visualization skills and geometric understanding. In this playful task, students are asked to match pattern blocks with their shape outlines, as educators model the use of geometric vocabulary (vertices, sides, rotation, shape names) and discuss strategies students use for matching pattern blocks with the appropriate outlines (shape discrimination and rotation). To extend learning, pattern block puzzles that require multiple shapes (two or more) to fit into one space can be used.
2. Present math play challenges to deepen students’ conceptual understanding. Young students are far more capable of mathematical understanding than previously thought and can engage with complex mathematical concepts with sustained attention (Bruce et al., 2016). Presenting students with a math play challenge encourages them to work with different ideas and make connections among them. One early math play challenge involves asking students to represent a number, like the number 7, using two sets of coloured linking cubes, in as many ways as possible (two blue cubes and five red cubes, one blue cube and six red cubes, and so on). This math play challenge helps students develop a greater understanding of the value a number represents and the multiple ways in which it can be composed.
3. Use structured math activities and games to promote automaticity. The more frequently young students engage with structured math activities and games, the more automatic their early math skills become. The activity of having students match quantity cards (pictures of small sets of objects represented as dots, fingers, frames, etc., shown right) with their corresponding numbers helps promote numerical knowledge. Dice games help students learn to subitize numbers (recognize the number of items in a group without counting), and playing dominoes can support student learning of basic addition facts. Moreover, using activities and games to promote automaticity in math is a great alternative to “drill and kill” worksheets that tend to leave students feeling unsuccessful and demotivated.
There is little doubt that early mathematics plays a critical role in promoting future math and school success. At the same time, many Kindergarten teachers and early childhood educators are ill-equipped to teach mathematics and are, understandably, uncomfortable with doing so. Structured math play is ideal for supporting early math learning because it promotes student engagement and targets important foundational skills.
First Photo: iStock
All other photos: Courtesy of the authors
First published in Education Canada, June 2021
For more information about ways to incorporate structured math play in preschools and Kindergarten classrooms, visit these websites:
The Robertson Program – Early Years Math
https://wordpress.oise.utoronto.ca/robertson/early-years
Erikson Institute – Big Ideas of Early Math
https://earlymath.erikson.edu/why-early-math-everyday-math/big-ideas-learning-early-mathematics
Play Learning Lab – Examples of Play
www.playlearninglab.ca/examples-of-play
Bruce, C., Flynn, T, & Moss, J. (2016). Early mathematics: Challenges, possibilities, and new directions in the research. http://mkn-rcm.ca/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/M4YC_LiteratureReview_25June12_RevisedSept2016.pdf
Clements, D. H., & Sarama, J. (2013). Rethinking early mathematics: What is research-based curriculum for young children? In L.D. English & J.T. Mulligan (Eds.), Reconceptualizing early mathematics learning (pp. 121–47). Springer.
Council of Ministers of Education of Canada (CMEC). (2012). CMEC statement on play-based learning.
www.cmec.ca/Publications/Lists/Publications/Attachments/282/play-based-learning_statement_EN.pdf
Duncan, G. J., Magnuson, K., et al. (2007). School readiness and later achievement. Developmental Psychology, 43, 1428–1446.
Germeroth, C., & Sarama, J. (2017). Coaching in early mathematics. In J. Sarama, D. H. Clements, et al. (Eds.), Advances in Child Development and Behavior: Vol. 53. The development of early childhood mathematics education (pp. 127–167). Academic Press.
Ginsburg, H. P., Lee, J. S., & Boyd, J. S. (2008). Mathematics education for young children: What it is and how to promote it. Social Policy Report: Giving child and youth development knowledge away, 22(1), 1–23. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED521700
Piaget, J. (1962). Play, dreams, and imitation in childhood. W. W. Norton & Co.
Pyle, A. & Danniels, E. (2016). A continuum of play-based learning: The role of the teacher in a play-based pedagogy and the fear of hijacking play. Early Education & Development. doi: 10.1080/10409289.2016.1220771
Youmans, A., Coombs, A., & Colgan, L.E.C. (2018). Early childhood educators’ and teachers’ early math education knowledge, beliefs, and pedagogy. The Canadian Journal of Education, 41(4), 1080–1104.
https://journals.sfu.ca/cje/index.php/cje-rce/article/view/3442
Whew. We made it through the winter. For many of you it has been, professionally and/or personally, the hardest winter ever. But with vaccination underway and warm weather ahead, we think we see light at the end of the COVID-19 tunnel.
After a year that forced educators to teach, or lead, reactively in response to a mountain of new challenges, we thought it might be a welcome change to look forward to a more aspirational approach to teaching and learning. Yes, there are ongoing and critical COVID issues. But we can also start thinking about how to re-engage students, build school community and make education the best training ground possible for our future leaders and citizens.
Taking on the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), whether as a school or as a class, is an exciting way to address all three of these goals. I like to think of this issue as a seed catalogue. The catalogue arrives when it’s still too cold to plant, but it conjures up big dreams for gardening season. We hope this issue will sow lots of ideas, and also lead you to the resources to develop them into a real plan. How great would it be to cover the curriculum in a way that engages students in real-world problems, encourages them to claim a stake in making the world a better place, and develops essential competencies in the process?
The authors in this issue are in the vanguard of integrating the SDGs into Canadian schooling, and part of an international network of educators who are helping to achieve these ambitious Agenda 2030 goals while providing their students with a positive, empowering opportunity to learn about and take action on global issues that are also urgent problems here at home, such as clean drinking water for Indigenous communities, homelessness, climate change, food insecurity, and racial inequities. See how other schools have taken on one or more of the goals in our article on UNESCO Schools, from our partners at CCUNESCO (p. 11). Or dive right into the features to learn about what the UN SDGs are, why they present such a great opportunity for educators, and how to integrate the SDGs into your classroom and school.
I hope this issue inspires educators, schools, and school boards to start planning how they might get involved in this world-changing initiative – and sow the seeds for a sustainable future.
Photo: courtesy MCIC
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As the financial landscape becomes increasingly complex (e.g. debt repayments, mortgages, line of credit, retirement savings), children and youth require a wide range of skills and knowledge to be able to successfully make informed choices about money that will serve them well as adults. School is crucial in strengthening students’ financial literacy skills including practical lessons about money. Research has shown that financial education tends to improve financial confidence and increases positive changes in financial behaviour such as saving and investing money. This is important for overall financial freedom and wellbeing: feeling in control of your finances and having the flexibility to make choices that allow you to enjoy life.
Financial skills are complex, but having conversations with children early on can help them understand the value of money. One easy way to teach this is to encourage them to think about what they could buy if they were to save their money, instead of spending it on toys or a treat. Metaphors like, “Money does not grow on trees, but if you put it in a bank, it could grow like a tree” are good ways of communicating about money to young children.
Learning through practice and receiving feedback, especially negative feedback, results in better learning than simply learning from a textbook. For example, using a mock credit card or creating a mock investment portfolio for students to track. Parents can also get children and youth involved with tracking household bills and expenses, which can help create healthy financial habits.
Financial education can easily be integrated into existing subjects such as math or social sciences. Using games and apps can make learning about money more engaging and allow students to learn how to make informed decisions, receive feedback, and understand the consequences of their choices (whether positive or negative).
Students will soon be making independent financial decisions. The last two years of high school is the right time to ramp up your efforts by getting specific about debit cards, bills, debt, budgeting, and savings. This is also the time to engage in deeper conversations about money and consider the social and cultural taboos (i.e. the belief that talking about money signals vulnerability or feelings of being judged) that prevent families from discussing money matters. Fostering openness will allow for better confidence in financial decision-making.
Building up students’ financial literacy is critical not only to their understanding of personal finances, but also to their role in the local and global economy as consumers, employees, and employers. Teachers and parents have an important role in equipping students with the knowledge and skills to make healthy and informed financial decisions. Setting simple, age-appropriate goals that focus on the value of money, the importance of budgeting and saving, and evaluating the consequences of financial decisions, sets the foundation for students to become financially confident adults.
Child and Youth Finance International: https://childfinanceinternational.org/
Financial Literacy in Canada: https://www.canada.ca/en/financial-consumer-agency/programs/financial-literacy.html
Global Financial Literacy Excellence Centre: https://gflec.org/
FuturFund: http://www.futurfund.org/
PlayMoolah: http://www.playmoolah.com/
Alsemgeest L. Talking about money is taboo: Perceptions of financial planning students and implications for the financial planning industry. Industry and Higher Education. 2016;30(6):394-401. doi:10.1177/0950422216670065
Amagir A, Groot W, Maassen van den Brink H, Wilschut A. A review of financial-literacy education programs for children and adolescents. Citizenship, Social and Economics Education. 2018;17(1):56-80. doi:10.1177/2047173417719555
Atkinson, A. and F. Messy (2013), “Promoting Financial Inclusion through Financial Education: OECD/INFE Evidence, Policies and Practice”, OECD Working Papers on Finance, Insurance and Private Pensions, No. 34, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/5k3xz6m88smp-en.
Blue, Levon, Peter Grootenboer, Mark Brimble (2014). Financial literacy education in the curriculum: Making the grade or missing the mark?, International Review of Economics Education, Volume 16, Part A, Pages 51-62, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.iree.2014.07.005.
Fernandes, Daniel & Lynch, John & Netemeyer, Richard. (2014). Financial Literacy, Financial Education, and Downstream Financial Behaviors. Management Science. 10.1287/mnsc.2013.1849.
Lusardi,A., OS Mitchell, V Curto (2010) Financial Literacy Among the Youth. Journal of consumer affairs, 44 (2), 358-380
Mandell L. (2008) Financial Literacy of High School Students. In: Xiao J.J. (eds) Handbook of Consumer Finance Research. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-75734-6_10
Sherraden, M.S., Johnson, L., Guo, B. et al. Financial Capability in Children: Effects of Participation in a School-Based Financial Education and Savings Program. J Fam Econ Iss 32, 385–399 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10834-010-9220-5
Soman, D (2017), Why financial Literacy should be taught in every school, The Conversation https://theconversation.com/why-financial-literacy-should-be-taught-in-every-school-88458
Te’eni-Harari, T. (2016), “Financial literacy among children: the role of involvement in saving money”, Young Consumers, Vol. 17 No. 2, pp. 197-208. https://doi.org/10.1108/YC-01-2016-00579
Seventeen Sustainable Development Goals – also known as the SDGs or the Global Goals – came into effect on January 1, 2016, following a historic United Nations Summit in September 2015. 193 governments from around the world agreed to implement the SDGs within their own countries in order to achieve what has become known as the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. To meet these new SDGs, countries are to mobilize efforts to end all forms of poverty, fight inequalities, and tackle climate change, all while ensuring that no one is left behind. To achieve this global challenge, everyone must take action both here and around the world. We know that these goals highlight issues that affect our students and communities as well as the broader world, and offer powerful points of connection to engage students on global issues in the classroom.
Global citizenship, the idea that the actions we take here can affect lives all over the world, is a compelling lesson for the classroom. Engaging students on global issues, and especially taking action locally, can spark exciting projects and build global awareness in students. Students who understand these local-global connections are building their understanding of issues facing the world today, developing compassion for the world around them, and discovering the power of taking action.
The Manitoba Council for International Cooperation (MCIC) has a long history of engaging students in classroom workshops and student conferences that are focused on educating students about global issues and empowering them to take action. If you need ideas on how to bring the SDGs into your classroom, we’ve developed Sustainable Foundations: A guide for teaching the Sustainable Development Goals, a new bilingual resource for educators that includes multiple lesson plan ideas and action steps for each SDG. The guide includes lesson plans for Grades 2–12, but largely focuses on Grade 5+, where the content around global issues is more relevant to the curriculum.
Taking an inquiry approach, each chapter in the guide offers an overview of a specific goal, including learning objectives, a summary of important international targets, and the ways to tell if we are on track to reach the goals. Each chapter offers inquiry-style questions that connect back to the curriculum, exploring some key questions, such as: Where did this goal begin? Why does this issue matter? Who and what are affected? and What is being done?
The guide explores the interconnected nature of the goals, taking care to highlight, for example, how we can’t reach Goal 1: Zero Poverty, without also reducing inequalities (Goal 10), ensuring decent work and economic growth (Goal 8), protecting life on land (Goal 15), and many others. There are many connections between each goal, and students can quickly begin to see how the success of one goal is tied to another.
Each chapter also highlights the consequences of inaction, sharing what might happen if we do nothing to reach the goal, and offers further reflection questions, inspiring quotes, and more. Of special importance to educators are the sections with resources, including ideas for taking action, lesson plans, activities, and video educational resources for use in the classroom.
For example, how can you teach your students about Goal 1: Zero Poverty? For students in Grades 5–8, consider the lesson “The World is Not Equal. Is that fair?” from the World’s Largest Lesson website and featured in the guide. This lesson highlights different types of inequality and helps students explore the impact inequality has on the wider society and economy. The lesson starts with students receiving an unequal amount of something (candy, stickers, etc.) and moves from fairness to a discussion on equality.
MCIC has also created lessons you can use in your classroom, now available directly on our website at mcic.ca. First, for students in Grade 5+, considering using the “Building Blocks for a Good Life” lesson, where students order a list of items from most important to least important for a good life. This lesson opens a discussion about poverty and what it means to have a good quality of life. Students will explore poverty as a “lack of opportunities” rather than a “lack of basic needs.” Framing poverty this way allows students to appreciate the complexity of the issue and promotes empathy in lieu of judgment.
Students work in groups to decide which items (a range including access to food, a television, cell phones, shelter, toys, health care and more) are most important and which are least important to a good life. Labels are provided that can be placed on blocks so students can build structures, or you can print a list of the items and cut them into individual squares so students can order them individually on their desks or at home.
This lesson has also been successfully used with high-school students, and we recommend leaving more time for older students to discuss differences of opinion and the debrief questions. Many great discussions can arise with all ages, based on student perspectives of the items on the list. There are several discussion questions and prompts included in the lesson, such as asking students if everyone needs the same things for a good life, a prompt that can be used to expand the conversation and include global perspectives. Do we need the same things as other countries? Use student answers to these prompts and differences in their prioritized lists to spark conversations about basic needs and lack of opportunities in the world.
Another MCIC activity with more global perspectives is “Breaking the Cycle,” for students in Grades 5–8. In this activity, students learn that poverty is not a result of individual choices alone; it is affected by societal systems. Students travel in groups through four different stations, making decisions about health and the environment inside scenarios from around the world, choosing how to spend their resources to survive. Focused on the themes of poverty and the poverty cycle, barriers associated with poverty, and a lack of access to health care and education, this activity brings home the real-world challenges people can face and opens a conversation about inequality around the world.
Learning about global issues is a great start, but true impact and passion can be inspired by taking action on the issues. Students who take action in their communities to effect change become engaged global citizens, learning powerful lessons about how their actions can change the world.
To encourage your students to take action, consider the ideas in the “How to Take Action” section included for each chapter of the guide, or the general tips on taking action in the introduction. For example, students could be encouraged to support a local organization through creating a fundraiser, or writing to their local government representative about the issues. Explore dosomething.org to find an issue your students care about and to find ways to take action on the issues. You can also see examples of how other students have taken action on the MCIC Take Action Blog, or consider connecting with an international cooperation organization working around the world. You can find examples of these organizations and their work through the case studies in each chapter of the guide or by contacting MCIC or another Council for International Cooperation in your area.
At our Generating Momentum for Our World student conferences, and as we share classroom resources, we encourage educators to let us know how their students take action on global issues. Following a student conference in rural Manitoba where students learned about the SDGs and how to take action on the issues, we heard about an exciting project one school had undertaken in their community.
With the support of their teachers, middle-years students created an “SDG Week” where they connected with their peers on a different goal each day. For example, when they talked about Goal 2: Zero Hunger, students baked and offered everyone in school a muffin. They hosted assemblies, shared information, invited MCIC to lead workshops, and created posters to share. One day they planted fruit trees on the school property, as a way to help reach several goals (no hunger, climate change, life on land, and more). With a new project each day, it was a great way to share what they learned with their fellow students and take action on the SDGs.
It was exciting to see how students took the knowledge gained about the SDGs and turned it into action, while sharing with their schoolmates.
AS EDUCATORS, you know that you hold the power to transform your students’ understanding of the world. As you teach them the universality of the SDGs and the issues facing the world today, we encourage you to also teach your students to be good global citizens who take actions that change the world for the better. Students who understand that they have the power to help reduce inequalities around the world and create a more sustainable future for all, are students who will take knowledge and turn it into action, making a more just world for everyone.
MCIC offers many free classroom resources at mcic.ca:
See also the World’s Largest Lesson website, with lesson plans and other classroom resources searchable by type of resource, age group, and duration:
Photos: courtesy MCIC
There is a unique opportunity before us to inspire and mobilize our students to engage with the world’s most pressing issues, as defined in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The SDGs provide educators with a wonderful canvas to embed global issues that require collective expertise and solutions into our curriculum. In this article, I share my experience with incorporating the SDGs into one of my courses to help students realize their lifelong mission and career purpose. While the example I provide was used in a post-secondary setting as a career education framework, my intention is to inspire you to consider how you might incorporate a similar approach toward helping your K–12 students connect with these critical topics and relate them to their own career aspirations.
I teach a post-university transitions course at both the University of the Fraser Valley and Kwantlen Polytechnic University in British Columbia. The main course objective is to ensure students are well prepared for their journey after post-secondary graduation. I elected to use the SDGs as a framework to help students consider three ambitious questions that can evoke personal values and their sense of purpose:
Rather than simply pose these questions in a single lecture, I elected to embed them in various capacities within assignments and activities throughout the term. In particular, I chose to structure these as “renewable assignments” that aim to provide value and impact beyond the course, as opposed to disposable assignments that students set aside once they are completed.
The results demonstrated immediate impact; students felt that the content was engaging and they immersed themselves into their assignments and activities. As one student noted:
“This course [and the SDG components] has me more focused on my dream of being more than a teacher… to ensure children are receiving more than a quality education… [and that they] do not go without food, have access to clean water, are healthy (mentally, physically, and emotionally), have equality, and gain skills to thrive in their community.”
Furthermore, a common insight that many students shared is articulated in this student’s comment about introducing the SDGs within the K–12 system:
“I found it surprising that the SDGs… (or the MDGs, which was the earlier version) were not introduced earlier in my undergrad, or even while I was in elementary and high school! Learning about them earlier on would have helped me better connect what I want to know and how I can help my community.”
I agree with this student that the SDGs can and should be introduced at a much earlier age. Three assignments that resonated particularly well with my students are described below, along with ideas for adapting them to suit the K–12 environment:
Occupational research
In the course, students are asked to research labour market information related to their career aspirations, using search engines such as the Government of Canada’s National Occupation Code (National) and WorkBC’s Labour Market Information Office (Provincial). What skills, education, and experiences are required to enter the occupation? What might be their career outlook and prospects, provincially and nationally? Having conducted this research, students are asked to consider which of the 17 SDGs their chosen profession or field might help advance and how.
Applicability to K–12: This assignment and its activities are likely suitable to the more senior secondary school years to help students further their research literacy and critical thinking skills. Students may also use this opportunity to explore the types of work – both in terms of paid employment and unpaid volunteer/service pursuits – that directly support or are involved within one or more of the SDGs, to help expand their understanding of how diverse occupations might be.
Information interview
In the information interview project, students speak with three individuals whom they believe can provide insight into a type of work they are considering, and then they reflect on these conversations. One of the reflective questions embedded in the project asks them to consider the common themes that emerged in their conversations, and how they believe these themes and individuals shed further insights into the SDGs.
Applicability to K–12: This assignment can be adapted to suit a particular grade level, from teachers providing a list of questions to ask in the lower grades, to empowering students to generate questions on their own in the higher levels. This assignment might be comparable to a career/occupation activity where teachers invite guest speakers to visit the class and talk about their profession, resulting in a group information interview where any students can pose questions. For example, a student interested in pursuing an occupation in trades might interview an electrician and learn that she is either explicitly or unknowingly supporting SDG 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities by sourcing and using local materials in her projects, as well as SDG 5: Gender Equality through her advocacy work as a female in her trade association. If an obvious connection isn’t immediately made, the student and professional can engage in a conversation about how someone working in the profession could potentially align their work with one of the SDGs. This then becomes an interesting two-way instructional opportunity where the student can, in turn, help educate the professional about the SDGs.
Mission statement
Students develop their mission statement as part of an ePortfolio. During the development process, they consider: What is the work they want to pursue? Who are they doing this work for? And how might the SDGs be furthered as a result of their work? In the last question, they are able to again infuse the SDGs and talk about the overarching goal and connect it back to their ideal work and profession.
Applicability to K–12: Teachers can adjust the scope of this project based on the grade level to have students identify what they can do in their own life to help advance one or more of the SDGs; a charter of sorts. This may also align with a research project on how one can make a specific impact in their local (school or neighbourhood) community.
Ultimately, the SDGs as a career education framework can be used with students to generate ideas on occupations they’d like to pursue. Using the UN SDGs as a framework helps them expand their current career aspirations by asking, “Which of the SDGs do you think you can contribute to as you work in your chosen field, and how so?” By doing this they can better connect their work aspiration to a bigger purpose, and that purpose can also be a motivating factor in their coursework and post-secondary options. Additionally, the SDGs can help students who are unsure about their occupational goals answer the question: “What is a cause I am passionate about and how might I contribute to that cause, either through paid work or through volunteering?”
I’d like to offer a few tips for educators who wish to incorporate the SDGs into their curriculum as a means to enhance their students’ career development:
In the case of my students, the response has been very positive. I’ve had students and graduates tell me they are incorporating the SDGs in their job and graduate school applications and even during job and admissions interviews.
This quote from one student reveals the seemingly lifelong impact that embedding the SDGs into my curriculum achieved:
“Something that I have learned about myself in relation to the UN SDG(s) that I have identified was that it is not easy to accomplish these goals right away, as it happens over time… The way I treat others and the actions I take always depend upon peace and justice as everyone should be treated equally and be able to have a second chance to grow from their mistakes.”
Photo: Adobe Stock
Read other articles from this issue
Canadian Commission for UNESCO. (2020). Teacher’s toolkit: UNESCO Schools Network in Canada. UNESCO.
https://en.ccunesco.ca/-/media/Files/Unesco/Resources/2020/04/ToolkitUNESCOSchoolsTeachers.pdf
Saskatchewan Council for International Cooperation (2021). Online global citizenship education resources.
www.saskcic.org/education_resources_collection
Global climate change and biodiversity loss are major contemporary challenges. To address these challenges, in 2015 the United Nations set 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), with a timeline to achieve them by the year 2030. Goal 15 reads as follows:
“Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss.”
The UN’s 2020 report on these goals (page 55) notes that, “The world is falling short on 2020 targets to halt biodiversity loss, despite some progress.”
To familiarize students with the important issues facing humanity, school curricula generally present these subjects at the elementary and high-school levels. From a young age, students are introduced to major global problems like pollution, deforestation and extinction, as well as their impact on the planet’s inhabitants. However, perhaps schools should start by helping young people discover the organisms that inhabit the ecosystems around them.
The outdoor spaces surrounding schools are rich learning environments, as both urban and rural areas are always full of life. Every environment is inhabited by a variety of arthropods, plants, birds, and small mammals.
These environments can help children develop scientific skills like curiosity, observation and experimentation from a very young age (Ayotte-Beaudet, 2020a). For example, to teach students about plants often described as weeds, ask them to draw a chalk circle around any plants pushing through a concrete sidewalk near school. Then have them write in the plant’s name to inform passersby (www.sciencesdehors.com).
Nearby areas off school property can also be used to learn about natural phenomena in situ (Ayotte-Beaudet, 2020b). Students can adopt a tree to make systematic observations about it throughout the school year. This will enable them to determine the adaptation and survival mechanisms used by the tree while also discovering the variety of living organisms that interact with it (e.g., lichen and birds). This type of monitoring helps children develop a shared sense of ownership in the tree under study.
Outdoors, students can also carry out field activities just like scientists do. Citizen science projects give schools a well-defined observation framework to follow and provide knowledge about certain local species (Secours et al., 2020). Some examples of citizen science projects are eBird for birding and NatureWatch for environmental monitoring programs.
The findings of a recent research project suggest that we should reflect on how schools teach biodiversity. The goal of the study in question was to better understand the impact on students of contextualized teaching and learning in a nearby ecosystem (Ayotte-Beaudet et al., in press). The participants, elementary-school students (ages 10-12), took part in a citizen science project designed to help them better understand the effects of global change on urban ecosystems (www.chenilles-espionnes.com). For the instructional phase, the researchers had decided to talk about nature in positive terms only, without ever mentioning environmental problems. During interviews conducted at the end of the project, many of the young people expressed the desire to protect living organisms, even though conservation was never explicitly mentioned. In other words, discovering nature in situ and hearing only positive things about it were enough to heighten young people’s awareness of the life around them.
If you are unaccustomed to holding outdoor classes on biodiversity, the first thing you should probably do is think about your motivation and set a clear learning objective for the first outing. This will help you plan the teaching and learning activities and persuade parents and administration to agree to your approach.
The first few times, it is better to go outside for short periods so you and your students can get used to this new learning environment (www.sciencesdehors.com). Research has also shown that it is important to properly prepare students for these outings, get them engaged in activities, and give them an opportunity to make choices (Ayotte-Beaudet & Potvin, 2020; Ayotte-Beaudet et al., 2019). Most importantly, stimulate the children’s curiosity and trust them. Furthermore, if you are a school principal, trust your teaching staff and give them a chance to experiment!
Elementary school curricula often focus on the gravity of environmental issues, but everyone involved in education should reflect on the best ways of making children aware of biodiversity. At what age can we, in good conscience, burden younger generations with the weight of the problems they will inherit? Before asking them to protect and restore terrestrial ecosystems, I believe we have a duty to teach them how to appreciate the diversity of life in the ecosystems around them.
Photos: Courtesy of Jean-Philipe Ayotte-Beaudet
Read other articles from this issue
Ayotte-Beaudet, J.-P. (2020a). Éveiller aux sciences de la nature à ciel ouvert. Revue préscolaire, 58(4), 36-38. http://aepqkiosk.milibris.com/reader/9d1311ef-ccbb-4df1-af16-ebc7f44582ae?origin=%2Frevue-prescolaire%2Frevue-prescolaire%2Fn584-2020
Ayotte-Beaudet, J.-P. (2020b). Regarder dehors pour apprendre et enseigner les sciences. Vivre le primaire, 33(3), 38-40. https://aqep.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/D-Regarder-dehors-pour-apprendre.pdf?fbclid=IwAR248QqdERwurwv755FVeGYMItC61bYxQ9GOjs4hbwxSiUN_-fT45NxlV8k
Ayotte-Beaudet, J.-P., Chastenay, P., Beaudry, M.-C., L’Heureux, K., Giamellaro, M., Smith, J., Desjarlais, E., & Paquette, A. (2021, in press). Exploring the impacts of contextualised outdoor science education on learning: The case of primary school students learning about ecosystem relationships. Journal of Biological Education.
Ayotte-Beaudet, J.-P., & Potvin, P. (2020). Factors related to students’ perception of learning during outdoor science lessons in schools’ immediate surroundings. International Journal of Environmental and Science Education, 16(2), 1-13. https://doi.org/10.29333/ijese/7815
Ayotte-Beaudet, J.-P., Potvin, P. and Riopel, M. (2019). Factors related to middle-school students’ situational interest in science in outdoor lessons in their schools’ immediate surroundings. International Journal of Environmental & Science Education, 14(1), 13-32. http://www.ijese.net/makale/2100.html
Chenilles-espionnes (https://www.chenilles-espionnes.com) is a Website dedicated to a citizen science project developed by a partnership involving Les Clubs 4-H du Québec, Université du Québec à Montréal and Université de Sherbrooke.
Des sciences dehors (https://www.sciencesdehors.com) is a Quebec-based knowledge-sharing website developed by and for people interested in and passionate about teaching and learning science.
United Nations. (2020). The sustainable development goals report 2020. UN. https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/report/2020/The-Sustainable-Development-Goals-Report-2020.pdf
Secours, É., Paquette, A., Ayotte-Beaudet, J.-P., Gignac, A., & Castagneyrol, B. (2020). Chenilles-espionnes, un projet de sciences citoyennes pour sensibiliser les jeunes à la biodiversité. Spectre, 50(1), 27-31. https://fr.calameo.com/aestq/read/00518148392339471f721
COVID-19 has put students in a unique situation when it comes to reflecting on our planet’s future. Difficult as it is, the pandemic has been instructive. It shows how we are interdependent, sustained by nature, and that our actions matter. This experience provides a timely opportunity for students and educators to focus on sustainability action, using the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
The UN’s goals, agreed on by Canada and nearly all other countries, are far-reaching and important. They target 17 areas directed toward sustaining life on Earth – human and all other forms – as well as ending poverty and inequity, achieving social justice, and combating climate change.
As sustainability becomes ever more important, strategies are emerging to help schools and educators inspire students to understand that their learning and community action contribute to progress on the Global Goals. These approaches make the goals both real and achievable, as youth begin to see new ideas and progress scale up across nations and regions of the world.
Using strategies to integrate the SDGs within a whole-school approach is a key focus for Learning for a Sustainable Future (LSF). LSF is a Canadian charity whose mission is to promote, through education, the knowledge, skills, values, perspectives, and practices essential to a sustainable future. Working with schools, school policies, and curricula is a core part of LSF’s activities, explains the organization’s President and Chief Executive Officer Pamela Schwartzberg.
LSF began its whole-school approach with support for Belfountain Public School in Ontario in 2005 and continued with the first Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) Lighthouse School project at Stouffville District Secondary School in 2006. In 2007, in partnership with the UNESCO Chair in Reorienting Education for Sustainable Development, York University’s Schulich School of Business, and its Faculty of Education, LSF began Sustainability and Education Academy (SEdA) seminars to engage senior education officials from school boards across Canada in:
The whole-school approach is designed to help students, teachers, principals, staff, parents, and community members integrate the SDGs into school culture, teaching and learning, facilities and operations, and community partnerships. “We get farther, faster if we work as a whole school,” says Pamela Gibson, LSF consultant. A whole-school approach helps reinforce engaging teaching methods and moves schools toward practising sustainability. It optimizes learning in synergistic ways and models 21st century skills – collaboration, innovation, and action.
In 2016, the Council of Ministers of Education, Canada (CMEC) articulated six broad Pan Canadian Global Competencies to: “provide learners with the abilities to meet the shifting and ongoing demands of life, work, and learning; to be active and responsive in their communities; to understand diverse perspectives; and to act on issues of global significance.” With some variation across the provinces and territories, the attitudes, skills, and knowledge needed for 21st century citizens include:
These Global Competencies support SDG 4.7 (Global Citizenship and Sustainable Development) as well as the education component of all of the other 16 SDGs.
By the same token, applying an SDG lens to course content and class work gives students the opportunity to practise all six competencies relevant to school success and their future roles. Any local or school issue embraced by students needs to be supported by specific instruction and guided practice of oral, written, and digital communication skills in order to gain support, design innovations, and find partners for collaboration. Students need to learn methods of collecting, organizing, and critically reflecting on data and research to determine best options for action. Educators have both the curriculum and the instructional strategies to build these competencies and help students practise them on a project that, whatever its size or scope, can contribute to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.
Greening a school playground with support from a local plant nursery and hardware store? Think about Goal 15: Life on Land; Goal 13: Protect the Planet and Goal 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities. Taking action involves many stages and steps requiring organization, planning, and self-regulation skills when plans don’t go as expected or take more time. The competencies build core functional skills, a big-picture perspective, strong learning skills, and resources for well-being. The SDGs give practice a purpose.
Introduce students to environmental, social, and economic issues. These will vary based on the community, and might include, for example, dealing with single-use plastics, exploring green jobs, understanding food insecurity, etc. Finding community partners is a great first step to making issues relevant and including practical experiences.
Provide context and purpose. Learning is more powerful when it’s applied. For example, data management comes to life when you step outside the classroom and learn to measure and graph the amount of food waste your classmates diverted from landfill and the compost that resulted. Relating this work to specific SDGs (See Goal 12 and Goal 15, for example) helps make abstract ideas real.
Transform teaching strategies and thinking tools. Using inquiry, systems thinking, and other tools for student engagement can link curriculum and local issues, leading to action projects that relate to SDGs. This extends learning, develops hands-on skills, provides valuable life/work experiences, and more. For example, researching and planting native plants can be linked to Goal 13 (Climate Action) and Goal 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities).
Use SDGs to guide curriculum and practices. Educators can tap into nearby nature and the surrounding built, natural, or cultural community to see how their learning can be used to improve or support innovation right where they live. They can embed this process in curriculum learning – for example, integrating environment-based budgeting into math or working on advocacy skills in writing. This place-based approach to learning is applicable to all grade levels.
Adopt inclusive models of planning and decision-making that consider the SDGs. Students, teachers, parents, and community members are valued voices in making decisions and problem solving. They can strengthen relationships by consulting each other, through interviews, questionnaires, or small focus groups. Other models include a Council of All Beings, where participants take on roles of different stakeholders in a decision including the people, plants, and animals. Important to include are Indigenous community partners or Elders as well as local experts. The SDGs gives discussions a wider context that can help build consensus.
LSF is now piloting a Sustainable Future Schools program (see Figure 1) promoting a whole-school approach using the SDGs and the global competencies as a foundation.
“The program will be a resource for schools to design their own path for advancing the SDGs. It is not set out as a prescribed journey, but rather as a map and set of planning tools using the SDGs as a lens,” Schwartzberg says.
It provides tools and strategies to monitor and evaluate progress, crucial for support from the board and parents.
The circular structure of the program framework allows schools and classrooms to start anywhere. The “Sustainable Self” is every individual child in our care at school, putting the student’s growth and well-being at the centre of the learning community. Students build awareness, caring relationships with others and with nature, learn new skills and knowledge – all in support of taking action to better their lives and communities.
The ten pedagogical elements are cited by research and practice as transformative tools for change. Educators’ depth of understanding and implementation for each practice may vary. Resources and professional learning on each are available and accessible. Teachers can learn independently, or with a teaching colleague, course, local partner, or faculty as a professional learning community.
LSF launched the Sustainable Future Schools pilot program in 2020, with support from 3M Canada, at Belfountain Public School. In early 2020, all classes at Belfountain learned about the Sustainable Development Goals. Using reflection time over the year, teachers asked students how their course content, information, or projects could be linked to one of the 17 goals. Noting these connections on a learning wall and in class discussions helped teach the SDG framework. It also provided evidence that students were understanding the goals over time. The connections showed the students the relevance of what they were learning at school. Students could link their own assignment goals to a website about an SDG initiative, showing how their work aligns with positive action taking place around the world.
For the 2020–2021 school year, the Sustainable Development Goals have become more integrated in classes throughout the school. The program began with a virtual school assembly in October, with a call to action on food waste and SDG 2: End hunger and achieve food security. In November each class shared their learnings and actions on the SDGs through videos, songs, and writings.
Starting from a shared understanding of a school’s culture and its unique sense of place ensures that success is not wholly dependent on one principal, teacher, or club for leadership and energy! The next step is to link the local action to one or more of the Sustainable Development Goals. Framing school learning to the wider world of the SDGs in school priorities is critical to the success of a whole-school approach. When the school is connected to local partners and tuned into real-life concerns, students, staff, and parents can work together on actions rooted in what matters to them, making acting on learning motivating and sustained over time.
Belfountain Principal Lynn Bristoll says, “When I was new, I sent out a short questionnaire to parents to find out their priorities and concerns and what they loved about the school. Overwhelmingly important for them was the environment and getting students outside.” For many years, Belfountain staff, students, and parents have connected to nature and the community.
“This is a core value of the school and a foundation to its culture. Students apply their lessons to making a difference, globally and locally,” says Bristoll. “For example, they participate in an annual Garlic Mustard Festival – a program that engages the public to identify and remove invasive garlic mustard from local green spaces. That underscores the importance of integrating the Sustainable Development Goals into our thinking and action.” (See Belfountain Grade 4 Water Inquiry for a class example).
The Sustainable Development Goals also help build awareness and understanding for other important social issues that are school priorities, such as the Black Lives Matter movement and Indigenous knowledge. Bristoll explains, “The goal is that students will leave the school knowing they can act on what they have learned.”
Grade 4 students wanted to learn and do something about water. They live in homes with well water, so potable water is important for them. They are concerned about a possible new development in the area and what might happen. SDG 6 is about Clean Water and Sanitation and SDG 14 is about Life below Water, so making the local relate to the global need was a clear imperative.
“Take them to the river,” LSF consultant Pamela Gibson advised the teacher. “I told her that the students are like investigative journalists, finding out what’s important for them and their community. That way they are attached to what they are learning, dialed in.”
The students observed and collected data on the river near the school. They had many questions from this initial visit. What will happen to the water table? Where is the water coming from and where is it going? Is it clean water? Their questions directed their lessons and research back at school. They learned about artesian wells, surface water, and underground rivers. The students could proceed in many directions with many projects, simply through collecting information and using their learning. The teacher could find many curriculum links through this process across several subject areas. Key to this was the outdoor experience.
It is important that teachers view the process through their curriculum. There were links to Science, Social Studies, Math and Language right from the start. Teachers can see what is possible and can guide learners to the curriculum concepts and the big ideas. Through the river and water experience, the teacher saw how her curriculum, the SDGs, and the integration of new pedagogies could all be linked.
Gibson says, “The idea is to reflect on learning experiences through the SDGs. Ask questions: How does this relate to our own future? To our local community? To global challenges?“
Belfountain kindergarten teacher and LSF Consultant Janice Haines has been part of the sustainability culture of the school for many years. “To make the goals understood you have to make them real for children. Big ideas need to be connected to their day-to-day experiences,” Haines explains. “For example, children can grasp a science idea like adaptation when they see the animals outside managing to survive in winter. They really get it.” Finding community partners is especially helpful. “A parent got us working on squirrel conservation a few years ago and we continued with it for five years,” she says.
It’s important to offer context and reassurance to students that what they are doing makes a difference. “We don’t stress them with catastrophes, but instead relate it to what is happening in their school playground,” Haines says. “My ultimate vision is of happy kids who are eager to learn and do more in their community. They know they have a voice.”
World’s Largest Lesson
https://worldslargestlesson.globalgoals.org
Posters and Lesson Plans https://worldslargestlesson.globalgoals.org/resource/introducing-explorers-for-the-global-goals/
Intro to Goals video: Sustainable Development Goals: Improve life all around the globe
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGcrYkHwE80&feature=youtu.be
Resources from Learning For a Sustainable Future (http://lsf-lst.ca)
Webinars: http://resources4rethinking.ca/en/outdoor-learning
These webinars introduce teachers to the SDGs and provide opportunities to share ideas and resources for integrating key SDGs into lesson plans and action projects.
Resources for Rethinking: www.R4R.ca
A free online database where educators and the general public can search, by the SDGs, for the highest quality, peer-reviewed, curriculum-matched teaching resources, children’s literature, videos, outdoor activities, and apps/games.
Our Canada Project: www.ourcanadaproject.ca
Allows schools to share their sustainability action projects with others to inspire youth agency, access resources, and apply for funding. More than 850 projects are currently posted and searchable by SDG.
Youth Leadership Forums:
These forums engage students in local sustainability issues, equip them with the knowledge and skills needed to make a change, and empower them to take action.
Banner Photo: Adobe Stock
Images courtesy of Learning for Sustainable Futures
Read other articles from this issue
Council of Ministers of Education, Canada. (2016). Pan-global competencies.
https://www.cmec.ca/682/global_competencies.html
The Global Goals. (2015). The Global Goals for Sustainable Development.
www.globalgoals.org
Kozak, S., & Elliott, S. (2014). Connecting the Dots: Key strategies that transform learning for environmental education, citizenship and sustainability. Learning for a Sustainable Future.
http://lsf-lst.ca/dots
United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs. The 17 Goals. United Nations.
https://sdgs.un.org/goals
UNESCO International Bureau of Education. (2020). Canada establishes a Pan Canadian Global Competencies Framework for Education. UNESCO.
www.ibe.unesco.org/en/news/canada-establishes-pan-canadian-global-competencies-framework-education
It was September, the start of a new school year. Lunchtime was almost over and I remember leaning over the shiny wooden dining hall tables of Ackerman Hall to pitch an idea to my colleague, Suparna. I wanted to provide a creative writing opportunity for my Grades 9 and 10 students to think outside of themselves and build meaningful relationships with those beyond their own Senior School community. As we brainstormed, wisps of ideas coalesced. The service-learning opportunity that emerged was a cross-divisional project where my students would each interview a Junior School (JS) student from Grades 4, 5, or 6 and then craft a story, making the latter the hero of the story. We even leapt ahead and imagined the grand finale: Senior School students reading their masterpieces to the littler ones, with the latter listening with rapt attention and nibbling on chocolate chip cookies.
As an Academic English teacher, I consistently endeavour to stretch my pedagogy to benefit the personal learning journeys of my students. However, the intention to stretch beyond my pedagogical comfort zone brought trepidations. Despite my excitement for facilitating an innovative learning task, I felt nervous about possible challenges. For example, what if my students considered that writing a 1,000 to 1,500-word short story for JS students was too elementary and superficial? A lack of engagement on their part could result in insensitivities, hurting the JS students who looked up to them. I thought of the school community. Would they see this service-learning creative writing project as I did and accept it as an opportunity to go beyond normal coursework and explore not-yet-visible possibilities? I worried that the quality of the final pieces would be less than those produced through more traditional approaches. I moved beyond my concerns, however, with the support of Suparna and my administration. I deeply felt that the benefits and value of this project would far outweigh the drawbacks.
I pitched the idea to my students, and what a relief it was to see that there was no apathy, only excitement. My students decided to first conduct their own research to find out more about Grades 4, 5, and 6 students. What did they do in their spare time? What kinds of books did they like to read? What words were linguistically “cool” in their world? After a class discussion of their findings, each of my classes appointed subgroups to interview the JS teachers to gain further insight.
What happened next was sweet. Many of my students had already been taught four to five years ago by the teachers they were to interview. Stepping into their classrooms was, to my students, like stepping into their childhood. The teachers marvelled at their poise and maturity. They exchanged shy smiles. The students’ eyes shone with respect while the teachers’ glowed with care and joy. Patiently, the teachers answered their questions.
Next, my students conducted two sets of 30-minute interviews at the Junior School. Many of the Senior-Junior school pairings were done at random, whereas some were more deliberate to respect learner needs. For the first interview, the Junior students were asked to bring in three objects of personal significance from home to conduct a show-and-tell. Thrilled to be the centre of attention, they spoke openly about themselves. My students followed up with a second interview as they began formulating the type of story in which they would cast their young partners as heroes.
Once my students had their plots in order, they asked the Junior students to create three illustrations. My students provided just enough guidance for the drawings, but not enough detail to reveal the plot. It was a visual arts opportunity. The younger students, tickled pink that their new friends were thinking so deeply about them, zealously drew with an insatiable curiosity about the plot.
The revising and editing process took time. I had 40 students and wanted to provide meaningful feedback. Meanwhile, they continued with other language arts tasks. It was December by the time the Junior students received their personalized gift. My students carefully inserted their young friends’ drawings amongst the printed pages and bound their books neatly with ribbon. This time the Junior students visited the Senior School classroom, which was decorated for the holiday season. Clumps of Senior and Junior students sat all over the classroom, spilling into the hallway… and yes, the younger ones listened with rapt attention while drinking hot chocolate and nibbling on chocolate chip cookies. When the readings were over, the groups just carried on chatting. The sessions ended with hugs and the question, “When will I see you again?”
From a curricular perspective, my Grades 9 and 10 students developed their creative writing skills. However, what my students gained from this project went far beyond creative writing accomplishments. In particular, they began to learn that meaningful relationships lie at the heart of service, and that such relationships can benefit the school community in unpredictable ways.
The resulting stories were of higher quality than I have ever received. My students were not creating for a mark. They were focused on their new little friends.
It was serendipitous that two students who both loved music and had a penchant for breaking out into dance move sessions were paired together as partners. It was both fascinating and amusing to watch how they collaborated with each other during the interview sessions. They developed a common understanding of how to work together and an appreciation for their similar interests and qualities.
I watched an artistic Grade 10 student, who initially knew very little about video games, step outside of her comfort zone to learn all that she could about her Grade 6 student’s favourite game. As a result, she was able to celebrate her partner’s interest by writing about a protagonist who overcame the trials of a video game world.
One of my fairly serious students was paired with a couple of Grade 5 students who loved romances. With dreamy countenances and a twinkle in their eyes, they begged their senior partner to write a romance story. Also, the story had to include a pig. Although my student was challenged by the requests, she committed herself to the task because she was invested in bringing the story to life for her young partners.
My students were moved to see the JS students demonstrate an equal investment in the process when asked to provide illustrations for their stories. While distributing the completed illustrations to my students, I heard many of them excitedly cry out, “This is exactly what I had envisioned!”
Suparna and I noted that all of the students involved were able to experience positive emotions, felt fully engaged in the process, and built relationships that brought meaning into their lives. In the end, together they created a product that made their accomplishments visible. In fact, these experiences represent the five key elements that psychologist Martin Seligman believes promotes psychological well-being and happiness.1 We did not intentionally manufacture a project to “cover” these elements. A post-project reflection session revealed that we did.
The positive outcomes of this service-learning project were numerous and reached beyond relationship building.
Our school’s strategic plan includes:
My students had many opportunities to shift perspectives and see the world through the eyes of a JS student, cultivating a sense of care, empathy, and compassion. I frequently highlighted how chuffed the Junior students were to have new, older Senior friends. Their trust in my students helped the Grade 9s and 10s build confidence in their oral communication skills and experience growth in their interview techniques. All of the students transcended the barriers of traditional classroom walls and experienced an innovative form of meaning making. Cumulatively, all of these aspects increased my students’ investment in their finished products, and the resulting short stories were of higher quality than I have ever received. My students were not creating for a mark. Rather, my students were focused on making visible to their new little friends the heroes that they already were.
The JS teachers were impressed to see the quality of work that their past students were creating and were eager to adjust their current expectations to further nurture the skills they saw developed at the senior level. One JS teacher had her class create lovely thank-you cards. Another teacher planned to have his students dramatically recreate their story using a green screen in the future.
Unfortunately, the green screen dream did not materialize, as the COVID-19 pandemic hit and students were tucked away in isolation. The pandemic made Suparna and I wonder what such a project would look like if completely carried out online. Interviews and sharing sessions could all happen in virtual breakout rooms that could be monitored by teachers and recorded and submitted by the Senior School students to ensure ethical behaviour. Expectations and ground rules would need to be set in advance. Delicious cookies, I suppose, would also need to be mailed out to students.
No matter what the scenario, oftentimes as teachers, we postpone innovative ideas for more traditional approaches due to lack of time or confounding logistics. However, both Suparna and I feel that if it is at all possible (even on a smaller scale), service-learning initiatives are well worth the effort. The school community benefits, and students realize that perhaps the greatest secret in receiving an education is that they have the power to express that learning in an act of giving.
Photo: courtesy the authors
First published in Education Canada, January 2021
1 According to Dr. Martin Seligman, the five pillars of well-being are: positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning, and accomplishment. See: Seligman, M. E. (2012). Flourish: A visionary new understanding of happiness and well-being. Free Press.
“Ring out the old, ring in the new,” goes Tennyson’s poem, “Ring Out Wild Bells.”
Many of us were only too happy to ring out 2020, or maybe give it a firm boot out the door. With COVID-19 vaccines rolling out, we hope for a better year ahead.
But what are we ringing in – the new and better, or the same old? After a year of disruption, the longing to return to the status quo is completely understandable. But if that’s all we do in our schools, it’s an opportunity lost. This year brought us many lessons, including wider awareness of the pervasiveness of systemic racism. We saw both the drawbacks and the potential of online learning, and we also saw how less privileged and higher-needs students suffered disproportionately from the loss of in-person classes. Some students became frustrated and disengaged – but others thrived as they became free to follow their own interests without the social stresses of a classroom. All these experiences and more should lead us to question just what school could and should be as we move beyond the COVID-19 Era.
Through fall/winter 2020, and culminating in this magazine, we tracked the learning that was emerging from the struggle to adapt an education system to pandemic conditions and still provide quality, equitable education (read the whole series on our website). One standout for me was Vidya Shah’s article (p. 15) showing how we can (and why we must) work towards greater equity in education during and beyond the pandemic.
It’s important to acknowledge the huge effort and serious stress that educators at every level of the system have shouldered during this crisis. But now we have a chance to look forward, to ring in the new. In our spring issue, EdCan will explore how the UN Sustainable Development Goals can be used to engage students with global and local issues and help them acquire essential competencies. And in June, we invite contributors to share their vision for the (near) future of education. How can we create a schooling experience that truly prepares today’s students to build tomorrow’s world?
Photo: Adobe Stock
First published in Education Canada, January 2021
We want to know what you think. Send your comments and article proposals to editor@edcan.ca – or join the conversation by using #EdCan on Twitter and Facebook.
AS A RECENT elite-level athlete, varsity coach, and current educational researcher, I remain very concerned with the ways that locker rooms and physical education classes are still reproducing, reiterating, and regurgitating hegemonic forms of masculinity. A social hierarchy that rewards typical bodies, traditional expressions of masculinity, and athletic ability still seems to come to fruition as a result of the ways that gym class is taught. These elements of doing masculinity and doing sport collide head-on in gym class. Masculinity is policed and labelled by the ways that boys physically move their bodies (Kehler, 2016). Thus, male gym class must not be seen as an environment for “boys to be boys,” nor one of hardcore competitive sport. It is a comprehensive educational domain that needs to focus on the development of holistic young men (Gerdin & Larsson, 2017). School hierarchies will never change if gym class continues to reward the most physically typical and gender-conforming learners. Physical education can be about teamwork, collaboration, hard work, positivity, fun, and friendships (Gerdin & Larsson, 2017). Until this is applied to pedagogy, physical education will remain a regressive forum for the recapitulation and celebration of hegemonic masculinity.
Much research has recognized that the construction of masculinities is heavily linked to physical endeavours and sport (Wellard, 2009). This makes the appropriate facilitation of inclusive physical education even more important for the robust development of young men and boys. Despite the hegemony within physical education, now, more than ever, boys and young men are desperately trying to safely and publicly perform types of masculinity that do not meet the traditional requirements of what it means to be a “boy.” But these attempts at gender diversity seem to draw the most attention and danger in the realm of physical education and school-sanctioned sports. It is sadly known, province to province, that physical education enrolment numbers after Grade 9 often drop precipitously (Dwyer et al., 2006). Too often, educators are ignoring the early warning signs of many boys’ discomfort with physical education. Many boys intentionally forget their athletic wear, conjure up imaginary injuries, skip class, and create ailments, all as a way to avoid gym class. The same avoidance tactics are deployed within the locker room because many boys fear how their masculinity will be read based on their physicality. This means many of them nervously change in a washroom before entering the locker room, seek refuge in a cubicle, strategically position themselves in a corner, or simply do not participate (Kehler & Chaudhry, 2018).
Physical education should not promote an uncomfortable atmosphere of ableism and heteronormativity, and its pedagogy should not perpetuate this. I am concerned with how physical education is still pedagogically deployed in such an exclusive manner. Gym and physical education classes are comprised of learners who range from the lowest of physical capabilities to the highest, and of learners who express masculinity in a multiplicity of ways. Pedagogy should reflect this. It is certainly not always an easy task to fulfill the athletic or social needs of all learners, but the young men and boys who struggle in the domain of sport and fitness, or express diverse masculinity, deserve a serious effort. They deserve to not be forgotten and to not be left out. They deserve to flourish in an athletic environment that supports their broad range of masculine gender expressions and athletic skills.
I would like to encourage educators and teacher-coaches to foster a physical education environment that instills confidence, positivity, passion, and excitement in all learners, no matter their physical capabilities or unique expressions of masculinity. To do so, I provide a framework of steps that can be cyclically applied within the classroom, and on the field, court, or rink.
Step 1: Always start with a conversation. Before every class, unit, or semester it is important to transparently set the stage, much like providing learning goals. Learners need to know the structure of the class and what the aim of the time being spent there is. It is essential to let learners know that this is not a place of high-intensity competitive sport. It is a place to learn about inclusivity, collaboration, teamwork, fun, and friendship. Additionally, learners need to realize that understanding a sport is simply one assessed component of their time in gym class. They need to know that they are being evaluated in the areas listed above.
Step 2: Level the playing field. The curriculum is certainly a guideline for what to teach, but diversifying it as much as possible is an exciting way to reposition or disrupt traditional ability and the social power imbalance it can create. Incorporating adaptive modes of sport that make them accessible to all learners is a fantastic way to level the playing field (Wood, 2015; School Adapted Team Sports, n.d.) It is important to strive toward equally spreading the feeling of comfort. By disrupting or altering traditional sport, educators are allowing students who may have otherwise never felt it to feel comfortable in gym class. Or, create a more universal sense of discomfort by introducing new forms of sport that allow all students to be of equal ability and confidence.
Step 3: Never stop role modelling. Often physical education teachers or teacher-coaches are highly regarded by students as being cool. I encourage educators to use this influence as a way to constantly perform masculinity or allyship in a healthy, robust way. This means speaking up when phobic pejoratives are used, establishing relationships equally with all learners, and embodying inclusivity at all times.
Step 4: Always debrief. Allocate at least ten minutes to unpack the lesson, practice, or class. It is another explicit reminder of what was learned and gained from the session. Refer back to Step 1’s emphasis on inclusivity, collaboration, teamwork, fun, and friendship. Have students share moments where they collaborated, engaged in teamwork, had fun, and built new friendships. Let them leave knowing that these were the true goals of the session.
Step 5: Never stop checking in. Make it a habit to speak confidentially with learners or observe while teaching. Ask what their needs are. Discuss ways to address or remedy their needs. Restructure pedagogy in a way that facilitates the solution to these issues or needs. This step is the engine of inclusivity. Continue to come back to this step as way to persistently address the needs of all learners in a physical education class or school-sanctioned sport. When you begin a new season, class, practice, school year, or semester. Return to Step 1 and fuse it with Step 5. The cycle will then restart.
Photo: Adobe Stock
Dwyer, J., Allison, K., LeMoine, K., Adlaf, E., Goodman, J., Faulkner, G., & Lysy, D. (2006). A provincial study of opportunities for school-based physical activity in secondary schools. Journal of Adolescent Health, 39, 80–86.
Gerdin, G., & Larsson, H. (2017). The productive effect of power: (Dis)Pleasurable bodies materialising in and through the discursive practices of boys’ physical education. Physical Education and Sport Pedagogy, 23(1), 66–83.
Kehler, M. with U. Chaudhry (2018). Body building or building bodies: Improving male body image through Health and Physical Education. What works? Research Into Practice, The Literacy and Numeracy Secretariat.
Kehler, M. (2016) Examining boys, bodies and PE locker room spaces: “I don’t ever set foot in that locker room.” In M. Messner & M. Musto (Eds.), Child’s play: Sport in kids’ worlds (pp. 202–220). Rutgers University Press.
School Adapted Team Sports (n.d.). American Association of Adapted Sports Programs. http://adaptedsports.org/school-programs
Wellard, I. (2009). Sport, Masculinities and the Body. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203874400
Wood, R. (2015, August). Sports for the Disabled. Topend Sports. https://www.topendsports.com/sport/disabled-sports.htm
I want to be clear about two things. The first is that everyone within the education system has made herculean efforts to keep kids safe, maintain positive environments, and in the midst of all this still cultivate the conditions for learning. Teachers, educational assistants, bus drivers, custodians, clinicians, library technicians, secretaries – all have done what is needed and beyond.
By way of example, music educators have adjusted countless times, redesigning their entire practice on a moment’s notice. Physical education teachers continue to take their learners outdoors for high-intensity experiences that are critical to wellness. These are just a few of the ways educators have pushed the boundaries of their expertise.
Second, teaching children remotely – whether that is for four days or two weeks, half of them in and half out, hybrid, hyflex, or hub-based – is really difficult. It requires expertise, an ability to work with families, and a fundamental shift in design. Simply teaching online does not equate to learning, and in some cases can be deemed miseducative. Moving worksheets online isn’t remote learning. It’s just worksheets online.
British researcher and consultant Dylan Wiliam makes the claim, supported by cognitive science, that the single most important factor in a child’s learning is the quality of the teacher and the day-to-day interactions that child and adult have. Not class size. Not the design of the classroom space. Not the amount of technology strapped to the wall. Not even the curriculum.
What counts is the expertise of teachers – teachers who spend countless hours designing deep learning experiences to engage their learners, to cause cognitive dissonance, and to fundamentally cause learning. And this comes in all sorts of forms. From traditional teachers at the front of the class, to project-based-learning teachers, and to those who weave back and forth with ease, a teacher’s expertise in teaching is what counts in learning.
COVID has certainly challenged this. With Senior Years learners attending every second day in most of our school divisions, and Early and Middle Years students having to leave for periods of time when cases occur, educators’ expertise has been put to the test. Their ability to replicate what they do in the classroom has been stunted, fractured – perhaps even sabotaged – by a virus that has shown no mercy.
And despite all these challenges, our teachers have persevered.
We have seen that success in the micro and macro adjustments educators make toward deep remote learning derives from three design assumptions. These assumptions rely in turn on the experience, research, critical thought, and desire to collaborate on the part of educators. Again, teachers are engaged in this work, despite the masks, the plexiglass, and the many unknowns.
The first of these assumptions is that what is done in the classroom cannot be replicated. We know the best learning happens in the classroom, on the land, at the internship, or in the lab. With the potential of face-to-face learners, learners connected online in the moment, and learners who need to learn in an asynchronous way, the expertise of a teacher can be stretched and distorted. In these cases, educators have reconceptualized their time. We have learned that an educator’s online time is best spent with small groups and individuals, and engaged in conferencing, coaching, planning, and feedback. Our teachers have expertly designed stations where learners rotate from asynchronous blocks of providing each other with feedback, to a small-group discussion with the teacher, and then time to read, reflect, and design significant projects.
The second assumption of deep remote learning is that the educator knows the curriculum well. Our educators see the curriculum dripping from the buildings and trees when they walk down the street. There are no limits for them. They read ferociously, they are engaged in the community, and they always seek to bring their passion into the classroom. They are able to bring curriculum areas together in powerful transdisciplinary projects that ask learners to engage in adult work – that is work that obliterates silos and domains and work that forces us to wrestle with the unknowns about the human experience.
The final assumption on which deep remote learning is predicated upon is the critical relationship that the educator has not only with the child, but with the family. We have seen this in the Kindergarten teacher who reads with her learners from the front door or in the backyard. We have seen this in the Middle Years educator who knows the circumstances of each of his children and is able to engage with each of them through the choice in reading and writing workshops. We have also observed this through the Seniors Years educator who follows the golden rule when teaching in a pandemic: less is more. There are countless examples of teachers who pull back and bring to light what Parker Palmer deems “the grace of great things.” Big questions, big struggles, big ideas, big history.
All educators are making quick cuts in muddy fields as they react to where their learners are – physically, emotionally, and cognitively. To meet the needs of learners, educators across the system demonstrate what matters: expertise. Expertise in design, expertise in passion, and expertise in love.
We need to nurture and support this expertise as we move further into the abyss that is COVID-19.
Photo: Adobe Stock
In the spring of 2020, schools were closed to limit the spread and impact of COVID-19 across Canada and beyond. As a result, students were suddenly at home with family, where most stayed for many months. Depending on the province and even school board in question, a range of distance and online options for academic learning were offered and/or required.
Those learning at home included about one million students, from Kindergarten through Grade 12, requiring special education services. These students included those who are gifted as well as those with disabilities, including learning disabilities, autism spectrum disorder, and mental illness. A range of programs, supports, and placements are typically offered in schools across Canada to meet the needs of these students. These include accommodations and universally designed teaching approaches provided in general education classes, as well as specialist supports and therapeutic services provided within general and specialized classes and schools (Hutchinson & Specht, 2020). So, what became of these approaches and supports when the learning context shifted from school to home, and what implications did this have for students and families?
In spite of the tremendous efforts of superintendents, principals, and educators to facilitate what would be known as “emergency” distance learning, we weren’t ready as a school system or as a society. We hadn’t planned for this pandemic and we were at various stages of readiness with respect to infrastructure and professional skill sets. What we learned during those months, however, has important implications for our planning going forward – for all students, but in particular for those with special education needs (SEN). Many students with SEN often require human supports at school to navigate daily life, flourish socially and emotionally, and progress in their academic development. It has been a challenge for systems to provide differentiated and appropriate at-home learning opportunities.
In the spring of 2020, we launched a study exploring the experience of families supporting students with special education needs at home during school closures. We surveyed more than 265 parents from across Canada about the learning and social-emotional supports they received, their self-efficacy in supporting their child’s learning, and their own stress levels. We also conducted in-depth interviews with 25 parents and we continue to collect stories about the ways in which families and schools have worked together to meet the needs of students, whether virtually or in face-to-face settings.
Our research over the past several months has documented stories of families supporting students with SEN in myriad ways. Two interconnected learnings arose from our study: at-home learning magnified what already existed, and relationships are key. We offer these learnings to guide our future efforts to create the most accessible learning opportunities possible, whether virtual or in bricks and mortar settings.
It will not be a surprise to anyone familiar with the complex institution of public education in Canada that there are areas to celebrate and areas for improvement. At-home learning shed a bright light on the strengths, cracks, and tensions that already existed within the education system. These were evident in areas such as instructional and pedagogical approaches, inclusive school communities, and the roles and resources of families.
Parents of students with SEN described this magnification of strengths and cracks through their stories of at-home learning in the spring. If inclusive approaches and differentiated instruction were evident in the classroom and school prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, parents saw evidence of these in the at-home learning efforts. If those approaches were not previously in place, they were even less apparent during at-home learning. Some parents we spoke to described the ways that their child’s educators continued to support them when schools closed, based on their deep understanding of the needs of the individual child. For example, one teacher videotaped herself going through the typical morning routine and shared it daily in order to provide consistency and familiarity for students. Another teacher provided options for assignments so students would all have work available at their level of readiness. Multiple parents described regular, personalized video interactions with their child’s teacher or education assistant as the most valuable offering, allowing for social, emotional, and academic support. Other parents said they disengaged from the at-home learning options because they felt that the offerings were poorly suited for their child, resulting in a sense of exclusion from the learning community.
The magnification effect also applied to the skills, resources, and relationships of families supporting students with SEN. Many parents – typically mothers – who were skilled advocates with experience in navigating the school system, were able to seek out and organize school-based resources to support their child during school closures. Those who had financial, work, or health challenges, or who had fewer resources to draw upon, described an abrupt end to services, which increased stress for the family and the child.
For some families, therapeutic services such as applied behaviour analysis, occupational therapy, or speech/language therapies are typically provided through or by schools. When schools closed, therapies stopped. In some communities, creative solutions were found to continue offering coaching for parents to be able to provide some services, and a few examples of direct service via video were noted. Many parents described the weight and stress of having to provide learning and therapeutic supports for their child(ren), often while facing financial pressures or while working at home.
And yet, while many children and families struggled, others flourished. Many families told us about the positives during school closures. Some parents learned an incredible amount about their child – their academic needs and the ways they learn best. Gains were seen by some parents in their child’s social and academic skills, largely because of the efforts made by the parents themselves. Others watched their child grow calmer, happier, and more rested away from the stresses of school schedules and social anxieties. A small number of families we spoke to were prompted by their child’s positive experience to consider leaving the public-school system altogether, either to home-school or to explore private schooling options. This response was more typical among well-resourced parents of young children.
Equity issues such as these are well known within education research and policy, but bubbled to the surface in more obvious ways during school closures and at-home learning.
Relationships – with school staff, with community-based service providers, and for students in particular, with peers – mattered in so many ways for families. Positive, productive, and personal connections served as the crux of successful at-home learning experiences.
Many parents pointed to the regular, personalized check-ins, by email, phone, or video chat, that were offered by their child’s education assistant and/or teacher as the most beneficial support they received from schools. Other parents felt the absence of this connection with their child’s teaching team.
Parents who had struggled to build or maintain strong, collaborative relationships with school staff prior to school closures described frustration and helplessness as these deteriorated even further. Conversely, examples of effective at-home learning experiences always included descriptions of the working alliance that existed between parents and school staff.
Peer relationships were also raised as important by parents. For many students with SEN, particularly those with more significant disabilities, connections with peers exist only at school. During school closures, many families in our study worried about the social and emotional well-being of their child – even more than they worried about them falling behind academically. We heard from families that very little attention was being paid to connecting peers with each other during at-home learning.
So what next? What are we learning about the roles that schools play in the lives of students with special education needs and their families? About the inequities within our systems that privilege some of these families over others? About the ways in which inclusion is experienced by children in school and in virtual settings? And about the relationships that serve as the foundation for the work we do in building communities of learners, educators, and families?
Within and after the pandemic, planning with difference as the driver, and collaboration the vehicle, is one path to greater equity and inclusion.
Relationships mattered in so many ways for families. Positive, productive, and personal connections served as the crux of successful at-home learning experiences.
What does this look like? Imagine that we are Grade 5 teachers, planning our virtual class of 30 students. We know that there are a few students reading below grade level, others who need support to sustain attention, and some who are struggling with feelings of worry or diagnoses of anxiety. We could prepare our activities and lessons for the day, and then consider what we could do differently to accommodate these students. Or we could think about what is required for these students to be successful and for them to be able to participate fully in the lesson. Do they need frequent movement opportunities? A visual schedule that maps out the online time? Options for working without video? Small group meeting rooms to share ideas and solve problems with less public risk? A range of options to show their work? And with our universal design for learning hat on, we know that these approaches are necessary for some students, but helpful for all students.
We use the term “collaboration” in schools often. The value of collaborative pedagogy is embedded in our policy documents, in our mission statements, and in our specific guidance regarding special education services. And it’s one of the toughest things to accomplish in any kind of authentic sense. We are inspired by the stories we were told of families, school staff, and community partners working together, with the voice of the student at the core. We need more of these, and we need to learn from them to tease apart elements we can replicate across the country.
The term “working alliance” has typically been used to describe clients and therapists working together in counselling settings. It has been used recently in education to capture not only the emotional aspect of relationships but also the cognitive aspect of the goals and tasks mutually agreed upon by students and teachers, and by teachers and parents (Knowles et al., 2019; Toste et al., 2015).
Building a working alliance and the key relationships that allow for this collaboration is complex and challenging. We often have the assumption that relationships just happen – as if they are outside of our control and we are at their mercy. Students requiring special education services don’t have the luxury of happenstance when it comes to relationships and collaboration – these need to be in place for them to thrive or even survive.
Focusing on the skills required in collaborating and building working alliances is one step. This skill-building can be done in BEd and continuing teacher education programs – particularly, but not exclusively, those focusing on inclusive classrooms. This idea is not new – collaboration has been listed as key to special education service delivery for decades. But given our findings, renewed attention is warranted.
This collaborative skill-building can best take place within systems that support and foster a focus on partnerships. Are there processes in place that prioritize authentic participation of students, families, and school staff in decision-making? Are there individuals in schools who have specific training in mediation and collaborative problem solving? Are these kinds of interventions considered to support students, families, and school staff in working together? How can some of the virtual approaches we’ve learned about be leveraged to increase participation? Collaboration is emotional work. Do school staff feel that they have the organizational resources they need? What about the emotional well-being of school staff? Is this being attended to and seen as a priority? Are there approaches in place to make sure that staff have the capacity and supports to engage in difficult conversations?
We were caught off guard by the switch to emergency schooling in the spring of 2020. Such an abrupt change of modality was unexpected and system-wide. But in what ways are we better prepared going forward? We are told that waves of viral pandemics may be the norm. We have also learned that virtual options are a great fit for some students, and we should consider opportunities for developing online learning offerings that are truly accessible for all students, including those with SEN. Considering the multiplying effect that emergency schooling had on the strengths, cracks, and tensions of the system, we need to use this time to identify and address the inequities that have been present in the system for decades. Effective, ethical emergency schooling requires a foundation of effective, ethical (non-emergency) schooling.
The pandemic has shifted our reality and much of what we’re experiencing, from wearing masks in classrooms to connecting by way of pool noodles in physical education classes, is new, different, and in many cases, uncomfortable. But what the pandemic has brought to light is what already existed when it comes to the education of students with special education needs. We have seen creative, inclusive efforts by many educators that we can learn from in continuing to build practices that support the participation of as many students as possible – particularly by planning with difference in mind. We also need to attend to skills and structures to ensure that students, families, and school staff are well-supported and resourced as they engage in the challenging work of building effective collaborative relationships.
Photo: iStock
First published in Education Canada, January 2021
Hutchinson, N. L., & Specht, J. A. (2020). Inclusion of learners with exceptionalities in Canadian schools: A practical handbook for teachers (6th ed.). Pearson Canada Inc.
Knowles, C., Murray, C., Gau, J., & Toste, J. R. (2019). Teacher–student working alliance among students with emotional and behavioral disorders. Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment, 38(6), 753–761.
Toste, J. R., Heath, N. L., McDonald Connor, C., & Peng, P. (2015). Reconceptualizing teacher-student relationships: Applicability of the working alliance within classroom contexts. The Elementary School Journal, 116(1), 30–48.