Educators will remember the 1980s as the decade of education reform. How effective those reforms were will be debated into the next century. The present decade will also see a plethora of education reforms attempted and discarded by state and provincial legislatures, by school districts, and by university faculties of education.
When in the spring of 1983 the education reform movement declared war on the “rising tide of mediocrity,” I wrote that “out of this bombardment [of recommendations from task forces] could come a higher standard of education so that 20 years down the road people might say it was education’s finest hour.”[1] I expressed my optimism in Churchillian phrases. Yet, as we have progressed down the road to reform, I see little evidence that we are going to accomplish much of what began with such promise.
I retain my overall optimism for education because I believe in the professionalism of educators. There is hope for the future of education if we heed the warnings of so many outstanding educators who say that only by understanding how teachers practice their profession can we ever hope to make real change in schools. Instead of taking into account the expertise of classroom teachers, the reformers of the past decade overwhelmed teachers with mandates, directives, innovations, and fads. A great wealth of teacher experience was ignored. The reform movement was – and still is – mainly driven by top-down decisions.
In recent years all provinces in Canada have forged ahead with various kinds of education reform. The situation has come to such a pass that teachers – fearing for their professionalism if not for their sanity – are beginning to say that enough is enough. The teachers of Alberta are speaking out loud and clear.
Thousands of Alberta teachers have made their voices heard in Trying to Teach.[2] This 27-page document is the report of the Committee on Public Education and Professional Practice, established by a resolution of the 1992 Annual Representative Assembly (ARA) of the Alberta Teachers’ Association. The committee’s mandate was “to develop and publicize a comprehensive position on and strategies for dealing with the combination of emerging trends in curriculum, methodology, and organization, which are imposing unsound educational practices on teachers and creating conflicting and unreasonable expectations of public education.”
The Alberta teachers were concerned about the rash of “solutions” being proposed for the problems of education – solutions that are sometimes politically motivated and sometimes pushed by administrators who want to give the appearance of being on the cutting edge of reform. One major concern expressed by the delegates debating the ARA resolution was that teachers and their professional association had little or no input into the myriad changes bemg undertaken.
Therefore, the committee sent invitations to all schools in Alberta, requesting that teachers and/or school staffs submit their responses to a list of recent trends or innovations taking place. The committee also sought the recommendations of superintendents, deans of faculties of education, and other educators. A total of more than 200 submissions were received, representing among them the opinions of more than 3,000 teachers.
Trying to Teach passionately and eloquently documents teachers’ responses to eight problematic innovations imposed on schools either by the provincial department of education or by school districts. These eight trends deal with integration of students with special needs into regular classes, results-based curriculum, program continuity, continuous progress, individual education plans, increased external testing, portfolio assessment, and mission statements. Many of the teachers were not opposed to change or reform – not even to the specific trends mentioned above. They saw some of them as good in theory but thought that “through lack of support of faulty implementation [they] may be unsound in practice as a result, or unworkable in their combined impact.”
Each of the eight trends is dealt with separately in the report, and the combined effects are considered as well because of their interrelated nature. The development that caused greatest concern among teachers was the notion of “integration of students with special needs.” Many teachers expressed “absolute support” for this goal but identified critical problems in implementation.
Larry Booi, an outstanding teacher who chaired the committee, pointed out that, given proper support, teachers would gladly accept many changes in their classrooms that would benefit teaching and learning. Booi observed that in general the teachers’ comments opposing some of the changes were made in the context of dedication to teaching and commitment to children. Many reformers and innovators complain that teachers resist change. But Booi does not agree:
We did not hear from the mass of teachers that they were opposed to change. Rather, they were opposed to meaningless change – that is, change that did not lead to improvements in instruction or that made it more difficult to meet the needs of children. They were opposed to changes that were perceived to be based on administrative whim or political expediency. Show them something that will improve their professional practice and that can be reasonably accomplished in their classrooms, and they will adopt it. But it must be their choice as professionals.
The report and two recommendations were presented to the 1993 ARA. The committee recommended that the ARA develop a comprehensive position on public education and professional practice according to the following principles: significant reductions in expectations placed on public education; recognition of the professionalism of teachers and of their right to make choices and judgments in the interests of their students; efficient school organization that recognizes the constraints of group instruction and the reasonable limits to individualization; provision of necessary supports for all introduced changes; opportunities and resources to help teachers refine and perfect instructional techniques; a model for implementing changes under controlled conditions and subject to independent evalution; and the restoration of balance in such areas as the integration of special students and student assessment. Probably the most important principle on which the implementation of change in education depends is “systematic and meaningful input by teachers, individually, in groups, and through their association” on matters that have an effect on their professional practice.
The committee also recommended that an action plan be developed and implemented to provide teachers and their association with an organized framework for promoting and achieving these changes. The 450 ARA delegates who represent 30,000 teachers unanimously approved the committee’s recommendations. They also approved – even in a period of fiscal restraint – $50,000 for the committee to carry on its work. The ongoing work of this committee will have far-reaching effects of the nature of teaching, not only in Alberta but in all of Canada.
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