tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/curriculum-1456/articlesCurriculum – The Conversation2024-02-29T14:40:07Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2239842024-02-29T14:40:07Z2024-02-29T14:40:07ZSouth Africa’s business students want their own industry superheroes and success stories in the syllabus – study<p>In the past few years there’s been much discussion globally about the need to <a href="https://globalchallenges.ch/issue/10/decolonising-education/">decolonise education</a>. Decolonisation is the process of undoing the impact of colonial thinking and its influence in the present. </p>
<p>Scholars have <a href="https://theconversation.com/universities-cant-decolonise-the-curriculum-without-defining-it-first-63948">differing opinions</a> about <a href="https://www.journals.ac.za/index.php/sajhe/article/view/4875">the best way to achieve this</a>, or whether it’s even necessary or desirable. </p>
<p>In South Africa, the issue of decolonisation was spotlighted by students during 2016’s <a href="https://businesstech.co.za/news/trending/141333/feesmustfall-leaders-explain-what-decolonised-education-means/#:%7E:text=%E2%80%9CFees%20Must%20Fall%20is%20an%20intersectional%20movement%20within,imperialist%2C%20colonial%2C%20capitalist%20patriarchal%20culture%2C%E2%80%9D%20the%20statement%20said">#FeesMustFall protests</a>. Eight years on, I was interested in finding out what the current cohort of students thought decolonisation could look like in their classrooms. So I asked final-year students in the management and commerce faculty at a rural campus in the country’s Eastern Cape province to take part in <a href="https://sajournalofeducation.co.za/index.php/saje/article/view/1637/1288%205">a study</a> that would centre their voices and opinions.</p>
<p>Students expressed a desire for decolonisation to embrace two important activities, especially in commerce education. First, students needed their curriculum to feature more business and industry leaders (framed in my study as “superheroes”) from South Africa and the continent more broadly. Second, students advocated for more localised stories and case studies in the courses taught in higher education. </p>
<p>The main issue and thread uniting the two findings? Relatability. These findings offer insight into how a decolonised curriculum can be created by striving for the infusion of <a href="https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/relatable">relatable</a> “superheroes” and stories. </p>
<h2>The status quo</h2>
<p>Much of management and commerce teaching globally can be described using the acronym “<a href="https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/06/100630132850.htm">WEIRD</a>”: it’s dominated by western, educated, industrialised, rich and democratic countries. This reality was flagged by many of the participants in my research. </p>
<p>They saw it, for instance, in which theorists’ and experts’ voices were used versus whose were not. Take US economics scholar Michael Porter: in 1979, in an article for the Harvard Business Review, Porter outlined what have come to be known as “<a href="https://www.isc.hbs.edu/strategy/business-strategy/Pages/the-five-forces.aspx">the five forces</a>”. His framework is useful in understanding the factors that drive competition in industries. </p>
<p>Students extolled the value of this work and did not suggest that it be removed from the curriculum. Instead, they suggested that more African examples be included – for instance, the work of the late Zimbabwean scholar <a href="https://theconversation.com/lovemore-mbigi-will-be-remembered-for-his-teaching-on-ubuntu-in-business-leadership-209260">Lovemore Mbigi</a>, who contributed enormously to research on ubuntu (a concept that emphasises the importance of including everyone and building a strong community) in business leadership.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/lovemore-mbigi-will-be-remembered-for-his-teaching-on-ubuntu-in-business-leadership-209260">Lovemore Mbigi will be remembered for his teaching on ubuntu in business leadership</a>
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<p>To the participants, decolonisation meant giving voice to scholars like Mbigi and increasing the volume of their contribution in classrooms. This would require lecturers to be more intentional in spotlighting what they called “superheroes”: African researchers and experts whose work was relatable to the students’ own context.</p>
<p>There have been efforts in South Africa to encourage case-based teaching similar to what my study advocates for. For instance, the Gordon Institute of Business Science at the University of Pretoria has a dedicated portal that <a href="https://www.gibs.co.za/about-us/faculty/pages/case-study-hub.aspx">houses and offers resources on case-based teaching</a>. Many of these case studies are from South Africa or elsewhere on the continent.</p>
<h2>Context and relatability</h2>
<p>One participant said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>In our (focus) group there appears to be consensus of the need for a change. The type of change that places importance on the role of giving more South African and even African business leaders a chance to be heard. This for us was what decolonisation was all about.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The students suggested that management and commerce teaching lent itself to decolonisation by the very nature of the discipline, which focuses on problem solving and case studies.</p>
<p>One participant reported how their focus group saw decolonised teaching having resonance when it came to business protagonists (that is, leaders in their fields):</p>
<blockquote>
<p>At the core of strategic management instruction is a protagonist, the one that is faced with a dilemma. There needs to be more effort in seeing case examples and the lives of protagonists we can relate with.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Another group reported:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>(We) made important links with the entrepreneurship space. There is (a) need to bring in the experiences of entrepreneurs from the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/township-South-Africa">township</a> and even rural community to the classroom. (This) would edify the teaching experience.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>And another said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Some great stories from South African business leaders fail to see the light of day in making it to the classroom. The challenge could be that researchers are not being active in making sure these stories make it to the classroom.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The students said some lecturers did introduce such examples in class and praised them for creating a pathway for African stories into the curriculum. </p>
<h2>So what happens next?</h2>
<p>I propose three points of consideration, especially for those working in higher education. </p>
<p>First, lecturers should be aware of the context in which they teach, including the material conditions around the students in their classroom. </p>
<p>Second, lecturers need to look for “superheroes” their students can relate to. Such examples are everywhere and their experiences are potentially rich learning fodder for the classroom.</p>
<p>Third, lecturers should be deliberate about making content more relatable. The process could be to train students in case-based writing or investigation skills. Students, through partnering with their lecturers, can help get local cases into the classroom.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/223984/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Willie Tafadzwa Chinyamurindi does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Students want more relatable examples, both of business leaders and of industry case studies.Willie Tafadzwa Chinyamurindi, Professor, University of Fort HareLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2228462024-02-12T19:04:31Z2024-02-12T19:04:31ZChanges are coming to Ontario’s kindergarten program — what parents and caregivers need to know<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574435/original/file-20240208-24-5pusnq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=14%2C592%2C4927%2C2697&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">'Back to basics' language used by the government distracts from the importance of continuously updating and revising curriculum. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Allison Shelley/The Verbatim Agency for EDUimages)</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Ontario Education Minister Stephen Lecce recently announced Ontario’s full-day kindergarten program is undergoing an <a href="https://www.cp24.com/news/ontario-announces-overhaul-of-kindergarten-curriculum-1.6738400">“overhaul” which will help “to create more systemic approaches to reading instruction and the introduction, in a very basic way, of mathematical skills and numeracy skills</a>.”</p>
<p>What do these proposed changes mean for educators, parents and children? </p>
<p>The proposed revisions must be considered and understood in the context of 1) <a href="https://www.dcp.edu.gov.on.ca/en/curriculum/kindergarten">the current full-day play-based kindergarten curriculum</a>, and 2) <a href="https://www.ohrc.on.ca/en/right-to-read-inquiry-report">recommendations and research that emerged from Ontario’s Right to Read report</a>, released in February 2022, stemming from an inquiry of the Ontario Human Rights Commission (OHRC). </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.ohrc.on.ca/sites/default/files/Right%20to%20Read%20Executive%20Summary_OHRC%20English_0.pdf">Right to Read inquiry</a> revealed Ontario’s public education system was not using evidence-based approaches to teach children with reading disabilities (and others) how to read. The education minister also said curricular updates are in keeping with <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/right-to-read-inquiry-report-literacy-ontario-1.6378408">the Right to Read report’s recommendations</a>.</p>
<p>While the province says kindergarten updates will be <a href="https://news.ontario.ca/en/release/1004097/ontario-unveils-a-back-to-basics-kindergarten-curriculum">combined with “hands-on and play-based learning</a>” there are concerns that play-based aspects of the curriculum — also grounded in <a href="https://theconversation.com/full-day-kindergarten-the-best-of-what-we-imagined-is-happening-in-classrooms-112602">evidence-based approaches to child development</a> — could be impacted by curricular revisions.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A child seen holding a book." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574439/original/file-20240208-18-9w9ojl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574439/original/file-20240208-18-9w9ojl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574439/original/file-20240208-18-9w9ojl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574439/original/file-20240208-18-9w9ojl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574439/original/file-20240208-18-9w9ojl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574439/original/file-20240208-18-9w9ojl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574439/original/file-20240208-18-9w9ojl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Curricular updates are in keeping with the Ontario Human Rights Commission’s Right to Read report recommendations.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Piqsels)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Teaching reading isn’t basic</h2>
<p>The “back to basics” language used in the province’s kindergarten announcement is intentionally and strategically tied to Premier Doug Ford’s promise in his <a href="https://ontariopc.ca/">election campaign</a> and is a slogan that Ford (and his team) have <a href="https://www.thestar.com/politics/provincial/premier-doug-ford-says-education-is-going-back-to-the-basics/article_50d11e2c-871b-5818-9c8d-c4aa33b6bc47.html">continued to use since becoming premier</a>. </p>
<p>It is not surprising that this political strategy is being used to market updates to the kindergarten program. </p>
<p>However, this language distracts from the importance of continuously updating and revising curriculum across the kindergarten to Grade 12 education sector. </p>
<p>It’s also important to note that the phrase “basics” is contradictory to what we know about the science of reading: teaching reading is anything but basic and <a href="https://www.aft.org/ae/summer2020/moats">involves understanding reading psychology and development, understanding language structure, applying evidence-based practices and using validated and reliable assessments to inform teaching</a>. </p>
<h2>Ontario’s full-day play-based kindergarten</h2>
<p>The current kindergarten curriculum has been in effect following a 2010 public policy shift. <a href="https://childcarecanada.org/resources/issue-files/resources/issue-files/resources/issue-files/resources/issue-files/resources">Based on recommendations from Ontario’s special advisor on early learning</a>, <a href="https://www.hdsb.ca/Documents/FDK-Parent-Fact-Sheet.pdf">in 2010 Ontario</a> began phasing in full-day play-based kindergarten for all four- and five-year old children. </p>
<p>This shift was also informed by <a href="https://www.oise.utoronto.ca/home/sites/default/files/2023-10/6-2014_-_ontario_s_full-day_kindergarten_a_bold_public_policy_initiative.pdf">interviews, focus groups and published scientific research on early learning</a>.</p>
<p>Essential to the <a href="https://www.ontario.ca/document/kindergarten-program-2016">revised kindergarten program</a> was the play-based structure of the full-day program. So was the delivery of the model by a <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-team-approach-makes-full-day-kindergarten-a-success-113339">teaching team</a> of an Ontario certified teacher and a registered early childhood educator. </p>
<p>Decisions to revise the earlier half-day kindergarten program acknowledged and leveraged research on the <a href="https://theconversation.com/kindergarten-scrapbooks-arent-just-your-childs-keepsake-theyre-central-to-learning-117066">value of play</a> and its role in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/rev3.3097">supporting academic, social and emotional development</a>. </p>
<p>It is important to note that <a href="https://files.ontario.ca/books/edu_the_kindergarten_program_english_aoda_web_oct7.pdf">misconceptions exist about play-based learning</a>, including the belief that play-based learning means letting children do whatever they want. Evidence-based play-based learning <a href="https://files.ontario.ca/books/edu_the_kindergarten_program_english_aoda_web_oct7.pdf">“…involves educators being deliberate and purposeful in creating play-based learning environments</a>.” </p>
<p>Furthermore, play is a basic human right of all children as recognized in the <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/convention-rights-child">United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child</a>. The revised play-based model in Ontario had (and continues to have) both empirical and philosophical grounds.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="An educator seen at a table with children with musical instruments." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574443/original/file-20240208-22-4mox38.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574443/original/file-20240208-22-4mox38.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574443/original/file-20240208-22-4mox38.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574443/original/file-20240208-22-4mox38.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574443/original/file-20240208-22-4mox38.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574443/original/file-20240208-22-4mox38.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574443/original/file-20240208-22-4mox38.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Educators are involved in the purposeful creation of play-based learning environments.‘</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
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</figure>
<h2>The OHRC Right to Read report</h2>
<p>Changes to the above model are now being made in response to recommendations from the Right to Read inquiry. </p>
<p>The inquiry’s report includes 157 recommendations directly tied to addressing systemic issues affecting children’s right to read. These <a href="https://www.ohrc.on.ca/en/right-to-read-inquiry-report/appendix-1-list-recommendations">involve changes to curriculum, instruction and interventions and screening and assessments</a> related to reading. The recommendations for curriculum and instruction focus on the need for evidence-based direct and explicit instruction. </p>
<p>These recommendations were made based on the <a href="https://www.ohrc.on.ca/en/right-to-read-inquiry-report/executive-summary">most up-to-date research on reading, lived experiences of students, families and educators and informed by expertise in the area of human rights</a>. </p>
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<p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/reading-disabilities-are-a-human-rights-issue-saskatchewan-joins-calls-to-address-barriers-214129">Reading disabilities are a human rights issue — Saskatchewan joins calls to address barriers</a>
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<p>The Right to Read report states: “Implementing the OHRC’s recommendations will ensure more equitable opportunities and outcomes for students in Ontario’s public education system.”</p>
<p>In keeping with prior revisions to the Ontario Kindergarten program, current plans to update kindergarten curriculum are being made based on empirical and philosophical grounds.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/iney0cEpx24?wmode=transparent&start=13" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Video from the Right to Read inquiry.</span></figcaption>
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<h2>Not an either/or conversation</h2>
<p>As revisions to Ontario’s kindergarten curriculum unfold, stakeholders need to ensure the best scientific research in both play-based learning and early reading are leveraged to ensure the success of all young children. </p>
<p>The beauty is that play-based learning is not an all-or-nothing approach. Drawing on the benefits of playful learning and using these strategies in combination with evidence-based direct instructional practices in kindergarten will be essential to successfully integrating proposed revisions. </p>
<p>There are many educators in Ontario who already offer meaningful play-based learning opportunities and direct and systematic instruction in their classrooms. </p>
<p>This is evidenced in research published in 2016 <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/10409289.2016.1220771">by early childhood researchers Angela Pyle and Erica Danniels</a> and also in follow-up research by Pyle and colleagues in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s10643-017-0852-Z">2018</a> which focused on how play and literacy interface in full-day kindergarten classrooms. </p>
<p>My current research in kindergarten classrooms, to be published later this year, examines how educators use a range of approaches (including teacher-directed play) to support children’s literacy and self-regulation outcomes. This research has, to date, also documented kindergarten educators using systematic instruction in combination with play-based learning.</p>
<h2>Educators need development, resources</h2>
<p>What’s needed is to ensure kindergarten educators are being provided with training and professional development to effectively lead classrooms utilizing both play-based learning and systematic instruction in reading, writing and math. This task is anything from basic — but is 100 per cent possible and necessary. </p>
<p>As curricular revisions are made, we must ask: </p>
<ul>
<li><p>Who are the stakeholders that are being invited to make the revisions to the curriculum? </p></li>
<li><p>Who is missing from the conversations? </p></li>
<li><p>What research is being used? </p></li>
<li><p>What type of training will be provided to educators? </p></li>
<li><p>Will this training include a focus on what it means to teach in evidence-based ways — and how to do so? </p></li>
<li><p>Will policymakers consider class size and sufficient resourcing for teachers so all students have the classroom supports required to ensure these changes will have real impact?</p></li>
</ul>
<p>In updating a curriculum, we cannot merely add additional content for educators to cover each day. </p>
<p>Instead, we need to consider what these changes mean and how we can best support educators in successfully supporting children’s learning — through both play-based learning and direct instruction.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/222846/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kristy Timmons received funding from Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. She is an Associate Professor of Early Childhood Education at Queen's University, an Ontario Certified Teacher, and a Registered Early Childhood Educator. </span></em></p>We need to ensure the best scientific research in play-based learning and early reading is leveraged, and teachers receive supports to meet children’s developmental and academic needs.Kristy Timmons, Associate Professor, Early Childhood Education, Queen's University, OntarioLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2228872024-02-08T19:17:36Z2024-02-08T19:17:36Z‘It needs to be talked about earlier’: some children get periods at 8, years before menstruation is taught at school<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573999/original/file-20240207-22-gj9n0o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=98%2C0%2C6444%2C4240&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.pexels.com/photo/pantyliners-on-pink-background-7692457/">Karolina Grabowska/ AAP</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Managing menstruation in public can be challenging at the best of times, but imagine being eight years old and having to deal with your period at school. You might need to change your pad during class and explain to your friends why you are not going to the swimming carnival. You might be scared you will bleed through your uniform because there aren’t any sanitary bins in the junior years’ bathroom.</p>
<p>In Australia, the average age of the first period is <a href="https://academic.oup.com/aje/article/185/7/554/3045901#113385236">about 13</a>. But about 12% of children get their period between the ages of eight and 11. Researchers call this “early menarche” or “early onset menstruation”. </p>
<p>But even though a significant proportion of students are getting their first period as early as Year 3 or even Year 2, primary school students are not officially taught about puberty until Years 5 and 6 (when they are aged between 10 and 12).</p>
<p>Our <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14681811.2023.2275595">research</a> explores current period education and what support is available for early menstruators. It shows how schools can act as gatekeepers of knowledge about this essential and very normal part of human development. </p>
<h2>Period shame exists but is not inevitable</h2>
<p>Shame about periods has existed in many parts of the world for centuries. Researchers have noted how children <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK565666/">are taught</a> not to talk about menstruation and if they do, it is often negatively (with a focus on pain and discomfort). </p>
<p>A <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/national/western-australia/period-embarrassment-sees-wa-students-skip-school-more-than-any-other-state-20210530-p57wh8.html">2021 survey</a> found 29% of 659 menstruating Australian students aged ten to 18 were concerned they would be teased at school for having their period.</p>
<p>Similar issues occur as students grow older. A 2022 <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/17455065211070666">Australian survey</a> of 410 university students who menstruate found only 16.2% felt completely confident in managing their periods at university. Just over half believed society thought periods were taboo (and so, not something you talk about). </p>
<p>But the stigma is not inevitable. There are examples of education programs in other countries that celebrate periods and are accessible across ages. </p>
<p>There is a <a href="https://menskompetens.se/">Swedish program</a> that provides information for young people, stories about first periods and advice on how adults can talk to children about menstruation. In the <a href="https://periodpositive.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/a-period-positive-national-curriculum-chella-quint-20-july-2022.pdf">United Kingdom</a>, there are moves to introduce a “period positive” curriculum for school students.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/dirty-red-how-periods-have-been-stigmatised-through-history-to-the-modern-day-206967">'Dirty red': how periods have been stigmatised through history to the modern day</a>
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<h2>What is taught in Australian schools?</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/f-10-curriculum/health-and-physical-education/">Australian curriculum</a> does not not explicitly mention “period” or “menstruation” in any of its online health and physical education curriculum resources, for any year levels up to Year 10. </p>
<p>We can assume schools would cover it under topics such as “understand the physical […] changes that are occurring for them”. But without explicit mention to menstruation or periods, it is likely what is being taught across classrooms in Australia is variable and insufficient.</p>
<p>It was last updated in 2022, under the former Morrison government.</p>
<h2>Our research</h2>
<p>We <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14681811.2023.2275595">interviewed</a> 15 staff across government, Catholic and private primary schools in Australia. We asked staff about their awareness of students who have experienced early onset menstruation, how their students are educated about periods, and what support is available to them. </p>
<p>Staff spoke about how students who menstruated early “felt isolated” and voiced the need for earlier “matter-of-fact” menstruation education. As one teacher told us: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I think we’ve got to take it down to Years 3 and 4 and be a lot more specific than we have been, because you are going to get more and more being younger.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>However, several participants shared apprehension around having discussions about periods with young students. As one teacher explained: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>You don’t want to scare young girls, like seven-and eight-year-olds […] if it is happening earlier, it needs to be talked about earlier. But that’s a hard one because a lot of girls […] aren’t really mature enough to understand […]</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Another teacher said that talking about periods in Year 3 was “probably a bit too much […] you don’t want to traumatise the child”.</p>
<p>Gatekeeping knowledge and awareness about periods from younger children is a problem on multiple levels. For one, it can deprive children of vital information about their bodies. For another, it frames menstruation as something inherently inappropriate, scary or crude. This in turn can reinforce stigma and taboo.</p>
<h2>Can we tell boys about this?</h2>
<p>Staff also spoke about how boys were not necessarily included in lessons about periods, and how male teachers may not have experience talking about these issues. As one teacher told us: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>It is a discussion that’s been done where they don’t really include the boys in it […].</p>
</blockquote>
<p>School staff also raised concerns that teaching boys about menstruation might present an opportunity for bullying or teasing. One school support officer suggested only girls should be taught about periods, noting:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>they [boys] might be like ‘oh, I found your pad!‘</p>
</blockquote>
<p>However, separating classrooms by gender for these lessons does not encourage the normalisation of periods. A <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11199-016-0701-3">2016 study</a> explored the attitudes of 48 Australian men towards menstruation. Participants reported being told little or nothing about periods while growing up, and so they grew up believing it was taboo.</p>
<p>Other teachers in our study noted how important it was for male students to be taught about periods. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I found it really frustrating that we’re giving young men who are eventually going to be in workplaces and potentially in positions of leadership, who are being deprived of these matter-of-fact moments of teaching [about menstruation] where they’re going to sort of pick up these things through like hearsay, through sort of uneducated conversation […]</p>
</blockquote>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/first-periods-can-come-as-a-shock-5-ways-to-support-your-kid-when-they-get-theirs-177920">First periods can come as a shock. 5 ways to support your kid when they get theirs</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>What needs to happen instead?</h2>
<p>Our <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14681811.2023.2275595">study emphasises</a> how a lack of timely and comprehensive education and support for early menstruators in Australian schools is underpinned by menstrual stigma and taboo. </p>
<p>But it also showed how the issue is driven by perceptions of children’s capacity to learn about periods, based on their age and gender.</p>
<p>This research highlights the need for the Australian curriculum to introduce specific menstruation education by at least Year 3 or earlier. The curriculum needs to explain what menstruation is, why it happens, the ways it can be managed and how it will begin happening to their peers and that this is normal.</p>
<p>In the meantime, we encourage all school staff to work towards building menstrual wellbeing by becoming comfortable discussing periods with all students, make period products accessible to all year levels in all bathrooms, and advertise free period product locations to students from Year 3. </p>
<p>This will enable all children who menstruate to manage their periods in school easily and without shame.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/222887/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jessica Shipman receives funding from Flinders Foundation. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Olivia Bellas does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In Australia, the average age of first period is about 13. But about 12% of children get their period between the ages of eight and eleven.Olivia Bellas, PhD Candidate, University of AdelaideJessica Shipman, Senior lecturer, Flinders UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2204852024-01-23T13:30:11Z2024-01-23T13:30:11ZThree South African universities have new approaches to assessing students: why this is a good thing<p>South African higher education faces many complex challenges rooted in the <a href="https://amnesty.org.za/research/broken-and-unequal-the-state-of-education-in-south-africa/">legacy</a> of <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/history-apartheid-south-africa">apartheid</a>. They include <a href="https://theconversation.com/pass-rates-for-school-leavers-in-south-africa-are-failing-students-and-universities-169876">the fact that many students</a> are unprepared for or excluded from higher education. Quality education is not available to all. It’s therefore difficult for many students to remain in higher education and eventually graduate. </p>
<p>The data points to two persistent trends. The first is that, according to 2018 figures, <a href="https://www.oecd.org/education/education-at-a-glance/EAG2019_CN_ZAF.pdf">69%</a> of young South Africans (20-24) were not enrolled in education programmes. </p>
<p>The second is that racial disparities remain in the profile of those enrolled at higher education institutions. In <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/1115545/student-participation-rates-in-south-africa-by-population-group/#:%7E:text=The%20source%20noted%20the%20following,%2C%20and%206.5%25%20were%20colored">2022</a>, black Africans, who make up the <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/1116076/total-population-of-south-africa-by-population-group/">majority</a> ethnic demographic in the country, accounted for only 5.5%. </p>
<p>The knock-on effect for young black South Africans is dramatic. The 2022 unemployment rate of young people (25-34) with a high school qualification was <a href="https://gpseducation.oecd.org/CountryProfile?primaryCountry=ZAF&treshold=5&topic=EO">40.7%</a>. In contrast, <a href="https://gpseducation.oecd.org/CountryProfile?primaryCountry=ZAF&treshold=5&topic=EO">75.3%</a> of those with a tertiary qualification were employed. </p>
<p>There are no simple or easy solutions to such challenges. However, educational assessment speaks to many of them. Assessment is the process of gathering, interpreting and using information to evaluate individuals’ knowledge, skills, abilities or performance. </p>
<p>Three South African universities – the <a href="https://cilt.uct.ac.za/projects/revising-ucts-assessment-policy">University of Cape Town</a>, <a href="https://sunrecords.sun.ac.za/controlled/C4%20Policies%20and%20Regulations/SU%20Assessment%20Policy_FINAL.pdf">Stellenbosch University</a> and the University of the Western Cape – recently approved new assessment policy documents. We were part of a group of University of the Western Cape academics <a href="https://journals.uj.ac.za/SOTL/index.php/sotls/article/view/334">who reviewed these documents</a>. Our main finding was that recent versions reflect global <a href="https://www.jisc.ac.uk/blog/what-is-the-future-of-assessment-and-feedback">shifts</a> in assessment thinking. </p>
<p>We found that previous assessment policy versions were more prescriptive and rigidly rules-based. They dictated what exactly should be done, for example, the examination rules and regulations. The new versions put students at the centre of the assessment process. In addition, they viewed assessment as a <a href="https://www.rpajournal.com/dev/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/SF.pdf">social practice</a>. </p>
<p>We conclude that this is an important shift. Viewing students as potential partners in assessment could be seen as a radical shift in power and responsibility. In emphasising students, and the realities of their diverse and <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-no-fee-school-system-cant-undo-inequality-178559">disadvantaged backgrounds</a>, assessment practices could make higher education more equitable in South Africa. </p>
<h2>Shifts from rules to real people</h2>
<p>Assessment is involved in university admission and selection processes. It influences curriculum design and benchmarking. It is used to ensure that the appropriate standards are met and maintained. It can help diagnose learning gaps and support student development. And, finally, assessment evaluates whether students have learned enough to graduate. </p>
<p>National statutory bodies set higher education standards, but universities develop their own policies and respond to new issues – such as COVID-19 and emergency remote teaching.</p>
<p>In the past, staff and the institution were very much at the centre. They enforced standards, their expertise was gospel and they were the authority on assessment decisions. </p>
<p>Previous policies focused on the more technical side of assessment, emphasising the importance of validity, measurement and judgement. While this focus is not necessarily “bad”, it is misplaced, as it largely ignores who the students are. </p>
<p>These policies dictated uniform rules that needed to be followed without consideration of student population diversity.</p>
<p>Our review shows that new policies adopted by the three institutions acknowledge the importance of the students and the need for their active involvement in assessment. The new policies re-centre students and their learning, which is relevant to the challenges of access, academic achievement, retention and throughput. </p>
<p>The University of Cape Town and the University of the Western Cape engaged students and other stakeholders in developing their new assessment policies. Stellenbosch University also stressed the need to build relationships between staff and students for mutual learning and improvement. Peer and team assessment were mentioned too. </p>
<p>In contrast to the previous rules-based approach, all three new policies put principles and values in the foreground. </p>
<p>For instance, they spoke of flexibility, including the use of technology among other modes of teaching and learning. We speculate that this may have been due, at least in part, to the rapid adaptations during the COVID-19 pandemic. Few in-person examinations took place in 2020 and 2021. </p>
<p>Values such as fairness and inclusivity were highlighted. For example, staff should feel free to assess students through work such as online presentations instead of relying only on traditional written examinations. And students should have more and varied opportunities to be assessed, for example extended deadlines, so as not to disadvantage or exclude them. </p>
<p>The universities also referenced their disability and language policies, acknowledging the diversity of their students. Bias or discrimination (ethnic, gender, linguistic) was unacceptable. Staff were to be culturally aware and contextually sensitive in their assessment practices. </p>
<h2>Impact will take time to judge</h2>
<p>The new policies emphasise the role of the people (staff and students) who practise, experience and are affected by assessment, and the differing contexts in which these take place. </p>
<p>This is encouraging because it acknowledges the need for equity, inclusivity and social justice in South African education.</p>
<p>But enthusiasm should be tempered. We reviewed only three out of 26 public universities. Institutions are free to update their policies – or not.</p>
<p>Also, it’s not known how well these policies are understood, accepted and implemented by staff, students and the public. It’s important for students, families and employers, as well as lecturers, to understand what students are expected to achieve, how they are being evaluated and what universities are doing to give them a fair chance of success. </p>
<p>The final caveat is that it will take time to see what impact the new approach will have on diversity, access, retention, throughput, academic achievement and employment.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/220485/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Assessment is involved in many of the challenges facing higher education.Danica Sims, Lecturer, University of OxfordRajendran Govender, Dean of Faculty of Education, University of the Western CapeSamuel Lundie, Teaching and Learning Specialist, University of the Western CapeSimone Titus, Associate Professor: Health Professions Education, Stellenbosch UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2212302024-01-17T15:41:01Z2024-01-17T15:41:01ZShould Kenya abolish all school exams? Expert sets out five reasons why they’re still useful<p>The role of <a href="https://www.standardmedia.co.ke/health/education/article/2001488553/highlights-of-the-2023-kcse-results">examinations</a> in Kenyan schools is under scrutiny. This is because there is a lot that is wrong with the country’s examinations, a situation that threatens to derail <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-the-new-education-curriculum-is-a-triumph-for-kenyas-children-75090">education gains made over the decades</a>. </p>
<p>For instance, for two consecutive years – <a href="https://www.the-star.co.ke/news/realtime/2023-10-12-report-how-cheating-was-orchestrated-in-2022-kcse-exam/">last year and the year before</a> – the periods during the country’s national examination period were marred by <a href="https://www.the-star.co.ke/news/2024-01-08-kcse-results-for-4109-candidates-suspected-of-cheating-withheld/">allegations of leaked tests</a>. These allegations are linked to <a href="https://www.standardmedia.co.ke/article/2001302037/exam-cheating-cartel-exposed">cartels</a> which make money from parents and learners.</p>
<p>There were also reports this year of high school students receiving <a href="https://www.the-star.co.ke/news/realtime/2024-01-10-kcse-2023-candidates-schools-and-parents-in-shock-over-changing-grades/">contradicting results</a> from the examinations results portal. </p>
<p>These issues cast doubt on the trustworthiness of the examining body and the ministry of education in general. </p>
<p>In 2017 the government set out to replace summative examinations – national tests done at the end of eight years of primary school and four years of high school – with continuous assessments. Most students have moved over to the new system, which revolves around a <a href="https://theconversation.com/6-priorities-to-get-kenyas-curriculum-back-on-track-or-risk-excluding-many-children-from-education-195235">competency-based curriculum</a>. But four more cohorts of students still have to sit the annual national high school examinations under Kenya’s old education curriculum. There is still a lot that is unclear about how the new curriculum will assess students in secondary school.</p>
<p>As someone who has been <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=12A_S6QAAAAJ&view_op=list_works&sortby=pubdate">involved in education for over 20 years</a>, I believe that exams are crucial. There are five main reasons for this, including highlighting inequalities in the education system and providing learners with guidance on their career path.</p>
<p>But they need to be done right to be effective. For any system to work efficiently – which Kenya’s doesn’t – this includes changing a situation in which so much relies on the exam outcome. Other career pathways need to be opened up so that children aren’t under such huge pressure. Also, schools need adequate staffing and facilities to promote learning. </p>
<h2>Why examinations matter</h2>
<p>There are compelling reasons not to do away with examinations. </p>
<p>First, examinations help identify, understand and address inequalities in access to education. As a <a href="https://www.unesco.org/en/right-education">basic human right</a>, every child should be able to get a quality education. A persistently low performance in examinations can be an indicator of <a href="https://www.oecd.org/education/school/50293148.pdf#page=11">personal or social obstacles</a> like gender, geographical position, social class, race or ethnicity in a learner’s life. </p>
<p>Second, examinations help improve teaching and learning by strengthening teaching methods. A learner-centred approach has <a href="https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1143881.pdf#page=3">better outcomes</a> than a teacher-centred one, which tends to silence learners’ voices. Tests help indicate which students need additional help to support their learning. </p>
<p>Third, they are used as a <a href="https://learningportal.iiep.unesco.org/en/blog/four-reasons-why-we-need-credible-examinations-in-sub-saharan-africa">tool</a> for knowing what learners are learning and its relevance to the country’s development goals. Education is <a href="https://www.oecd.org/education/school/50293148.pdf#page=5">closely linked</a> to the political, social and economic development of a country. Examinations test the skills, knowledge and values that students pick up in the course of an education cycle, and how well the country can harness these skills and knowledge to industrialise and for general development. </p>
<p>Fourth, examinations provide guidance for learners’ personal and career development in the post-secondary world. This gives tertiary institutions the opportunity to select suitable students for various career pathways in their institutions. However, high school examination results are not necessarily a <a href="https://search.informit.org/doi/abs/10.3316/ielapa.200100198">predictor of student success</a> in tertiary education.</p>
<p>Fifth, examinations offer <a href="https://bestaccreditedcolleges.org/articles/careers-and-education/what-is-an-educational-certificate.html">qualifying certification</a> that accounts for a student’s time in a learning institution. This certification shows that one has successfully completed an education period. </p>
<h2>What needs to change</h2>
<p>But this system needs to be improved.</p>
<p>Firstly, the pressure needs to be taken off children sitting final examinations at school. Many candidates write examinations under immense pressure and anxiety as failing a national examination has major implications on the direction their life takes. For this to change, Kenya’s education system needs to be geared to <a href="https://nation.africa/kenya/news/gender/exams-must-never-be-allowed-to-define-our-children-s-worth-4456844">preparing students</a> to seize other opportunities of earning a livelihood beyond going to university. </p>
<p>Secondly, examinations have been given <a href="https://www.tuko.co.ke/kenya/counties/534280-kakamega-video-parents-chasing-school-principal-poor-kcse-results-angers-kenyans/">outsized importance as an accountability measure</a> in the education system, despite other factors being at play. These include adequate staffing, having trained and motivated teachers, and providing a good work environment and facilities. </p>
<p>Thirdly, the ranking of top schools and learners based on exam results needs to be abolished entirely. The government officially <a href="https://www.capitalfm.co.ke/news/2014/11/kcse-student-school-exam-ranking-abolished/">stopped such rankings in 2014</a>, but the practice persists in other forms, like in <a href="https://nation.africa/kenya/news/education/kabarak-basks-in-national-glory-as-school-tops-exam--4486054">informal media rankings</a>.</p>
<p>Rankings promote elitism and corruption. Schools that are ranked “the best” are often those near urban centres, and have better teaching facilities than those in rural or marginalised areas. Parents who can afford it can <a href="https://www.capitalfm.co.ke/news/2024/01/eacc-urges-parents-to-report-headteachers-soliciting-bribes-for-form-1-admission/">pay bribes</a> to get their children admitted into such schools, even if these students don’t meet the grades officially required. This crowds out poor and deserving learners.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/798140/pdf">dangers of ranking schools</a> include the exclusion of non-performing learners, forced repetition of classes and the transfer or dropping out of students perceived to be poor academically. Rankings narrow curriculum coverage, lead to the neglect of other aspects of education and encourage examination malpractices. </p>
<h2>Way forward</h2>
<p>Examinations are viewed negatively for a number of reasons. These include increased stress levels among learners, and human interference in the management and administration processes. But they still play a relevant role in providing a quantitative measure of a learner’s academic ability. This helps with identifying their strengths and weaknesses, which provides an idea of where to place them in tertiary institutions or in jobs.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/221230/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Beatrice M’mboga Akala does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Examinations help a country measure if its system of education is teaching the skills and knowledge needed to meet development goals.Beatrice M’mboga Akala, Lecturer, University of the WitwatersrandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2189142023-11-30T19:03:29Z2023-11-30T19:03:29ZThe Australian Curriculum is copping fresh criticism – what is it supposed to do?<p>This week a new <a href="https://learningfirst.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/FULL-REPORT-COMBINED.pdf">report</a> said there was a “curriculum problem” in Australia. Education consultancy group <a href="https://learningfirst.com/about-us/">Learning First</a> found the science curriculum lacked depth and breadth and had major problems with sequencing and clarity.</p>
<p>While the report said it was not “assigning blame directly to the curriculum”, it also noted since the Australian Curriculum was introduced more than a decade ago, “the performance of students in international […] science assessments has fallen by almost a whole year of schooling”.</p>
<p>Headlines followed about a “<a href="https://www.smh.com.au/education/shockingly-poor-how-australia-s-science-curriculum-fails-students-20231122-p5elvz.html">shockingly poor</a>” curriculum and “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/nov/27/australian-education-in-long-term-decline-due-to-poor-curriculum-report-says">long-term decline</a>” in performance. At the same time, <a href="https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/teachers-no-option-but-to-make-lessons-up/news-story/cbaf7cdaa48209ed8780d92ffba16797">The Australian reported</a> concerns the curriculum does not provide enough guidance to teachers.</p>
<p>While students’ scores on some international assessments <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/education/alarm-bells-australian-students-record-worst-result-in-global-tests-20191203-p53gie.html">have been falling</a>, is it right to blame the curriculum for these trends? </p>
<h2>What is the Australian Curriculum?</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/about-the-australian-curriculum/">Australian Curriculum</a> is designed for students from the first year of schooling to Year 10. </p>
<p>It sets out:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>the expectations for what all young Australians should be taught, regardless of where they live in Australia or their background.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It is made up of eight “learning areas”: English, mathematics, science, humanities and social sciences, the arts, technologies, health and physical education, and languages.</p>
<p>It has <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-do-australian-states-need-a-national-curriculum-and-do-teachers-even-use-it-171745">been described as a “map”</a> of all the learning a teacher covers in each year for each particular subject.</p>
<p>Importantly, as <a href="https://theconversation.com/first-its-not-an-instruction-manual-3-things-education-ministers-need-to-know-about-the-australian-curriculum-173058">education experts note</a>, the curriculum was never meant to be prescriptive and nor should it be. Teachers should be able to tailor lessons to particular classes, situations and students. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-do-australian-states-need-a-national-curriculum-and-do-teachers-even-use-it-171745">Why do Australian states need a national curriculum, and do teachers even use it?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Who sets the curriculum?</h2>
<p>It is designed by the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority, in consultation with teachers, academics, parents, business, industry and community groups. It undergoes a review every six years and all updates are subject to ministerial approval.</p>
<p>Commonwealth and state and territory education ministers first approved the curriculum in 2009. It was designed to reflect the priorities of the 2008 <a href="https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED534449.pdf">Melbourne Declaration</a> on the purposes and goals of Australian education. For example, “Australian schooling promotes equity and excellence”.</p>
<p>The curriculum has since been updated four times (as recently as April 2022 under the Morrison government) but remains a <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-is-peter-dutton-trying-to-start-another-political-fight-over-the-school-curriculum-187021">contested document</a>. Common <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-crowded-curriculum-sure-it-may-be-complex-but-so-is-the-world-kids-must-engage-with-157690">criticisms</a> include that the curriculum is overcrowded, too complicated, <a href="https://theconversation.com/teaching-a-hatred-of-australia-no-minister-heres-why-a-democracy-has-critical-curriculum-content-167697">too political</a> and not inclusive enough. </p>
<h2>Teacher shortages and lack of funding</h2>
<p>Given the curriculum has to cover so much diverse content and serve so many purposes, criticism is all but inevitable. </p>
<p>While it is important to scrutinise the curriculum, it does not dictate how students learn or the conditions they learn in. So we should not let “<a href="https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/not-interested-in-picking-fights-new-education-minister-says-curriculum-wars-have-been-settled-20220603-p5aqtb.html">curriculum wars</a>” distract us from other issues hurting Australian schools and education. </p>
<p>Australia is in the midst of a <a href="https://www.education.gov.au/teaching-and-school-leadership/consultations/national-teacher-workforce-action-plan">serious teacher shortage</a>. In <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-10-24/nsw-casual-teacher-shortage-educational-support/103015334">New South Wales alone</a>, 10,000 classes per day are not adequately staffed due to shortages. Teachers are plagued by <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00049441221086654">excessive workloads</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/school-principals-are-reaching-crisis-point-pushed-to-the-edge-by-mounting-workloads-teacher-shortages-and-abuse-201777">abuse</a> and a <a href="https://theconversation.com/no-wonder-no-one-wants-to-be-a-teacher-world-first-study-looks-at-65-000-news-articles-about-australian-teachers-186210">lack of respect</a> for the profession. </p>
<p>Public schools are also battling <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/nov/23/australia-100-wealthiest-schools-earnings-income-data-education-department">dire funding shortages</a>. A <a href="https://www.aeufederal.org.au/news-media/news/2023/how-school-funding-fails-public-schools-report">report</a> for the Australian Education Union recently found private schools were overfunded by about $800 million in 2023, while government schools were underfunded by $4.5 billion. </p>
<p>This is based on the <a href="https://www.education.gov.au/recurrent-funding-schools/schooling-resource-standard">Schooling Resource Standard</a>, which outlines the minimum funding standard required for schools to respond adequately to their students’ needs. </p>
<p>In chronically underfunded schools with staffing shortages, it is no surprise students’ performance will be affected, regardless of teachers’ efforts – or whatever is in the curriculum. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A student works at a desk with a notebook, ruler, phone and books." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/562595/original/file-20231130-15-rqbb3z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/562595/original/file-20231130-15-rqbb3z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562595/original/file-20231130-15-rqbb3z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562595/original/file-20231130-15-rqbb3z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562595/original/file-20231130-15-rqbb3z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562595/original/file-20231130-15-rqbb3z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562595/original/file-20231130-15-rqbb3z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Recent figures show 10,000 classes in NSW are without a teacher per day.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://unsplash.com/photos/person-drawing-on-white-sketch-pad-zuQDqLFavI4">Tamarcus Brown/Unsplash</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>What do schools actually need?</h2>
<p>The curriculum should be revised, challenged and critiqued to ensure it is responsive to the ever-changing needs of Australian students. We should also hold high expectations for quality education in Australia. </p>
<p>But blaming the curriculum for underperformance is a distraction from bigger issues that impact student learning. </p>
<p>What schools really need to succeed is <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-11-20/report-funding-divide-australian-public-private-education-system/103123514">adequate funding</a> and a stable and <a href="https://blog.aare.edu.au/why-restoring-trust-in-teaching-now-could-fix-the-teacher-shortage/">well-supported</a> teaching workforce.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-the-national-school-reform-agreement-and-what-does-it-have-to-do-with-school-funding-202847">What is the National School Reform Agreement and what does it have to do with school funding?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/218914/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jessica Holloway receives funding from the Australian Research Council. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stephanie Wescott does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Two education researchers argue it is important we don’t let ‘curriculum wars’ distract us from the other issues hurting Australian schools and education.Stephanie Wescott, Lecturer in Education, Monash UniversityJessica Holloway, Senior Research DECRA Fellow, Institute for Learning Sciences and Teacher Education, Australian Catholic UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2137822023-10-03T19:35:30Z2023-10-03T19:35:30ZHistory teaching in South Africa could be vastly improved – if language skills were added to the mix<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/549746/original/file-20230922-16-n0uvt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Combining content learning and language skills is a boon for academic performance.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Epicurean</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In recent years there’s been <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Russell-Cross-3/publication/343283423_CLIL_in_Multilingual_and_English-Background_Contexts_Expanding_the_Potential_of_Content_and_Language_Integrated_Pedagogies_for_Mainstream_Learning/links/64ab7f63b9ed6874a509e50b/CLIL-in-Multilingual-and-English-Background-Contexts-Expanding-the-Potential-of-Content-and-Language-Integrated-Pedagogies-for-Mainstream-Learning.pdf">growing recognition</a> among education experts that <a href="https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1279084.pdf">integrating content and language learning</a> is key to promoting comprehensive academic achievement.</p>
<p>This is particularly relevant in multilingual education systems where English serves as the primary medium of instruction. </p>
<p>So, in 2013, South Africa’s Department of Basic Education, which is responsible for primary and secondary education, set out to enhance academic performance through a strategy called <a href="https://www.education.gov.za/Portals/0/Documents/Manuals/Manual%20for%20Teaching%202.pdf?ver=2015-04-24-153244-727">English Across the Curriculum</a>. This approach involves integrating language skills in content subjects such as history. Language skills include listening and speaking; reading and viewing; writing and presenting; and language structures and conventions. </p>
<p>The initiative was designed to guide teachers in public schools who lacked prior experience in merging content subjects like history, <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-72009-4_4">physical sciences</a> and mathematics with language learning. It was a compulsory tool to reinforce the use of English as a language of learning and teaching and a way to address language barriers to academic success in primary and high schools. </p>
<p>Four years later, the department released <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books/about/English_Across_the_Curriculum_EAC.html?id=_hgdywEACAAJ&redir_esc=y">a report</a> revealing that many content teachers were not using the strategy effectively. As an expert in curriculum studies, I wanted to know what was holding teachers back. I conducted <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/tesj.748">qualitative research</a> that focused on grade 8 social science educators teaching history at four schools in the Eastern Cape province. </p>
<p>My findings suggest that most educators were not intentionally choosing or setting out to integrate English language learning skills with history content. Two of the four schools did not have formal, explicit policies to use English Across the Curriculum. </p>
<p>But, intriguingly, I found that the history teachers at the schools without such policies still worked to impart language skills to their pupils. They were able to do so for several reasons. </p>
<p>Firstly, they adjusted their teaching to encompass both language and subject skills, driven by their extensive understanding of how their subject is taught and the support needed for learners to develop historical competence. Second, they were personally committed to imparting language skills. And third, they were proficient in the English language themselves.</p>
<p>This underscores the idea that effective teaching practices transcend mere policy implementation. They also require educators to be well-equipped with both skills to teach in any context to ensure that their pupils learn with comprehension as opposed to just implementing policies. </p>
<h2>What teachers told me</h2>
<p>I had the opportunity to interview 15 teachers who teach grade 8 history at seven schools. Grade 8 is the entry level to South Africa’s secondary school; the average age of pupils at this level is 14 or 15.</p>
<p>In my initial discussions with these 15 teachers, 11 indicated that, while they were aware of the English Across the Curriculum approach, they were not using it.</p>
<p>I ultimately interviewed four teachers from four schools. All were intentionally choosing to integrate content and language teaching. Two did so because of their schools’ policies. They taught at what are often referred to as <a href="https://wiredspace.wits.ac.za/server/api/core/bitstreams/a5993764-50b3-450a-b5b1-cf6e3b48fb30/content">former model C schools</a> (reserved for white students before 1994 and fairly well-resourced). </p>
<p>The other two schools were in highly populated and resource-constrained communities and did not have English Across the Curriculum policies. However, the teachers I interviewed took the initiative and used language teaching as an academic support mechanism for their learners. </p>
<p>All four teachers primarily employed activities such as vocabulary development, clustering exercises, and the use of writing frames that encompassed sentences and paragraphs. Clustering activities allowed the learners to use mind maps and word associations as a way of encouraging them to organise historical ideas into interconnected categories and narratives. They said these exercises helped to make learning more engaging and interactive. One of the teachers told me: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>For grade 8s, these activities help organise their thoughts and language structures. It allows for free-writing and peer feedback. When they have ideas and points on what to write, they complete their tasks satisfactorily. I am saying satisfactorily because for most of them, the language is a struggle. You know sometimes, I wish they could just write in isiXhosa or Afrikaans.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The teachers also told me they knew it was important to impart language skills because some of their grade 8 learners, emerging from the COVID pandemic, had not fully developed their vocabulary and writing abilities in primary school. One of the teachers explained that: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Instead of just teaching history, I also work on helping them with their language skills. History needs learners that can read with comprehension, so it would be pointless to teach them without providing reading strategies. While this approach may be time-consuming, it is helpful to my learners. </p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Training is key</h2>
<p>My findings suggest that, while English Across the Curriculum policies are undoubtedly important, educators’ individual commitment and adaptability, coupled with their expertise in subject-specific language, play an important role in achieving successful integration of language and content instruction. </p>
<p>There are several ways that my findings could be integrated into training. The Department of Basic Education requires in-service teachers to pursue continuous professional development. The coordinators of that development must prioritise English as a medium of instruction alongside content teaching in secondary schools.</p>
<p>Trainee teachers, meanwhile, should be equipped with the pedagogical skills needed to seamlessly integrate content and language teaching in the secondary school curriculum. </p>
<p>My findings also emphasise the crucial role that schools play in nurturing a sense of agency among teachers. The two teachers whose schools did not have a policy were still empowered to teach in a manner that fostered effective learning. They used their knowledge about their schools’ communities and their individual students to facilitate language development. </p>
<p>But policies are still important: a structured approach to integrating content and language teaching indicates a collaborative effort between a school’s administration and its educators.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/213782/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nhlanhla Mpofu does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>There’s more to effective teaching than just implementing school policies.Nhlanhla Mpofu, Chair- Curriculum Studies, Stellenbosch UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2131032023-09-28T14:16:10Z2023-09-28T14:16:10ZAkan folklore contains ancient wisdom that could benefit Ghana’s western-style education system<p>Philosophies of education serve as frameworks for producing lifelong learners and a knowledgeable and skilled human workforce who develop their societies. Ghana’s education system currently favours a western educational philosophy, relegating its indigenous philosophies to the back burner.</p>
<p>I am an <a href="https://www.ug.edu.gh/distance/staff/dr-samuel-amponsah">academic</a> in the field of curriculum studies. In a <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11159-023-09993-x">recent paper</a>, I argue that education in Ghana needs to incorporate more elements based on an authentic Ghanaian framework. Based on the view that education, culture and development should be connected, I highlight the educational strengths of African folklore.</p>
<p>I conclude that aspects of Akan folklore, including its stories and proverbs, its kinship rights and rules, its moral codes, its corporate and humanistic perspective, complement the country’s current westernised education.</p>
<p>It is in this spirit that education lecturer <a href="https://www.unisa.ac.za/sites/corporate/default/Colleges/Education/Schools,-departments,-centres-&-instututes/School-of-Educational-Studies/Department-of-Adult-Basic-Education/Staff-members/Prof-KP-Quan%E2%80%93Baffour">Kofi Poku Quan-Baffour</a> has <a href="http://hdl.handle.net/10500/14348">referred to</a> the Akan proverb <em>Tete wobi ka, tete wobi kyere</em>. It means “heritage has lots to say, heritage has lots to teach”. Folklore holds benefits. </p>
<h2>The case for Akan folklore</h2>
<p>Ghana has about <a href="https://cdn.unrisd.org/assets/library/papers/pdf-files/asante-ssmall.pdf">92 ethnic groups</a>. The largest of these is the Akan. They can be found in eight of the <a href="https://mfa.gov.gh/index.php/about-ghana/regions/">16 regions</a> of the country and in parts of <a href="https://resources.saylor.org/wwwresources/archived/site/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Akan-People.pdf">Côte d'Ivoire</a> and <a href="https://resources.saylor.org/wwwresources/archived/site/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Akan-People.pdf">Togo</a>. The influence of the Akan in Ghana and west Africa is not just by virtue of their numerical strength but also due to their strong culture and the spirit that binds them. They have been able to maintain their culture throughout the blows of colonial history.</p>
<p>I argue that Akan folklore can be integrated into the school curricula to teach social skills and emotional intelligence. After all, education seeks to provide learners with the knowledge, skills and attitudes that will make them functional and responsible members of their communities. </p>
<p>This tool may also benefit learners in colleges of education and universities offering Ghanaian languages and related courses. The crucial question here is: where is the place of indigenous pedagogy as a tool in nursing and agricultural training colleges, technical universities and the like? </p>
<p>Without indigenous components in their course curricula, students may graduate from such institutions as professionals who have lost their culture. They will not pass on indigenous values in their own teaching practice. </p>
<h2>Not just proverbs and stories</h2>
<p>Researchers such as <a href="https://www.ug.edu.gh/linguistics/staff/diabah">Grace Diabah</a> and <a href="https://www.ug.edu.gh/vc/about">Nana Appiah Amfo</a> have established the power of folklore types like proverbs to <a href="https://www.ajol.info/index.php/gjl/article/view/181293">deal with</a> important topics like gender. Unfortunately, the focus of education has leaned heavily towards <a href="https://theconversation.com/ghanas-colonial-past-and-assessment-use-means-education-prioritises-passing-exams-over-what-students-actually-learn-this-must-change-211957">examination performance</a> and readying learners for the job market. There is no recourse to the rich culture of the people. The absence of indigenous components in course curricula results in a graduate population without any appreciation for cultural identity. </p>
<p>In their study on <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09751122.2015.11890253">integrating indigenous knowledge in the teaching of intermediate mathematics</a>, for example, James Owusu-Mensah and Kofi Poku Quan-Baffour argue that Akan indigenous knowledge systems such as storytelling and games could make subjects easier for learners to relate to and comprehend.</p>
<p>Furthermore, short Akan sayings add spice to the <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/369549251_Akan_folklore_as_a_philosophical_framework_for_education_in_Ghana">debate</a> that African philosophies can contribute to sustainable quality education for development. Examples such as <em>Kwan nkyɛn ade yɛfɛ, wᴐde sika na ɛyɛ</em>, which roughly translates to “money is needed for everything” and <em>wᴐnsom ԑne nipa</em> (success accrues from collective efforts) undoubtedly take most Ghanaians back to their roots to learn hard, work diligently and live cooperatively.</p>
<p>The urgent need to preserve the environment and its biodiversity also resonates in traditional taboos. These establish rules on days not to farm, hunt or go fishing. This is also done to keep certain flora and fauna sacred and protected. </p>
<h2>Looking ahead</h2>
<p>My research revealed that there is a need to develop and use an alternative indigenous philosophical framework, drawing on Akan folklore. There is a need to display a sense of commonalities, affirm culture, tradition and value systems, and foster comprehension of the local consciousness in a bid to resolve the challenges people are facing. </p>
<p>In a nutshell, while western philosophies open students up to global understandings and perspectives, Akan folklore grounds them in their own culture. Quality education of the kind proposed in this article will produce students and graduates who are beneficial to their societies while understanding, appreciating, cooperating and contributing to global issues and development.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/213103/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Samuel Amponsah does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Incorporating Akan folklore in the curriculum will promote quality and lifelong education in Ghana.Samuel Amponsah, Associate Professor, Open Distance Learning, University of GhanaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2099372023-07-27T20:10:12Z2023-07-27T20:10:12ZWhy B.C. has ended letter grades for younger students<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/538780/original/file-20230721-17-c8rqc3.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=1372%2C350%2C5108%2C3444&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">B.C. Premier David Eby signs a student's cast as he visits a classroom to mark the opening of the new Bayview Community Elementary School, in Vancouver, B.C., April 13, 2023. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck</span></span></figcaption></figure><iframe style="width: 100%; height: 100px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" allow="clipboard-read; clipboard-write" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/why-bc-has-ended-letter-grades-for-students-in-kindergarten-to-grade-9" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>In British Columbia, the province’s move away from letter grades for some students has <a href="https://globalnews.ca/video/9797857/mixed-opinions-on-students-moving-to-proficiency-grading-scale/">produced anxiety</a> or has been opposed by <a href="https://bc.ctvnews.ca/b-c-pursues-plan-to-end-letter-grades-despite-opposition-from-parents-teachers-students-1.6456772">some parents and teachers</a>. </p>
<p>“Beginning in the 2023/24 school year, all school districts in B.C. will no longer use letter grades for grades 4-9, and will implement the Provincial Proficiency Scale on report cards for students in grades K-9,” a spokesperson for the B.C. Ministry of Education and Child Care said in an email to <em>The Conversation Canada</em>.</p>
<p>“At least half of B.C. students are familiar with this type of report card as it is already in place in their school district.”</p>
<p>The B.C. changes reflect larger paradigm shifts in education. But for many people, letting go of the older model is not easy. </p>
<p>Anxiety and discomfort about this change <a href="https://globalnews.ca/video/9797857/mixed-opinions-on-students-moving-to-proficiency-grading-scale">could be alleviated by unpacking the rationale behind it</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A parent and child seen crossing a crosswalk to go to school." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/538782/original/file-20230721-23-toota7.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/538782/original/file-20230721-23-toota7.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/538782/original/file-20230721-23-toota7.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/538782/original/file-20230721-23-toota7.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/538782/original/file-20230721-23-toota7.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/538782/original/file-20230721-23-toota7.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/538782/original/file-20230721-23-toota7.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Letting go of a letter-grade model isn’t necessarily easy.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jonathan Hayward</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Curriculum overhaul</h2>
<p>British Columbia’s kindergarten to Grade 12 education system has been undergoing <a href="https://www.bctf.ca/news-and-opportunities/news-details/2019/08/02/the-politics-of-curriculum-making-understanding-the-possibilities-for-and-limitations-to-a-teacher-led-curriculum-in-british-columbia">an overhaul</a> since 2010. </p>
<p>Roots of this transformation lie in the <a href="https://curriculum.gov.bc.ca/rethinking-curriculum">shifting needs of the economy, away from industrialization and towards a more “technologically-rich” world</a>. Adoption of the new curriculum occurred <a href="https://www.cotronline.ca/pluginfile.php/495272/mod_resource/content/1/BC%20K-12%20Curriculum%20Timeline%20of%20Rollout.pdf">in phases</a>, beginning in 2015 for kindergarten to Grade 9, and in 2019 for grades 10 through 12. </p>
<p>The move to proficiency scale assessment is one aspect of this larger transformation. The scale visualizes learning as a continuum where students progress through the stages of Emerging, Developing, Proficient and Extending.</p>
<h2>The rationale</h2>
<p>The centrepiece of B.C.’s new curriculum is a set of <a href="https://curriculum.gov.bc.ca/competencies">core competencies</a> — cross-curricular proficiencies for students in the domains of communication, critical thinking and social-emotional awareness and relations. Teachers will use the scale <a href="https://curriculum.gov.bc.ca/sites/curriculum.gov.bc.ca/files/pdf/assessment/a-framework-for-classroom-assessment.pdf">to assess how students are doing</a> in developing these competencies.</p>
<p>The scale operates from <a href="https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/education-training/k-12/administration/legislation-policy/public-schools/student-reporting-for-families">a strengths-based perspective</a> that views all students as coming to school with inherent skills. Classroom learning seeks to build upon this.</p>
<p>Proficiency scale assessment regards learning as ongoing, whereas the letter grade and percentages system viewed learning as an event with a definite end.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A classroom." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/538781/original/file-20230721-6786-2w0qdx.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/538781/original/file-20230721-6786-2w0qdx.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/538781/original/file-20230721-6786-2w0qdx.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/538781/original/file-20230721-6786-2w0qdx.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/538781/original/file-20230721-6786-2w0qdx.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/538781/original/file-20230721-6786-2w0qdx.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/538781/original/file-20230721-6786-2w0qdx.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Scale-style assessment operates with the notion that all students come to school with inherent skills. A classroom is seen in Vancouver, B.C. in April 2023.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Letter grades: highlighting students’ deficits</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.weareuca.org/s/edutopiaorg-Will-Letter-Grades-Survive.pdf">Letter grades and percentages</a> position some students (with As or Bs) as having strengths, while other students (with Cs or Ds) are regarded as not even being on the continuum of learning. Letter grades highlight the deficits of underperforming students, thereby perpetuating a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts. They also only give a snapshot of current achievement.</p>
<p>By contrast, scale-style assessment offers a broader outlook because it considers student learning over time. With the new curriculum, scores on tests are not all that matter. Teachers are encouraged to assign equal value to all the learning that happens between tests, including through <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-94-007-1727-5_11">formative</a> and <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2009-24359-004">descriptive feedback</a> that students subsequently reflect upon and implement to further refine their work. </p>
<p>Many <a href="https://www.bctf.ca/news-and-opportunities/news-details/2021/06/11/growth-not-grades-student-centred-assessment">educators observe that</a> continuous <a href="https://www.lifescied.org/doi/full/10.1187/cbe.cbe-14-03-0054">descriptive feedback</a> is more effective <a href="https://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/education/administration/kindergarten-to-grade-12/information-for-parents-and-caregivers-what-is-descriptive-feedback.pdf">in helping students</a> concretely understand their strengths and shortcomings. </p>
<p>Although letter grades had the appearance of being definitive, they were ambiguous: students received the very visible stamp of a letter grade or percentage but had little understanding of how that grade came to be.</p>
<h2>Process of learning</h2>
<p>The most important aspect of the proficiency scale is its focus on the <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-school-report-cards-should-be-clear-not-confusing/">process of learning</a> itself. </p>
<p>For example, a student’s position on the scale in Language Arts is determined by more comprehensive measures that include: </p>
<ul>
<li>teacher observations of how well the student understands and can apply concepts; </li>
<li>conversations with the student in which the student communicates their understanding of a given concept;</li>
<li>class activities/assignments where the student gets to apply the concept and refine its usage;</li>
<li>any formal assessments, which may not be tests but rather projects where the student gets to robustly show their learning by integrating various concepts. </li>
</ul>
<p>B.C.’s scale-based assessment helps students <a href="https://doi.org/10.1207/s15430421tip4104_4">to not only understand facts</a>, but also the processes behind how those facts come to be. By teaching students about the process behind various concepts, the intention is that they will be able to transfer those skills across various areas of schooling, which previously were subject specific.</p>
<h2>Particular criticisms, questions</h2>
<p>One source of parental anxiety relates to <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/9792360/parent-student-react-no-letter-grades/">the feeling that the scale is subjective and unclear</a>. To this end, <a href="https://theconversation.com/are-top-scholar-students-really-so-remarkable-or-are-teachers-inflating-their-grades-191035">all forms of assessment and reporting are subjective to some degree</a>. Scale-based assessment, through its use of descriptive feedback, hopes to clarify the basis of assessment.</p>
<p>I’ve heard other parents express concern around the flip-flop between how the scale is applied in kindergarten to Grade 9, but not in grades 10 through 12 or post-secondary institutions. </p>
<p>They wonder: How will children in B.C. fare when for the first 10 years of their education experience they were assessed using the proficiency scale, only to have to revert to letter grades for grades 10 through 12 and post-secondary? </p>
<p>They’re also concerned that the proficiency scale may cause students to lose their <a href="https://vancouver.citynews.ca/2023/06/26/bc-parents-student-letter-grades/">competitive edge</a>, given that it values independent learning over competition. </p>
<p>Scale-based assessment does not necessarily ignore competition. Instead, it asks students to consider their competitive relationship with themselves first, before considering it with others.</p>
<h2>Face-to-face conversations needed</h2>
<p>My unique vantage point as both an educator and researcher enables me to see how policies translate in living classrooms and in the public at large. I have a helpful tip for the Ministry and schools, and this relates to communication. </p>
<p>The anxieties of stakeholders largely relate to people not understanding the rationale behind this change or how to interpret it. Some anxiety and criticism about the change is grounded in how entrenched letter grades have been in B.C.’s education system — and indeed, in mainstream western education. </p>
<p>The ministry, school district leaders, principals and educators need to do a better job communicating the intentions of this change. <a href="https://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/education/administration/kindergarten-to-grade-12/unpacking-the-proficency-scale-support-for-educators.pdf">Online information may be helpful</a>, but ongoing old-fashioned face-to-face conversation is also required. </p>
<p>Parents, especially parents of English-language learners, need to directly hear from teachers and administrators via open houses or parent advisory councils because of the fog which surrounds this change. </p>
<p>Lifting this fog and bringing B.C.’s Proficiency Scale out from the shadows and into the sunlight will likely reduce anxieties and increase its acceptance as an effective tool for learning.</p>
<p><em>This is a corrected version of a story originally published on July 27, 2023. The earlier version said B.C. has ended letter grades for students in kindergarten to Grade 9, instead of in grades 4 to 9.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/209937/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Victor Brar does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Parents need to directly hear from teachers and administrators via open houses or parent advisory councils to lift the fog of confusion and concern surrounding this change.Victor Brar, Adjunct Professor, Faculty of Education, University of British ColumbiaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2030622023-06-21T20:00:28Z2023-06-21T20:00:28ZChances are your child’s school uses commercial programs to support teaching: what parents should know<p>Australian primary schools are becoming increasingly reliant on commercial programs for teaching students. This means the content and the way students are being taught is outsourced to a third-party provider, who is not your child’s teacher. </p>
<p>Pre-pandemic research, <a href="https://www.aare.edu.au/blog/?tag=commercialisation-of-public-schools">commissioned</a> by the New South Wales Teachers Federation in 2017 showed 28% of the state’s public school teachers already regularly used commercial products. We know the use of commercial programs <a href="https://eiwebsite.blob.core.windows.net/uploads/20200630_133212_2020_EIResearch_GR_Summary_Commercialisation_privatisation_Covid19_ENG.pdf?sv=2019-10-10&ss=b&srt=o&sp=rdx&se=2030-05-26T22:00:00Z&st=2020-05-26T14:11:47Z&spr=https,http&sig=fqlBEId9cO6/PzqL9OFD54Ufvt33KDBvH/hM9wsIvLA%3D">increased</a> since the start of COVID with increasing demands on schools. </p>
<p>The use of programs has grown to the point where some state education departments <a href="https://www.education.vic.gov.au/school/teachers/teachingresources/discipline/english/literacy/readingviewing/Pages/commercial-phonics-programs.aspx">provide guidance</a> about their use and even have <a href="https://www.education.wa.edu.au/phonics-initiative">endorsed resources</a>. </p>
<p>These programs may seem like a good solution when teaching resources are stretched and the community demands evidence of learning progress. But their use can threaten children’s engagement in learning and undermine the value of professional teaching staff.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-is-tech-giant-apple-trying-to-teach-our-teachers-186752">Why is tech giant Apple trying to teach our teachers?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>What are commercial programs?</h2>
<p>These are programs developed by commercial organisations and sold to schools in prepackaged form. Some parents may already be familiar with literacy programs used to teach reading. But commercial programs are developed and sold across all areas of the curriculum.</p>
<p>Packages include programs of work with prescribed lessons and timing for delivery. They can even include scripts for teachers to read aloud during lessons. Teachers are trained how to use these programs by the provider. They are told it will only be effective if they <a href="http://www.icorimpact.com/fidelity-the-new-f-word-in-education/">copy</a> the provider’s content and methods.</p>
<p>The developers also advocate a “whole school” approach, which means the program is taught across all year levels and incorporates its assessment tools, interventions and extension programs. </p>
<p>The cost to schools can be thousands of dollars, plus associated resources like worksheets and tests, and professional development. They are paid for out of school budgets via both <a href="https://www.aare.edu.au/blog/?tag=commercialisation-of-public-schools">government funding</a> and school fees. </p>
<h2>Why are schools using commercial programs?</h2>
<p>The use of commercial programs in Australian schools has increased dramatically over the last 15 years since the introduction of <a href="https://www.aare.edu.au/blog/?p=1407">NAPLAN</a> and publication of test results on the <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/304378304_The_performative_politics_of_NAPLAN_and_Myschool">MySchool</a> website. </p>
<p>More <a href="https://www.nap.edu.au/about">transparency</a> around school performance was intended to empower parents to make informed choices and drive school improvement.
However, pressure to prove a school’s academic performance has created urgency for schools to find strategies that will give them a competitive edge. </p>
<p>At the same time, there has been a broader, <a href="https://pasisahlberg.com/global-educational-reform-movement-is-here/">global shift in education</a> towards standardisation, high-stakes accountability and the use of corporate management models. </p>
<p>It is easy to see why schools use commercial programs. They offer efficient, consistent delivery of content across year levels. They also save teachers planning time and come with ready-made resources for lessons. </p>
<p>But <a href="https://eprints.qut.edu.au/84075/">schools often adopt these programs</a> to reduce workload or because they have become widely accepted by other schools, rather than investigating whether they are endorsed and peer-reviewed by Australian or international education experts. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-rise-of-chatgpt-shows-why-we-need-a-clearer-approach-to-technology-in-schools-199596">The rise of ChatGPT shows why we need a clearer approach to technology in schools</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Why is it a problem?</h2>
<p>Most commercial programs claim to be “<a href="https://literacycare.com.au/scientific-evidence-based-intervention/">evidence-based</a>”. But this can be based on small, selective or <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/2013/mar/26/teachers-research-evidence-based-education">inadequate research</a> that cannot be generalised to all students.</p>
<p>They may rely on “<a href="https://melanieralph.com/2022/01/18/direct-instruction-alone-is-not-enough-why-teachers-need-more-than-one-tool-in-their-toolkit/">direct instruction</a>” teaching methods – where the teacher stands at the front and instructs students – and prioritise a quick pace for rapid academic gains. </p>
<p>This is despite broad understanding that hands-on, <a href="https://www.unicef.org/sites/default/files/2018-12/UNICEF-Lego-Foundation-Learning-through-Play.pdf">play-based</a> experiences support meaningful learning and are more <a href="https://elearningindustry.com/educational-equity-and-inquiry-based-learning-during-the-pandemic-and-beyond">inclusive</a> in the classroom. </p>
<p>Commercial programs also require teachers to “<a href="https://www.chalkbeat.org/2017/11/21/21103830/why-the-phrase-with-fidelity-is-an-affront-to-good-teaching">trust the program</a>”, which can limit the teacher’s capacity to meet individual children’s needs. </p>
<p>Some schools and early learning centres now deliver <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.2304/ciec.2014.15.1.40">commercial programs in the preschool years</a> despite <a href="https://www.acecqa.gov.au/nqf/national-quality-standard">National Quality Standards</a> requiring educators to respond to children’s own ideas and play, and personalise interactions. </p>
<p>All the while, it is taking autonomy away from teachers, while devaluing their professional knowledge and skills. </p>
<p>Reliance on commercially driven third parties is at odds with the evidence-based training teachers receive at university. It also makes it harder for education students to develop essential teaching and programming skills during their professional placements.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A teacher writes in a book, sitting at her desk." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/532859/original/file-20230620-56064-tl07qb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/532859/original/file-20230620-56064-tl07qb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532859/original/file-20230620-56064-tl07qb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532859/original/file-20230620-56064-tl07qb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532859/original/file-20230620-56064-tl07qb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532859/original/file-20230620-56064-tl07qb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532859/original/file-20230620-56064-tl07qb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Commercial programs can take autonomy away from teachers if they are told what to teach and how to teach it.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>What do parents need to know?</h2>
<p>It is important parents ask who (or what) is behind their child’s learning at school. </p>
<p>Commercial programs are inherently generic and may rely on teaching methods including repetition of content and skills, often without opportunity for “real life” application that sustains <a href="https://developingchild.harvard.edu/resources/how-to-motivate-children-science-based-approaches-for-parents-caregivers-and-teachers/">children’s motivation to learn</a>. </p>
<p>This can have an impact on a <a href="https://ro.ecu.edu.au/theses/2490/">child’s engagement at school</a>, because they are being “talked at” rather than allowed to explore ideas and develop thinking and communication skills that lead to understanding.</p>
<p>Particularly in the early years of school, homogeneous teaching makes it harder for children to learn at their natural pace – and to support their social and emotional development. </p>
<p>Schools need to be transparent about the commercial programs they adopt so parents are aware of the costs, how the programs are delivered, and what that means for their child’s engagement in learning on a daily basis. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/as-more-biometric-data-is-collected-in-schools-parents-need-to-ask-these-10-questions-191263">As more biometric data is collected in schools, parents need to ask these 10 questions</a>
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</em>
</p>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/203062/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Amelia Ruscoe is affiliated with the Literacy Education Network, Western Australia (LENWA) and the Schools Curriculum and Standards Authority, W.A. (SCSA). </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Fiona Boylan is affiliated with the Schools Curriculum and Standards Authority, W.A.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Pauline Roberts is affiliated with Early Childhood Australia (ECA). </span></em></p>These programs may seem like a good idea. But they can threaten children’s engagement in learning and undermine teachers’ professional skills.Amelia Ruscoe, Lecturer, School of Education, Edith Cowan UniversityFiona Boylan, Lecturer, School of Education, Edith Cowan UniversityPauline Roberts, Senior Lecturer in the School of Education, Edith Cowan UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2057332023-06-19T20:48:59Z2023-06-19T20:48:59ZHow Canadian and Chinese teachers’ reciprocal learning can benefit students<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/532467/original/file-20230616-17-nw47xo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=30%2C814%2C5673%2C3420&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Working to understand and appreciate differences between western and Chinese approaches to education could contribute to the cross-cultural understanding we need to address global crises.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>What makes a good elementary teacher, and how can teaching systems support this?</p>
<p>Ontario has a generalist teaching model at the elementary level, meaning elementary teachers have a foundational understanding of most subjects. A 2014 report commissioned by the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario noted there was “<a href="https://www.etfo.ca/getmedia/dcdb69d0-fb8c-44bb-9f93-d8875e90b24f/161123_ReviewSpecTeacher.pdf">increasing pressure on public elementary teachers to be generalist practitioners in all areas of a highly specialized and progressively complex elementary curriculum</a>.”</p>
<p>In April, Ontario’s minister of education announced <a href="https://news.ontario.ca/en/release/1002937/ontario-launches-plan-to-boost-math-writing-and-reading-skills">funding to “boost math skills”</a> by hiring more school math coaches in classrooms, identifying a math lead per board and “enhancing skills of new teachers.”</p>
<p><a href="https://www.oecd.org/china/Education-in-China-a-snapshot.pdf">China’s elementary teachers are primarily specialist teachers</a> with expert understanding in specific fields. Chinese teachers are trained to focus on content knowledge and basic skills, and around <a href="https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/The-Cross-national-Comparison-of-Pre-service-and-Chen-Mu/ab343d162d286f763515bab5bac23740555e620e">60 per cent of their post-secondary study courses are subject knowledge courses</a>. </p>
<p>However, Naiqing Song, an education scholar, proposes that <a href="https://chn.oversea.cnki.net/KCMS/detail/detail.aspx?dbcode=CJFD&dbname=CJFDLAST2022&filename=JIJX202204001&uniplatform=OVERSEA&v=GUJP9vbvq0OBy-kCTHOiuvGbfilvZKJHWrVDlBKS8bHGdqQrhq9O2pfJrn3-rS-f">more than 90 per cent of Chinese elementary teachers should be trained as generalist teachers</a> in the next decade. </p>
<p>It is essential to understand generalist and specialist models of teaching through reciprocal learning. These approaches need not be treated as dichotomized or opposed to each other.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A teacher and students outdoors." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/532457/original/file-20230616-11631-7qstn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C58%2C3000%2C1854&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/532457/original/file-20230616-11631-7qstn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=433&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532457/original/file-20230616-11631-7qstn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=433&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532457/original/file-20230616-11631-7qstn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=433&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532457/original/file-20230616-11631-7qstn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=544&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532457/original/file-20230616-11631-7qstn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=544&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/532457/original/file-20230616-11631-7qstn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=544&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Varied approaches to teaching need not be treated as opposed to each other. Kindergarten teachers and children outdoors at the Ritan Park in Beijing in 2012.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Andy Wong)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Reciprocal learning</h2>
<p>Shijing Xu, Canada Research Chair in International and Intercultural Reciprocal Learning, and one of the authors of this story, and Michael Connelly, an education professor emeritus at Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, research reciprocal learning. This is “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-59533-3_37-1">a concept and an approach for international and cross-cultural teacher education and school education for bridging the West-East dichotomy…</a>.”</p>
<p>Their research has addressed harmonizing eastern learning and western knowledge with mutual respect and appreciation, and determining what generalist and specialist teachers can reciprocally learn from each other. A book series, <a href="https://link.springer.com/series/15114"><em>Intercultural Reciprocal Learning in Chinese and Western Education</em></a>, shares findings from this work.</p>
<p>Chenkai Chi, the lead author of this story, is doing doctoral research as part of Xu and Connelly’s research project, titled <a href="https://www.reciprocal-learning.ca/pages/">Reciprocal Learning in Teacher Education and School Education Between Canada and China</a>. </p>
<p>This research is based on intensive six-year fieldwork in <a href="https://reciprocal-learning.ca/show/sisterSchool-W-C.html">a Windsor primary school and a Chongqing primary school, a Canada-China sister school pair that is part of the larger study</a>. </p>
<h2>Sharing learning</h2>
<p>Policymakers sometimes stress essential differences in curricular and teaching approaches, depending on the policy paradigms they embrace: <a href="https://interdisciplinarystudies.org/docs/Vol28_2010/28_OntarioSchools.pdf">“accountability” paradigms (often using language of “back to basics”) or student-centred paradigms</a>. Some scholars highlight that such framings <a href="https://theconversation.com/6-changes-in-ontarios-not-so-basic-new-elementary-math-curriculum-148878">may exaggerate differences</a> in curriculum or what teachers actually do.</p>
<p>Still, there are lessons that teachers and teaching systems can share. One important lesson that Canadian generalist teachers can learn from specialist teachers in China is teachers’ collaboration with each other, seen, for example, in collective lesson planning. </p>
<p>Education researcher <a href="https://cies2023.org/program/keynote/">Linda Darling-Hammond</a> has outlined some examples of what she observed in Shanghai about teacher collective lesson plans, and has highlighted the importance of teacher mutual support. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/HP0wItXjALA?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">‘Transforming Education for a More Equitable World,’ featuring education researcher Linda Darling-Hammond.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Specialist teachers in China should also learn how Canadian generalist teachers develop the whole child. This approach focuses on priorities such as children’s <a href="https://www.ontario.ca/document/health-and-physical-education-grades-1-8/social-emotional-learning-sel-skills">social emotional learning needs</a>, developing a <a href="https://www.ontariovirtualschool.ca/understanding-developing-growth-mindset/">growth mindset</a>, and the importance of <a href="https://doi.org/10.20935/AL387">transdisciplinary thinking</a>. </p>
<h2>Trust and collaboration</h2>
<p>Generalist and specialist teaching both have advantages and disadvantages. Mutual and appreciative learning and sharing should be based on trust.</p>
<p>Educators need to uphold the spirit of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/13540602.2019.1601077">reciprocal learning</a>. We need educators who can dedicate themselves towards harnessing diversity in a variety of academic disciplines.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Catherine Febria of the Great Lakes Institute for Environmental Research presents as part of Asian Heritage Month 2023 on the subject of harnessing diversity in freshwater science.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>By highlighting appreciative learning, educators can gain insights across cultures to understand how to focus on <a href="https://sdgs.un.org/goals">urgent issues of today for sustainable development</a>.</p>
<p>As education scholars Yishin Khoo and Jing Lin argue, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s12564-023-09827-3">people need to see themselves as citizens of Earth to solve the issues with “we-togetherness” thinking</a>. </p>
<p>We human beings should think beyond anthropocentrism, and our own comfortable cultural frameworks, and act collaboratively in a harmonious way. In so doing, together we can find ways <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbuaU6IYV2I&t=44s">to address climate change</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEwzoairmQk">racism and prejudice</a>, <a href="https://www.uwindsor.ca/vp-equity-diversity-inclusion">and equity, diversity and inclusion</a>. We can then significantly positively impact people’s lives and the next generations.</p>
<p>With mutual appreciation and through relationships, school teachers, teacher educators and policymakers can work collaboratively to build an education system that is holistic, inclusive, reciprocal and equitable.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/205733/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chenkai Chi is a research assistant in Xu and Connelly's SSHRC Partnership Grant Project and has received a SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship and an Ontario Graduate Scholarship.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Shijing Xu has received research funding from SSHRC Partnership Grant and Canada Research Chair Program for research in international and intercultural reciprocal learning in education. </span></em></p>Teachers in Ontario elementary schools can learn from how teachers in China approach collaboration as subject area specialists, while Chinese teachers can learn about developing the whole child.Chenkai Chi, PhD candidate, Faculty of Education, University of WindsorShijing Xu, Canada Research Chair, Faculty of Education, University of WindsorLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2060652023-05-25T21:40:56Z2023-05-25T21:40:56ZWildfires in Alberta spark urgent school discussions about terrors of global climate futures<p>In the wake of wildfire outbreaks tearing through Alberta, which have
destroyed infrastructure, homes and razed <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/alberta-wildfire-rain-1.6852105">an estimated one million or more hectares of forest</a>, the <a href="https://www.alberta.ca/diploma-exams.aspx">province recently announced</a> only <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/9700373/alberta-wildfires-2023-diploma-exams/">students evacuated for 10 days</a> would be exempted from writing Grade 12 diploma examinations. </p>
<p>While public attention is understandably focused on the immediate impacts of the wildfires on communities, including the <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/alberta-students-and-schools-coping-with-wildfire-evacuation-1.6840063">urgent efforts of schools to cope</a>, the announcement was also out of touch with widespread existential concern among students for their futures.</p>
<p>As students, principals and teachers shared with us, the arbitrary 10-day window failed to recognize the widespread anxiety and uncertainty across central and northern Alberta triggered by the unprecedented wildfires and on the heels of the COVID-19 pandemic. </p>
<p>This decision reflects a legacy of faltering efforts <a href="https://alberta-curriculum-analysis.ca/">to reform Alberta’s</a> kindergarten to Grade 12 currriculum and assessment programs. </p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/teachers-need-bolder-action-from-our-school-boards-to-educate-in-and-for-a-climate-emergency-199972">Teachers need bolder action from our school boards to educate in and for a climate emergency</a>
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</em>
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<p>As education researchers and teachers respectively at the university (J-C) and high-school (Melissa) levels, we are urgently reminded to return to foundational insights about teaching.</p>
<p>To offer students something vitally relevant to their lives, we can’t view <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/lower-diploma-exam-weighting-brings-student-relief-but-could-affect-motivation-teachers-say-1.6598246">curricula as just content to be consumed (and tested on)</a>. </p>
<p>As education scholar Kent den Heyer has underscored, the “content,” of learning exists in <a href="https://legacy.teachers.ab.ca/News%20Room/ata%20magazine/Volume-93/Number-4/Pages/The-challenges.aspx">the daily encounters</a> between the student, the school subject and society. With this in mind, teachers open possibilities for generative classroom encounters which are a point of departure for learning rather than the destination. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Fire and smoke is seen close to a house." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528022/original/file-20230524-29-9ex43d.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528022/original/file-20230524-29-9ex43d.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528022/original/file-20230524-29-9ex43d.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528022/original/file-20230524-29-9ex43d.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528022/original/file-20230524-29-9ex43d.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=585&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528022/original/file-20230524-29-9ex43d.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=585&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528022/original/file-20230524-29-9ex43d.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=585&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A Métis settlement is devastated by an out-of-control wildfire and remains at risk as hot and dry conditions in Alberta’s forecast threaten to worsen an already intense fire season.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source"> THE CANADIAN PRESS/Handout - Brad Desjarlais</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Complicated conversations needed</h2>
<p>Alberta’s wildfires invite policymakers to recognize that given our global climate emergency, classrooms ought to be places to host “complicated conversations.” </p>
<p>The province’s policy announcement on exams stands in stark contrast to what we have heard and seen in recent days about the conflicted lived experience <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/kidsnews/post/alberta-teen-flees-wildfire-with-more-than-a-dozen-animals-in-the-back-seat">of students affected by the fires</a>.</p>
<p>One of the authors of this story, Melissa, teaches secondary school <a href="https://globalnews.ca/video/9707445/officials-warn-drayton-valley-residents-ongoing-fire-poses-risks">in Drayton Valley</a>, one of <a href="https://www.draytonvalley.ca/business-industry">the hubs of Alberta’s energy sector</a>, about an hour’s drive south-west of Edmonton. Students in her class reflected sombrely on their fire evacuation experiences.</p>
<h2>Talking about terror</h2>
<p>The research of <a href="https://www.ualberta.ca/the-quad/2020/10/consider-this-how-terror-management-theory-helps-us-understand-the-pandemic.html">Cathryn van Kessel</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/00220272.2019.1659416">Kent den Heyer and Jeff Schimel</a>, which draws on their combined expertise in education and psychology, can help teachers to guide classroom discussions through practising what’s known as <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/00220272.2019.1659416">terror management theory</a>.</p>
<p>Terror management theory offers insight and strategies to understand <a href="https://www.academia.edu/82769321/Fighting_the_plague_Difficult_knowledge_as_sirens_song_in_teacher_education">cataclysmic events</a> and the ways that death and reminders of our mortality affect people’s sense of self-esteem in relation to their cultural worldviews. </p>
<p>On first blush this might seem both conceptually and emotionally overwhelming for young people. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A large pumpjack resembling a tractor with a pick-axe head is seen against a blazing colourful sky." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528031/original/file-20230524-19-h9dkzc.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528031/original/file-20230524-19-h9dkzc.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=383&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528031/original/file-20230524-19-h9dkzc.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=383&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528031/original/file-20230524-19-h9dkzc.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=383&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528031/original/file-20230524-19-h9dkzc.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=481&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528031/original/file-20230524-19-h9dkzc.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=481&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528031/original/file-20230524-19-h9dkzc.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=481&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A pumpjack draws oil from a well head near Calgary, Alta., in September 2022. Some oil and gas producers in Alberta temporarily halted operations due to wildfires.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jeff McIntosh</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Yet research in schools is proving <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/00224871211051991">that applying such an approach with students</a> is possible to engage tectonic events related to environmental collapse, <a href="https://theconversation.com/reconciliation-and-residential-schools-canadians-need-new-stories-to-face-a-future-better-than-what-we-inherited-108305">the impacts and legacies of Indian Residential Schools</a> and <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/house-motion-recognize-genocide-1.6632450">facing genocide</a> and colonialism in Canada, and experiences of personal loss in the COVID-19 pandemic.</p>
<h2>Terror management theory in the classroom</h2>
<p>Applying terror management theory in the classroom provided Melissa with language to engage <a href="https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2023/03/07/climate-change-worries-leave-most-young-people-feeling-sad-anxious-and-powerless-survey.html">the most intense emotions triggered by</a> the immediate and larger <a href="https://www.unep.org/resources/report/spreading-wildfire-rising-threat-extraordinary-landscape-fires?gclid=Cj0KCQjwjryjBhD0ARIsAMLvnF9F3FDDrzW5MDYA5DQpzuI8kWWNGl_rkN-M0JApe244mO2emJfHyv0aAgJcEALw_wcB">climate change crises presented by the wildfires and the threat climate change</a> poses to our “business as usual” worldviews.</p>
<p></p>
<p>The existential cracks triggered by the global environmental crisis for Canadian young people was <a href="https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2023/03/07/climate-change-worries-leave-most-young-people-feeling-sad-anxious-and-powerless-survey.html">highlighted in a recent survey</a> documenting growing emotional and psychological impacts: 39 per cent of 1,000 surveyed people across the country, aged 16-25, considered their probable future world so bleak they would hesitate to have children. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1660057816407904256"}"></div></p>
<h2>Teachable moments</h2>
<p>In Melissa’s high-school class, relying on terror management theory allowed her to anticipate a “teachable moment” related to the study of citizenship in a democratic society. She offered this question to students: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>To what extent has the wildfire not interrupted — but instead enriched — your learning about what it means to be a citizen?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Many students were frustrated and troubled by <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/wildfire-election-tackling-misinformation-1.6847916">disinformation on social media and confusion it generated</a>. Students also reflected on how worry about their grades is entangled with navigating the wildfire threats. </p>
<p>We became aware of conflicted feelings students shared that described feeling somewhat guilty about hoping the evacuation would continue so that they would not have to write diploma exams.</p>
<p>This reminded us of the challenges teachers face in achieving the lofty goals articulated in the government’s Framework for Student Learning “<a href="https://open.alberta.ca/dataset/9780778596479/resource/58e18175-5681-4543-b617-c8efe5b7b0e9">to develop competencies for engaged thinkers and ethical citizens with an entrepreneurial spirit</a>.” </p>
<p>We need a curriculum that recognizes the multiplicity of students’ voices and interwoven tensions and contradictions that shape students’ daily lives and how they anticipate their futures. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.unesco.org/en/brief">As UNESCO</a> policy analyst Riel Miller notes, since curriculum programs — like any product of government policy — are inevitably driven by assumptions of what we anticipate and the values informing this, a key project of education <a href="https://en.unesco.org/futuresofeducation/miller-imagination-education-futures">should be creating spaces where we continually “question the sources of our imagination</a>.” </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Hazy smoke seen over a skyline." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528394/original/file-20230525-29-95j0ko.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528394/original/file-20230525-29-95j0ko.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528394/original/file-20230525-29-95j0ko.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528394/original/file-20230525-29-95j0ko.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528394/original/file-20230525-29-95j0ko.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528394/original/file-20230525-29-95j0ko.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528394/original/file-20230525-29-95j0ko.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Heavy smoke from Alberta forest fires comes south to blanket the Bow River area in downtown Calgary, Alta., May 16, 2023.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Larry MacDougal</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Looming threats and time for students</h2>
<p>Even though the immediate threat to Drayton Valley students and their community has receded, the possibility of evacuation still looms for them and many other students and families when the <a href="https://edmonton.ctvnews.ca/alberta-wildfire-season-2023-how-does-it-compare-1.6391711">typical fire season is just beginning</a>. </p>
<p>With a provincial election looming <a href="https://edmontonjournal.com/news/politics/the-battle-for-st-albert-and-area">and with a divided electorate</a>, it remains unclear how any provincial government might <a href="https://theconversation.com/alberta-curriculum-end-the-failed-partisan-politics-over-what-kids-should-learn-153163">navigate the highly controversial and contested curriculum rewriting process</a>. </p>
<p>As the province and educators face this task, we must consider current and <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/7846985/slave-lake-wildfire-5-things-to-know/">previous fire</a> <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/fort-mcmurray-flood-damage-1.5673962">and flood crises</a> in the context <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/14767724.2021.1904212">of an increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world</a> as an opportunity to help us rethink what success in school looks like and what it means to be a citizen. </p>
<p>For schools impacted by the wildfires, the best efforts of teachers to cover the curriculum under additional pressure of lost instructional time due to evacuations is one more indication of needed changes. We need a curriculum that has time for students — time to engage their questions and the sources of <a href="https://ssc.teachers.ab.ca/SiteCollectionDocuments/OneWorldInDialogue/OneWorldinDialogue_2016Vol4No1/den%20Heyer.pdf">their imagined futures</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/206065/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>School systems need to wake up from ‘business as usual’ learning. Teachers can draw on terror management theory in their work on the front lines with students navigating the climate crisis.J-C Couture, Adjunct faculty and Associate Lecturer, Department of Secondary Education, University of AlbertaMelissa McQueen, Master's student, Department of Secondary Education, University of AlbertaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2051712023-05-23T12:25:42Z2023-05-23T12:25:42ZNew approach to teaching computer science could broaden the subject’s appeal<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/527051/original/file-20230518-23-xsgvbi.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Language arts students can program chatbots for literary characters.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/side-view-of-youthful-african-american-schoolboy-royalty-free-image/1425235236">shironosov/iStock/Getty Images Plus</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Despite <a href="https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/computer-and-information-research-scientists.htm#tab-1">growing demand for computer science skills</a> in professional careers and many areas of life, K-12 schools <a href="https://www.eschoolnews.com/steam/2023/02/23/what-is-computer-science-education-lacking/">struggle to teach</a> computer science to the next generation.</p>
<p>However, a new approach to computer science education – called <a href="https://www.fierceeducation.com/teaching-learning/teaching-computational-thinking-essential-future-college-students">integrated computing</a> – addresses the main barriers that schools face when adding computer science education. These barriers include a <a href="https://news.gallup.com/reports/196379/trends-state-computer-science-schools.aspx">lack of qualified computer science teachers</a>, a lack of funds and a focus on courses tied to standardized tests.</p>
<p>Integrated computing teaches computer science skills like programming and computer literacy within traditional courses. For example, students can use integrated computing activities to <a href="https://youtu.be/KG_JqpmmkdQ">create geometric patterns in math</a>, <a href="https://youtu.be/x5w6x7f33Wk">simulate electromagnetic waves in science</a> and <a href="https://youtu.be/654BOJwAWCg">create chatbots for literary characters</a> in language arts. </p>
<p>As a <a href="https://education.gsu.edu/profile/lauren-margulieux/">professor of learning technologies</a>, I have been <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=YGV0Y24AAAAJ&hl=en&oi=sra">designing integrated computing activities</a> for K-12 students for the past five years. I work with faculty and students in teacher training programs to <a href="http://www.doi.org/10.26716/jcsi.2022.11.15.35">create and test integrated computing activities</a> across all academic subjects. </p>
<p>In <a href="https://laurenmarg.com/research/">my research</a>, I have found that integrated computing solves three major hurdles to teaching computer science education in K-12 schools.</p>
<h2>Challenges to teaching computer science</h2>
<p>Fitting a new academic discipline into an <a href="https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/0ebc645c-en/index.html?itemId=/content/component/0ebc645c-en">already crowded curriculum</a> can be a challenge. Integrated computing allows computer science education to become part of learning in other classes, the way reading skills are also used in science, math and language arts classes. </p>
<p>Teacher knowledge is <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/07380569.2023.2178868">another difficulty when it comes to teaching computer science</a> in K-12 schools. While people who specialize in computer science are often recruited to more lucrative careers than teaching, integrated computing develops all teachers’ computer science knowledge. Teachers do not need to become computer science experts to teach computer literacy and programming skills to their students. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Teacher holds tablet while working in classroom" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/527129/original/file-20230518-19-2wsuw7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/527129/original/file-20230518-19-2wsuw7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527129/original/file-20230518-19-2wsuw7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527129/original/file-20230518-19-2wsuw7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527129/original/file-20230518-19-2wsuw7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527129/original/file-20230518-19-2wsuw7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527129/original/file-20230518-19-2wsuw7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Teachers do not need a computer science degree to incorporate computing into their classrooms.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/indian-teacher-using-digital-tablet-in-classroom-royalty-free-image/526297603">LWA/Dann Tardif/DigitalVision Collection/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In fact, the most surprising result of my research is how quickly teachers learn to teach integrated computing activities. In about two hours, <a href="https://www.doi.org/10.26716/jcsi.2022.11.15.35">teachers can use a pre-made computer science lesson</a> in their classrooms. In the future, I will teach them to use artificial intelligence to create their own lessons for their students. For example, a science teacher recently asked me how she could create a data analysis activity for her class. AI tools would allow her to <a href="https://www.ironhack.com/us/en/blog/chatgpt-for-data-analysts">quickly design the technical aspects</a> of this activity. </p>
<p>And finally, integrated computing also addresses students’ reluctance to take elective computer science classes when they have little knowledge of computer science. In 2022, over half of U.S. public high schools offered computer science, but just <a href="https://www.edweek.org/technology/computer-science-education-is-gaining-momentum-but-some-say-not-fast-enough/2022/09">6% of students</a> took these classes. Students who do take computer science in high school typically have had <a href="https://doi.org/10.2190/9LE6-MBXA-JDPG-UG90">early exposure to computer science</a>. Integrated computing can give all students early exposure to computer science, which I believe will increase the number of students who take computer science courses later in school. </p>
<h2>Computer science for everyone</h2>
<p>Early exposure to computer science in school is especially important for students from groups <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/research/exploring-the-state-of-computer-science-education-amid-rapid-policy-expansion/">underrepresented in computer science</a>. A <a href="https://advocacy.code.org/stateofcs">2022 report</a> from Code.org, a nonprofit that advocates for more computer science education in K-12 schools, found that students who are Latino, female or from low-income or rural areas are <a href="https://www.edweek.org/technology/computer-science-education-is-gaining-momentum-but-some-say-not-fast-enough/2022/09">less likely</a> to be enrolled in foundational computer science courses.</p>
<p>Teachers who want to build their computer science knowledge and apply it to their classroom can try these free self-paced, online <a href="https://gavirtualpd.catalog.instructure.com/browse/computerscience">integrated computing courses</a> that I developed, and which are tied to micro-credentials. Also, this sortable list of <a href="https://integratedcomputing.org/">integrated computing activities</a> provides free lesson plans. The activities require only a computer – no prior knowledge is needed, and young learners can complete them outside of class, too.</p>
<p>Integrated computing provides a path to increase computer literacy for all K-12 students. As technology advances at an increasing rate, I believe schools must take care that our young people do not fall behind.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/205171/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lauren Margulieux receives funding from Snap, Inc., Google, the National Science Foundation, and the US Department of Education. </span></em></p>Integrated computing enables teachers to incorporate basic programming skills into K-12 students’ regular math, science and language arts classes.Lauren Margulieux, Associate Professor of Learning Technologies, Georgia State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2034132023-04-19T20:08:29Z2023-04-19T20:08:29ZMany teachers find planning with colleagues a waste of time. Here’s how to improve it<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/521734/original/file-20230418-28-rpo8ir.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C15%2C5184%2C3430&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Creating protected time for teachers to <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00940771.2013.11461877">collaborate with colleagues</a> provides – in theory – an opportunity for teachers to improve teaching, and reduces the time they have to spend in the evenings and on weekends preparing for class. </p>
<p>Teachers now report spending an average of <a href="https://www.aitsl.edu.au/docs/default-source/atwd/national-teacher-workforce-char-report.pdf?sfvrsn=9b7fa03c_4">four hours a week</a> collaborating with colleagues.</p>
<p>But the unfortunate reality is many Australian teachers find collaborative planning a frustrating waste of time.</p>
<p>That’s a disturbing finding from two recent Grattan Institute surveys of more than 7,000 Australian principals and teachers on <a href="https://grattan.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Making-time-for-great-teaching-survey-results.pdf">teacher workload</a> and <a href="https://grattan.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Ending-the-lesson-lottery-Survey-Results.pdf">curriculum planning</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/521205/original/file-20230417-14-x6w4qk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=8%2C17%2C5673%2C3776&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Two teachers discuss work together." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/521205/original/file-20230417-14-x6w4qk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=8%2C17%2C5673%2C3776&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/521205/original/file-20230417-14-x6w4qk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521205/original/file-20230417-14-x6w4qk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521205/original/file-20230417-14-x6w4qk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521205/original/file-20230417-14-x6w4qk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521205/original/file-20230417-14-x6w4qk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521205/original/file-20230417-14-x6w4qk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In theory, creating protected time for teachers to collaborate with colleagues provides an opportunity to improve teaching.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>
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Read more:
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</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>What teachers told us</h2>
<p>In Grattan’s <a href="https://grattan.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Making-time-for-great-teaching-how-better-government-policy-can-help-Grattan-Report.pdf">2021 survey</a> on teacher workload, nearly half of teachers (49%) said collaborative planning meetings at their school were a barrier to having enough time for effective classroom preparation.</p>
<p>These findings were replicated across the country, and were apparent in both government and non-government schools.</p>
<p>And while nine in ten teachers in Grattan’s <a href="https://grattan.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Ending-the-lesson-lottery-Grattan-Report.pdf">2022 survey</a> wanted access to curriculum materials they could share with their colleagues, a majority had significant concerns about the extent to which collaborative planning time is used effectively to support this goal.</p>
<p>Teachers told us that time for collaborative planning is often derailed by other issues. </p>
<p>Fifty-five percent said they usually or always end up discussing non-instructional matters during collaborative planning meetings. </p>
<p>Only about a third said that in these meetings they “usually” or “always” consider how to revise or improve instructional materials, or discuss how to use instructional materials effectively in the classroom.</p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/521209/original/file-20230417-14-eydi6e.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/521209/original/file-20230417-14-eydi6e.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/521209/original/file-20230417-14-eydi6e.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521209/original/file-20230417-14-eydi6e.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521209/original/file-20230417-14-eydi6e.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521209/original/file-20230417-14-eydi6e.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521209/original/file-20230417-14-eydi6e.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521209/original/file-20230417-14-eydi6e.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sample size ranged from 1,129 to 1,132 because not all teachers responded to each statement. Response options included ‘never true’, ‘rarely true’, ‘sometimes true’, ‘usually true’, ‘always true’, and ‘not applicable’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">2022 Grattan survey on curriculum planning and resources.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>One secondary school teacher said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>For the dedicated and hard-working teachers, collaborative planning time simply increases their workload […] The ‘spin’ around the benefits of collaborative planning all too often does not reflect the experience.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Three-quarters of the teachers we surveyed <a href="https://grattan.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Ending-the-lesson-lottery-Survey-Results.pdf">identified</a> a lack of effective leadership as a barrier to establishing shared curriculum materials at their school.</p>
<p>One teacher told us their collaborative planning meetings were unproductive because there was “nobody moderating different perspectives to ensure a middle ground is reached”. </p>
<p>Another said, “everyone has their own thoughts and there’s little vision to guide everyone in the same direction”. </p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/521210/original/file-20230417-16-gtvbnn.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/521210/original/file-20230417-16-gtvbnn.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/521210/original/file-20230417-16-gtvbnn.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521210/original/file-20230417-16-gtvbnn.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521210/original/file-20230417-16-gtvbnn.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521210/original/file-20230417-16-gtvbnn.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521210/original/file-20230417-16-gtvbnn.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521210/original/file-20230417-16-gtvbnn.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Total sample size ranged from 1,168 to 1,178. Teachers were asked the question in relation to either the first lesson in their timetable, the first lesson after recess, or the first lesson after lunch.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">2022 Grattan survey on curriculum planning and resources.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<h2>How to improve things</h2>
<p>Grattan Institute’s research on curriculum planning in schools points to two concrete strategies to increase the value of collaborative planning time.</p>
<p>First, use this time to select, establish or refine shared curriculum materials as part of a whole-school approach to teaching and learning.</p>
<p>This is <a href="https://d2tic4wvo1iusb.cloudfront.net/documents/projects/Mathematical_Reasoning.pdf?v=1630926416">good for student learning</a>: well-planned curriculum materials improve opportunities for students to create deeper knowledge and stronger skills across year levels and subjects.</p>
<p>The Grattan Institute’s <a href="https://grattan.edu.au/report/ending-the-lesson-lottery-how-to-improve-curriculum-planning-in-schools/">research</a> suggests shared school-wide curriculum materials are also associated with increased professional agreement between teachers about what to teach and how to teach it.</p>
<p>Once established, shared curriculum materials can <a href="https://grattan.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Ending-the-lesson-lottery-Survey-Results.pdf">provide</a> a stronger “common language” for teachers to engage in effective forms of professional development and deliver higher levels of teacher satisfaction with planning processes in their school.</p>
<p>Second, strengthen the leadership capacity and curriculum expertise of middle leaders, so that collaborative planning meetings are led more effectively. Without effective leadership, collaborative planning meetings often flounder.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1646483460897271808"}"></div></p>
<h2>Putting collaborative planning time to work</h2>
<p>Grattan Institute’s latest <a href="https://grattan.edu.au/report/how-to-implement-a-whole-school-curriculum-approach/">Guide for Principals</a> profiles five schools across Australia which are making the most of this precious time.</p>
<p>At one of the case study schools, Ballarat Clarendon College in regional Victoria, teachers have worked together to develop shared, high-quality curriculum materials across all subjects and year levels. </p>
<p>With this strong foundation in place, teaching teams collaborate in regular “phase two” meetings, which are set up to identify and share great teaching practices.</p>
<p>In the maths department, for example, teaching teams come together roughly once a fortnight to examine student results from recent assessments. If one teacher’s class has excelled, the teacher demonstrates to the group how they taught that specific point to help identify whether a particular approach – such as how they unpacked a worked example – contributed to better learning.</p>
<p>As the teaching teams identify effective strategies, the strategies are noted in the curriculum materials for the benefit of future teachers and students. </p>
<p>These are often small instructional details, such as the best questions for teachers to ask students, the specific words used to describe a process, or common student misconceptions to address.</p>
<p>As one teacher explained</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The point is to get the best teaching practice possible. When someone explains in a phase two meeting what they did, we put it in the slides for next year.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The lesson is clear. </p>
<p>Simply setting aside time for collaboration doesn’t always lead to better outcomes for teachers or students. </p>
<p>Effective collaboration requires skilful leadership and a common language. </p>
<p>A whole-school commitment to shared curriculum materials can bring these elements together and create a strong foundation for teachers to work collaboratively on what matters most: great teaching in the classroom that sets students up for learning success.</p>
<hr>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/203413/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jordana Hunter is the Director of the Education Program at the Grattan Institute. The Grattan Institute has been supported in its work by government, corporates, and philanthropic gifts. A full list of supporting organisations is published at <a href="http://www.grattan.edu.au">www.grattan.edu.au</a>.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nick is an Associate at the Grattan Institute and is currently training to be a teacher at the Melbourne University's Graduate School of Education.</span></em></p>Simply setting aside time for collaboration doesn’t always lead to better outcomes for teachers or students. Effective collaboration requires skilful leadership and a common language.Jordana Hunter, School Education Program Director, Grattan InstituteNick Parkinson, Associate, Grattan InstituteLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2024382023-03-24T01:04:37Z2023-03-24T01:04:37ZTeachers need a lot of things right now, but another curriculum ‘rewrite’ isn’t one of them<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517290/original/file-20230323-1627-qu4iur.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C8%2C5463%2C3628&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Less than a fortnight after teachers staged a <a href="https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/486101/in-pictures-teachers-strike">national strike</a>, education was back in the headlines with the National Party’s release of its <a href="https://www.national.org.nz/teaching_the_basics_brilliantly">curriculum policy</a> – or “rewrite”, as leader Christopher Luxon described it.</p>
<p>In a nutshell, the policy would require primary and intermediate schools to teach at least an hour a day each of reading, writing and maths. Learners in Years 3-8 would also be tested on their progress at least twice a year – not unlike the controversial (and subsequently dropped) <a href="https://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/national-standards-ended">national standards</a> system from 2010 to 2018.</p>
<p>Prime Minister Chris Hipkins responded by arguing the school curriculum should ideally be a <a href="https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2023/03/chris-hipkins-doesn-t-want-education-curriculum-to-become-political-football-after-national-plan-rewrite.html">bipartisan issue</a> rather than a political football: “Parents, kids, teachers deserve to know that we’ve got a stable curriculum regardless of who the government is.”</p>
<p>Clearly, we all want the best learning outcomes for our nation’s children. But there are deep ideological divisions in the debate about how best to teach and test school children. It seems the curriculum will inevitably become a partisan issue as the election year unfolds.</p>
<p>Behind this immediate contest of ideas, however, sits a larger question: does the education system need yet another upheaval when the curriculum is already undergoing a “<a href="https://curriculumrefresh.education.govt.nz/">refresh</a>”?</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1638986063141277697"}"></div></p>
<h2>How the curriculum works</h2>
<p>The school curriculum is not set in stone. Since the 1989 <a href="https://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1989/0080/latest/DLM175959.html">Education Act</a>, schools have been self-governing and charged with developing their own curriculum.
These local curriculums are underpinned by the national <a href="https://nzcurriculum.tki.org.nz/The-New-Zealand-Curriculum">New Zealand Curriculum</a> and <a href="https://tmoa.tki.org.nz/Te-Marautanga-o-Aotearoa">Te Marautanga o Aotearoa</a>. </p>
<p>The national curriculum and school curriculums work in tandem to balance national consistency with localised enrichment. As part of the curriculum refresh now under way, Te Mātaiaho/The Curriculum Framework will replace the New Zealand Curriculum. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://curriculumrefresh-live-assetstorages3bucket-l5w0dsj7zmbm.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/2023-03/PDF%20Te%20Mataiaho%20March%202023.pdf?VersionId=4mGOdynJVtlzePlxTvWRyHJf_W5tw_WE">latest version of Te Mātaiaho</a>, which includes responses to school feedback last year, was released on March 17. It’s open for further input until May 12. Part of the process involves updating the eight learning areas – what many will recognise as the traditional school “subjects” – within a new “<a href="https://curriculumrefresh.education.govt.nz/whats-changing#understand-know-do-a-progression-focused-curriculum">understand, know, do</a>” model. </p>
<hr>
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<p>This model establishes key learning stage “progressions”. While it doesn’t go as far as National’s proposed year-by-year testing system, it does set out five consecutive phases: for years 1-3, 4-6, 7-8, 9-10 and 11-13. This replaces the current system of eight overlapping levels across years 0-13.</p>
<p>The new progressions are <a href="https://curriculumtimelines.education.govt.nz/refreshing-the-new-zealand-curriculum/">scheduled to be released</a> for consultation in phases, with full implementation planned for 2026. The first “refreshed” learning area – <a href="https://curriculumrefresh.education.govt.nz/social-sciences">te ao tangata/social sciences</a> – was released last year. It includes the new <a href="https://aotearoahistories.education.govt.nz/">Aotearoa New Zealand’s Histories</a> curriculum, which schools are now required to teach.</p>
<p>The curriculum refresh also includes improvements to literacy and communication, and numeracy, including explicitly describing outcomes as a component of all learning areas. As part of the <a href="https://www.education.govt.nz/our-work/changes-in-education/curriculum-and-assessment-changes/literacy-and-communication-and-maths-strategy/">literacy and maths strategy</a>, a <a href="https://www.education.govt.nz/our-work/changes-in-education/curriculum-and-assessment-changes/common-practice-model/">common practice model</a> is already being developed to create greater clarity, coherence and consistency across the school years. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517291/original/file-20230323-1043-r85dah.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517291/original/file-20230323-1043-r85dah.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517291/original/file-20230323-1043-r85dah.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517291/original/file-20230323-1043-r85dah.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517291/original/file-20230323-1043-r85dah.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517291/original/file-20230323-1043-r85dah.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517291/original/file-20230323-1043-r85dah.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Big workloads, inadequate funding: striking teachers arrive outside parliament on March 16.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Getty Images</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Teachers on the front line</h2>
<p>The upshot of all this is that extensive curriculum work is well under way – and teachers and school leaders are already grappling with the implications. But the National Party curriculum policy implies these changes <a href="https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/131581169/national-party-school-policy-focuses-on-daily-hourly-sessions-for-maths-reading-and-writing">won’t go far enough</a>. </p>
<p>If enacted, the proposed curriculum rewrite will require teachers to get their heads and hearts around even more change. This will include overseeing a new standardised testing regime in reading, writing and maths for years 3-8 – rather than solidifying their understanding of the current refresh.</p>
<hr>
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<hr>
<p>More curriculum change is assuredly not what teachers were calling for when they <a href="https://www.1news.co.nz/2023/03/16/photos-teachers-nationwide-take-to-the-streets-for-day-of-strike-action/">went on strike</a> on March 16. Rather, they were drawing attention to working conditions and pay scales that haven’t kept pace with inflation. </p>
<p>Mainstream reporting and social media posts overflowed with teachers and principals sharing experiences of increasing concerns about the wellbeing of students and staff. They spoke of overwhelming workloads and inadequate funding to support students with complex learning and behavioural needs. </p>
<p>Christopher Luxon addressed this broader educational complexity head-on, <a href="https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/131581169/national-party-school-policy-focuses-on-daily-hourly-sessions-for-maths-reading-and-writing">speaking directly to teachers</a>: “In addition to teaching, you have become the front-line response to complex social, educational, housing and wellbeing challenges.”</p>
<hr>
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<hr>
<h2>Beyond the school gates</h2>
<p>Of course, a strong curriculum and clear milestones for progress are important. But we also need to recognise that quality education occurs within a complex milieu of wider social and economic policies. </p>
<p>If Chris Hipkins’ desire for a bipartisan approach to education were to work, it would be good to see the educational policies of different political parties directly address the funding issue for schools. </p>
<p>Beyond that, how does school funding intersect with other policies targeting inequality and inequity outside the school gates? The same day National announced its curriculum policy, child poverty again <a href="https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/politics/cost-of-living-child-poverty-levels-hardly-improving-still-12000-in-material-hardship/NAARKFE32NAW5GTERMAZ2QSOLY/#">made the headlines</a>. A <a href="https://www.stats.govt.nz/news/child-poverty-statistics-show-no-annual-change-in-the-year-ended-june-2022">new report</a> showed 10% of the nation’s children are living in material hardship. </p>
<p>Having school children arrive at school properly fed, warm, well dressed and ready to learn is surely the priority. Teachers will then be able to focus on implementing the curriculum for everyone’s benefit.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/202438/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Cathy Buntting is contributing to the writing of the science learning area within the current New Zealand curriculum refresh. </span></em></p>The National Party’s new curriculum policy proposes reforms, when there are already several underway. What schools and teachers really need is more funding and less change.Cathy Buntting, Director, Wilf Malcolm Institute of Educational Research, University of WaikatoLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1944722022-12-06T13:11:52Z2022-12-06T13:11:52ZSkills shortages are plaguing South Africa’s economy - policy and social conditions must support their development<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/496954/original/file-20221123-14-d0xz15.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Many South Africans argue that the country has a skills crisis. An equal number question why it can’t sort this out by “adopting the German or Swiss approach”. </p>
<p>The reason the country isn’t getting the right skills to grow its economy is because of the way it thinks about both the problem – and solutions. </p>
<p>There are two aspects to this.</p>
<p>First, in relation to the notion of “skill”, we to see it as expertise embedded in bodies of knowledge, as well as gained through practical experience. Expertise is used for and developed at work, but acquired through schools, vocational institutions, universities, short courses or workplace training. But this is misguided. A dominant idea is that if we just figure out exactly what it is we want learners to be able to do, designing education that enables them to do it will be relatively easy. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, this is only the case for very specific practical skills like riding a bicycle.</p>
<p>Second, we need to understand skill formation happens through a set of systems which are shaped by, and which shape, economies, institutions and social relations. “Skills” are not a variable that can be changed on their own to create desired changes in the economy. If we want to make changes to skill formation systems and get the right skills, we have to understand this complexity.</p>
<p>Our research at the <a href="https://www.wits.ac.za/real/">Centre for Researching Education and Labour</a> suggests that:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>seeing skill as something to be separated from the knowledge and practice in which it is located leads to misguided and often destructive curriculum reforms. For example, the idea that “problem solving” can be taught as a standalone skill is nonsense.</p></li>
<li><p>education institutions are not the best or only places for learning skills like social skills</p></li>
<li><p>education institutions are the best, and perhaps only places for learning theories, concepts and practices that are very difficult to learn outside structured programmes</p></li>
<li><p>education institutions and systems are complex, difficult to build, require deliberate and extended support and focused cultivation, and are easy to destroy.</p></li>
</ul>
<h2>The gaps</h2>
<p>Where work requires expertise, it depends on education <a href="https://brill.com/edcollbook/title/36464">programmes</a> that are broadly, <a href="https://brill.com/edcollbook/title/36464">not narrowly</a>, vocational. That are based on bodies of knowledge in occupational areas, as opposed to teaching the narrow and specific tasks of a particular workplace. </p>
<p>Providing training to do specific tasks through formal education is usually a waste of valuable resources.</p>
<p>A second flaw in the current approach revolves around skill formation systems. Many interventions in skill formation assume that changing one ingredient – the skills of a group of individuals – will change economies and societies. This follows the logic of human capital theory, a simple input/output model which creates a virtuous cycle of more skills, more productivity and higher wages. </p>
<p>From a policy viewpoint, this leads to flawed interventions because it only looks at individuals and assumes individual effects can be aggregated up. Even institutions are theorised as individuals to be incentivised.</p>
<h2>What’s needed</h2>
<p>What we need instead of a neat causal system in which x causes y, and therefore if we incentivise x we will achieve y, we need to visualise a complex system in which changing any one part will have an effect on all the others. </p>
<p>The education system is part of society and the economy. It doesn’t exist outside of them, producing knowledge, expertise and skills in a vacuum. Societies, nationally and globally, are webs of institutions and institutional relationships that shape each other.</p>
<p>Research shows huge differences across wealthy countries in terms of the overall patterns of skill formation. These differences are not simple policy options, or models to be selected and adopted as education reforms, because they are intrinsic to different types of economies. Economic factors that shape skill formation systems include labour market regulation, collective bargaining, welfare and industrial policy and production regimes, political factors including degrees of federalisation, and election systems.</p>
<p>In low and middle-income countries, <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13636820.2020.1782455?journalCode=rjve20">we see complex multi-directional relationships</a> between education, poverty and inequality. All the evidence, even from those arguing that fixing schools is key to rupturing inequality, <a href="https://repository.hsrc.ac.za/handle/20.500.11910/15098">shows</a> that poverty is the biggest cause of educational failure in South Africa. </p>
<p>Of course South Africa has problems with our curriculum, teacher training and other aspects of our schooling system. However, poverty is a factor constraining teaching, affecting who becomes a teacher and how teachers are trained, how schools function, and the ability of individuals to learn.</p>
<p>This complex multi-directional set of relationships then shapes what is possible in the rest of the education and training system. Education can’t make up for inadequacies in other policy domains that have and continue to cause mass unemployment and underemployment. The country has to look much more systematically at the different pieces of the system needed to support both the demand for and the development and utilisation of skills, and most importantly, we need policies for structural economic change. </p>
<p>South Africa will improve its chances of skill formation success if it can identify potential key policy levers, and look at how they interact with each other.</p>
<p><em>This article is based on the author’s <a href="https://wits-za.zoom.us/rec/play/IhQIilx17bznV-z7sL0uIrU1so9FMmaYfUeOzDtbIAu2kvo6Qhfoh88UW_N3f-vpiGe_8j0YL01kHDDZ.2DItwgeekJlNUG2G?continueMode=true&_x_zm_rtaid=FfjUgaaLShOf4wuolYXpmA.1668674708163.818f8c7aa2452967bbcbd42a1e631045&_x_zm_rhtaid=258">inaugural lecture</a> presented at Wits University on 9 November 2022.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/194472/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stephanie Allais receives funding from the South African National Research Foundation.</span></em></p>Education can’t make up for inadequacies in other policies that continue to cause mass unemployment.Stephanie Allais, Faculty member, Centre for Researching Education and Labour, University of the WitwatersrandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1911022022-10-20T19:59:07Z2022-10-20T19:59:07ZEven school boards are now experiencing severe political polarization<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/490967/original/file-20221020-19-hip9f8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C361%2C3214%2C1865&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">School trustees play an important role in shaping education, yet during election time voters often have little awareness of trustee candidates.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Recently there has been a resurgence of movements across North America resisting anti-racist reforms such as the <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-critical-race-theory-should-inform-schools-185169">use of critical race theory in schools</a>. </p>
<p>These movements are often organized covertly, <a href="https://blueprintforcanada.ca/">using social justice language</a> and describing themselves <a href="https://ottawacitizen.com/news/polar-opposites-zone-6s-school-board-trustee-race-pits-woke-against-anti-woke">as “anti-woke.”</a></p>
<p>Groups that oppose the teaching of critical race theory and 2SLGBTQ+ supports in schools often position themselves as truly or more accurately in favour of social justice by co-opting social justice language, alleging <a href="https://www.thestar.com/local-perth/news/2022/05/16/2-lfk-candidates-vow-opposition-to-teaching-critical-race-theory-in-ontario-schools-oppose-bill-67.html?itm_source=parsely-api">critical race theory discriminates against white people</a>. School boards have been at the centre of these attacks. </p>
<p>As Ontario residents prepare to go to the polls in municipal elections on Oct. 24, CBC reports that “<a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ontario-school-board-trustee-investigation-1.6622705">dozens of candidates are running on promises to roll back protections for transgender students</a>, part of a concerted effort by conservative lobby groups to undo policies aimed at addressing systemic discrimination.”</p>
<p>Currently, school boards are bearing the brunt of backlash because their role in the public education system is the most accessible for members of the public to voice their concerns and try to have direct influence over policy and practice. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1582835021068439552"}"></div></p>
<h2>Sites of contestation</h2>
<p>While school boards have always been sites of contestation, there has been a recent rise in hate directed at those in the system working towards social justice. This includes <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-why-a-waterloo-ont-school-board-has-emerged-as-a-battleground-for/">school board directors</a> and <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/tdsb-racist-hate-mail-newtonbrook-black-teachers-anti-black-racism-1.5922976">teachers</a> who have tried to enact anti-racist reforms in Ontario schools. </p>
<p>In Waterloo Region, the chairperson of the public district school board <a href="https://www.therecord.com/news/waterloo-region/2022/08/20/nails-in-tires-hate-mail-death-threats-public-school-board-chair-facing-continued-abuse-over-transgender-book-meeting.html">received death threats</a> and <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-why-a-waterloo-ont-school-board-has-emerged-as-a-battleground-for/">hate mail</a> after disallowing a now-retired teacher from presenting on books she felt weren’t age-appropriate that discussed asexuality and transgender identity. </p>
<p>In Chilliwack, B.C., a trustee received a message threatening to <a href="https://www.theprogress.com/news/chilliwack-school-trustees-encourage-filing-of-police-reports-as-book-debate-escalates/">report her to the RCMP sex crimes unit</a> after she argued against banning books with LGBTQ+ and anti-racist content.</p>
<p>This pushback against social justice work in schools is not new. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1108/JEA-07-2016-0075">Principals in Ontario</a> have been experiencing it for years. </p>
<h2>Political will of the public?</h2>
<p>School trustees occupy a space between politics and administration. They represent the political will of the public but are supposed to leave the actual running of the school district to the director of education and other education professionals. </p>
<p>Under this dichotomy, politics and policy are the domain of the school board, whereas the director and other district staff have authority over administration. In practice, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/15700763.2019.1585548">these boundaries are often blurred</a>. </p>
<p>Part of what complicates matters is the governance structure of school boards. School trustees (elected school board members) are <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3516033">locally elected but are tasked with working “as one body representing the entire community</a>.” </p>
<p>But given that they are each individually accountable to their constituents, some trustees prefer to take a hand-ons approach to addressing issues of local concern. </p>
<p>This complicates what might ordinarily be considered a <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/24027683">“politics-administration dichotomy”</a> — a divide that some researchers note is questionable and contentious. </p>
<h2>Elected school boards in Canada</h2>
<p>Elected school boards have a history in Canada <a href="https://books-scholarsportal-info.proxy.bib.uottawa.ca/uri/ebooks/ebooks2/ogdc/2014-02-10/1/269864">that predates Confederation</a>. The idea behind the creation of school boards was for civic leaders to gather and decide how best to educate the children of the local community. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/quebecs-bill-40-further-undermines-the-provinces-english-language-school-system-131595">Québec's Bill 40 further undermines the province's English-language school system</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Historically, boards governed relatively small geographic areas and only a handful of schools. For example, in 1969, <a href="https://utorontopress.com/9780802081254/from-hope-to-harris">Ontario had around 3,500 school boards</a>.</p>
<p>In the 1960s, proponents of larger school systems argued that amalgamation would increase the financial resources of school boards which would <a href="https://www.biblio.com/book/how-big-too-big-problems-organization/d/521828576">allow for the hiring of specialized staff and an increase in the quality of services they could provide</a>.</p>
<p>From the 1960s to 1990s, Ontario went from over 3,500 school boards, to 230 county school boards, and finally down to the 72 district school boards that exist today. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A teen with blue hair seen facing a car with a rainbow poster." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/490898/original/file-20221020-17-ep9n4a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/490898/original/file-20221020-17-ep9n4a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490898/original/file-20221020-17-ep9n4a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490898/original/file-20221020-17-ep9n4a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490898/original/file-20221020-17-ep9n4a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490898/original/file-20221020-17-ep9n4a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490898/original/file-20221020-17-ep9n4a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A teenager receives a card from a motorist during an anti-bullying parade in Mission, B.C., Jan. 17, 2021.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Board mandates shifted</h2>
<p>During this time, the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/15700763.2019.1585548">mandate of school boards has grown considerably</a>. For much of their history, school boards were legally responsible for hiring teachers and furnishing schools.</p>
<p>Today’s school boards are also responsible for promoting student achievement, well-being, equity and inclusion, preventing bullying, providing for students with special education needs, ensuring community input through school councils, scheduling busing, establishing student dress codes and co-ordinating with child-care centres, among many other things. In Ontario, all of these responsibilities are highlighted in the <a href="https://www.ontario.ca/laws/statute/90e02">Ontario Education Act</a>. </p>
<p>As a result of these changes, school boards have become large and complex administrative units. This makes effective governance of school boards both challenging and important. </p>
<h2>Contentious position of board trustees</h2>
<p>Local school boards in Ontario are responsible for much of what happens in the day-to-day operation of schools, with members of the school board receiving their positions through municipal elections, a process that is often misunderstood. </p>
<p>The position of the school board trustee is contentious. Almost anyone <a href="https://elections.ontarioschooltrustees.org/BecomeATrustee/CandidateFAQs.aspx#:%7E:text=When%20filing%20a%20nomination%20a%20candidate%20must%20meet,by%20any%20legislation%20from%20holding%20school%20board%20office.">qualifies for a role</a> and obtains great power to influence educational policy and practice, raising questions about the tension between democratic control and expert authority. </p>
<p>While it’s clear that school trustees play an important role in shaping the education that children receive, during election time voters often have little awareness of their trustee candidates. </p>
<p>According to the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, this has provided an opening <a href="https://www.antihate.ca/confronting_preventing_hate_canada_school_boards">for far-right groups to try to stack school boards with candidates that harbour anti-equity ideologies</a>.</p>
<p>To help prevent this, the organization has come up with a framework for asking trustee candidates important questions that are centred around children’s rights. </p>
<h2>Student well-being</h2>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="A student seen walking in a hallway" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/490896/original/file-20221020-1694-zk2zb1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/490896/original/file-20221020-1694-zk2zb1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=426&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490896/original/file-20221020-1694-zk2zb1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=426&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490896/original/file-20221020-1694-zk2zb1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=426&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490896/original/file-20221020-1694-zk2zb1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=535&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490896/original/file-20221020-1694-zk2zb1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=535&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490896/original/file-20221020-1694-zk2zb1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=535&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">What about student well-being?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Graham Hughes</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>While local democratic engagement is necessary, it is important that politics not be allowed to subsume school districts and distract from the core purpose of schooling — student learning and well-being. </p>
<p>Checks and balances are required to ensure that the focus remains on creating and sustaining a school system that all students deserve. </p>
<p>As our society rethinks possibilities for critical democratic engagement in schooling that attends to issues of power and identity, we invite rethinking school boards. Communities need to imagine decision-making structures that include students, community organizations, educational experts and elected officials.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/191102/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sachin Maharaj receives funding from SSHRC.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stephanie Tuters receives funding from SSHRC. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Vidya Shah receives funding from SSHRC. </span></em></p>According to the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, far-right groups have been trying to stack school boards with candidates harbouring anti-equity ideologies.Sachin Maharaj, Assistant Professor of Educational Leadership, Policy and Program Evaluation, Faculty of Education, L’Université d’Ottawa/University of OttawaStephanie Tuters, Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream in the Department of Leadership, Higher and Adult Education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), University of TorontoVidya Shah, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Education, York University, CanadaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1921902022-10-11T14:04:32Z2022-10-11T14:04:32ZDecolonising education in South Africa – a reflection on a learning-teaching approach<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/489103/original/file-20221011-17-7r5061.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Opening up spaces for students to talk to each other and to lecturers is a way to entrench education as a public good.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Klaus Vedfelt/Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>It has been seven years since students in South Africa began <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/student-protests-democratic-south-africa">protesting</a> in a bid to “Africanise” the country’s university curricula. They viewed what they were learning as too <a href="https://oxfordre.com/education/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264093.001.0001/acrefore-9780190264093-e-404">neoliberal</a> – characterised by Western values pushing the marketisation of education. They wanted universities to become more relevant to students in an African country and more connected to their own lives.</p>
<p>The students’ calls propelled “decolonisation” to the forefront of national (and even <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/mar/16/the-real-meaning-of-rhodes-must-fall">international</a>) debate. Decolonisation in the university context involves dismantling the institutional practices and policies that uphold white supremacist, Western values. Since then there have been various initiatives at most of the country’s 26 public universities designed to change what students learn and how. </p>
<p>Every academic has their own opinion and their own approach. Mine, as a university educator who lectures future teachers, has been to adopt a teaching-learning approach called defamiliarisation.</p>
<p>The idea of defamiliarisation was coined by Russian literary theorist <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Viktor-Shklovsky">Viktor Shklovsky</a>. It is a process of looking at things differently through art, poetry, or film so that you don’t see them automatically; Shklovsky said that you could look at something you know several times without really analysing it. </p>
<p>I have <a href="http://ersc.nmmu.ac.za/articles/ERSC_June_2018_SPEd_Waghid__Hibbert_Vol_7_pp_60-77.pdf">researched</a> and used defamiliarisation in my teaching since 2015, finding it a good place to contribute towards disrupting the sort of neoliberal curriculum student protesters opposed. If a curriculum doesn’t consider the humanistic side of learning, the system and institution can treat students as a form of human capital. That ultimately changes education from a public good to a commodity. </p>
<p>By approaching my classes using defamiliarisation, I have been able to help students think beyond the usual stories about history. Crucially, they have been put in charge of their learning. In this way, education is shored up as a public good.</p>
<h2>A space to speak openly</h2>
<p>So, what does defamiliarisation look like in practise? One example is an activity a colleague and I designed: we asked a group of students, as part of a lesson, to draw how they saw themselves and how they felt about being taught in English at the university. While English is widely spoken in South Africa, most of our students speak isiXhosa as their first language. </p>
<p>Even though the question was about the university, many of the students’ drawn answers were about society and their communities in reference to the university. These examples showed that, for these students, the community and the university are not separate. The question seemed to bring up deeper issues that neither the students nor I were aware of at the time.</p>
<p>For example, one of the students I talked to about her drawing creatively explained how her feelings were connected to her beliefs, culture, and context pertaining to the dominant and gendered power relations in her community, and at the school she had attended. </p>
<p>She drew two portraits of herself: on the left, a false representation at the school she attended, depicting the aesthetic beauty and success that came with being able to speak English fluently and with excellent grades; on the right, a portrait of her dormant natural beauty that held on to her culture and true identity.</p>
<p>Her drawing showed how she saw herself and how she thought the rest of society saw her. Her drawing showed her race, language, culture, gender, and a false representation of who she was in her school environment. </p>
<p>The student said that in her community, people often asked her about her race because she spoke in a dialect that she may have picked up at a former Model C (whites only during apartheid) school, and that was often associated with “white culture” in her community. </p>
<p>The defamiliarisation approach allowed this student to make her peers and me aware of her socio-cultural context and, more importantly, the challenges and subtleties of her identity and how she felt about them. By doing this activity, she, like many of her peers, could talk about herself creatively and effectively.</p>
<p>This approach developed students’ openness, compassion, sympathy and responsibility. </p>
<p>You could say that defamiliarisation gave the students the freedom to become their own narrators. It also allowed them to understand what their peers were going through and show compassion for them around instances of marginalisation in society. This, in my opinion, is crucial for aspiring educators to fully comprehend the range of experiences and viewpoints held by learners from a variety of socioeconomic backgrounds.</p>
<h2>Educators benefit, too</h2>
<p>I believe this kind of teaching was valuable and essential to assist students in developing the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and behaviours needed for critical global citizenship. It allowed them to communicate openly about victimisation and unjust treatment in South Africa. </p>
<p>Even though in some instances it made them feel uncomfortable, defamiliarisation was met with <a href="https://journals.co.za/doi/pdf/10.20853/32-4-2922">mostly favourable reactions</a> from students. It helped them to open up about the challenges in their own lives. And I still use the approach today, mostly through the medium of film. For instance, I showed the <a href="https://www.showmax.com/eng/movie/69pli6p9-krotoa">movie</a> <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/krotoa-eva">Krotoa</a> to a different class. It examines the impact of Dutch colonisation on the culture and identity of the indigenous Khoi people of the Cape in the 17th century. </p>
<p>Defamiliarisation helps educators, too. I have reflected on my role as a university lecturer and, frankly, to question aspects of my teaching that seem dominant and obvious to my students but are just habitual to me. Learning about my students’ real-life experiences and sentiments helped me empathise with them and value their individuality. It helped us to connect in a meaningful way as equals. </p>
<p>Using this approach is a way for academics to return to the basics. That’s crucial if universities are to offer a curriculum that centres students’ needs as the primary focus of learning.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/192190/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Zayd Waghid does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Putting students at the centre of their learning is a powerful tool for decolonising the classroom.Zayd Waghid, Associate professor, Cape Peninsula University of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1881972022-09-16T12:17:16Z2022-09-16T12:17:16ZThese high school ‘classics’ have been taught for generations – could they be on their way out?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/484952/original/file-20220915-25735-8jjzi8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=17%2C34%2C5734%2C3794&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">High school students have studied many of the same books for generations. Is it time for a change?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/william-shakespeare-royalty-free-image/168625734?adppopup=true">Andrew_Howe via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>If you went to high school in the United States anytime since the 1960s, you were likely assigned some of the following books: Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet,” “Julius Caesar” and “Macbeth”; John Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men”; F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby”; Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird”; and William Golding’s “The Lord of the Flies.”</p>
<p>For many former students, these books and other so-called “classics” represent high school English. But despite the efforts of reformers, both <a href="https://eric.ed.gov/?q=multicultural+canon&id=ED371401">past</a> and <a href="https://disrupttexts.org/">present</a>, the most frequently assigned titles have never represented America’s diverse student body.</p>
<p>Why did these books become classics in the U.S.? How have they withstood challenges to their status? And will they continue to dominate high school reading lists? Or will they be replaced by a different set of books that will become classics for students in the 21st century?</p>
<h2>The high school canon</h2>
<p>The set of books that is taught again and again, broadly across the country, is referred to by literature scholars and English teachers as “the canon.” </p>
<p>The high school canon has been shaped by many factors. Shakespeare’s plays, especially “Macbeth” and “Julius Caesar,” have been taught consistently <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/1488191">since the beginning of the 20th century</a>, when the curriculum was determined by college entrance requirements. Others, like “To Kill a Mockingbird,” winner of the 1961 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, were ushered into the classroom by current events – in the case of Lee’s book, <a href="https://time.com/3928162/mockingbird-civil-rights-movement/">the civil rights movement</a>. Some books just seem especially suited for classroom teaching: “Of Mice and Men” has a straightforward plot, easily identifiable themes and is under 100 pages long.</p>
<p>Titles become “traditional” when they are passed down through generations. As the education historian Jonna Perrillo observes, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/09/12/todays-book-bans-might-be-more-dangerous-than-those-past/">parents tend to approve</a> of having their children study the same books that they once did.</p>
<p>The last period of significant change to the canon was during the 1960s and 1970s, when the largest generation of the 20th century, the baby boomers, went to high school. For instance, in 1963, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/810053">a survey of 800 students</a> at Evanston Township High School in Illinois revealed that “To Kill a Mockingbird,” first published in 1960, was by far the “most enjoyed book,” followed by two books that had been published in the 1950s, J.D. Salinger’s “The Catcher in the Rye” and Golding’s “The Lord of the Flies.” None of these books were yet traditional, yet they became so for the next generation.</p>
<p>A comparison of national surveys conducted in 1963 and 1988 shows how several books that were introduced to the classroom when the boomers were students had become classics when boomers were teachers.</p>
<p><iframe id="UU1gm" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/UU1gm/3/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>During the 1960s and 1970s, teachers even reframed “Romeo and Juliet” as a contemporary work. Lesson plans from the era referred to its adaptations into “<a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/811316">West Side Story</a>” – a musical that <a href="https://www.westsidestory.com/1957-broadway">initially came out in 1957</a> – and Franco Zefferelli’s <a href="https://eric.ed.gov/?q=zeffirelli+romeo&id=ED026386">risqué 1968 film version</a> of Shakespeare’s story of star-crossed lovers. It became the perfect hook for ninth graders in a study of Shakespeare that would conclude in 12th grade with “Macbeth.”</p>
<h2>Efforts to diversify</h2>
<p>English education professor <a href="https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED309453">Arthur Applebee observed in 1989</a> that, since the 1960s, “leaders in the profession of English teaching have tried to broaden the curriculum to include more selections by women and minority authors.” But in the late 1980s, according to his findings, the high school “top ten” still included only one book by a woman – Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” – and none by minority authors.</p>
<p>At that time, a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1991/09/23/opinion/the-mosaic-and-the-melting-pot.html">raging debate</a> was underway about whether America was a “melting pot” in which many cultures became one, or a colorful “mosaic” in which many cultures coexisted. Proponents of the latter view argued for a multicultural canon, but they were ultimately unable to establish one. A 2011 survey of Southern schools by Joyce Stallworth and Louel C. Gibbons, published in “English Leadership Quarterly,” found that the five most frequently taught books were all traditional selections: “The Great Gatsby,” “Romeo and Juliet,” Homer’s “The Odyssey,” Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible” and “To Kill a Mockingbird.”</p>
<p>One explanation for this persistence is that the canon is not simply a list: It takes form as stacks of copies on shelves in the storage area known as the “book room.” Changes to the inventory require time, money and effort. Depending on the district, replacing a classic <a href="https://ncte.org/statement/material-selection-ela/">might require approval by the school board</a>. And it would create more work for teachers who are already maxed out. </p>
<p>“Too many teachers, probably myself included, teach from the traditional canon,” a teacher told Stallworth and Gibbons. “We are overworked and underpaid and struggle to find the time to develop quality lessons for new books.” </p>
<h2>The end of an era?</h2>
<p>Esau McCauley, the author of “Reading While Black,” describes the list of classics by white authors as the “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/07/opinion/what-should-high-schoolers-read.html?searchResultPosition=1">pre-integration canon</a>.” At least two factors suggest that its dominance over the curriculum is coming to an end.</p>
<p>First, the battles over which books should be taught have become more intense than ever. On the one hand, progressives like the teachers of the growing <a href="https://disrupttexts.org/">#DisruptTexts movement</a> call for the inclusion of books by <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/article/what-is-bipoc.html">Black, Native American and other authors of color</a> - and they question the status of the classics. On the other hand, conservatives have challenged or successfully banned the teaching of many new books that deal with gender and sexuality or race.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/484967/original/file-20220915-6106-4kq0zl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Toni Morrison wears her hair in gray locks under a cream-colored hat." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/484967/original/file-20220915-6106-4kq0zl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/484967/original/file-20220915-6106-4kq0zl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484967/original/file-20220915-6106-4kq0zl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484967/original/file-20220915-6106-4kq0zl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484967/original/file-20220915-6106-4kq0zl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484967/original/file-20220915-6106-4kq0zl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484967/original/file-20220915-6106-4kq0zl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Conservatives have sought to ban books written by Toni Morrison.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/toni-morrison-american-writer-novelist-editor-italy-news-photo/1129511612?adppopup=true">Leonardo Cendamo via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>PEN America, a nonprofit organization that fights for free expression for writers, reports “<a href="https://pen.org/banned-in-the-usa/">a profound increase</a>” in book bans. The outcome might be a literature curriculum that more resembles the political divisions in this country. Much more than in the past, students in conservative and progressive districts might read very different books.</p>
<p>Second, English Language Arts education itself is changing. State standards, such as those <a href="http://www.nysed.gov/common/nysed/files/912elastandardsglance.pdf">adopted by New York in 2017</a>, no longer make the teaching of literature the primary focus of English class. Instead, there is a new emphasis on “<a href="http://www.nysed.gov/curriculum-instruction/teaching-learning-information-literacy">information literacy</a>.” And while preceding generations of teachers voiced concerns about the distractions of <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/42832830">radio</a> and then <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/42799566">television</a>, books may have an even smaller share of students’ attention in <a href="https://countercurrents.org/2021/04/impact-of-social-media-on-our-attention-span-and-its-drastic-aftermath/">the age of cellphones, the internet, social media and online gaming</a>.</p>
<p>“We no longer live in a print-dominant, text-only world,” the National Council of Teachers of English proclaims in <a href="https://ncte.org/statement/media_education/">a 2022 position statement</a>. The group calls for English teachers to put less emphasis on books in order to train students to use and analyze a variety of media. Accordingly, students across the country may not only have fewer books in common, but they also may be reading fewer books altogether.</p>
<h2>Why teach literature?</h2>
<p>Over generations, English teachers have voiced many reasons to teach books, and the canon in particular: to instill a <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/816405">common culture</a>, foster <a href="https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED027289">citizenship</a>, build <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/820324">empathy</a> and cultivate <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/4128931">lifelong readers</a>. These goals have little to do with the skills emphasized by contemporary academic standards. But if literature is going to continue to be an important part of American education, it is important to talk not only about what books to teach, but the reasons why.</p>
<p><em>This story has been updated to correct the year that “West Side Story” appeared as a musical.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/188197/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andrew Newman has received funding from John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.</span></em></p>An English professor takes a critical look at why today’s students are assigned the same books that were assigned decades ago – and why American school curricula are so difficult to change.Andrew Newman, Professor and Chair, Stony Brook University (The State University of New York)Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1803792022-05-18T12:14:13Z2022-05-18T12:14:13ZPublic education is supposed to prepare an informed citizenry – elementary teachers have just two hours a week to teach social studies<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/462314/original/file-20220510-14-crjvgp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=43%2C0%2C5717%2C3840&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A student listens to a U.S. history lesson in a New Mexico classroom.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/EducationSocialStudies/27cb0809521a44c4b5fdee2a7cb72187/photo">AP Photo/Cedar Attanasio</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The founders of the United States were <a href="https://iep.utm.edu/american-enlightenment-thought/">intentionally building a nation</a> <a href="https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/creating-the-united-states/founded-on-a-set-of-beliefs.html">based on the ideals of the Enlightenment</a>, a movement centered on <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Enlightenment-European-history">individual happiness, knowledge and reason</a>. This new approach to defining a country – rather than basing it on language, ethnicity or geographic proximity – meant the new United States would have to educate its citizenry with the ideas, skills and values necessary to build and grow their democracy.</p>
<p>As a result, the founders <a href="https://www.visitthecapitol.gov/exhibitions/artifact/northwest-ordinance-1787">called for schools to be established</a> and funded. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and others believed it was the <a href="https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED606970.pdf">responsibility of the government</a> to provide that education. Jefferson believed that education would <a href="https://www.deseret.com/opinion/2015/2/27/20759428/in-the-words-of-thomas-jefferson-why-education-matters">serve as the moral foundation of the nation</a> and redress the effect of poverty because education would be available to all children.</p>
<p>Though public schools did not become widespread <a href="https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED606970.pdf">until the 19th century</a>, the goal of educating informed citizens capable of inquiry and critical thinking was part of the democratic republic from the start. But nearly 250 years after the nation’s founding, its schools struggle to achieve that goal.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/455652/original/file-20220331-15-bbb91w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A wood engraving depicts a young student speaking to a school class" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/455652/original/file-20220331-15-bbb91w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/455652/original/file-20220331-15-bbb91w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=582&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/455652/original/file-20220331-15-bbb91w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=582&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/455652/original/file-20220331-15-bbb91w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=582&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/455652/original/file-20220331-15-bbb91w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=731&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/455652/original/file-20220331-15-bbb91w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=731&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/455652/original/file-20220331-15-bbb91w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=731&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An illustration in Harper’s Weekly in 1874 depicts a village school lesson in rhetoric.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.loc.gov/resource/cph.3b03482/">Harper's Weekly via Library of Congress</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A fourth basic subject</h2>
<p>Foundational American educational theorist <a href="https://www.neh.gov/article/john-dewey-portrait-progressive-thinker">John Dewey</a>, who worked and wrote in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, promoted education that would help build and maintain a democracy made up of different groups of people. In his 1916 book “<a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/852/852-h/852-h.htm">Democracy in Education</a>,” he warned that focusing education only on the “<a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/852/852-h/852-h.htm">three Rs: reading, ‘writing and 'rithmetic was not enough to educate a useful citizen</a>.”</p>
<p>It is no accident that Dewey’s career in educational philosophy coincided with the rise of a new field of education, <a href="https://www.socialstudies.org/sites/default/files/publications/se/5907/590702.html">called social studies</a>, aimed at cultivating good citizenship to build a stronger American society. </p>
<p><a href="https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED374072&msclkid=a0283c7dcfd111ecbc4ada5d4ee48e1a">In 1916</a>, the term was used by the National Education Association to “designate formal citizenship education and [place] squarely in the field all of those subjects that were believed to contribute to that end.”</p>
<p>That purpose remains today. According to the National Council of the Social Studies, the current goal of <a href="https://www.socialstudies.org/about">social studies education</a> “is to help young people develop the ability to make informed and reasoned decisions for the public good as citizens of a culturally diverse, democratic society in an interdependent world.” </p>
<p>But since at least the 1980s, the nation’s public schools have consistently put social studies on the <a href="https://www.proquest.com/openview/e18c582e6d1248932c183470595e70e6/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=48205">back burner</a>. This process accelerated with the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, which <a href="https://theconversation.com/no-child-left-behind-fails-to-work-miracles-spurs-cheating-38620">required schools to focus</a> on the “three Rs,” to the <a href="https://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/summer-2007/no-child-leaves-the-social-studies-behind">exclusion of social studies</a>.</p>
<p>A 2010 study demonstrated the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2015/03/31/social-studies-education-facing-crisis-as-class-time-is-slashed-departments-closed/">relative importance of social studies</a> when it reported that elementary school teachers spent <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00933104.2010.10473418">2.5 hours on social studies</a>, 11.6 hours on Language Arts, and 5.3 hours on math per week. </p>
<h2>A lower priority</h2>
<p>As a <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=nGjdMkkAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">scholar of social studies education</a>, I have noticed that social studies is <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0895904812453998">often a lower priority</a> than reading, writing and math in <a href="https://hechingerreport.org/how-social-studies-can-help-young-kids-make-sense-of-the-world/">many schools</a>.</p>
<p>For instance, from 1993 to 2008, the time allotted to social studies instruction <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00933104.2010.10473418">dropped by 56 minutes per week</a> in third through fifth grade classes in the U.S. Over the same time, math, English and language arts instruction increased. This trend continued, with a 2014 study that documented an “<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0895904812453998">an average of 2.52 hours of social studies instructional</a> time per week.”</p>
<p>This reduction in social studies instruction has affected minority students more than others. Federal statistics show that since at least 1998, <a href="https://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/civics/">Black students have tended to score lower</a> on tests of civics knowledge <a href="https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/highlights/civics/2018/">than white students</a>. </p>
<p>One study described how that this civic education gap contributes to a <a href="http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:8454069">civic participation gap</a>, in which poorer people and those from nonwhite ethnic groups vote less. That study declared the gap “challenges the stability, legitimacy, and quality of our democratic republic.” Those comments echo those of Jefferson and Dewey, who believed that the purpose of schools was to prepare children to be citizens. </p>
<p>There was a need for civic education in their time – and the complexity of modern society and the increasingly obvious fragility of U.S. constitutional government indicate that social studies is more relevant and more vital now than ever before.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/180379/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kenneth Anthony receives funding from the Library of Congress Teaching with Primary Sources Program. He is a past president and member of the Mississippi Council for the Social Studies. </span></em></p>From the founding of the U.S., public schools were seen as a key way to develop an informed, active citizenry. Social studies educators struggle to achieve that goal today.Kenneth Anthony, Associate Professor of Elementary Education, Mississippi State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1804982022-04-20T19:56:26Z2022-04-20T19:56:26ZAll teachers need to teach language and literacy, not just English teachers<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/458524/original/file-20220419-13-96w8fh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C29%2C5000%2C3300&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://www.educationstandards.nsw.edu.au/wps/portal/nesa/about/news/media-releases/media-release-detail/new-english-and-maths-curriculum-for-years-3-to-10">Proposed changes</a> to the New South Wales English syllabus reinforce the misguided idea that the teaching of language and literacy skills should fall chiefly to English teachers, leaving other teachers to focus more on their subject content.</p>
<p>The plan follows <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/national/students-struggle-as-review-finds-writing-skills-neglected-in-nsw-high-schools-20200911-p55uvu.html">a report</a> by the NSW Education Authority (NESA) that found students’ writing standards had fallen sharply over recent years.</p>
<p>The draft <a href="https://www.educationstandards.nsw.edu.au/wps/portal/nesa/about/news/media-releases/media-release-detail/new-english-and-maths-curriculum-for-years-3-to-10">NSW English syllabus</a> includes <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/english-teachers-told-to-focus-on-grammar-punctuation-as-writing-declines-20220317-p5a5l9.html">specific language and literacy outcomes</a> such as grammar, punctuation, paragraphing and sentence structure, unlike the draft <a href="https://educationstandards.nsw.edu.au/wps/wcm/connect/f38597f3-fc57-4c73-a6c8-c37bc41029ce/mathematics-3-6-draft-syllabus-pdf.pdf?MOD=AJPERES&CVID=">NSW maths syllabus</a> which has no specific language outcomes. </p>
<p>The Sydney Morning Herald <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/english-teachers-told-to-focus-on-grammar-punctuation-as-writing-declines-20220317-p5a5l9.html">reported</a> the English Teachers Association said the changes “would hand them an unnecessary burden because literacy skills differ from subject to subject.”</p>
<p>Linking language and literacy outcomes to the English syllabus in an attempt to improve students’ writing across all subjects is a flawed approach.</p>
<p>It ignores important research on what <em>all</em> teachers need to know about language and gets in the way of students developing the <a href="https://www.education.vic.gov.au/school/teachers/teachingresources/discipline/english/literacy/readingviewing/Pages/litfocuslitacrosscurriculum.aspx">different language skills</a> they need in different subjects. It also risks disadvantaging students who are still learning English. </p>
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<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/458484/original/file-20220419-76445-gqc5s6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Students face the whiteboard in a classroom." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/458484/original/file-20220419-76445-gqc5s6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/458484/original/file-20220419-76445-gqc5s6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458484/original/file-20220419-76445-gqc5s6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458484/original/file-20220419-76445-gqc5s6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458484/original/file-20220419-76445-gqc5s6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458484/original/file-20220419-76445-gqc5s6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458484/original/file-20220419-76445-gqc5s6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A recent report by the NSW Education Authority (NESA) found that students’ writing standards had fallen sharply over recent years.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>How does language work differently in different subject areas?</h2>
<p>Rather than learning lists of vocabulary or abstract grammar rules, students learn best when they get actively involved in their classroom learning.</p>
<p>This means using many different language skills, such as listening to teachers’ explanations, taking notes and developing written arguments.</p>
<p>But not all of these language skills can be transferred to different subjects in the same way.</p>
<p>Take science, for example.</p>
<p>We often think of it as a practical, hands-on subject rather than one focused on reading and writing. But students also need to read scientific explanations and write scientific reports. They also need to use complex language skills to explain, present and test scientific ideas.</p>
<p>Skilled <a href="https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/family-education/article/1099942/why-many-students-have-trouble-grasping-abstract-science">science teachers</a> understand and plan for those bits of scientific language that students find difficult.</p>
<p>Confusion can arise when a word that means one thing in everyday language means quite another thing in science – like “culture”, when we mean to grow bacteria or cells, or “medium”, when we mean the liquid that bacteria or cells grow in. </p>
<p>Students also need to know that in science, unlike in English, the subject of the sentence is not as important as the concept or process we are talking about. </p>
<p>So instead of saying, “we saw the water droplets”, we would often say “water droplets were observed”.</p>
<p>We also tend to use more economical language in science than in the English classroom. </p>
<p>So, it’s a “saltwater solution” rather than “a liquid solution with salt in it” and “condensation” rather than “that thing that happens when water condenses”. </p>
<p>We can’t expect English teachers to anticipate these science-specific language challenges. </p>
<p>Maths is also often thought of as a “language-free” subject, even though language is essential for <a href="https://research.acer.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1006&context=digest">understanding and communicating maths</a>. </p>
<p>But mathematical language is best taught in the context of doing maths. Some everyday words such as “product” and “domain” mean something quite different in maths, while different terms like “times” and “multiply” mean the same thing. This can be challenging when English is not your first language. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/458488/original/file-20220419-95-l9pjh3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/458488/original/file-20220419-95-l9pjh3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/458488/original/file-20220419-95-l9pjh3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458488/original/file-20220419-95-l9pjh3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458488/original/file-20220419-95-l9pjh3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458488/original/file-20220419-95-l9pjh3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458488/original/file-20220419-95-l9pjh3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458488/original/file-20220419-95-l9pjh3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Science isn’t just about experiements; it is about reading and writing, too.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>What about students who don’t speak English as a first language?</h2>
<p>In NSW schools, 24% of students speak <a href="https://education.nsw.gov.au/about-us/educational-data/cese/publications/statistics/eald-2019-statistical-bulletin">English as an additional language</a>. They have to learn multiple facts, figures and skills in a language that they are still learning. </p>
<p>They need their teachers to be able to understand their language challenges and to give them <a href="https://education.nsw.gov.au/about-us/educational-data/cese/publications/research-reports/eald-effective-school-practices">subject-specific language support</a> so they can succeed at school like everyone else. </p>
<p>Yet, many teachers say they don’t feel well prepared to teach English language learners. Teachers need to have <a href="https://education.nsw.gov.au/about-us/educational-data/cese/publications/research-reports/what-works-best-2020-update">professional development opportunities</a> available to make sure they are supported to meet the challenges they face in the classroom.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/language-matters-in-science-and-mathematics-heres-why-68960">Language matters in science and mathematics - here’s why</a>
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</em>
</p>
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<h2>What does the research say?</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.wested.org/resources/amplifying-the-curriculum/">Researchers</a> <a href="https://ro.uow.edu.au/sspapers/2904">argue</a> that because all learning involves language, language and literacy <a href="https://www.heinemann.com/products/e05664.aspx">should</a> be taught explicitly across all school subjects. Language must be understood and learned <a href="https://www.petaa.edu.au/w/Teaching_Resources/P40/Derewianka_and_Humphrey_essay.aspx">in context</a>, not outsourced to English teachers and taught as generic “skills”.</p>
<p>If we want to improve the writing of all students, we need to give them lots of practice in using different vocabulary, grammar and text structures in their different school subjects. Then they can learn language at the same time as they are learning about new concepts and contexts. </p>
<p>This is particularly important for students who are new to English. Simply dropping them in an all-English learning environment or giving them simplified English will not work. </p>
<p>In Australia, the language challenges faced by students from different backgrounds are all too often invisible to teachers. We need this to change.</p>
<p>If we are serious about making education fair and inclusive, then <em>all</em> subject teachers should share responsibility for teaching language.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/180498/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sue Ollerhead does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Researchers argue that because all learning involves language, language and literacy should be taught explicitly across all school subjects. Language must be understood and learned in context.Sue Ollerhead, Senior Lecturer: Language and Literacy Education, Macquarie UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1772752022-03-06T09:22:07Z2022-03-06T09:22:07ZElitism affects schools across the globe: it needs to be kept in check<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/447755/original/file-20220222-23-ocweus.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Klaus Vedfelt/Gettyimages</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>There is no shortage of themes to address in schools and universities: wellbeing; climate change; diversity; equity and social justice; assessment; 21st century learning; the list goes on.</p>
<p>But, are there some challenges that stand out above the others? The answer is yes, but yes on two fronts. </p>
<p>The first relates to the teacher – the most important human influence on student learning. This has been shown through multiple analyses: <a href="https://learningportal.iiep.unesco.org/en/library/the-impact-of-teacher-effectiveness-on-student-learning-in-africa">trials</a> in Uganda have suggested a real shift in learning when the teacher is strong, research by the <a href="https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/29883/WPS8454.pdf?sequence=5&isAllowed=y">World Bank</a> points to the importance of teachers’ beliefs in their students (what the groundbreaking psychologist Bandura called <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10833-018-9319-2">collective teacher efficacy</a>) and an extensive study by the <a href="https://www.rand.org/education-and-labor/projects/measuring-teacher-effectiveness/teachers-matter.html">Rand Corporation</a> outlines the extraordinary value-added teaching can have on students.</p>
<p>However, this is only part of the puzzle. Teachers and students operate in systems characterised by values, culture and opportunities which determine many crucial factors, such as how far a student can hope to go in their journey, what they will study and what the next steps in life might be. </p>
<p>A teacher alone cannot determine these aspects of life as many will be influenced, if not completely determined, by the second front that has the greatest effect on learning. This second front is ideological: elitism. </p>
<p>I’ve written a book on this – <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Education-and-Elitism-Challenges-and-Opportunities/Hughes/p/book/9780367527884">Education and Elitism: Challenges and Opportunities</a>. I have noticed in my daily practice as a Principal that the theme of elitism is omnipresent, from the pressure students put on themselves to enter elitist universities to the type of knowledge that is promoted, and excluded, in the curriculum. I argue that elitism is a central theme that defines almost everything that happens in schools and universities.</p>
<p>Of course, this depends on geographic regions: in the book I show how educational elitism is far more strident in the free-market Anglo-American sphere, for example, than it is in social democracies in Nordic countries. However, this is a question of valency, for elitism affects all educational systems across the globe.</p>
<p>Let’s investigate what this means at different levels: meritocratic, plutocratic and cultural elitism.</p>
<h2>Meritocratic</h2>
<p>First, there is the elitist system of meritocracy whereby the best are promoted and awarded. But what do we mean by the best? Best at what? Traditional school assessment metrics measure attainment in academic domains and extra curriculars. </p>
<p>The question to ask is where the space is for neurodivergent, physically challenged or socially disadvantaged students. Social advantage (or lack therefore) predicts opportunity. For instance, students with access to coaching and technologically advanced infrastructures can get ahead in extra curriculars. </p>
<p>In essence, meritocratic elitism is meant to be need-blind, but it is not.</p>
<h2>Plutocratic</h2>
<p>Next, there is plutocratic elitism meaning that the wealthy have the opportunities and the poor do not. </p>
<p>This is especially true in education for a number of reasons. First, top-tier universities are still extremely expensive. Some students receive needs-based scholarships, but even after scholarships, average tuition is still very high. And its easier to get there through <a href="https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/06/private-schools-competitive-college-advantage-problems.html">expensive schools</a>, with resources directed at college counselling. </p>
<p>A <a href="https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/poor-children-7-times-less-likely-finish-school-rich-children-new-oxfam-report">2019 Oxfam report</a> showed that poorer children in the so-called “developing world” were seven times less likely to finish school. <a href="https://www.unicef-irc.org/publications/995-an-unfair-start-education-inequality-children.html">A UNICEF report</a> makes it clear that even in more developed countries “not all children have an equal opportunity to reach their full potential”. This is often because lower resourced schools struggle to provide the type of learning support that many student might need to excel.</p>
<h2>Cultural elitism</h2>
<p>Finally, there is cultural elitism, in other words, presenting a curriculum to students that excludes many voices. For instance, Kenyan students are still learning as much, if not more, about British history through a British curriculum <a href="https://hrmars.com/papers_submitted/1433/A_Critical_Appraisal_of_History_Taught_in_Secondary_Schools_in_Kenya1.pdf">than Kenyan history and culture</a>.</p>
<p>This causes what is known as <a href="http://www.tesl-ej.org/wordpress/issues/volume16/ej64/ej64r7/">curriculum violence</a>. When the curriculum is biased towards one cultural hegemony, it can create complexes of inferiority among students and instructors from other, less represented, or pessimistically represented cultures. For example, <a href="https://www.learningforjustice.org/magazine/spring-2020/ending-curriculum-violence">clumsy classroom experiments on what it means to be a slave or colonised person</a> run the risk of traumatising students from historically denigrated cultures as they are forced to confront heavy, painful issues in front of a curious audience. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.mentallyhealthyschools.org.uk/risks-and-protective-factors/school-based-risk-factors/relationships-and-belonging/">Psychological well-being in schools</a> often stems from a feeling of not belonging to the in-group. The effects of this alienation are manifold and can be extremely negative. </p>
<p>Anti-cultural elitist movements can veer into crude exclusionary tactics too: rubbishing Western culture; excluding people based on their identities or seeking stigmas, categorisations and new types of stereotypes. Ironically, in the effort to dismantle elitism, a new type of elitism can be created. The search should be for an expression of culture that is less fragmented and more inclusive. Culture is a discussion to be had by everyone. </p>
<p>At the end of the day, education is about building confidence in students for the next challenge, and to build up someone’s confidence, there must be care for their multiple identities, not an aggressively elitist interest in some groups only.</p>
<h2>A way forward</h2>
<p>In my <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Education-and-Elitism-Challenges-and-Opportunities/Hughes/p/book/9780367527884">book</a>, I point out that elitism is not always necessarily bad. Situational elitism is at the core of much human organisation, mainly in systems of contests, canons of respect, social structure or aesthetic discernment. Ultimately, there is no such thing as a world without elitism.</p>
<p>However, when it is too strident and unchecked, it becomes important for educators to stand back, to check the systems and values that are framing student learning and to adapt them if possible. </p>
<p>How to do this?</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Broaden Assessment. Schools need to look carefully at how they can assess students more broadly than on academic skills predicated on social advantage. At the same time, universities need to be part of that discussion too, ensuring that the entry requirements to tertiary instructions are more holistic and appreciative of character and human flourishing than they are at present. If schools want to encourage entrepreneurship and student agency, then transcripts have to change to recognise this. A group that is doing this work to broaden assessment is the <a href="https://rethinkingassessment.com/rethinking-blogs/the-coalition-to-honour-all-learning/">coalition to honour all learning</a>.</p></li>
<li><p>Improve the reputation of state universities. As long as students are queuing at the door of the same top-tier, Ivy League and Russell group universities, the pressure on guidance counsellors, teachers, parents and, of course, students, to outperform one another will remain, causing stress and unhealthy zero-sum-game competition. To mitigate this, entire national systems and districts have to do work to improve the reputation of state institutions so that progress to tertiary educational pathways is smoother and more mindful. Ranking tables should be discarded.</p></li>
<li><p>Decolonise the curriculum. If the society that human beings need in the future is more inclusive, sustainable and socially responsible, then the values that are implicit in the curriculum need to be rethought. Schools should re-calibrate so that the curriculum experience is critically-minded, diverse, competence-based and celebratory of human qualities such as compassion, cultural literacy, environmental custodianship and accountability. A good starting place for this work is the study of <a href="https://www.cois.org/about-cis/news/post/%7Eboard/perspectives-blog/post/decolonising-the-curriculum">history</a>.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Therefore, I submit that to reform education for good, elitism must be addressed. Schools and society should allow for people to reach potential, to become excellent, but it does not have to be at the cost of others. If we look for the good and celebrate gifts as they are rather than how they should appear in one rigid framework, the whole question of elitism will become a different question, one of human flourishing in all its diverse and powerful expressions.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/177275/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Conrad Hughes is the founder of the Coalition to Honour all Learning</span></em></p>Education must care for the multiple identities of students, not an elitist interest in some groups only.Conrad Hughes, Campus and Secondary Principal at the International School of Geneva's La Grande Boissière, Research Associate at the University of Geneva's department of Education and Psychology, Université de GenèveLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1723922021-11-24T19:05:18Z2021-11-24T19:05:18ZCurriculum is a climate change battleground and states must step in to prepare students<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/433598/original/file-20211124-22-1j4n2pa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C8%2C5054%2C3514&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>There is a pressing need to prepare for the impact of the climate crisis on schools and school education in Australia. A Western Australian parliamentary <a href="https://www.parliament.wa.gov.au/Parliament/commit.nsf/(EvidenceOnly)/35F6FBC873D3030C4825874B0013A0DA?opendocument">inquiry into the response of the state’s schools to climate change</a> reflects this need. It is investigating current and potential mitigation and adaptation strategies undertaken in schools.</p>
<p>The inquiry seeks to prepare for the impacts of a <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02179-1">heating planet</a> on the infrastructure and provision of school education. It is investigating the actions, benefits and barriers to climate change responses in schools. But, oddly, its terms of reference exclude curriculum. </p>
<p>Curriculum is the bread and butter of schooling. And <a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0206266">research shows</a> it’s an <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/research/unleashing-the-creativity-of-teachers-and-students-to-combat-climate-change-an-opportunity-for-global-leadership/">effective means</a> to reduce and adapt to climate change impacts.</p>
<p>When it comes to climate change, however, curriculum is a battleground. It may not be as visible as the student climate protests, but it is a crucial sphere in which the future of the world is understood, imagined and created. For educators, what they do, what they teach and the possibilities they imagine often start and end with the curriculum. </p>
<p>Yet, in Australia, there is no substantive national climate change education or curriculum. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/ever-wondered-what-our-curriculum-teaches-kids-about-climate-change-the-answer-is-not-much-123272">Ever wondered what our curriculum teaches kids about climate change? The answer is 'not much'</a>
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<h2>Why does the curriculum neglect climate change?</h2>
<p>The 2008 <a href="http://www.curriculum.edu.au/verve/_resources/national_declaration_on_the_educational_goals_for_young_australians.pdf">Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australians</a>, made by all the nation’s education ministers, referred to climate change and the embedding of sustainability across the curriculum. But under the stewardship of the federal education minister, these <a href="https://www.policyforum.net/educating-australia-on-the-climate-crisis/">references were removed</a> when the declaration was updated and agreed to by the ministers in 2019. We have also seen the withdrawal of federal funding and support for school sustainability initiatives and national action plans over the past decade. </p>
<p>The piecemeal curriculum approach to climate change has left schools and teachers to “<a href="https://theconversation.com/ever-wondered-what-our-curriculum-teaches-kids-about-climate-change-the-answer-is-not-much-123272">fend for themselves</a>” if they want to teach climate change.</p>
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<em>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/children-deserve-answers-to-their-questions-about-climate-change-heres-how-universities-can-help-169735">Children deserve answers to their questions about climate change. Here's how universities can help</a>
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<p>The lack of national vision and strategy reflects the federal government’s <a href="https://www.mja.com.au/journal/2021/215/9/2021-report-mja-lancet-countdown-health-and-climate-change-australia">failure to lead responses that match the scale of the climate crisis</a>. It bodes poorly for achieving a national approach to climate change education. </p>
<p>While the states have constitutional responsibility for school education, reforms over the past two decades have only <a href="https://www.routledge.com/The-Quest-for-Revolution-in-Australian-Schooling-Policy/Savage/p/book/9780367681876">strengthened the federal government’s influence over education</a>. This includes influence over the national curriculum, which it has <a href="https://www.aare.edu.au/blog/?p=10987">not hesitated to exercise</a>. </p>
<h2>Schools can make a difference</h2>
<p>With the federal government at odds with states that wish to pursue ambitious climate change agendas, or simply to make climate change an educational priority, those states must go it alone. The Victorian government, for instance, is consulting on its <a href="https://engage.vic.gov.au/download_file/49870/5784">Education and Training Climate Change Adaptation Plan 2022-2026</a>. It seeks to embed a climate-change lens in decision-making across the many facets of its education sector, including curriculum. </p>
<p>The education policy architecture created over the past two decades is meant to serve the national interest. When it comes to climate change education, the absence of the federal government in this sphere is glaring.</p>
<p>There is still cause for modest hope that <a href="https://theconversation.com/student-protests-show-australian-education-does-get-some-things-right-108258">schools are getting it right</a> when it comes to climate change. However, the response of Australia’s school system to the climate crisis is like that of other systems around the world: diffuse and fragmented. Thus, schools are largely <a href="https://www.nzcer.org.nz/nzcerpress/set/articles/how-can-new-zealand-schools-respond-climate-change">“unexploited as a strategic resource to mitigate and adapt to climate change”</a>.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/involving-kids-in-making-schools-sustainable-spreads-the-message-beyond-the-classroom-119470">Involving kids in making schools sustainable spreads the message beyond the classroom</a>
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<h2>Onus is on the states to act</h2>
<p>Perhaps, then, the states need to better assert their constitutional rights over schooling. They could use the national policymaking architecture to create and administer an ambitious national response to climate change that includes curriculum. </p>
<p>Australian schools and young people need to be prepared for their climate futures. This means every teacher must be a climate change educator and every school an <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-world-needs-a-new-generation-of-citizen-lobbyists-84354">incubator of informed and empowered citizens</a>. </p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-world-needs-a-new-generation-of-citizen-lobbyists-84354">The world needs a new generation of citizen lobbyists</a>
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<p>With a federal government missing in action, state-led responses to climate change, such as the schools inquiry in WA, must be unapologetically ambitious. To do less is to abdicate their constitutional role. </p>
<p>When it comes to climate change education, to repurpose <a href="http://classic.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/SGSocUphAUCon/1992/9.html">the words of then Labor MP Gordon Bryant</a> in a 1958 parliamentary debate over the role of the states, the dead hand of the federal government should not be allowed to strangle the education systems of this country.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/172392/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Preparing young people for their future requires teachers to be climate change educators, but the federal government has resisted its inclusion in the curriculum. It’s up to states to take the lead.Brad Gobby, Senior Lecturer in Curriculum, Curtin UniversityGeorge Variyan, Lecturer, Faculty of Education, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1693322021-11-04T12:26:27Z2021-11-04T12:26:27ZWhat American schools can learn from other countries about civic disagreement<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/429185/original/file-20211028-17-1wkw2bk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=25%2C0%2C5587%2C3744&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Learning how to discuss divisive issues and disagree with respect is good for democracy.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/CriticalRaceTheoryTeachers/10b751925f124e948ff076adf7795a7b/photo?Query=critical%20race%20theory&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=31&currentItemNo=15">Mary Altaffer/AP</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Few areas of American life have experienced more conflict of late than public education. The conflict has <a href="https://www.axios.com/school-board-recalls-soar-critical-race-theory-86823daf-a7e1-4a55-965c-32f79b64954f.html">largely revolved</a> around how public schools should deal with the difficult subjects of <a href="https://theconversation.com/critical-race-theory-what-it-is-and-what-it-isnt-162752">race and racism</a>. The situation has become so inflamed that a national school board group asked the federal government to step in and protect school officials and educators from what they said were a <a href="https://nsba.org/-/media/NSBA/File/nsba-letter-to-president-biden-concerning-threats-to-public-schools-and-school-board-members-92921.pdf">growing number of attacks</a> from angry citizens. </p>
<p>As a historian who specializes in <a href="https://education.jhu.edu/directory/ashley-rogers-berner-phd/">education policy</a>, I believe it is worth asking: Is the United States the only place where debates rage about what should and shouldn’t be taught in public schools? </p>
<p>My experience <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=mi_mVqEAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">studying school systems throughout the world</a> tells me that the U.S. can learn a lot from how other countries handle divisive issues. </p>
<p>Put simply, other countries don’t necessarily view studying different ideas as the same as being forced to believe in them. That is to say, they don’t conflate exposure with indoctrination.</p>
<h2>Exposure vs. indoctrination</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/indoctrination-education-and-god-the-struggle-for-the-mind/oclc/836346256&referer=brief_results">Indoctrination happens</a> when one set of claims about the world is presented to the exclusion of others. An example would be presenting the Marxist take on a historical event as if it were the only perspective, without naming it as a Marxist view and providing alternative understandings.</p>
<p>It is easy for Americans to associate indoctrination with <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/G/bo5972812.html">religious fundamentalist schools</a> in the U.S., but indoctrination can also be <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/2673273">secular and tacit</a>. A school that avoids discussing religious beliefs across human history, or engaging with thorny topics of bioethics, for instance, is teaching young people something, too: that such questions are either unimportant or too divisive to discuss. </p>
<p>Exposure, by contrast, happens when students encounter competing ideas about the world and have a chance to discuss them together. Exposure works against indoctrination, by opening up new concepts and experiences for consideration. It also <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s11109-008-9063-z">builds students’ civic capacities</a> and their participation in what University of Virginia education professor E.D. Hirsch calls a democratic “<a href="https://www.harpercollins.com/products/how-to-educate-a-citizen-e-d-hirsch">speech community</a>” – a community in which a common body of knowledge is widely shared. </p>
<p>Students have to learn to make and respond to reasoned arguments. This ability doesn’t come naturally. Yet the habit of disagreeing with respect <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73963-2">supports participation in democratic life</a> in adulthood – a finding that has <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2020/04/10/in-a-polarized-america-what-can-we-do-about-civil-disagreement/">held steady for 40 years</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="People attend a rally in Virginia" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/426233/original/file-20211013-13-gf2kv5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=8%2C0%2C5341%2C3272&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/426233/original/file-20211013-13-gf2kv5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=368&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/426233/original/file-20211013-13-gf2kv5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=368&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/426233/original/file-20211013-13-gf2kv5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=368&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/426233/original/file-20211013-13-gf2kv5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/426233/original/file-20211013-13-gf2kv5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/426233/original/file-20211013-13-gf2kv5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Parents are divided on how schools should teach about dark themes in U.S. history, including slavery and systemic racism.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/people-talk-before-the-start-of-a-rally-against-critical-news-photo/1233450533">Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>How other countries handle divisive issues</h2>
<p>Some high-performing school systems, such as those in the Netherlands, Singapore and Alberta, Canada, promote exposure through mandatory curricular frameworks. They require a content-rich curriculum that all students must learn, regardless of the type of school they attend. This means that they separate the ethos of the schools – which vary considerably – from the curricular framework that all schools must teach. </p>
<p>For instance, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Education-Britain-1750-1914-History-Perspective/dp/0312216246/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=9780312216245&linkCode=qs&qid=1634928441&qsid=141-9636377-1719543&s=books&sr=1-1&sres=0312216246&srpt=ABIS_BOOK">England has funded</a> religious schools since 1834 and secular schools since 1870. But all students in all English schools must learn about diverse religions and philosophies. </p>
<p>To put it bluntly, an English mother might enroll her child in a secular school, but that child still needs to understand the tenets and practices of Islam and Judaism. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/teaching-religion-terence-copley/1130296797">legal requirements</a> for “religious education,” as it is known, have not diminished despite the growing secularism of the English population. Learning what people deeply believe, and why, is seen as fundamental to exercising responsible democratic citizenship. </p>
<p>Most countries in the <a href="https://www.oecd.org/unitedstates/">Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development</a> – an international association that supports economic growth – follow suit and have <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Law-Religious-Freedoms-and-Education-in-Europe/Hunter-Henin/p/book/9781138261389">increased requirements</a> around learning about different religions and philosophies in the past two decades. </p>
<p>Here’s a more pointed example. </p>
<p>The Netherlands’ ministry of education funds 36 different kinds of schools, including creationist schools. Yet students in creationist schools must still <a href="https://research.vu.nl/en/publications/the-origins-of-creationism-in-the-netherlands-the-evolution-debat">demonstrate understanding of evolutionary theory</a> on national exams. They cannot be forced to believe that evolution is true, of course, but they have to master what evolutionary theory posits about the natural world. Other examples abound.</p>
<h2>Limits to exposure</h2>
<p>This widely used approach to curriculum and assessments can <a href="https://www.proquest.com/docview/218184376?accountid=11752&forcedol=true&forcedol=true">work well for students’ academic and civic success</a>. But it raises questions: How much exposure? At what age? </p>
<p>While the precise limits of exposure will need to rest on national and local contexts, a few broad principles might help clarify the “what” and the “when.” </p>
<p>First, there should be limits to exposure according to children’s age and developmental concerns. For instance, very young children <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/0305569940200105">may not be emotionally prepared</a> to manage details about the Holocaust or see graphic images of the 14th-century <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/middle-ages/black-death">Black Death</a> that wiped out a third of Europe. </p>
<p>Second, teachers should not entertain debates about what the University of Wisconsin’s Diana Hess calls “<a href="https://kappanonline.org/richardson-using-controversy-as-a-teaching-tool-an-interview-with-diana-hess/">settled issues</a>.” Whether human enslavement and racial discrimination are ever warranted, whether the Holocaust actually occurred, or <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2015/12/16/459673575/politics-in-the-classroom-how-much-is-too-much">whether climate change is happening</a> should not be brought to the classroom table. </p>
<p>Rather, debate should center on why particular events happened or are happening. For example, what factors contributed to Hitler’s rise to power? What, if anything, should governments do to remedy social and economic inequality? What are the economic trade-offs of different policy responses to climate change? </p>
<h2>Learning to disagree</h2>
<p>Beyond these guardrails, school and board policies matter a great deal in setting the expectation that students will encounter ideas with which they and their parents disagree – even profoundly. The <a href="https://go.boarddocs.com/fl/sbmd/Board.nsf/goto?open&id=BK6KN84FFC3B">Miami-Dade school board</a> puts it this way: </p>
<p>“Students are encouraged to participate in discussions, speeches, and other expressions in which many points of view, including those that are controversial, are freely explored. A controversial issue is a topic on which opposing points of view have been promulgated by responsible opinion or likely to arouse both support and opposition in the community.”</p>
<p>The Miami-Dade policy goes on to specify that the controversial conversations must serve an instructional purpose, and that teachers may not promote personal views in the classroom. </p>
<p>Another example comes from an independent school in Baltimore, McDonogh School. Its <a href="https://www.mcdonogh.org/about/academicfreedom">Freedom of Expression and Civil Discourse</a> policy acknowledges a clear democratic rationale for viewpoint diversity, even when it leads to discomfort: </p>
<p>“[Preparation for democratic participation] … requires the hard work of analysis, perspective-taking, debate, reflection, and application. Through such methods, we honor the diversity of thought in a pluralist culture as we work towards sound, evidence-based positions and conclusions. Members of our community may find certain ideas that emerge when wrestling with sensitive topics untenable – even offensive – from time to time; in such moments of friction, however, we can help our students learn to resolve conflict, to reason well, and to communicate their own positions.” </p>
<p>Both of these policies ask a lot of teachers, students and parents – patience, among them. But they simultaneously protect teachers’ efforts to teach young people to reasonably disagree. They also signal to parents that their children will be exposed to many opinions – and that that’s a good thing for the next generation. </p>
<p>[<em>Get the best of The Conversation, every weekend.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/weekly-highlights-61?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=weeklybest">Sign up for our weekly newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/169332/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ashley Berner is director of the Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy.</span></em></p>The controversy over critical race theory is an opportunity for Americans to examine how other democracies deal with diverse viewpoints in public schools, an education policy expert argues.Ashley Berner, Associate Professor of Education, Johns Hopkins UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1669362021-09-08T12:25:06Z2021-09-08T12:25:06ZWhat schools teach about 9/11 and the war on terror<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/419381/original/file-20210904-17-1ephsq7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C16%2C5476%2C3653&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A survey of U.S. history teachers found they teach about 9/11 primarily on the date of the anniversary. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/wilson-high-school-student-allen-simon-a-cadet-in-the-jrotc-news-photo/1272002008">Ben Hasty/MediaNews Group/Reading Eagle via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The phrase “<a href="https://www.911memorial.org/20th-anniversary/inspire/never-forget-fund">Never Forget</a>” is often associated with the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. But what does this phrase mean for U.S. students who are too young to remember? What are they being asked to never forget? </p>
<p>As <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=s1AAji4AAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">education researchers</a> in <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=vzraNsoAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">curriculum and instruction</a>, we have studied since 2002 how the events of 9/11 and the global war on terror are integrated into secondary level U.S. classrooms and curricula. What we have found is a relatively <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/00377996.2011.585551">consistent narrative</a> that focuses on 9/11 as an unprecedented and shocking attack, the heroism of the firefighters and other first responders and a global community that stood behind the U.S. in its pursuit of terrorists. </p>
<p>This narrative <a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781475818116/Reassessing-the-Social-Studies-Curriculum-Promoting-Critical-Civic-Engagement-in-a-Politically-Polarized-Post-9-11-World">is in official curricula</a>, such as textbooks and state standards, as well as in many of the most popular materials teachers report using, <a href="https://doi.org/10.29173/css26">such as documentary films</a>.</p>
<p>While honoring the victims and helping a new generation understand the significance of these events are important, we believe there are inherent risks in teaching a simple nationalistic narrative of heroism and evil.</p>
<h2>Annual commemoration</h2>
<p>In our <a href="https://minds.wisconsin.edu/handle/1793/79305">survey of 1,047 U.S. secondary teachers</a> conducted in late 2018, we found that the majority of the history teachers tend to teach about 9/11 primarily on the date of the anniversary each year. </p>
<p>Based on the topics being taught, teaching materials and their descriptions of lessons, the instruction emphasizes commemoration of the attacks and victims. Teachers also attempt to help students who were not alive on 9/11 to understand the experience of those who witnessed the events on TV that day. They report sharing their own recollections, showing news or documentary footage of the attacks, and focusing on the details of the day and events that followed.</p>
<p>The surveyed teachers view 9/11 as significant – and believe that teaching it honors the goal to never forget. However, they described the challenge of making time for discussing these events when the standards for their class do not necessarily include them, or include 9/11-related topics only at the end of the school year. As a result, the lessons are often limited to one class session on or near the anniversary. It is also taught out of historical context given that the anniversary arrives at the beginning of the school year and most U.S. history courses start in either the 1400s or the post-U.S. Civil War era. </p>
<h2>Risks of a simple narrative</h2>
<p>Teaching 9/11 as a memorializing event on the anniversary also generally avoids deeper inquiry into the historic U.S. role in the Middle East and Afghanistan. This includes, for example, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1988/04/18/world/arming-afghan-guerrillas-a-huge-effort-led-by-us.html">arming mujahedeen fighters</a> against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1992/01/26/world/us-secretly-gave-aid-to-iraq-early-in-its-war-against-iran.html">aiding Iraqi President Saddam Hussein</a> in the war against Iran also in the ‘80s. </p>
<p>A more in-depth approach, on the other hand, could explore how U.S. actions contributed to the <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/network/alqaeda/indictment.html">formation of al-Qaida</a>, which <a href="https://www.state.gov/1993-world-trade-center-bombing/">bombed the World Trade Center in 1993</a> and later carried out <a href="https://www.fbi.gov/history/famous-cases/east-african-embassy-bombings">attacks on U.S. embassies</a> in East Africa as well as on the <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2013/09/18/world/meast/uss-cole-bombing-fast-facts/index.html">USS Cole</a>, a Navy ship fueling in Yemen, in the years leading up to 9/11. </p>
<p>Simplistic narratives do not help students reflect on the many controversial decisions made by the U.S. and their allies after 9/11, such as using embellished evidence to <a href="https://www.rand.org/blog/2013/03/the-invasion-of-iraq-a-balance-sheet.html">justify the invasion of Iraq in 2003</a>. </p>
<p>And they potentially reinforce <a href="https://www.doi.org/10.29173/assert15">political rhetoric that paints Muslims as potential terrorists</a> and ignore the <a href="https://www.911memorial.org/learn/students-and-teachers/lesson-plans/muslims-america-after-911-part-ii">xenophobic attacks against Muslim Americans</a> after the 9/11 attacks. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Teenager adjusts her hijab in mirror" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/419878/original/file-20210907-12-1bscstp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/419878/original/file-20210907-12-1bscstp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/419878/original/file-20210907-12-1bscstp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/419878/original/file-20210907-12-1bscstp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/419878/original/file-20210907-12-1bscstp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=513&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/419878/original/file-20210907-12-1bscstp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=513&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/419878/original/file-20210907-12-1bscstp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=513&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Lessons can include the perspective of Muslim Americans who experienced discrimination and xenophobic attacks in the aftermath of 9/11.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/Sept11MuslimsInAmerica/8cfc90d9e90d4a1c93e273dcd13510d3">Jessie Wardarsk/AP</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Generational differences among teachers</h2>
<p>Many teachers, however, do engage students in the complexities of these events. Middle school teachers report including 9/11 as part of their discussion of Islam in a world religions unit; world history teachers describe placing it in the context of the modern Middle East. </p>
<p>For U.S. history courses organized chronologically and using widely available textbooks, the move to standardized curricula and testing in many U.S. states can make it <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/00220272.2018.1473496">difficult to incorporate current events</a> in meaningful ways. Teachers tell us they feel there is no room or time to deviate. Many end their course in the 1980s or rush through final decades superficially. Some get creative and tie 9/11 to other terror attacks like the <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/19th-century/haymarket-riot">1886 bombing of a labor protest in Haymarket Square</a> in Chicago.</p>
<p>Younger teachers in particular reported different goals for their students that go beyond commemoration or a focus on the shocking nature of the events of the day. They want young people to recognize how the events and policies that followed 9/11 impacted daily life in ways they might not realize. This reflects their own experience, which was less a vivid memory of the day of the attacks but perhaps constant reminders of the color-coded <a href="https://www.dhs.gov/homeland-security-advisory-system">terrorism threat levels</a> issued by the Department of Homeland Security from 2002 to 2011. They want students to understand the recent evacuation of U.S. personnel from Afghanistan in relation to both 9/11 and the U.S. role in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Or to examine provisions of the <a href="https://www.justice.gov/archive/ll/highlights.htm">USA Patriot Act</a> of 2001, which allowed greater surveillance of U.S. citizens.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Afghan nationals disembark from a US air force aircraft after an evacuation flight from Kabul" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/419880/original/file-20210907-14-8g8m09.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/419880/original/file-20210907-14-8g8m09.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=371&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/419880/original/file-20210907-14-8g8m09.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=371&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/419880/original/file-20210907-14-8g8m09.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=371&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/419880/original/file-20210907-14-8g8m09.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/419880/original/file-20210907-14-8g8m09.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/419880/original/file-20210907-14-8g8m09.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Younger teachers in particular want students to understand how 9/11 relates to current events like the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/refugees-disembark-from-a-us-air-force-aircraft-after-an-news-photo/1234971225">Cristina Quicler/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Learning from 9/11</h2>
<p>If the goal of teaching history is to develop citizens who use knowledge of the past to understand the present and inform future decisions, educators need to help students learn from 9/11 and the war on terror, and not just about them. This means going beyond the facts of the day and the <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/G/bo20832188.html">collective memory aspects</a> to also engage in inquiry into why they happened and how the U.S. and other nations reacted. </p>
<p>Teachers can use news footage from that day to commemorate and as a starting point for student inquiry. Students could question why Osama bin Laden’s image was presented <a href="https://doi.org/10.29173/css26">within an hour and a half</a> of the first plane hitting the World Trade Center, and <a href="https://doi.org/10.29173/css26">how U.S. experts knew</a> he was hiding in Afghanistan. They can explore the <a href="https://www.intelligence.gov/publics-daily-brief/presidents-daily-brief">President’s Daily Brief</a> from <a href="https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB116/index.htm">Aug. 6, 2001</a>, which highlighted the threat of bin Laden planning an attack on the U.S., or the <a href="https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP94T00885R000100230015-8.pdf">CIA memo</a> from the late 1980s that outlined the dangers of abandoning the mujahedeen. </p>
<p>Many <a href="https://teaching911beyondtwenty.wisc.edu">updated resources</a> are available for teachers to draw from for lessons on 9/11. These resources include the perspectives of veterans, Afghan and Iraqi interpreters and refugees, Muslim and Sikh Americans and others not often included. </p>
<p>To “Never Forget” for students today may start with teaching them about aspects of 9/11 that seem to have been overlooked, erased or forgotten.</p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jeremy Stoddard receives funding from the September 11th Education Trust, William & Mary, and the University of Wisconsin - Madison for the research referenced in this article. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Diana Hess does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks is an opportunity for teachers to focus less on recreating the day and more on what students can learn from it, two curriculum experts argue.Jeremy Stoddard, Professor of Curriculum & Instruction, University of Wisconsin-MadisonDiana Hess, Professor of Curriculum & Instruction and Dean of the School of Education, University of Wisconsin-MadisonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.