Education Canada Spring 2009
Our latest issue offers ideas that will compel readers to rethink their preconceptions about youth, learners, learning, teaching and the definition of educational success. Take a look at our featured on-line content, which will trigger conversations about educational reform in Canada.
In Learning In Depth: Students as Experts, authors Kieren Egan (Canada Research Chair in Education at Simon Fraser University) and Krystina Madej share the potential of their emerging Learning In Depth (LiD) program – a learning process in which students gradually expand their knowledge of a single topic throughout their K-12 years. This groundbreaking curriculum idea could have a transformative influence in schools and radically change most students’ experience of education in the process.
Mastering Marking Madness is this issue’s Promising Practices entry. Author Brooke Moore (a teacher at Rockridge Secondary School in West Vancouver, B.C.) explains why she stopped marking students and started giving feedback instead. Moore walks us through this student-teacher collaborative process, which effectively changes a ranking system into learning system, where students have ownership over their progress.
From the Editor
Manning the Barricades
We don’t usually think of Education Canada as a revolutionary publication, but in some sense our raison d’être is to foment revolution among the educators of this country. Our latest editorial guidelines state that our objective is to “stimulate dialogue and discussion about education and educational reform by encouraging readers to reexamine their preconceptions about youth, learners, learning, teaching, and the definition of educational success.”
This issue offers plenty of opportunities to do just that. From Steven Turner and Debby Peck’s proposal for a re-visioning of the way we teach science (the second such proposal in as many issues), to Alan Sears’ call for a revolution in the teaching of social studies, to urgings from Sharon Rich and John McLaughlin – backed up by our At Issue department – for a move away from narrow economic definitions of success to a broader, more socially responsive perspective, to Jonathan Scott’s plea for greater student ownership of education and Kieran Egan and Krystina Madej’s in-depth learning initiative – we have the ingredients for a minor revolution.
But it’s probably not time to throw up the barricades just yet. We also include in this issue a selection from the Canadian Education Association archives, an excerpt from the presidential address to the 1958 Annual Meeting of CEA. In 1958, as many of us will remember, the Russians had just launched Sputnik, a technological revolution was sweeping through Western nations, and the economy was being fueled by growing consumerism. Some then – as now – questioned the effect these developments were having on educational priorities. CEA President Dr. H.L. Campbell was one of them.
In the face of calls for a greater focus on science and technology, he argued for a broader view with a greater emphasis on social issues and education for social democracy. “It seems to me,” said Campbell, “that what we should do in our schools and colleges today is to encourage humanitarian thinking. We need to increase respect for statesmanship, intellectual eminence, and force of character, but most of all we need a sense of social justice and of responsibility for the needs of all men and all nations.”
As Campbell also notes, public education is always a reflection of its social context, and his context is not ours. It is also a continuous quest for balance, and we have experienced many shifts in emphasis over the last fifty years. But his calls for re-examination and change strike an eerily familiar chord across the half-century and suggest that those expecting a revolution may have a long wait ahead.
Paula Dunning
Contents
Features
Making Room for Revolution in Social Studies Classrooms
ALAN SEARS
La communication entre l’école et la famille
ROLLANDE DESLANDES, MARIE-CLAUDE RIVARD et FRANCE JOYAL
Learning in Depth: Students as Experts (PDF)
KIERAN EGAN and KRYSTINA MADEJ
Turnaround Schools: Leadership Lessons
KENNETH LEITHWOOD and TIIU STRAUSS
Apprentissage du français et de la musique chez l’enfant hyperactif (PDF)
LINDA ESSIAMBRE, PAULINE CÔTÉ et NICOLE CHEVALIER
Student Ownership of Education: Practicing Democracy in Schools
JONATHAN SCOTT
Social Imperatives for Better Education: Putting Wisdom on the Agenda
SHARON RICH and JOHN MCLAUGHLIN
A Collision of Culture, Values, and Education Policy: Scrapping Early French Immersion in New Brunswick
MAX COOKE
Can We Do School Science Better? Facing the Problem of Student Engagement
STEVEN TURNER and DEBBY PECK
Education for Democracy: An Excerpt from the Archives
DR. H. L. CAMPBELL (DECEMBER, 1958)
Departments
FROM THE EDITOR / LE MOT DE LA RÉDACTION
Manning the Barricades / Postés aux barricades
AT ISSUE / ENJEUX
From Human Capital to Human Development: Transformation for a Knowledge Society
Du capital humain au développement humain : Une transformation vers la société du savoir
CHRISTA FREILER
PROMISING PRACTICES
Mastering Marking Madness (PDF)
BROOKE MOORE
ETHICALLY SPEAKING
The Third Language
RUSHWORTH M. KIDDER
VIEWPOINT
Mental Health: The Next Frontier of Health Education
STAN KUTCHER, DAVID VENN, and MAGDALENA SZUMILAS
BOOK REVIEW
Goodbye to Obsolete High Schools
PETER H. HENNESSY
NOTRE MONDE D’AUJOURD’HUI
Comprendre les enfants qui souffrent : Entretien avec le Dr. J.-D. Nasio
CORINNE CÉCILIA
END NOTES
Recreating Teaching Spaces
STEPHEN HURLEY