On Education

First Work, Then University

The Tyee is running a "Big Ideas" series, and one of them is mine: Idea #4: First Work, Then University. Excerpt:

Suppose we created a "Canadian Service Corps." It would offer some kind of paid work for any high-school grad who applied, preferably in the grad's own community. Whatever the job, it would include some training in life skills like living on a budget, eating properly and keeping fit. CSC recruits would work in community centres, in municipal and provincial governments, or with cooperating private firms. 

Pay would be minimal -- maybe $10 an hour, for a gross income of $20,000 a year. Few jobs, however useful, would be thrilling. But for every hour worked, the recruit would also earn $10 toward some kind of post-secondary education. That money would stay in a secure savings account until the recruit was ready to enrol.

The CSC recruit would sign a contract guaranteeing at least six months' full-time service. Resigning before the end of the contract would mean forfeiting one's education savings fund. Two years in the CSC would mean $40,000 to be applied to costs of tuition, books, lodging, and so on. (StatsCan says the average Canadian post-secondary tuition in 2011-2012 is $5,366.) 

For anyone wanting to go into trades training, the CSC might offer a $5,000 bonus; we're going to need a lot of young plumbers, electricians, and heavy-equipment mechanics.

Crowd-sourced teaching and learning

Via The Globe and Mail, a very interesting article: Physicist's crowd-sourcing philosophy gains traction in the classroom. Excerpt:

Nobel laureate Carl Wieman was already toying with ways to fix university-level science teaching in 2007 when the University of British Columbia came calling with an offer he couldn’t refuse: a chance to test his theories on a grander scale. 

The world-famous American physicist packed up and left the University of Colorado, arriving in Vancouver with fellow physicist (and his wife), Sarah Gilbert. About $10-million in donated funds awaited to launch the Carl Wieman Science Education Initiative. 

Dr. Wieman’s central tenet is that “it’s what’s going on in the students’ brains that matters,” and that 20 years of cognitive science say those brains go farther in classes where students tackle tasks and problems together. It’s the educational equivalent of crowd-sourcing and a philosophy gaining currency at all levels of education. 

These ideas are not entirely alien to other universities across Canada, but the UBC initiative is the country’s most co-ordinated and generously bankrolled effort. It is aimed at cracking a common conundrum, namely the creeping suspicion that the entrenched stand-and-deliver style of so many lectures is not grooming the kinds of collaborative, entrepreneurial, critical and adaptable students the world needs. 

“The fundamental paradigm [has long been] it’s what the person up in the front of the class is doing,” Dr. Wieman said. “That’s not what determines learning.” The key is less what students learn than how they learn it: The Googles of the world have decentralized knowledge, meaning the teacher’s role is now much more about helping students assess information and apply it.

The article goes on to describe an approach I called "swarm learning" in a Tyee article back in 2008: a group self-teaching method using computers. It turned out to be surprisingly effective.

Are Finnish schools the best in the world?

Via The Independent: Are Finnish schools the best in the world? Excerpt:

The task is as hard as weeding out the brightest youngsters for places on Oxford and Cambridge Universities' most popular courses. There are 16 candidates for every vacancy and somehow the 2,000 applicants have to be whittled down to 120 by the time the course starts. 

We are not talking about law and medicine at Britain's most prestigious universities, though. This is Finland and the applicants are desperate for a job in what is the most sought-after profession in their country: teaching. 

Finland is the country that has topped the international league table of the developed world's education systems for almost all of the past decade. And England's Education Secretary, Michael Gove, has been taking a close look at its policies to see if there is anything he can glean from them to improve standards over here. 

Finland's top-level ranking is based on its performance in the PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) tests of 15-year-olds around the globe in reading, maths and science. It is published by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. 

Professor Jari Lavonen, the head of the Department of Teacher Education at the University of Helsinki, is the man with the enviable task, in some eyes, of whittling down the pack. He is in no doubt as to how Finland has got to this position. 

"We decided all teachers should have a master's degree – putting teaching on an equal footing with law and medicine," he says. "Teacher education is therefore very attractive." Figures showed that the highest-flying youngsters then started flocking to the profession because of its new-found prestige. 

The applicants are all given a book to read before being grilled on their understanding of it. Then the 300 top performers are interviewed before the remaining 120 are offered places. 

"We want to find out how suitable a person is for teaching," he says. "Last year, it was more difficult to come on to a primary-education programme than to go to medical school. The competition was more heavy." 

Mr Gove has already said he would like to go down the Finnish path. A common theme among three of the top-performing nations – Singapore, South Korea and Finland – is that they all attract the best talent into the profession by setting high standards for recruitment. 

Mr Gove's answer to this is to limit entrance to the profession to those who have better than a third-class degree. He has come in for a fair amount of criticism here, with teachers' leaders arguing that it would prohibit people such as the Conservatives' own maths guru, Carol Vorderman, from entering the profession. The brightest people in their subject area may not always be the best communicators in the classroom, so the argument goes. 

Professor Lavonen is wary of the idea that foreign governments can "cherry pick" parts of the Finnish education system and ignore the rest. 

There is, he argues, a second part of the equation: the introduction of a free compulsory education system for all, which goes hand in glove with the recruitment process to create a successful education system. It is illegal to charge fees in the Finnish education system, so even those schools that are run privately take their funding from the state. Its schools are comprehensive in that there is no selection of pupils.

A document from the past

Here's a PDF of the Summary of Findings of the Royal Commission on Education (better known as the Sullivan Commission), published in 1988 and forgotten within a few years.

Download Legacyforlearnerssummary

Give Us an Edge in the Global Brain Race

The Tyee has published my article Give Us an Edge in the Global Brain Race, about recruiting more international students. Excerpt:

Canada doesn't have to be the wallflower at the prom. We need to stop thinking of international students as cash cows and start thinking of them as future Canadians. 

In the U.S., a foreigner can become a citizen very quickly: Enlist in the military while on U.S. soil in wartime. Otherwise it's a long, slow process. Here in Canada, you can't become a citizen until you've gained permanent resident status and lived here for three of the last four years. It's the same in Australia. 

An offer they can't refuse 

Suppose, then, we offered the top foreign post-secondary students a deal. Just as Cecil Rhodes endowed a scholarship fund that still attracts the best and brightest, let's create "Canada Scholars." 

Canada Scholars would receive scholarships and fellowships covering the full cost of tuition and reasonable living expenses, plus permanent-resident status after two years of successful study. At that point they could apply for citizenship as well. At the end of a third successful year, they would receive it. 

By the time these top students left grad school, they'd have their pick of careers, and we'd make sure that Canadian opportunities were especially attractive: challenging jobs in business, the professions, the sciences, the civil service.

Give School Boards Power to Improve Learning

The Tyee has published my article Idea: Give School Boards Power to Improve Learning. Excerpt:

Let's say that the province goes on funding the schools according to the current formula -- however inadequate that may be. 

But let's say the province also provides each district with an Innovation Fund of $1,000 per student. 

For Vancouver, that would be $56 million. For Vancouver Island North, it would be $1.55 million. For the total B.C. public-school population, the cost would be $580 million. (In 2009-10, B.C. schools' total operating expenses were just over $5 billion.) 

Every school board would then issue a request for proposals from local teachers, staff, or district residents on how best to spend this innovation money. It could not go to repainting classrooms, or keeping a school open for another year, or paying for employee benefits. The proposals would have to offer a new program, a new technology, a new way to teach or learn. 

Like a venture capital firm, every board would review the proposals and consult with teachers, parent advisory councils, and the public. The winning proposals would have to fit within the funds available and would have to show measurable results within two years of implementation: a reduced dropout rate, or improved test scores, for example. 

A proposal that got results would be funded again, and perhaps in other districts as well. The province would also pay a royalty to the originating district: Maybe $10 for every student enrolled in a district that adopts the new program. 

So if Vancouver adopted a program from Vancouver Island North, that would bring in an extra $560,000 for the schools in places like Port Alice, Sointula and Alert Bay for every year that Vancouver kept the program. The district could get a double royalty if its program was adopted in another province. And it could spend its royalties on anything it needed to.

Plagiarism for Beginners

The Tyee has published my article Plagiarism for Beginners. Excerpt:

Welcome, class of 2014. You're about to enter post-secondary armed with your smartphone and laptop, and every campus is now wireless. This is a good time to think about the hazards of plagiarism.

The word comes from plagiarius, Latin for kidnapper, and plagiarism is a kind of intellectual kidnapping -- stealing ideas instead of people. Every college and university website has a page about plagiarism policy.

Every prof, on the first day of classes, will lay out that policy. This speech will terrify you without making any sense at all. After the third or fourth prof has given it, you will glaze over and start texting your buds: plagerism wtf?

Surrey's Catch-22 funding problems

The Tyee has published my article BC's Biggest School District Faces Cuts as Enrolment Grows. Excerpt:

The irony is hard to miss: While most B.C. school districts have lost funding because of declining enrolments, a few are growing -- none more than Surrey. Yet Surrey's growing student numbers are only compounding its funding problems. 

After decades as a semi-rural suburb, Surrey has become the biggest school district in the province, with 67,293 students this year. (Vancouver has about 56,000.) 

Surrey has 99 elementary schools, 19 secondaries, five student learning centres and four adult education centres. The district is Surrey's biggest single employer, with about 5,000 teachers and 3,700 other employees. Its estimated operating budget this year is about $545 million dollars. But that's not quite enough.

BC's Education Brownout

The Tyee has published my article on the structural shortfalls in our school funding: BC's Education Brownout.

BC School Closures: A Cure Worse Than the Disease

The Tyee has published my article BC School Closures: A Cure Worse Than the Disease. Excerpt:

Forty-four of B.C.'s 60 school districts have closed 176 schools since 2002, and over 50 more closures are certain or threatened over the next couple of years. But demographic projections suggest that closures are a short-term solution that will create a long-term problem. 

The figures on closures come from a database created by the B.C. Teachers' Federation and available on the BCTF website. They provide a concise history of education under the Liberals, and a discouraging preview.