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What Matters to Alberta Education Leaders

December 31, 2015 by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) at 02:58 PM

I have written before (here, for example) about the constructivist changes to the Alberta math curriculum and the petition to reinstate the basics. The petition has been in existence for two years and more than 18,000 people have now signed it, but until very recently there has been very little response from education leaders.

But when Dr. Tran-Davies, the petition's leader, wrote a blog last month questioning the credentials of a visiting progressive math educator, the College of Alberta School Superintendents responded by writing to Dr. Tran-Davies to request that she publicly retract and apologize for her statements. Good to know someone is listening. more

As Dr. Tran-Davies writes, "Perhaps it's just me, but I see a great moral imbalance in this when thousands of case reports of harm to thousands of children did not move any one of them to seek apologies from their educational peers for pushing the new math or discovery-learning agenda."

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Alberta Education Used To Be A Model On The World Stage

Economics text books used to highlight Alberta’s forward thinking in education provision — school based management, parental choice, charter schools, magnet schools, subsidiarity (devolving management to local level), etc., etc. Magazine articles and TV programs extolled the Alberta advances.

Alberta education achievement scores always rated way up there in international benchmarks. And it used to be tops in Canadian provinces.

Then envy set in. One of the seven deadly sins. The tall poppy syndrome kicked in. Alberta was brought down to size. Average.

Alberta has not only been leveled-down it’s also become a dumping-ground for discredited and leftover fads of bygone eras.

Education is notorious for being years and decades behind best practices and validated research. The dissemination of worthwhile findings is seriously lacking and lagging. For example here is one article I’m trying to read as I think it will apply to the Alberta Math problem. Probably applies to our BC “constructivist” BC Ed Plan too. BC is also a backwater.

Kirschner, Sweller, Clark — Why Minimal Guidance During Instruction Does Not Work: An Analysis of the Failure of Constructivist, Discovery, Problem-Based, Experiential, and Inquiry-based Teaching. Educational Psychologist 41, no. 2 (2006)

https://postmediaedmontonjournal2.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/kirschner_sweller_clark.pdf

Posted by Tunya Audain on 12/31 at 09:23 PM

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What Matters to Alberta Education Leaders

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