Gary Hunt

It has been mentioned in this seminar that we should consult widely among stakeholders to get feedback on how people feel about implementing a national system that would provide for national accreditation of teacher training programmes and portable, national certification of post-secondary teachers in Canada.

If we were to develop a survey for stakeholders, exactly what should we ask? Lets assume that we would have the response anchors of, strongly agree, somewhat agree, somewhat disagree, and strongly disagree.

Post your suggestions in this thread and if we get quite a few, we can test it on contributers to this SCoPE forum before the end date of March 22. Under each one there would be opportunity to comment.

Here are some possible examples.

• I think Canada should have a national system of accredited teacher training programmes.
• I think teacher training in Canada would be improved if we had a national framework of standards.
  
• I think student learning would improve if all post-secondary teachers were trained.
• I think Canada should use the UK, HEA system as a basis for our framework of standards.
  

These are very good points. There is a wealth of information available about teaching practices, both online and print. The way this can be accommodated in an expectations framework is through what we call in BC, PLAR--prior learning assessment and recognition.

The critical detail, as you say, is aligning this prior learning with elements in the expectations framework and determining equivalence. We do a lot of this kind of alignment in assessing student prior learning in the context of course learning outcomes. It can be done.

Vivian, I think your examples fit well with elements of content in many Canadian training programmes. The link here goes to the University of British Columbia faculty teacher training certificate program. If you go to the specific learning outcomes you can see what the students do.

Gary

(Edited by Sylvia Currie - original submission Monday, 9 March 2009, 08:56 PM. Fixed link)

I would be interested to hear from someone in Ontario who is going through the transition of implementing the newly mandated undergraduate and graduate degree level expectations. I wonder if the initial reaction was a lot of grumbling about all the work and if there is now a culture of acceptance building, and if most are realizing the advantages for teaching and learning that these must be having. These framework documents are posted on the wiki.

Gary

Rosalie, I share your ethical concerns. How many professions are there that require no training or experience? We certainly would not go to doctors, mechanics, financial managers, etc. who had no training. We would not consider having our kids attend elementary and secondary schools where teachers are not certified. Yet society accepts having post-secondary students in classrooms where a significant proportion of the teachers have no training or experience. From the standpoint of professional ethics, accountability, and transparency about how we practice, surely we need to recognize that we have a problem here.