The Alberta Teachers’ Association

Are schools squandering teachers’ talent?

We must stop squirreling away our teachers’ talent. It’s time to invest in it like other high performing nations do.
—Andy Hargreaves and Michael Fullan, “Are schools squandering their teachers’ talent?” The Guardian, November 13, 2013

The cautionary note above about the risk of turning our backs on the long history of successes in jurisdictions such as Alberta is timely. In their recent op-ed piece, Andy Hargreaves and Michael Fullan, no strangers to our province, observed that Alberta’s long-established reputation as a world leader in developing the professionalism of teachers is in danger of being “squandered recklessly for short-term gains.”

Hargreaves and Fullan see the Alberta Teachers’ Association (ATA) as a progressive teacher organization that has combined service to the profession with a commitment to improve learning for students. They consider the historical evolution of the Association and its current efforts as an example of what is possible in the current global policy milieu where the deprofessionalization of teachers erodes possibilities for sustained progress.[1] (The ATA’s exemplary work advocating for the Alberta Initiative for School Improvement (AISI) is one of many examples of the collective efforts of Alberta’s teachers to enhance student learning.)

Referring to the recent decision of the government to replace the provincial achievement testing program with beginning-of-the-year student assessments, they state:

Old-style teacher unionism squirrels away teachers’ talents by defending individual teacher autonomy and the longevity of experience over research and professional expertise. But look what other unions do. The Alberta Teachers’ Association spends half its budget on research and professional development[2] and has worked collaboratively with the government to replace standardised testing with rigorous in-class assessments in 2015.

As this theme issue of the ATA Magazine illustrates, complex factors have led to the success of the Association’s strategic foresight and research. A key is that since its inception the ATA has been a united organization with school administrators as fully integrated members of the organization. Even to this day, many researchers who study Alberta fail to recognize the pivotal cultural driver that exists for Alberta school leaders: they remain primus inter pares (first among equals) but are teachers first.

We need more policy and less politics

The government’s Task Force on Teaching Excellence is yet one more example of the challenges teacher organizations face in Canada and internationally: the triumph of sound bites and sloganeering (“good isn’t good enough, we need excellence”) that act as substitutes for addressing the systemic obstacles to learning (poverty, racism, environmental degradation). Meanwhile, while we are distracted by the government’s task force over the meaning of “a great teacher compared to an excellent teacher,”[3] classes in Alberta mushroom to levels never thought possible and one out of seven students in the province lives in poverty.

If research and evidence guided policy in Alberta, we might consider the implications of the following realities:

Ninety per cent of Alberta teachers report that they are very committed to teaching as a profession and 89 per cent feel proud to be a teacher. Yet only 60 per cent feel they can teach the way they aspire to teach.

• The average teacher in Alberta works 56 hours a week, the equivalent of almost two days a week of unpaid time.
• Thirty-two per cent of Alberta teachers report that they have little control over their work lives and 72 per cent report high levels of conflict between their working life and their personal time.
• Over half of Alberta teachers do not have access to professional development during the school day and almost one-third (32 per cent) indicate they have little control over their own PD.
• Fifty-seven per cent of teachers say that support for students with specials needs has declined compared to the previous year (10 per cent of teachers see improvement).
• While funding cuts and the elimination of AISI have had widespread effects, the impacts on this year’s cohort of new teachers are dramatic. Mentorship programs for new teachers are down by 15 per cent and support for school-based PD and attendance at specialist council conferences has been reduced.

These developments illustrate the diminishment of the professional capital of Alberta teachers. Meanwhile, the government’s billion-dollar investment in educational technology over the past 10 years is often marketed as a resource for teachers to advance an ambiguous vision of 21st-century learning. Yet it is worth noting that the number one source of increased workload reported by teachers is time spent trouble-shooting unsupported technology and reporting student progress using digital reporting software that is often untested and cumbersome.

More than ever, current circumstances and recent decisions by the Redford government continue to be driven by Alberta’s scarred prosperity and roller-coaster economy with its overreliance on primary resources.

The broken promises of the past year (full-day kindergarten, class size and resources for inclusion) point to the tragic irony of a government that now substitutes public consultation on “teaching excellence” for following through on its commitment to assist the most disadvantaged in Alberta.

The average term-life of an education minister in Canada is about 2.5 years; research shows that meaningful reform takes between 5 and 7 years to take root and flourish.

Decades of research show that sustained relationships built on evidence-informed decision making trumps rhetoric; building the professional capital of teachers means far more than cynical short-term injections of money tied to election cycles. Perhaps Alberta could achieve the empty horizon of excellence in teaching if we could make even a mediocre commitment to evidence-informed policy and decision making that acknowledges the long history of the Association as an adaptive and innovative organization.

Reference

Hargreaves A., and M. Fullan. 2013. “Are schools squandering their teachers’ talent?” The Guardian. Retrieved November 18, 2013: www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/teacher-blog/2013/nov/13/teaching-talent-schools-attract-staff.

Dr. J-C Couture is the ATA’s associate coordinator of research.