The Alberta Teachers’ Association

What makes a great school?

Having been a teacher at various levels of education the last forty years, it is interesting to walk through a mall, for example, and wonder not only if you have taught some of the people you pass or to whom you pass your credit card, but also what school has meant to them. In our daily interactions with people we hope they are competent in their jobs, just as we as teachers are held accountable to be competent at what we are entrusted to do.

Yet competence is not the only thing that defines us in terms of our fuller sense of being human or that defines us as professionals. As much as I wonder about my former students’ abilities to do good work in any field of endeavour, I also wonder what kind of people they have become and whether they are able to live fulfilling lives in terms of what school offered them. Central to the question of what makes a great school is not just what people can learn to do (competencies), but equally what they can learn to be (what I will call capabilities). In what follows I offer the position that competencies do not fully answer the question of what makes a great school, and that capabilities offer a more compelling and inclusive approach to defining—and creating—great schools.

Integral to defining the parameters of a great school is the question of aims: what purposes and ends schools serve for both the individual and larger society. The noted educational philosopher Nel Noddings (2003) has asked why the talk of aims of education has become so diminished and too quickly reduced to measurable outcomes. Noddings argues that a focus on objectives—and competencies such as numeracy (Alberta Education 2011, 2)—and an overemphasis on testing narrow the question of purposes. In an example of mathematics curriculum, she asks, “What are we trying to accomplish by teaching algebra? Who benefits? Should our efforts be designed to enhance the society … or should they be directed at benefits for the individual?” (2003, 75–76) and so on. Such questions, Noddings suggests, are about aims—that is, what makes for good teaching and learning and the purposes of school. Furthermore, casting aims in terms of competencies such as being good at mathematics and doing well on tests, Noddings would suggest, cannot fully address the deeper responsibilities that education has for creating possibilities for children to live well in the world.

Competencies is a term currently in use in the development of curriculum in Alberta and is defined as “an interrelated set of attitudes, skills, and knowledge that is drawn upon and applied to a particular context for successful learning and living” (Alberta Education 2011, 3). At first glance it is difficult to find fault with the kinds of competencies identified, which include critical thinking, communication with others, ethical responsibility and so on. It would require a longer discussion to adequately address the pros and cons of competencies as a framework for curriculum, but I will address three interrelated issues that I think are central to the differences between competencies and capabilities: how we think about the learner, qualities of and contexts for learning, and the purposes schools serve.

First, it is helpful to raise questions about how we privilege certain ways of thinking and being. Judith Butler (2009) has used the word frames to help explain the ways in which we make sense of the world and to what we give significance and meaning, but also to what is left out. For example, particularly in Western society, being a person is defined in terms of individualism rather than in terms of community (Butler 2009, 5). In curriculum terms, this means that we may overemphasize learning as primarily located in the individual. Alberta Education (2011) emphasizes that, for example, “learners see themselves as individuals and active agents” (p 4). Thus, the “frame” of individualism is a powerful way “that allow us to assert what counts as being fully human” (Smits and Naqvi 2012, 9).

Second, context for what we understand to be the purposes of school is critical. Complex social, economic and cultural trends frame the question of what makes for a great school, and how we should prepare our children to live well in a changing world. The Alberta Teachers’ Association document Changing Landscapes (n.d.) identifies several future trends that challenge how we will have to think about education and schools in a future Alberta. Increasing exploitation of natural resources, environmental crises, globalization, the impact of new technologies and what those mean for learning, qualities of citizenship and civil society, and the nature of personal identity all challenge the purposes of education and what schools ought to be about.

Given the complex and interrelated set of trends identified by the ATA, how should we understand what is required of schools and in what terms? In Alberta Education’s discussion of competencies, it is interesting to note the language used to describe what we want our students to become: to develop an entrepreneurial spirit, for example. However, the term entrepreneurial implies an already assumed future where a business-oriented and dominated society will require certain kinds of aptitudes of graduates. The competencies identified by business organizations, while admirable, are also driven by primarily economic concerns about producing productive workers in the future.¹

In countering the view that we need to burden our children with the future well-being of our economy, Globe and Mail columnist Elizabeth Renzetti (2014) wrote that we need to remember that “… we’re educating humans, not mass-producing widgets. They need to learn to tie their own shoelaces before they can worry about their pension plans.” Renzetti was not making an argument for the basics such as numeracy, but rather offering a reminder to think about what ends school should serve in the education of the young.

Renzetti echoed the concerns of the philosopher Hannah Arendt (1968), who, in the 1950s, another period of time on the cusp of great social and cultural change, wisely wrote that it would be a disservice to the young to emphasize only vocational training or skills assumed to be necessary for the world of work. Arendt’s critique is pertinent to the discussion of competencies. One response to the trends identified by the ATA might be that we need to educate the young to take their place in the resource economy, to learn skills and competencies that will allow them to be successful in economic terms.

However, a narrow focus on preparation for present and future occupation takes away the possibilities for renewing the world since it already assumes the future is determined in terms of the present. Rather, as Arendt stressed, “the function of the school is to teach children what the world is like” (p 195), which includes understanding one’s self in relation to the past, to the present and to others as necessary dispositions for ultimately assuming responsibility for and participation in the world. Further, in Arendt’s terms, personal action cannot be simply reduced to the individual, but must be understood as the individual’s relationship to and dependence on community (Deneulin, Nebel and Sagovsky 2006, 3).

When we consider questions of what school is for and what kinds of capacities our children will require to take up their lives in the future, narrow forms of accountability based on lists of discrete skills and competencies fail the test of what children require to become successful. As Diane Ravitch (2013) noted, “accountability turned into a nightmare for American schools, producing graduates who were drilled on the basic skills but were often ignorant about almost everything else.”

What is ignored when children can do well on tests but be deficient in “almost everything else”? A few years ago, some colleagues and I interviewed more than 200 high school students to try to get a sense of how they experienced school (ATA 2003). Not to suggest that these students were unconcerned about doing well in terms of grades, but they overwhelmingly spoke of qualities of learning and relationships with teachers and other students as critical qualities of their experiences. Most significant was how they experienced learning in terms of the student–teacher relationship, the deep need to be regarded as capable persons, and the desire to understand the value and meanings of what they were offered in terms of learning.

The students’ words spoke of a deeper sense of what the experience of school might offer—what I am here referring to as capabilities. “What are capabilities?” Martha Nussbaum (2011) asks. She replies, “They are answers to the question, ‘What is this person able to do and to be?’ … They are not just abilities residing inside a person but also the freedoms or opportunities created by a combination of personal abilities and the political, social, and economic environment” (p 20).

In countering the belief that learning depends only on the individual, Nussbaum counsels that education has to address disadvantage and inequality (p 159) and that “the attitude toward people’s basic capabilities is not a meritocratic one … but … the opposite: those who need more help to get above the threshold get more help” (p 24). Capabilities are oriented by a sense of justice in requiring that communities, and institutions like school, ensure possibilities for a better common life (Deneulin, Nebel and Sagovsky 2006, 3). Examples of such capabilities include critical thinking, the ability to imagine and to understand another person’s situation from within, and a grasp of world history and the current global economic order, essential capabilities for nurturing democratic citizenship (Nussbaum 2011, 156).²

Today the challenge is not the absence of skills and competencies, but rather ensuring that all children will be part of more hopeful futures. If we conceive of this challenge only in terms of competencies, we risk being in the realm of empty promise. On the other hand, a great school built around nurturing capabilities offers children participation in “coming communities” (Agamben 1993), defined in terms of hope and meaningful forms of life other than immediate economic gain.

In such communities, teachers, too, would be recognized as those “whose success at teaching character, wisdom, and judgement cannot be measured by standardized tests” (Ravitch 2010). To be a great school requires opportunities for all children to begin, through the arts, humanities and the many ways that subjects like science and mathematics contribute to making sense of and imagining the world, to see themselves as citizens of the world. “Public assurance” (ATA 2012) about great schools would invite a conversation about the deep responsibilities we all have for building and protecting futures for our children.

References

Agamben, G. 1993. The Coming Community. Trans M Hardt. Minneapolis, Minn: University of Minnesota Press, 2009.

Alberta Education. 2011. Framework for Student Learning. Competencies for Engaged Thinkers and Ethical Citizens with an Entrepreneurial Spirit. Edmonton, Alta: Alberta Education.

Alberta Teachers’ Association. 2003. Trying to Teach, Trying to Learn: Listening to Students. Edmonton, Alta: Alberta Teachers’ Association.

———. 2012. A Great School for All: Transforming Education in Alberta. Edmonton, Alta: Alberta Teachers’ Association.

———. n.d. Changing Landscapes. Alberta 2015-2035. Shaping Our Preferred Future. Edmonton, Alta: Alberta Teachers’ Association.

Arendt, H. 1968. “The Crisis in Education.” In Between Past and Future, 173–96. New York: Penguin, 1993.

Butler, J. 2009. Frames of War. When Is Life Grievable? London, UK: Verso.

Conference Board of Canada. n.d. Employability Skills 2000+. Available at www.conferenceboard.ca/topics/education/learningtools/employability (accessed February 6, 2014).

Deneulin, S., M. Nebel and N. Sagovsky, eds. 2006. Transforming Unjust Structures. The Capability Approach. Dordrecht, Neth: Springer.

Noddings, N. 2003. Happiness and Education. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Nussbaum, M. 2011. Creating Capabilities. The Human Development Approach. Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

OECD. 2013. Innovative Learning Environments. Paris: OECD.

Ravitch, D. 2010. “Why I Changed My Mind About School Reform.” Available at http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052748704869304575109443305343962 or http://on.wsj.com/1eCfVwf (accessed February 6, 2014).

———. 2013. “Holding Education Hostage.” Available at http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2013/feb/01/holding-education-hostage/ (accessed February 6, 2014).

Renzetti, E. 2014. “Math-Obsessed Parents Should Sit Back, Relax and Count to 10.” Globe and Mail, January 11.

Smits, H., and R. Naqvi. 2012. “Challenging the Frames of Curriculum.” In Thinking About and Enacting Curriculum in “Frames of War,” ed R. Naqvi and H Smits, 9–19. Lanham, Md: Lexington Books.

UNESCO International Commission on Education for the 21st Century 1996. Learning: The Treasure Within. Paris: UNESCO.

Hans Smits is retired from the Faculty of Education at the University of Calgary, where he served as associate dean of teacher preparation.

1    See, for example, Conference Board of Canada, n.d., and OECD 2013.

2    See UNESCO International Commission on Education for the 21st Century, 1996. The idea of capabilities as a way of capturing more fully the purposes of school is elaborated in UNESCO’s “four pillars of learning,” which are learning to know, learning to do, learning to live together and learning to be. These ways of describing learning serve as useful placeholders for developing practices that can nurture capabilities as purposes for education.