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ATA President Mark Ramsankar is raising a number of questions regarding the focus on the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) at Minister of Education Jeff Johnson’s recent Inspiring Education Symposium.
The symposium, held on Wednesday, February 19 at the BMO Centre in Calgary, brought together about 1,300 members of Alberta’s educational community to hear about the status and future of the Inspiring Education initiative. Attendees were largely trustees, superintendents, teachers, students and parents. Many of the delegates were selected by school boards or stakeholder organizations including the Alberta Teachers’ Association.
The symposium featured keynote addresses by Johnson and Deputy Minister Greg Bass, as well as an address by Task Force for Teaching Excellence chair Glenn Feltham. Ramsankar’s concerns, however, relate to other keynote presentations, given by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s PISA director Andreas Schleicher and Canadian Council of Chief Executives President John Manley.
In his prerecorded presentation, Schleicher highlighted the rising importance of 21st-century skills, namely nonroutine analytical skills and nonroutine interpersonal skills. He said that these skills were becoming increasingly important, whereas more routine and manual skills were declining in importance. He also highlighted the strong standing of Canada on measurements related to student equity and critical thinking.
“To me, inspiring education is about how we transform public education so it continues to prepare students for the changing world,” said Ramsankar. “The skills that Schleicher spoke of are important, but they are not measured by PISA.”
Schleicher also used the opportunity to repeat a message that high-performing jurisdictions have larger class sizes, a message reiterated by Johnson in his address. Ramsankar notes that Schleicher often talks in generalities about class size when he highlights a region like Shanghai or South Korea but that he rarely shares data on the issue.
“For someone who loves data so much, I’m surprised he leaves out the graphs on this point—I don’t think he’s done the statistical analysis,” said Ramsankar. Ramsankar noted that inclusion of special needs students and amount of professional time are also commonly left out of the discussion, which are more significant emerging issues for teachers in Alberta today.
“When we talk about using data like PISA to improve our system, we should be looking at what works for whom, when it works and why,” said Ramsankar. “Every nation—and school, for that matter—has its own challenges and goals, so we shouldn’t assume that one approach used in Asia is the best approach for us in Alberta.”
Manley’s presentation began by also highlighting the need for more of what he called soft skills. His organization surveyed its member CEOs about what skills they look for when they hire new employees. Leading the way were people skills, communication skills, problem-solving skills, analytical abilities and leadership skills.
Ramsankar noted that a stark contradiction existed within Manley’s speech. Manley started by emphasizing soft skills and then moved on to describe a national crisis in education as evidenced by declining results in PISA and the OECD’s other ranking system, the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC).
“That’s what we’re talking about in Inspiring Education and developing students for 2030—soft skills!” said Ramsankar. “Yet Manley relies on PISA results to discredit teachers’ work and attempts to portray a national crisis in education.”
Ramsankar believes that the approach that is being used in Inspiring Education today is notably different from the approach that was being used in 2009, the last time 1,000-plus stakeholders in education got together under the Inspiring Education banner. That event featured a keynote presentation from Daniel Pink, whose work focuses on creativity and motivation. This event featured keynote speakers from the OECD and the Canadian Council of Chief Executives.
“I worry that, increasingly, the goals of Inspiring Education are being viewed through an economic lens rather than an educational one, and that is problematic,” said Ramsankar. “We are on board with Inspiring Education as outlined in the 2010 report, but today’s event seems inconsistent with that and was not inspiring for the educators there.” ❚
