Evidence-based . . . or not

During the course of researching my post on the purported boy crisis in education (coming soon!) I came across a fascinating book by John Hattie, an educational researcher from New Zealand. The title is Visible Learning: A Synthesis of Over 800 Meta-Analyses Relating to Achievement (Routledge 2009). By "Visible Learning" Hattie seems to mean some combination of transparent pedagogy, feedback from teachers to students and students to teachers, and evidence-based innovation. But for me the real fascination of the book is the sheer amount of data underpinning Hattie's review of the 800 meta-analyses. Together, the 52,637 studies included in the book represent over 83 million students. That's a lot of data and a lot of "effects"–146,142, in fact–correlated to 138 variables affecting learning.

"Evidence-based" is a popular buzzword in education, as it is in many other spheres of research. But as Hattie points out, the vast number of studies about "what works" in education can be overwhelming to teachers and administrators. Perhaps more damagingly, the abundance of disparate and sometimes contradictory findings can lead to the justification of certain pet practices on the basis of one or two studies that may suffer from small sample size or design flaws. This is where the power of of meta-analysis comes in. Meta-analysis overcomes or neutralizes potential distortions in the results of individual studies–caused by sample size, design or methodological problems–through the aggregation (and sophisticated statistical manipulation) of data from multiple studies. That's the theory anyway, but as with any theory, meta-analysis has its critics. In the case of this particular synthesis (or meta-meta-analysis), the most salient problem–one acknowledged by the author himself–is that it concerns itself solely with research measuring effects on "achievement," and achievement is invariably measured via some form of testing. But many educational policies, including choice of curricular materials, pedagogical approaches, and integration of technologies, are justified by appealing to these very measures. So the information presented by Hatti is extremely useful to anyone trying to evaluate such programs on their promulgators' own terms.

And the results are quite surprising. Contrary to expectation–mine, anyway–many popular "progressive" pedagogical approaches have low "effect sizes," whereas practices that have been mostly discredited and discarded turn out to have large effect sizes. For instance, the practice of problem-based learning, wherein a teacher acts as a facilitator while students work through "authentic" real-world problems has an average effect size of 0.14; in Hattie's scheme, an effect of 0.40 or greater is considered one that rises above the baseline achievement due to teacher influence and students' year-to-year development. By contrast, the practice of Direct Instruction (which, in this review, means something quite specific) has an effect size of 0.59. In his discussion of the studies of Direct Instruction, Hattie usefully points out the ways in which constructivism–a theory of knowledge–has been confused with certain types of inquiry-based teaching strategies. He rightly stresses that constructivism is not a pedagogy, and that constructivist epistemological views are not incompatible with teacher-directed pedagogies. Certainly, my own experience with my daughters' elementary curriculum leads me to believe that more direct instruction, especially in math, would not be amiss. (See here for my take on the problems inherent in so-called constructivist approaches to math instruction.) And in fact, when it comes to math instruction, Hattie's data show that direct instruction methods have more positive effects on achievement (0.55) than other methods, such as technology-aided approaches (effect size 0.07).

Other results are less surprising to me, but still may be controversial or difficult for administrators to accept. The effect of homework, for instance, is low (. 29), as is that of extracurriculars (.17). This latter figure may be of interest to parents and teachers in Ontario, where extracurriculars have been curtailed by teachers protesting government-imposed contracts. (See my post on the protests here.) But this is also an example of the weakness of this type of study: the effects of extracurricular programs in schools may not be measurable by tests of achievement, but that does not necessarily make them less worthwhile than programs that can be so measured. It might, however, explain, why they are considered "extra" as opposed to part of the curriculum.

One other finding is worth pointing out: by Hattie's calculations the effect size of gender on achievement is a paltry 0.12. He writes:

The . . . question . . . is why we are so constantly immersed in debates about gender differences in achievement–they are just not there. The current synthesis shows that where differences are reported, they are minor indeed.

 This is a good question, and one which provides a perfect segue to my next post on the supposed "boy crisis" in education. Stay tuned.

Teachers: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly (plus the Sexy!) Part 3b

(This is the final section of the third installment of a post on teachers. See Part 1 here, Part 2 here, and the first part of of Part 3 here.)

The Sexy, Part B

It was near the end of September, not long after the discussion about the Vietnam War, that I began to linger in Mr. S's classroom after dismissal. At first our conversations were trivial and impersonal—discussions of assignments or continuations of classroom debates—but they soon evolved into more relaxed, personal exchanges about all manner of topic. I took these conversations seriously, occasionally even prepping for them! They had become the highlights of my week and I consistently skipped math class so that I wouldn't have to forego them. At some point, Mr. S expressed concern about my math grades but after I reassured him that I was doing well, he stopped worrying and accepted my decision to skip. I can't imagine a teacher doing that today, but it was a different era, one whose spirit was more conducive to respecting kids' inclinations and choices. Even then it was a Zeitgeist on its way out, but Mr S, with his irreverence for convention and rules, seemed to embody it perfectly.

In our after-class chats we talked a lot about books, with him recommending and lending, and me acting like an eager sponge. In the first few weeks alone, he introduced me to Susan Sontag's I, Etcetera Joan Didion's Play it as It Lays and The White Album, Camus' The Myth of Sisyphus, Proust (whom he adored but recommended I hold off reading until I was over thirty), and poetry by Rimbaud, Verlaine and Éluard. One day he brought in his copy of Violette LeDuc's classic of lesbian lit,  La Batarde; I'd asked to borrow it after reading about Simone De Beauvoir's interest in Leduc. As I flipped through it, I jokingly said I was going to show it to my parents and ask them what they thought of his taste in literature. He grabbed the book out of my hand, tore out the page where he'd written his name and handed it back to me. This gesture (which I assured him was unnecessary) was a springboard to talk about homophobia, a new-ish term at the time, whose meaning he explained to me. This in turn led to a discussion of "projection"—a concept that interested him. People who fear homosexual urges in themselves, he explained, will often project that fear onto another, thus relieving them of the burden of confronting the true source of their fear.

Books were not the only conduits to such discussions. Music and movies played a similar role. Mr. S would recommend movies that were playing at the local rep cinemas, alerting me to foreign films that he thought might interest me, especially classics of the French New Wave. (He shared my Francophilia, though in his case it was more understandable—his mother was Swiss French.) But he surprised me by praising certain popular movies as well. I remember him pronouncing Saturday Night Fever a "well-made movie." At the time, I was firmly in the "disco sucks" camp; such praise coming from him was a significant challenge to my adolescent snobbery.

Other topics I remember discussing included: the legalization of marijuana—I was in favour, he did not disagree; the jock-ish culture of high school; Canadian and American politics; and suburbia, against which I chafed but which he defended as a quiet place where people understandably chose to raise kids. "How can you defend it?" I asked. "It's soul-destroying." He shrugged. "Living here is part of why you are who you are." But the next day he brought in his copy of Cheever's Bullet Park for me to read: "My favourite suburban novel," he said.

What surprises me when I look back on those chats is not their breadth and occasional depth, but that they occurred at all. My own participation is not particularly surprising: the student "crush" is a familiar trope in both popular and literary culture, though I would argue that the trivializing term (often applied to unsanctioned attractions, especially those of the young) does not do justice to the potent mix of sexual and intellectual attraction I felt towards Mr. S. More difficult to understand from my perspective is Mr. S's motivation. I wondered then and I wonder now why he was willing to forgo so much of his prep time to engage in an ongoing conversation with a student. The more I think of it, though, the more I realize that what is important is not that he didn't feel anything inappropriate—though I believe he did not—but that if he did, I didn't know. He did not let it show. There was no physical contact between us, with one minor exception. On a spring day when I was the last to leave his classroom, he followed me out, and as I moved through the doorway, he took hold of my braid and let it run through his fingers. It was in all likelihood an innocent, affectionate gesture—which didn't stop me from wandering around for the rest of the day in a thrilled daze, thinking to myself, he touched my hair, he touched my hair!

But the point is, regardless of what he may have felt, and what I clearly did feel, nothing (beyond hair-touching) happened. Or rather what happened was entirely positive, from a pedagogic perspective: feelings rippling beneath the surface of our interaction acted as a catalyst for engaged teaching and learning. It's no accident that I produced better work and learned more in Mr. S's class than I had in the previous three years of high school English.

As I mentioned in Part A of this post, Eros has been recognized as an inducement to learning since antiquity. In the Platonic model, however, love or desire for a person is only the beginning of a process which, if all goes well, ends with the learner transferring her affection to Beauty or Knowledge itself. Human love, of the sort a student might feel towards a teacher, is merely a means to a "higher" end. (See the Ladder of Love.) It's a nice idea, but I don't think one has to view this progression as inevitable or necessary, in order to appreciate the role that Eros can play in learning. A love that remains focussed on a person or that is mixed with desire is a feeling that can produce intense and pleasurable learning. What is there to object to in that? (I'm not saying this is the only way to motivate students!) Love between student and teacher cannot be acted on under most normal circumstances; but it needn't be denied or suppressed either. As long as there are teachers like Mr. S, there will be students who love them. I say let the kids love and learn.

Teachers: The Good, The Bad and the Ugly (plus the Sexy!), Part 3

(This is the third installment of a three-part post; read part 1 here and part 2 here.)


The Sexy, Part A [that's right, a part divided into further parts . . . ]

I confess that the writing of this segment of my three-part post on teachers has been a bit of a struggle. Like all of you, I'm aware that we're not supposed to mention teachers and love, or teachers and sex, in the same sentence—not supposed to do so outside the context of porn, that is. (Google "sexy teacher," and see what comes up.) Which goes to show how deeply conflicted we are as a society, not only about teachers as human beings, but also about human beings (including teachers and adolescents) as sexual beings. All I'll say here, as a preface to my story about the "sexy" teacher in my life, is that there is a rich history and philosophy going back to ancient Greece concerning the role of Eros in teaching. Eros as a concept (derived form the god of the same name) is much more broad and powerful than sex. It is conceived (by Plato, for instance) as a primal force and motivator, which incorporates but is not reducible to love, desire, passion. Its role as a spur to learning has been recognized in both ancient and modern educational philosophy, but it remains unacknowledged and controversial in our culture. And yet . . .

There he was on the first day of class, the epitome of English-teacher cool, in black shirt and tight pants, book in hand, leaning back in his chair with one knee bent, foot against the edge of the desk. A cynosure. I hovered by the entrance of the classroom affecting an attitude of bored indifference, but I was secretly excited. Mr. S's reputation, and that of the unusual course he'd designed, preceded him. Pretending not to notice him, I picked up a piece of chalk and wrote in a corner of the blackboard, "Make the rich pay!" Just as I finished writing, Mr. S stood up. With a flick of his longish, dirty-blond hair, he surveyed the space and the kids occupying it. He glanced briefly at what I'd written on the board and reached for the blackboard eraser; as I took my seat at the back of the class, he shot me a ghost of a smirk that seemed to say "really?" then put the eraser down, leaving the Marxist-Leninist party slogan on the board. "This course is World Literature in Translation," he said in a voice that silenced the room. "I'd like to start by reading a poem by Sappho."

The material in the course was rich and eccentric by today's standards. We began with the Classics: Aristotle's Poetics; plays by Aeschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles; poetry by Sappho, Horace and Catullus; excerpts from Ovid's Metamorphoses. Then we jumped to pre-modern and modern lit (I don't remember studying anything in between), reading short stories by De Maupassant, Chekov, Kafka; plays by Ibsen, and Jean Anouilh; essays by Camus and Simone de Beauvoir.

Mr. S expected us to read these texts carefully and write serious responses in the form of essays or reviews; but the selections also served as conduits to some of the most exciting discussions I'd ever had in a classroom setting—discussions about philosophy, psychology, art, feminism, politics. Mr. S moderated these discussions expertly, encouraging open, flexible discussion amongst the students, but he was also willing to express his own opinion as the need arose. He almost never lost his cool, which is probably why I recall one occasion early in the school year when he did. I can't remember the literary context, but we were talking about about war, specifically the Vietnam war. A boy commented that "if the US had won the war, we wouldn't have had to deal with the problem of 'boat people' in North America. Mr S said, "The problem of the boat people. Hmm. Are we all a 'problem' then? Aren't we  all immigrants in this country?" "No, sir," the boy said. "Oh, I see," Mr S said." So way back before the English and French arrived, there were the native peoples—and the Johnsons. Just your family skating around on the glaciers with the Inuit, right?" "No," the boy said.

An awkward silence followed this exchange, but I remember being secretly thrilled. For the first time in my life, I'd witnessed a teacher challenging the unthinking, petty racism that I saw and heard daily in high school. My half-Jewish, WASP-resenting, self-hating white soul was stirred. I was in love.

Next: The Sexy, Part B

Teachers, the Good, The Bad, the Ugly (plus the Sexy!), Part 2

(This is the second installment of a three-part post. Read Part 1 here.)


The Bad

Trust, of the sort that teachers earn and students give, is always fragile and provisional, based as it is on a delicate negotiation of the inevitable power imbalance between adult and child.  It took one bad teacher to destroy that trust for me. Mr J, my grade seven teacher, was everything the "good teachers" I'd had before were not: dour, humourless, needlessly authoritarian. Unlike Mr H, he seemed to have no passion for teaching any subject at all, though I do remember him frequently extemporizing on the topic of the superiority of the Scandinavian peoples. This memory raises red flags in my adult mind, especially when I consider that he seemed to take a particular dislike to me, the only child in the class who stayed home for Jewish holidays. But at the time, I was more alarmed by the way he massaged the shoulders of the "developed" girls as he moved through the rows of desks while supervising our work. Also disconcerting was his temper, which he often seemed to direct my way, even though by the second week of Grade 7 I'd transformed myself from mild shit-disturber to taciturn rule-follower. One day, he saw me working on a speech in what I thought was my free time; he swooped over to my desk, grabbed my only copy, crumpled it into a ball and threw it in the garbage can. "I did NOT say you could work on your speech!" he bellowed. The class was silent; I fought back tears. After class, I snuck back into the room (hurray for open classroom design!) and retrieved my manuscript from the garbage can. To him, work done at inappropriate times was garbage; my stealth retrieval of my work implies that I didn't quite buy that, but I do know that Mr J had the power to make me feel like garbage. I felt like garbage every time I walked into his classroom for the entire year.


The Good, Redux

By the time I entered Grade 8, I was greatly changed. The cheerful, mischievous child who told a classmate that she foresaw a sex change in her future was gone. In her place was a mopey, mildly depressed young teen who professed a profound dislike of school. By sheer fluke that miserable young person was placed in a classroom run by a teacher who was in many ways the polar opposite of Mr J. Mrs L was an exuberant woman of Dutch origin with a passion for grammar. As it turned out, she was passionate—in a non-creepy way—about her students as well. One afternoon in late September, when I was the last kid to leave her classroom, she surprised me by asking a rather blunt question. "What's your deal, K?" (She had the neo-hippy lingo down pat!) "Why so down on school? Did someone give you a bum deal? A teacher, a kid?" This last question shocked me; it implied that she thought my bad attitude stemmed not from some defect of mine, but from an experience I might have had in school. I was a typical enough teenager to hide my true feelings and to offer only the most perfunctory of responses, "I just hate school." Mrs L looked at me as if she wanted to interrogate me further, but said only "Well, don't."

This conversation, brief though it was, had a profound effect on me. It wasn't so much what she said, but the fact that she'd said anything at all, that she had seen me, read me correctly. I perked up almost overnight. I took an interest in my school work, including the grammar that Mrs. L was so enthusiastic about, becoming in the course of a few short weeks her "best grammar student." (I confess my retention of this material has been sub-optimal.) Slowly I recovered my rebellious streak as well, possibly because Mrs L, while not encouraging it, did not discourage it, either. Somewhere in the middle of the school year, a friend and I staged a mini-revolt against the reciting of the Lord's Prayer during announcements, refusing to stand for it, as was the custom. Mrs L was tolerant, but arranged for us to talk to the Vice Principal. The VP was also tolerant; she urged us to stand during the prayer to show respect, but did not insist that we say the prayer ourselves. (Such a compromise seems unsatisfactory in a public school—but at least we were not punished!) I remember many things about Mrs L, including the fact that she was the first teacher I encountered who discussed homosexuality in a positive way (amid a chorus of snickers). I also remember the hug she gave me while handing me my Grade 8 diploma, and her whispered advice: "Don't hate school anymore." But what stands out for me when I think about my year in her classroom is how important the personal—the person—was to my ability and willingness to learn. When I hear educators wax enthusiastic about tech or flipped classrooms or YouTube learning, I can't help but think of the look of genuine interest and concern on Mrs L's face when she asked, "Did someone give you a bum deal?"

Next up: Part 3, The Sexy!

(See also, Part 1, The Ugly and the Good)

Teachers: The Good, The Bad and the Ugly (plus the Sexy!), Part 1

I promised several people (including my kids) that my next post would be about the sorry state of sex education in Ontario schools, but between the time I first thought about writing it (after being interviewed by a local newspaper on the issue) and now, I've become less motivated. Maybe sex just isn't on my radar as much today as it was a month ago, or maybe events have conspired to turn my thoughts elsewhere. But what I've found myself thinking about recently is teachers. And I've found myself trying to reconcile the two types of writing I've been engaging in: i.e., blogging, which for me means viewing the personal through a theoretical and political lens, and fiction writing, which is . . . well, something else entirely. The reconciliation I've settled on is a kind of personal creative non-fiction, which is quite a departure for me in this space. But bear with me. The personal—be it parenting or aspects of one's own educational history—is still the soci-political for me, as I hope will become clear.

First off, I should clarify that I want to talk about my teachers, teachers who affected me for better or for worse (but mostly for better) during the long years of my student-hood. The differences between teachers (and teaching) in the past and today are part of what I think makes the topic interesting, but of equal interest are the parallels and resonances between "then" and "now."


The Ugly

I start with the "ugly" because the teacher in question happens to have been my very first teacher, my kindergarten teacher, Mrs B. (She was not in fact ugly; my reason for referring to her this way will become apparent.) She was a woman in her early sixties, nearing retirement when I passed through her classroom. In those days, a requirement of kindergarten teachers was that they be able to play the piano. I remember a lot of singing, children's voices reverberating throughout the sunlit room, belting out songs like "I've Been Working on the Railroad," while Mrs B played the piano. A lot of that year is a blur, but one incident stands out in my mind. At Halloween Mrs B dressed up in a convincing (to a five-year-old) witch costume, complete with warty face mask, hat, and cape. She brought in a large cauldron, filling it with what she called her potion. She sat us around her while she stirred the concoction and handed out cups, inviting the kids to taste it. There was silence as kids inched-wormed backwards, enlarging the circle. A boy beside me trembled softly. No one accepted Mrs. B's offer. No one except—after several moments of careful consideration—me. I took a sip of what I immediately recognized as some combination of ginger ale and eggnog. It was good.

Today I wonder how kids could have been so petrified of a teacher in a witch's costume. (Would today's kids be as frightened?) I also wonder why I decided to risk tasting the potion. It may be because I had an older sister who chased me around the house pretending to be Captain Hook; that experience was far more terrifying to me than Mrs B in an ugly witch's costume. But I think it goes beyond that. Mrs B had read to us, played piano for us, led us in the Hokey Pokey, bandaged our scraped knees, reprimanded us when we stepped out of line the way a parent might, firmly but without malice. Nothing in her previous behaviour suggested that she would attempt to poison us on this occasion. So, I said yes to her scary potion, as I'd said yes to all the lessons and activities she'd offered us up to that point. Fill me up, my gesture seemed to say, with anything and everything you have to offer. The cup seems to me a perfect synecdoche for the transmission model of learning operative at the time. But even transmission is never truly one way. By accepting the gift of Mrs B's potion, I was giving her something in return: my trust.


The Good

For the next several years of my schooling, teacher after teacher proved themselves worthy of my trust. In Grade 1, there was Mrs M, who was surprised when I wrote this message on a test: "Am I right?" I remember her showing the note to my mother, and the two of them sharing a laugh about it. Both my mother and Mrs M appeared to consider it strange for a student to attempt to communicate with a teacher in a non-sanctioned way. What I appreciated about Mrs M—or what I appreciate now, looking back—was her openness to this gesture on my part. "Yes, you are," she'd written in response.

Maybe this openness was part of what emboldened me a few years later to ask Mr H, my Grade 5 teacher, a rather odd question. Mr H was a mild-mannered man with minimal control of the class, and a seeming lack of interest in anything other than music. We spent hours on end repeating our "ta-ta-tee-tee, tas" or learning solfege or singing songs like Both Sides Now. A friend who was also in Mr H's class thinks it was a wasted year. I disagree. I loved all the music and singing, and I especially enjoyed the children's operetta—His Majesty's Pie—that we staged outside of school hours, under his direction. It boggles the mind that he was given such leeway to pursue his own interests, but I don't think we were the worse for it. Watching an adult live out his passion day after day is not a bad thing for a child to witness.

But to the question: A boy and I had been talking about what we wanted to be when we grew up. I told him I was going to be a man. (In grade two, I'd told the teacher I wanted to be a nun; clearly in the intervening years I'd set my aspirations higher—or lower, depending on your point of view.) He snorted. "Very funny." "No, I'm serious," I said. "Impossible," he said.

I knew better. My older sister had a college classmate who was in the the process of transitioning from male to female. The students at the college derisively dubbed her "Nick the Chick," but my sister had told me the story in non-judgemental terms, and I was intrigued. I'm pretty sure I didn't actually want to become a man when I grew up; I did want to prove a point to my classmate. So I dragged the boy to the front of the class where Mr H stood writing on the blackboard. "Sir," I said. "I can change from a girl to a boy when I get older, right? I can be a man if I want to." Mr H swung around, an expression of mild surprise on his face. He glanced from me to the boy, then back at me. The look of surprise evaporated, replaced by his customary poker face. "Yes," he said tersely. "Now go sit down, both of you."

Mr H often used to preface answers to questions with "I cannot tell a lie." He was also fond of the phrase "Man is an adaptable animal." He displayed honesty and adaptability that day, but he also showed the boy and me that change—especially the socio-sexual change that the newly emerging recognition of gender dysphoria betokened—is not something to get worked up over. It's difficult not to marvel that decades later we (in Canada) still have governments capitulating to fringe groups complaining about the GLBT content of proposed new sex ed curricula.

(See also: Part 2, The Bad and the Good, Redux)

From All-About-Me to We: Musings on Kids, Parents, Teachers and Bill 115

I wasn't going to write about it. "It" being Bill 115 (subtitled "Putting Students First"), passed by the recently-prorogued Ontario legislature, a bill that imposes an austerity contract on a majority of the province's 115, 000 teachers, cutting their sick days in half and removing (for the duration of the contract) their right to strike. I wasn't going to write about it, not only because it's an incendiary topic for parents and teachers alike, one that is best approached with the kind of care and nuance I wasn't sure I could muster, but also because, as my reader(s) may have noticed, I've taken a break from blogging to work on other projects.

But, then, the other day a tweet came through my stream that read something like this: "10-yr-old DD has started a petition to protest against lack of extra-curriculars. I'm so proud of her!"

This tweet (a paraphrase) epitomizes the position that has dominated the discussion of the Bill among parents since union leaders invited teachers to protest against the province's imposition of a contract by declining to supervise extra-curricular activities. Despite the fact that, by the terms of teacher contracts, participation in extra-curriculars is voluntary, parents and kids have been vocal in their denunciation of this action. Many have made the point that kids should not be used as pawns in the conflict between the province and teachers. Columnists and pundits have jumped on the bandwagon, bemoaning the lack of extra-curriculars and, more recently, condemning the suggestion from unions that teachers further express their displeasure with the imposed contract by restricting their comments on the November progress reports to one sentence. What one hears most often in the discussions about the current impasse between the government and the teachers is the sage-sounding admonishment to everyone involved to take a deep breath and remember: it's all about the children.

But -- and this is why I've decided to end my silence, because someone has to say it -- IT'S NOT ALL ABOUT THE CHILDREN. In a democracy, an education system is "about" everyone. It concerns and affects young and old, parents and non-parents, teachers and kids. It seems simple enough, but it bears emphasizing: the stakeholders of a society's education system are all of us. Without an educated population, we not only have no workers to pay taxes and support the young and old but, more importantly, we lack an informed citizenry to protect and expand our democratic institutions and ideals. Without a well-paid, well-respected teaching body, the education system simply does not -- cannot -- exist. So instead of patting our kids on the back when they decide to protest the lack of their favourite extra-curricular (which, we might remind them, is called "extra" for a reason), or stepping in to run the activities ourselves, we should be taking the opportunity to shift the focus from "me to we," and teach kids something about the role of education in a democracy.

One way to approach such a lesson might be to talk about the context in which this labour dispute is occurring. I believe that it's incumbent upon parents -- regardless of where they stand on the political spectrum -- to supply this context, for the simple reason that teachers are unable to broach the topic lest they be accused of partisanship. We could begin by talking about how the current labour situation in Ontario fits into the larger picture of recent educational trends in North America: namely, the "reform movement," with its emphasis on boosting "achievement" through increased standardized testing and "accountability." We could talk about how within such a picture, teachers are often painted as part of the problem -- as scapegoats (a term worth discussing) for the socio-political problems of poverty and the chronic underfunding of education --  rather than as a crucial part of the solution. We could then back up and broaden the focus to help kids situate Bill 115 within the context of labour history. We could talk about how ordinary people, working in disparate sectors of the Canadian economy have fought hard for the freedom to strike and the right to engage in collective bargaining with their employers. We could talk about how the federal government has infringed on these rights in recent years by imposing back-to-work legislation in such sectors as transportation and the civil service (e.g., postal workers). We could then bring the discussion back to the current situation in Ontario, specifically to Bill 115, taking care to point out that, as an Act that imposes a contract upon a majority of teachers in the province, it has removed a right -- the right of unions to negotiate the terms of employment -- that most people, regardless of their political persuasion, regard as a cornerstone of modern democratic economies. In addition, we should stress that since the Act proscribes striking or working-to-rule, minor actions such as declining to supervise sports teams and clubs, are among the few avenues for protest left open to teachers.

One could go into a lot more detail and make the discussion far more interesting by bringing up salient events in Canadian history, such as the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919 or the Windsor Strike of 1945, the latter of which led to greater acceptance of unions and collective bargaining (see Rand Formula). But the exact content of the context-supplying conversation we have with our kids is not as important as is the simple fact of having it.  If, afterwards, they decide that they still want to protest against missing extracurriculars or report card comments, then so be it and more power to them. At least they will be acting from a position of knowledge, which is all we can expect of kids -- or citizens of any age -- in a democracy.

Terms of Parent (Dis-)Engagement (or Happy Back to School!)

 Parent engagement matters. Study after study has shown us that student achievement improves when parents play an active role in their children's education.  — Ontario Ministry of Education website

As I write this, it's late August, a time when Type-C parents like me eschew newspapers, avoid malls, shoe stores and business supply shops, and resort to holing themselves up in their bedrooms watching episodes of Breaking Bad, or reading books with titles like How to Live Well in a Cave in Greece (okay, I made that up)—all to escape the tsunami of back-to-school hype, and the accompanying trite advice. (How many times do I need to be told to set up a quiet spot for Joey to do his busywork?)

Then there are the Type-A and -B parents. These are the mothers and fathers who not only willingly take their progeny shopping for things they may or may not need, but who also spend time thinking about what a term like "parent engagement" might mean for them in the coming year. But, my aversion to shopping notwithstanding, I do have something in common with these conscientious parents: this year I, too, find myself thinking about parent engagement.

Or, more precisely, dis-engagement. Because, I confess, at the moment I feel more dis-engaged than engaged in my kids' school life. And I think I've figured out why. Part of it is the consequence of my daughters' having made the transition from elementary to middle school. At this stage, some levelling off of parent participation in schooling is both inevitable and sane for both parents and educators. Middle schools simply don't need as many parents hanging around as elementary schools. But I'm not really talking about physical presence in the school. In the educational research I've been reading (between episodes of Breaking Bad!), "engagement" is often distinguished from "involvement," with the latter tending to be used as a short-hand for volunteerism and participation in school events.*

To me, engagement involves an attitude of interest or concern, a sense of investment in schools and a belief in one's ability as a parent to make a difference in the educational spheres our kids inhabit.  My revelation into my feeling of disengagement was occasioned by this post, a link to which recently came through my Twitter feed. The piece, by Marilyn Mitchell-Price, a respected educational psychologist who blogs for Psychology Today, concerns the issue of parent involvement in the digital age, and contains much useful information, but what I zeroed in on was this statement : "family engagement is a mandate of U.S. education reform." By way of elaboration, Mitchell-Price links to an article summarizing the section of the No Child Left Behind Act dealing with Title I funding; it is this section of the Act which sets forth guidelines for the parental involvement initiatives it mandates.

Suddenly, my inchoate understanding of my parental disengagement became slightly more choate. Parent engagement could and perhaps should be politically neutral, but reading about the interconnections between parent involvement and NCLB drove home to me something that I hadn't seriously considered: both the concept and the implementation of "parent engagement" have been used to further the goals of the "educational reform" movement in the US, and to some extent in Canada. The two most salient features of "reform," as I understand it, are an increased reliance on standardized testing as a means to the chimerical end of "accountability," and a move towards parental "choice," which often denotes varying degrees of privatization within an ostensibly public system. On a practical level, in the context of educational reform, parent engagement becomes conflated with "involvement" of a very concrete nature (volunteerism, fund-raising, homework help, etc.), which relieves government of some of its fiscal responsibilities. On a theoretical level, parent engagement initiatives function as a low-key means for governments to enlist a powerful segment of the electorate—parents—as allies in their reformist agendas.

Evidence of how important parent engagement has become—as both a concept and set of practices—to departments and ministries of education is not hard to find. The US Department of Education website features a Parent Involvement page, rich with links to policies, research, guidelines and resources (including, not coincidentally, resources pertaining to "school choice"). In my home province of Ontario, the Liberal government requires (as of 2011) each board to establish a Parent Involvement Committee (PIC) to "to support, encourage and enhance meaningful parent involvement at the board level to improve student achievement and well-being." The government supplies funding to PICs both directly and through the allocation of what it calls Parents Reaching Out (PRO) grants. Such initiatives are perhaps well-intentioned but it is clear, from even a cursory glance at the pertinent government web pages, that they are not politically—or even educationally—neutral. The FAQ on PICs, for example, clearly states that the committees' purpose is to support the government's education vision:  

How do PICs help the education system?
The positive results of a genuine partnership between parents and schools include improved student achievement, reduced absenteeism, better behaviour and increased confidence among parents in their children’s schooling.

The unstated premise here is that such results are in fact positive; that, for instance, "better behaviour" and "improved student achievement"—measured in Ontario through EQAO testing—are worthy goals of an education system. They may be worthy goals in the reformist understanding of education (whose purpose is to produce workers for the "global economy"—a topic for another post), but where does that leave parents who don't support "reform" as the word has been defined by educrats both north and south of the border? Should they give up on the idea of parent engagement altogether? Or might there be a way to re-conceive the term and "engage" differently?

I hate to invoke Foucault (yet again!) on this blog, but when I reflect on parent engagement I can't help but think about discourses of power, and how in Foucauldian terms all such discourses are inherently contradictory. The contradictions inherent in the concept and practice of parent engagement are in fact readily discernible. Our "voices" as parents are being solicited on the assumption that we agree with the bigger picture of education being promoted in part through that solicitation, but the space opened up by the idea of engagement—the idea of a "genuine partnership between parents and schools"—is one that could conceivably be exploited to "voice" alternative visions of education.

As to how one goes about that, well that's the tricky part. True to Type-C parenting form, I'm more of an armchair parent activist, than . . . the other kind. But I have been wondering lately, what would happen if a bunch of parents on a given PIC decided that their mandate was to advocate for the abolition of EQAO? At the local level, what would be the result if one joined an established school council committee and tried to subvert its purpose from within? I may actually find out the answer to this, as I have recently volunteered to serve on the Safe and Caring School committee at my daughters' middle school. I've been told that this committee concerns itself mainly with traffic problems around the school and lockdown procedures. But to me, a "safe and caring school" could mean something different. I've decided that it might be worth my while to attempt to practice parent engagement in such a way as to make the committee—and engagement in general—meaningful to me.


*See Parent Engagement: Creating a Shared World, by Debbie Pushor. (Thanks to Sheila Stewart for sharing this and many other useful links. See also her blog for further resources and commentary on the issue of parent engagement.)