The slow path to equity, diversity, and inclusion

Charles Ungerleider, Professor Emeritus, The University of British Columbia

[permission to reproduce granted if authorship is acknowledged]  

It is no consolation to those who experience racism, exclusion, and inequities today that since the Second World War Canada has pursued an erratic path to increasing social justice. It is nonetheless important to recognize the changes that have occurred and understand the factors that have led to those changes.  

While there were, no doubt, pre-war antecedents, the effort to unite Canadians of different ethno-linguistic backgrounds for the purpose of pursuing WWII was significant. For without sufficient harmony, Canada’s contribution to the Allied victory would not have occurred. The War made clear that no group was exempt from the possibility of state generated genocide and gave rise to such legislation as Ontario’s Racial Discrimination Act (1944), Saskatchewan’s Bill of Rights Act (1947), and the Ontario Human Rights code (1962).  

Greater equality and inclusion were evident in the changed relationships between French and English Canada. Among the changes were simultaneous translation in Parliamentary proceedings (1959), the issuance of Government of Canada cheques in French (1962), the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism (1963-1969), and the Official Languages Act (1969).  

Immigration reform during the period 1967-1978 was tacit acknowledgement of Canada’s explicitly racist treatment of non-European origin immigrants first by exclusion and later by means of rules stacked against non-whites. In the late 1940s the franchise was extended to persons of Chinese, Japanese, and Indian ancestry. Canadians did not achieve universal franchise until 1960 when "treaty Indians" and Inuit were permitted to vote.  

In 1971, Canada formally proclaimed a state policy of "multiculturalism within a bilingual framework." In 1982, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms was added to Canada's constitution. The addition significantly strengthened democratic citizenship and social cohesion by declaring that the Charter “shall be interpreted in a manner consistent with the preservation and enhancement of the multicultural heritage of Canadians and enshrining minority language educational rights.    

My UBC colleague, Jason Ellis, traces the changes in educational equity in Canada that were concurrent with the ones I mentioned above. He calls attention to two post-war periods. He calls the period between 1950-1970 “getting everyone to the schoolhouse door.” During that period public education was expanded to include unserved or under-served groups. The  unserved included Indigenous children in the separate federal “Indian” day and residential schools and children with IQs lower than 50 who were legally excluded from schools. The under-served includes rural children, Black children in segregated schools in Ontario and Nova Scotia, children in institutions, and others.  

The second period (roughly 1970 to the present) Ellis describes as “making the schoolhouse welcoming to all.” During this period curricula were broadened to be respectful of and welcoming to difference. Notable changes include tolerating additional instructional languages (a form of multiculturalism), gender-sensitive curricula, the ending of Christian opening exercises and Christian religious instruction.  

Don’t get me wrong, the development of social justice in Canada has not been an inexorable, progressive march. Anything but. Examining the changes that have occurred may help us understand the factors that help to contribute to improved equity, inclusion, and diversity.  

Beginning during the Second World War policy makers recognized that apparent differences among groups would weaken the social fabric. In response, they promulgated legislation and regulation that required people to behave in conformity with the norms expressed. Furthermore, although it took painfully long, policy makers came to recognize that reconciliation among groups required formal acknowledgement of the harms inflected and admission for responsibility for those harms.  

Furthering equity, diversity, and inclusion in education requires that we examine whether the legal and regulatory framework affecting education is consistent with those values. For example, would these values be enhanced with provincial codes of conduct for trustees, staff, and students specifying their obligations to avoid harassment and discrimination on prohibited grounds? How might practices be brought into line with those values? For example, should there be a common investigatory protocol for complaints of discrimination and harassment, and a database of cases in which harassment and discrimination were proven?

District leadership for learning

 Charles Ungerleider, Professor Emeritus, The University of British Columbia

 [permission to reproduce granted if authorship is acknowledged]

A reader of my blog about principal leadership and teacher practices asked me to address district leadership for learning. This is my reply to the request.

Although it is one of the best supported principles in education,[1] it is ironic that learning cooperatively with one’s peers is too rarely practiced or supported when it comes to teacher professional learning. Like students, teachers should work and learn together for their benefit and for the benefit of students.  

District leaders should establish the expectation and create the conditions that make such cooperation possible. District leaders can, and should, make explicit at the time of hiring that teachers are expected to work and learn together. The assignment of teaching responsibilities should consider the complementarities among the knowledge and skills that staff members possess. District leaders should require that District-supported professional learning be aligned with district and provincial goals.  

District leaders should also carefully consider the teaching responsibilities assigned to school-based administrators. Administrators who have onerous teaching responsibilities will spend what little remains of their time attending to the administrative issues that arise and not have time to devote to the primary role of supporting teachers to improve student learning and wellbeing. Administrators who are required to teach cannot lead learning. Assigning teaching responsibilities to vice-principals, a common practice in some jurisdictions, denies them the opportunity to learn to lead.    

In addition to articulating the expectation that principals should be leading the collaborative learning among staff members, district staff should expect them to spend time in classrooms observing the instructional process and providing feedback about what they have observed. Principals and vice-principals should be able to draw upon their knowledge and experience to support teachers in the same way that a coach supports an athlete to improve her performance. Skilled administrators engage in dialogue with individuals and groups of teachers, encouraging them to reflect upon and improve their practice.  

Expecting principals and vice principals to provide instructional leadership, organize and convene opportunities for teachers to collaborate to improve their performance and student outcomes, and align professional learning with district and provincial goals is a significant change. To ensure that principals and vice-principals can meet these expectations, the preparation, recruitment, and selection of school-based administrators must change to make these responsibilities the focus of the work of principals and vie-principals. Doing so would honor the original meaning of principal as principal teacher.   

It is essential that districts have clearly articulated expectations about student improvement against which student performance is regularly monitored.  Principals and vice-principals play an important part in leading the staff in monitoring performance and modifying teaching practices when progress does not meet expectations.  

Leadership for learning is not a ‘nice to have.’ It is an essential ingredient if one wants to have systemic and continuous improvement. While it is possible in the short run to take incremental steps to improve teaching practices, teaching practices will not improve – and student performances will not improve - without conscious, persistent, and system-wide effort and support. 

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[1] Johnson, D.W.  and R.T. Johnson (2009) An Educational Psychology Success Story: Social Interdependence Theory and Cooperative Learning. Educational Researcher 38:5, 365-379. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X09339057

Principal leadership and teacher practices

 Charles Ungerleider, Professor Emeritus, The University of British Columbia

[permission to reproduce granted if authorship is acknowledged]

A reader of last week’s blog about conditions for improving student achievement asked, “What specifically can school principals do to encourage collaboration in aid of improved student achievement?” I said there is a suite of practices that principals should apply to encourage staff to take collective responsibility for the achievement and well-being of all students. “What are they?” he asked. This blog is informed by our exchange about leadership for learning.  

De-personalize teaching. It is difficult to assume collective responsibility for the welfare of all students if we talk about students as “your students” or “my students” or “that teacher’s students.” It may not sound revolutionary but changing our nomenclature can influence how we think about students. Possessing students (mine, yours, ours) has always struck me as problematic. Being proprietary about students implies that their behaviour and achievements reflect upon me alone rather than on the collective responsible for their education and socialization.  

Changing how we regard students can help de-personalize teaching. By de-personalize, I mean creating a concerned professional detachment about what and how we teach like the kind of clinical detachment that physicians have toward their work. The practices they employ are not unique to them as individuals; they possess a shared professional knowledge. I’ve not ever heard a physician say, “that’s my approach to X” but I have heard that often from teachers (“my program”). I am not suggesting that teachers do not care about their practice, but they should recognize and apply the body of knowledge shared among professionals with similar responsibilities.    

Sharing professional knowledge and experience would reduce the isolation among teachers that reinforces the impression that teachers are on their own and causes some to leave the profession. A collaborative professional culture would benefit students and help combat the professional alienation that some teachers experience.  

De-privatize teaching. Make it possible for teachers to see one another in action. For a brief period during their teacher education student-teachers observe their mentors. But, for most of the remainder of their careers, teachers do not see one another teach.  

I recently had a minor surgical procedure. The surgeon was assisted by a physician in family practice who made the surgical incision and the excision of the tissue.  I asked the surgeon about the arrangement. She explained that the family practice physician had been assisting her surgeries every Friday morning for more than a year. “She wants to get a better understanding of the surgeries and their impact so that she can better support the patients she cares for.”  

The early morning surgical schedule made it possible for the family practice physician to assist without too great an impact on her schedule. In elementary schools, however, scheduling makes it all but impossible for teachers to see one another in the classroom. Observations are possible at the secondary level because teachers have periods during the day or week when they can do their preparation while their colleagues teach. Despite the opportunity to see a colleague teach, few – almost none – do. Principals at the elementary level can facilitate observation by assuming responsibility for the observer’s class. The same could be done at the secondary level, and encouragement by the principal might go a long way to encouraging the practice.  

Encourage team teaching. Teachers at the same or adjacent grade levels or in the same subject areas can combine their classes and teach together.  

Provide instructional leadership. Instructional leadership can take many different forms. Principals should meet with individual teachers to discuss their goals and the challenges they face. Principals can arrange for and lead discussions about best, research- and evidence-informed practices. Principals can articulate expectations about the prioritization of foundational subject-matter knowledge and about the efficient use of time.  

Monitor student performance. At regular intervals throughout the school year, principals should lead teachers in the review of student results. In addition to an examination of the performance of the entire student population, staff should be scrutinizing the data about how sub-groups of students are performing. I have been in schools where – in areas not open to the public – the staff had posted memos and informal reports about the progress of students who found school particularly challenging. In those schools, successes were shared and celebrated by everyone along with responsibility for the students who found school or some part of it difficult.  

When I have described these practices to some principals, they have asked, “Where do these principals find the time?” I tell them that they have prioritized these actions and try assiduously not to allow the less important matters that arise from preventing them from addressing the important and enduring issues. Those who have made time for mentoring staff and monitoring student achievement have found their work more satisfying and are proud of creating a climate in which the staff feels they are working together for the benefit of the students they serve.

Minimum Conditions for Improving Student Achievement

Charles Ungerleider, Professor Emeritus, The University of British Columbia

[permission to reproduce granted if authorship is acknowledged]  

From time to time, one hears about extraordinary individual improvement. The victim of an accident who through enormous effort overcomes near life-threatening damage to lead a life unimpeded by the injuries she sustained. The athlete who by dint of training and hard work becomes a medal-winner.   

They make for nice stories: Individuals overcoming significant obstacles to their success. But they are not complete stories. What one rarely hears about are the support from people who made such successes possible. The first responders who extricated the accident victim in time to save her life, the nursing and surgical staff who repaired the damage, the occupational therapist who carefully calibrated an exercise regimen and coached the patient.  

Behind each story of individual success there is a cadre of people removing obstacles, coaching, mentoring, encouraging, using their ingenuity and talents to improve performance so that success can be achieved. It takes a village to raise more than children.  

The key ingredient in improving performance and achieving success in most – if not all – human contexts is teamwork. Improvement and success are difficult to achieve on one’s own. Not only must individuals do their jobs well, but they must also be conscious of the contributions that others make to the overall effort. There must be a sense of shared, collective responsibility.  

Improving student school performance is more difficult than rehabilitating an accident victim or helping an athlete excel. It is more like improving a team of athletes. Schools are collections of students. Teachers can cope with a classroom of students. Some extraordinary teachers can close their classroom doors and improve the performance of all students in their care. Notice my explicit use of the word extraordinary.  

Yes, there are remarkable teachers who on their own help students make remarkable gains in achievement. Those gains probably won’t be sustained over time. Most empirical literature indicates that improvement attenuates over time in the absence of collective, sustained effort.  

There is much talk about school staff members taking collective responsibility for student achievement. One hears of teachers meeting to review data, plan improvement, share techniques, monitor results, and, when obstacles are encountered, adjust their practice.  However, as a participant in education for 50 years, it happens less frequently than one would infer from the literature and is rarely sustained beyond a couple of years – at best.  

The obstacles to successful student improvement are many. Individual teachers must be sufficiently comfortable to talk about their practice and receive suggestions from their peers. They must be willing to meet with their peers on a regular basis and consider evidence about student improvement beyond the information they collect by means of classroom assessments. They must be willing to interpret the data and dig in behind the data to try to understand the challenges students face. They must be willing to expose their practice to one another and be accountable for the results they have achieved.  

Oh, yes, there is another very important ingredient: leadership. For student improvement to occur at the school level there must be leadership. And, if whole systems are going to improve, there must be district leadership. Schools must have leaders who can bring together the disparate individual teachers and support staff to take collective responsibility, interpret data, create an improvement plan, share techniques, monitor results, and, when obstacles are encountered, adjust both individual and collective practice.   

I have described what I believe are the minimum conditions for improving student achievement. The literature and my experience tell me that many, perhaps most, are not present in schools or school districts. Until those conditions are met, one is unlikely to see much sustained improvement in student achievement.

Hard truths: choice and equity are incompatible

 Charles Ungerleider, Professor Emeritus, The University of British Columbia

[permission to reproduce granted if authorship is acknowledged]

 School boards try to navigate between two fundamentally incompatible values: choice and equity. The former has been well established in the field of education. “Programs of choice” and “schools of choice” are common in the education vocabulary. And, even where the terms are not used, the practices to which they refer are treasured.  

In some places, ‘choice in education’ is enshrined in legislation. The province of Alberta makes provision for charter schools, for example. British Columbia’s School Act makes provision to enrol students living outside the boundaries of their local school and for students who live outside of the boundaries of a school district.  

Equity in education is less well established, dating most visibly to the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court that over-turned the doctrine that separate facilities were permissible if they were equal. The Court’s decision said that separate educational facilities for white and African American students were inherently unequal.  

Maliciously inclined school boards sought ways to avoid integrating schools and programs. Even well-intentioned school boards have tried to accommodate what the Court recognized are essentially incompatible values. The student composition of programs and schools of choice tends to favour students from advantaged backgrounds. They immediately benefit from what is offered. The advantages they possess as off-spring of advantaged families are perpetuated when their participation in such programs or schools is recognized by selective post-secondary institutions.  

Canada has its own history of [in]equity. My colleague, Jason Ellis addresses equity in the history of education policy course he teaches at UBC. In his examination of equity in Canadian education his divides the postwar period into two. In the first, “getting everyone to the schoolhouse door,” (roughly 1950-1970) he addresses the extension of public education to unserved or under-served groups. Among the unserved Ellis includes Indigenous children in the separate federal “Indian” day and residential schools and children with IQs lower than 50 who were legally excluded from schools. Ellis includes rural children, Black children in segregated schools in Ontario and Nova Scotia, children in institutions, and others among the under-served.  

In the second period (roughly 1970 to the present) that he describes as “making the schoolhouse welcoming to all,” Ellis addresses broadening curricula to make it more respectful of, and welcoming, of difference. Notable among the changes are tolerating additional instructional languages (a form of multiculturalism), gender-sensitive curricula, the ending of Christian opening exercises and Christian religious instruction, etc.  

Contemporary post-secondary education remains economically layered. High school students from advantaged families are over-represented among the student bodies of selective institutions and high school students from less advantaged backgrounds are over-represented in institutions that are not selective. The effect is to reproduce the advantages of advantaged students.  

Many school boards try to moderate the differential impact that schools and programs of choice confer by using mechanisms such as random selection among applicants. Such mechanisms are merely hopeful gestures because advantaged families are over-represented in the pool of applicants from which names are drawn. Advantaged families can afford the transportation to and from the schools/programs and any additional fees that enrollment may require. Less advantaged families disproportionately rely on older siblings to ensure younger ones get to and from school safely.    

Inequities resulting from choice lead school boards to eliminate a program or school of choice or to change the selection criteria. When that happens, they are subjected to pressure from families with disproportionate political and economic capital. Talk about rocks and hard places.  

It would be easy to demonize the advantaged parents for wanting to maximize the benefits that participation in schools and programs of choice confer. I don’t think that gets anyone anywhere. What parent does not want what they perceive to be the ‘best’ for their children?  

Persuading parents to see beyond the horizon of their children’s interest for the common good would be challenging. It would likely require broader social recognition of the inherent conflict between choice and equity. I think it is worth striving for such recognition. The significant fraying of social cohesion is one consequence of favoring choice over equity. I worry that we are approaching the point where the social fabric will shred completely.  

I am encouraged when school boards recognize that choice and equity are incompatible values and make efforts to lessen the impact of choice and increase equity. But social equity will require changes beyond those under the control of school boards.  

In the meantime, I think there is something that school systems might implement that will mitigate the effects of choice and increase equity. But it will be challenging. I suggest that schooling be divided into two parts through the end of grade 10. All students should be immersed in language, mathematics, science, and social studies for seventy per cent of the school week. The remaining 30 per cent should be allocated for elective studies in areas such as art, music, athletics, and second-­language studies.  

I’d label this universal education program through grade 10 the foundation program. We should make every effort to ensure that students have successfully completed the foundation program successfully.  

By the time they are eligible for grade 11, students should possess the foundation for choosing a program of specialized study in areas such as language and literature; trades and technologies; social and behavioural science; mathematics and science; fine and performing arts; and business. There should be no prerequisites for enrolling in a program of specialized study except successful completion of the foundation studies program through grade ten. Specialized study programs might include more than two years of study, as is the case with Collège d’enseignement général et professionnel (CEGEP) in Quebec. Students who successfully complete a specialized study program would be awarded a certificate.  

If implemented well, my proposal would accomplish two important objectives. One is ensuring that all students meet the same standards to the completion of grade ten. The other, is that it provides a common social and educational experience that might contribute to greater social cohesion.  

My proposal does not completely address the incompatibility of choice and equity. But I think it would make a modest contribution to equity and social cohesion.