The British Columbia government has embarked on what
they describe as a "transformation" of K-12 education in the
province.
Unlike "reform" programs in the U.S., the
reform movement in B.C. is not based on claims that the schools are
failing. In fact, the K-12 system is
characterized as high performing in the international assessments such as the
OECD's PISA and most recently the PIRLS (Progress
in International Reading Literacy Study). Canada scores among the top countries and
B.C. generally scores above the Canadian average.
Why, then, a demand for transforming the education
system?
The impetus for this reform is a policy document
called A Vision for 21st Century Education released in 2010. It was the product of the BC Premier's Technology
Council and was adopted as government policy by the premier of the day, Gordon
Campbell.
Cory (Tobey) Steeves wrote his Master of Arts thesis
as an analysis of this policy document: (De/Re)--Constructing teachers and their
work: A discourse analysis of British Columbia's
21st-century policy agenda.
Steeves points out that the focus of the Technology
Council report is on the practice of teaching, yet no teachers or education
scholars were involved in drafting of the report. In fact, the voices and values of teachers
were marginalized in its development and the planning of its implementation.
The significance of the thesis is in clearly laying
out the explicit and implicit directions for the work of teachers in the report
and pointing out the inevitable conflict with the values and ideals of
teachers. The thesis has relevance
beyond British Columbia as well in that versions of the "21st century
skills" agenda for education are being promoted globally, not just in B.C. Many of those promoting that agenda are the
same technology corporations and foundations seen in B.C.
In fact, a human capital agenda of global
competition is cited by the technology lobby as the reason that a high quality
education system has to be transformed into a high tech education system.
In his discourse analysis, Steeves identifies two
concepts central the transformation based on technology: "learnification," which is
essentially focusing education on skills rather than content, and
"accountingization," which reduces education objectives and evaluation
to an external, technocratic, audit-based numbers game.
Steeves uses a number of approaches to looking at
the word choice in the Vision
document that define the conception of teachers as technicians and teaching
"transformed into a technical relay to achieve predetermined economic
goals." (p. 58) In this vision, "teachers' work is
(only) appropriately aimed at distributing skills to students." (p.58)
Steeve contrasts this "21st century
skills" vision of the values and role of teachers with one that he prefers
and believes is the dominant view among teachers: teaching for democratic citizenship rather
than being focused primarily on economic objectives. He concludes the thesis with a call for
teachers to "have meaningful influence over policies that regulate the horizons
of their work" and for "teachers' resistance to the siren call of
deceptively packaged policies." (p. 69)
Premier's Technology Council. (2010). A vision for 21st century
education. Vancouver, BC http://www.gov.bc.ca/premier/attachments/PTC_vision%20for_education.pdf
Steves, C.
(2012). (De/Re)--Constructing
teachers and their work: A discourse
analysis of British Columbia's 21st--century policy agenda. Unpublished thesis--University of British
Columbia. https://circle.ubc.ca/handle/2429/43675
