Bill 11 - Is the BC government privatizing and seizing control of teacher professional development?

Yesterday the BC government introduced Bill 11 - new law that will, among other things, change the system of teacher professional development in BC. Without any consultation with teachers or their union, the BCTF, the government is legislating a new system of authorized continuing education that may be required to maintain teacher certification.

Not surprisingly, having been rebuffed by the BC courts twice with unilateral changes to teachers' collective agreements, the government is trying a different tack. Leave the collective agreement provisions in place, but add new restrictions through the regulatory framework. Having failed to bargain teacher professional development changes, the government is turning to its tried and true formula: legislate.

The new provisions will depend to a large degree on the accompanying regulations, which of course are not yet known. But the basic framework of the new system looks fairly familiar. It appears to be modelled on the type of mandated professional development requirements that have been put in place for other regulated professions, such as lawyers and nurses. In these frameworks, a certain number of hours of authorized activities are required, sometimes along with a professional development plan, self-reflection, or peer review. What is not yet clear is to what degree the profession itself (teachers) will have control over the authorization process, if any.

The current system of teacher professional development is highly autonomous and predominantly public. While there are teachers and others who run businesses to sell professional development services and materials, most teacher professional development is conducted teacher to teacher, at school, or in non-profit teacher led organizations. In BC we have a system of Local Specialist Associations for the different teaching areas who put on large conferences annually where teachers share new practices. We also have many regional conferences hosted by teacher associations on a non-profit basis. Finally at the school level, most school based professional development activities are organized and run by a professional development committee at the school. Outside speakers are brought in when expertise beyond the teaching profession is required for specific topics, such as to learn about development disabilities.

The system that the new legislation appears to envision, which is modelled on other regulatory professional development frameworks, is considerably different. Like just about everything the BC Liberals do, it is market based. Each individual teacher will have their own private professional development requirements, and will go out to the professional development marketplace to find courses and webinars and activities to fulfil the requirements. I would certainly hope that the major events that currently take place, such as the provincial conferences, will be authorized as approved activities. But it isn't at all clear that less formal school or department based activities, or even individual teacher activities such as reading education journals, will be authorized, or what type of bureaucratic hoop jumping might be required to get authorization. If the process is cumbersome or the approval system ideologically driven, it will open the door for an increase in for-profit professional development services to replace teacher driven activities. In other words teacher credential-ling requirements could be used to force teachers to become the customers of an expanded teacher professional development industry.

The second major concern is the influence of the approval process. The legislation as introduced gives government the power to enact an approval system of its choice. Who approves and what is approved will be key to the degree of coercive control the new scheme represents. If you do not yet have the same degree of scepticism as many teachers about how bad this can be, check out this short video of a test preparation professional development session from the Chicago Public Schools: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAy3vJn4pbs&feature=youtu.be In the worst case, the approval process could mean direct interference from the Ministry or government or school Districts or Principals into the topics, format and delivery of teacher professional development in a highly prescriptive manner. Rather than teachers identifying their own professional needs based on the subjects they teach, the students they serve and their own individual areas of growth, someone else will be making that decision for them.

High performing school system? Trust your teachers

I don't usually post bargaining reports from the BCTF here directly, but this week we had Dr. Charlie Naylor, a BCTF researcher, give an excellent presentation on the connection between teacher autonomy and high performing school systems. The presentation was in reaction to BC Public School Employer's Association (BCPSEA) bargaining proposals that would drastically reduce teacher autonomy and professionalism.

Dr. Naylor has written two responses to "discussion documents" published by BCPSEA. I highly recommend them. They are available here:
* http://bctf.ca/uploadedFiles/Public/Publications/ResearchReports/2011-EI-01.pdf
* http://www.bctf.ca/uploadedFiles/Public/Publications/ResearchReports/2011-EI-03.pdf

Here is an excerpt from the report from the bargaining table:

The main point that Dr. Naylor presented was that in high performing school systems, teachers are afforded more autonomy and there is less focus on standardized testing, accountability measures with consequences, and a narrow preoccupation with literacy and numeracy. He discussed how the academic literature on quality teaching and learning shows that the best performing systems are where teachers are treated as professionals, like with other professions. In the low performing systems, teachers are treated as employees, with a heavy focus on managerialism. He also stated that if the education system is part of producing a society that generates critical thinkers and problem solvers, then the teaching profession must be afforded the opportunity to model these skills in teaching—the adults in society must themselves use critical thought to address issues such as how best to teach a particular group of children. This is in opposition to the proposals that BCPSEA has made, which focus on principal control of many aspects of teaching, such as our professional development and our autonomy in practice. He finished by saying that the approaches BCPSEA and the government are proposing are not supported by the literature, and they do not even refer to research in their background papers—only to legal rulings. These are not evidence-based arguments for changing the education system, rather they are “positional.”

Dr. Naylor used several examples to make his points. For instance, he contrasted Britain, which narrowed autonomy and increased accountability measures which has now plummeted in performance, to Finland, which provides a high degree of professional autonomy and has radically improved performance.

He suggested that a real “conversation” would be an informed debate based on the literature, rather than one model imposed from one side. He referenced Ontario, where the government “did not impose a forced model imposed by principals.” He also commented that in both Ontario and Alberta, change came with significant amounts of funding to ensure resources are there to enable the changes. He finished by saying “you don’t have a conversation when you put this kind of language on the table…What I see in your proposal is an imposition of a professional growth program, implemented by principals in schools.”