School must go on

"We need to ensure that our students cannot just regurgitate content." Brandy Yee is the Assistant Professor and Director of Liberal Studies in Education Program at the California Lutheran University. She is from Canada where she worked as a teacher and principal. In addition, she has also worked as a professor in Germany and Finland, which gave her an insight into the educational systems there. In the podcast “School must go on” Brandy Yee talks about the huge shift in the Canadian education system during the last years. – PISA scores vs. intellectual engagement – A study in Canada (“What did you do in school today?”) found out a few years ago that students do not enjoy being students. And this in spite of the consistently good results in PISA. “We need to ensure that our students cannot just regurgitate content. But they have the skills and abilities necessary to engage in lifelong learning to be agile and to be able to pivot when times change”, Brandy Yee explains. She describes intellectual engagement as a deep investment in learning through which the kids come to school because they're so excited about what they're learning. So, the PISA scores are important, Brandy says, but you need to also ask yourself “Are the kids engaged?” Can they not only do well on standardized tests of achievement? Is there an environment where the kids want to be continuous learners? “The Canadian study really forced us to reconsider the things that we were doing.” – A system for every student – In the past, if you weren’t a kid who did very well in the core subjects, Brandy explains, there was really no place for you in the Canadian education system. “It was hard for us to come to terms with that – that we had created structures within our system that only served some of our students well.” For a long time there were students that believed that they could never make it at a university or post secondary setting – so they didn’t even try and apply. “We started to create opportunities within our high schools where they could start to take some of those preliminary University courses”, the Professor says. There are also partnerships with some trades, technical schools and art schools and the students even have the possibility to go to other high schools for specific courses. In addition to this, Canada started to bring mentors from the industry into education. “So we're supporting the students as they transition from high school into post-secondary, and then we're supporting them with those key connections as they transition from post-secondary into the workforce.” – Progress reports instead of classic report cards – “We also started to look at formative assessment”, Brandy Yee sums up. For a long time summative assessment was the main form of assessment used in Canada – and in many other educational systems around the world. “That was something that we just accepted as the acceptable practice. But when you actually start to unpack, it runs quite counterintuitive to teaching and the learning process,” the former principal explains. “So, if we only test students at the end of a unit by a test and it shows that either, they get an 82 or 94 and so they've sort of met the learning outcome, or they get a 60 or a 50 or 40, which means that they maybe haven't quite met the learning outcome. What happens the next day? Will we move on to the next unit?”, Brandy wonders. “We started to shift and integrated three important concepts into the progress report: Student growth, progress, and achievement.” All in all, Brandy Yee says, they have given students a voice in their education. Brandy Yee also talks about the role and self-concept of teachers, how to move from ideas to implementation, and the importance of middle school to adolescents.