Alberta Education’s plan to update the province’s curriculum for all grade levels is a process teachers have been waiting a long time for, according to the president of the local chapter of the Alberta Teacher’s Association.
Michelle Glauvine, who also teaches Grade 7 at Bearspaw School, said updating the curriculum has been long over due with some of the oldest portions dating back up to 20 years.
David Eggen, Alberta’s minister of education, said the ministry is looking at a six-year development program and expects to roll out the first changes in 2018 for kindergarten to Grade 4 followed by Grade 5 to Grade 8 in 2016 and concluding with Grade 9 to Grade 12 rolling out between 2020 and 2022.
“I’m very happy to see they are looking at all the core subjects,” she said, including arts and wellness in new curriculum standards is a welcome addition. “Technology in the last decade has increased so much that the curriculum has not kept pace.”
Glauvine said the goal will be to redevelop the education process to be less broad and more skilled focus with a cross-curriculum approach in mind.
She said the change will bring a strong focus on core and fundamental skills that will help better prepare students.
Eggen said curriculum reform isn’t a new idea, but the process has consistently stalled with five ministers in charge of education in as many years.
“There is a strong appetite for it in the public and the education community,” the minister said.
Eggen said it is vital that students not only learn the essentials such as math and language, but also learn to be critical thinkers and life skills.
“Financially literacy is a good example of skills that are sorely needed,” he said.
Not everyone is as excited about the government’s plan for curriculum reform.
During a recent Alberta Can’t Wait meeting – a movement seeking to unite the right and bring Wildrose and Progressive Conservatives under one banner – keynote speaker Conservative MP Jason Kenney said he feared the process will lack consultation and be an exercise in “social engineering.”
“We will not allow the NDP to politicize our education system,” he told a crowd of 200 people at the Cochrane Legion, which responded with thunderous applause.
Eggen dismissed the comment, saying it “demonstrates an ignorance in the appetite Albertans have for curriculum reform.”
Dave Morris, associate superintendent of learning with Rocky View Schools, said the curriculum reform in Alberta is long overdue and expressed disappointment with Kenney’s comments.
“Politicians need to stay out of the classroom,” he said. “Alberta Education is predominantly, at a working level, educators.”
Eggen emphasized that starting this fall the government will begin a comprehensive consultation process.
Through a combination of online surveys, focus groups, meetings with the public in cities and towns, and consulting with teachers and post secondary institutions, he estimates there will be around 30 groups involved and 1,800 interactions with stakeholders.
Glavine said so far from what she has seen, the process is set out to be very collaborative.
“In the past there has been much less consultation proposed,” she said. I am happy we are going forward.”
