Education Canada - Spring/Printemps 2022 (Vol. 62 No. 1)

www.edcan.ca

WHAT IS SCHOOL SUCCESS?

QU’EST DEVENU LE SUCCÈS?

A tiered approach to student mental health Limiting COVID-19 learning impacts Anti-racism and equity education

Recherches décontextualisées sur l’enseignement à distance Les directions d’école en temps de pandémie

PLUS: The case for

quality over quantity Nuisible, l’enseignement à distance?

March/mars 2022 Vol. 62 No. 1 $10/10 $ Publication 40031215 Display until June 1, 2022/Disponible jusqu’au 1er juin 2022

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Contents

Table des matières

5 EDITOR’S NOTE

5 LE MOT DE LA RÉDUCTION

How Do You Spell Success?

Le succès revisité

6 NETWORK VOICES

6 VOIX DU RÉSEAU

What’s STRONG with Us in Mental Health and Well-Being?

By Gwen Keith

ENVOL des initiatives de bienêtre et de santé mentale Par Gwen Keith

8 WELL AT WORK

System-Wide Implementation of K-12 Workplace Well-Being

By Charlie Naylor and Brian Andjelic

30 La santé de la direction et la qualité de ses pratiques en pandémie Premier pas vers le succès des élèves Par Jules Rocque et Cynthia Côté

11 TECHSAVVY

Making Effective Instructional Videos

By Rachel Johnson and Katie Attwell (the EduGals)

36 Est-ce que l’apprentissage à distance s’est réalisé aussi bien qu’en salle de classe?

Les recherches indiquent que la réponse est plutôt « non » Par Steve Bissonnette et Christian Boyer

14 Distress Undermines Learning Mental health must be a key part of our post-COVID recovery vision for schools

By Claire Crooks

40 S’opposer à l’enseignement à distance sans tenir compte des contextes différenciés Une attitude réductrice risquée Par Mélanie Tremblay et Stéphane Allaire

18 Taking Action to Limit Learning Impacts from the Pandemic In the face of widespread impacts on learning, other countries are investing in effective strategies

By Kelly Gallagher-Mackay and Christine Corso 21 Reimagining Student Success in the Aftermath of the Pandemic Centring anti-racism and equity education

By Ann Lopez

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COVER ILLUSTRATION: Diana Pham www.edcan.ca/magazine

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25 What Does It Mean to Be Well-Educated?

Now that the pandemic may be waning, we should ask ourselves what counts as a successful education

By Joel Westheimer

EdCan Network | March/mars 2022 • EDUCATION CANADA

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Executive Editor | Rédacteur en chef Max Cooke English Editor | Rédactrice anglophone Holly Bennett Francophone Editor | Rédactrice francophone Gilberte Godin Art Director | Directeur artistique Dave Donald Operations Manager | Responsable des opérations Mia San José Program Manager, Strategic Initiatives| Chef de programme, initiatives stratégiques André Rebeiz Knowledge Mobilization and Evaluation Lead | Chargée de la mobilisation des connaissances et de l’évaluation Sarah Ranby Marketing Manager | Responsable de marketing Shanice Tadeo Communications and Project Coordinator | Coordonnatrice de projets et des communications Brigitte Michaud Junior Graphic Designer/Digital Content Publisher | Assistant graphiste/Éditeur du contenu numérique Daniel Escate Printer | Imprimeur PointOne Graphics Inc. Advertising Sales | Ventes de publicité Dovetail Communications Inc. (905) 707-3526 or/ou advertise@edcan.ca / publicite@edcan.ca TM

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Publisher | Éditeur Canadian Education Association / Association canadienne d’éducation Chair | Présidente Denise Andre

Education Canada Editorial Board / Comité éditorial d’Éducation Canada Marius Bourgeoys, cofondateur d’escouadeÉDU, conférencier, coach et consultant, L’Orignal, ON Dr. Curtis Brown, Superintendent, South Slave Divisional Education Council, Fort Smith, NT Dr. Alec Couros, Director, Centre for Teaching and Learning, University of Regina, Regina, SK Nathalie Couzon, technopédagogue, Collège Letendre, Laval, QC Grant Frost, President (Halifax County Local), Nova Scotia Teachers’ Union, Halifax, NS Roberto Gauvin, Consultant en éducation chez Édunovis, Édunovis, Lac-Baker, NB François Guité, consultant au ministère de l’Éducation, de l’Enseignement supérieur et de la Recherche (MEESR) du Québec, Québec, QC Dr. Michelle Hogue, Assistant Professor and Coordinator of the First Nations Transition Program, University of Lethbridge, Lethbridge, AB

© 2022 Canadian Education Association/l’Association canadienne d’éducation ISSN 0013-1253 Publications Mail Agreement No. 40031215 HST/TVH # R100763416 www.edcan.ca Rooted in the Canadian education experience and perspective, our English and French articles provide voice to teachers, principals, superintendents and researchers – a growing network of experts who examine today’s school and classroom challenges with courage and honesty. Pragmatic, accessible and evidencebased, Education Canada connects policy and research to classroom practice.

Education Canada is published three times yearly by the EdCan Network.

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Address all editorial correspondence to: Holly Bennett, Editor Education Canada editor@edcan.ca Tel: (705) 745-1419; Fax: (416) 591-5345 You are free to reproduce, distribute and transmit the articles in this publication, provided you attribute the author(s), Education Canada Vol. 62 (1), 2022, and a link to the EdCan Network (www.edcan.ca). You may not use the articles in this publication for commercial purposes. You may not alter, transform, or build upon the articles in this publication.

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Normand Lessard, Secrétaire général, Association des directions générales scolaires du Québec, Sherbrooke, QC Corinne Payne, Directrice Générale, Fédération des comités de parents du Québec (FCPQ), Québec, QC David Price, Senior Associate, Innovation Unit, Leeds, UK Zoe Branigan Pipe, Teacher, Hamilton, ON Cynthia Richards, Canadian Home and School Federation, Chipman, NB Sébastien Stasse, directeur formation et recherche au CADRE21, Longueuil, QC Dr. Joel Westheimer, University Research Chair in the Sociology of Education, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON Andrew Woodall, Dean of Students, Concordia University, Montréal, QC Dr. Christine Younghusband, Assistant Professor, University of Northern British Columbia School of Education, Prince George, BC

Ancrés dans l’expérience et la perspective de l’éducation au Canada, nos articles, en anglais et en français, donnent voix aux enseignants, aux directeurs d’écoles, aux administrateurs et aux chercheurs, c’est-à-dire à un réseau croissant d’experts qui se penchent avec courage et honnêteté sur les enjeux actuels de l’école et de la pratique en classe. Pragmatique et accessible, fondé sur des données probantes, le magazine Éducation Canada jette des ponts entre politiques, recherche et pratique.

Le magazine Éducation Canada est publié trois fois l’an par le Réseau ÉdCan. 60, avenue St. Clair E, bureau 703 Toronto, ON M4T 1N5 Tél. : 416 591-6300; Téléc. : 416 591-5345 Courriel : publications@edcan.ca www.edcan.ca/fr Membre de Magazines Canada Le Réseau ÉdCan ne vend pas d’abonnements au magazine Éducation Canada. Cette publication est réservée aux membres du Réseau ÉdCan. Les bibliothèques, les écoles et les établissements postsecondaires peuvent encore se procurer un abonnement par l’intermédiaire d’une agence d’abonnements.

Envoyez vos lettres et manuscrits à : Gilberte Godin Rédactrice en chef Éducation Canada redaction@edcan.ca Tél. : 416 591-6300 Téléc. : 416 591-5345 Il est permis de reproduire, de distribuer et de transmettre les articles de ce magazine, à condition d’en indiquer l’auteur (ou les auteurs) ainsi que Éducation Canada, Vol. 62 (1), 2022, et d’inclure un lien vers le Réseau ÉdCan (www.edcan.ca/fr). Il est interdit d’utiliser les articles de cet ouvrage à des fins commerciales ou encore d’altérer, de transformer ou d’étoffer les articles de ce magazine.

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editor’s note / le mot de la rédaction

BY HOLLY BENNETT

PAR GILBERTE GODIN

How Do You Spell Success?

Le succès revisité

AND HERE WE ARE AGAIN. It’s early March as I write this, at the tail end of the Omicron winter. We’ve been through sky-high case counts, more school closures, hospitals strained to the breaking point, and truck blockades, but maybe we are over the hump. Of course, we all thought that last spring. It’s beginning to feel like the never-ending story, right?

This pandemic is definitely a longer haul than we first realized.

Back in spring 2020, “success” in education could reasonably have been defined as “just getting through the rest of the year.” Now, in our third disrupted year of schooling, things are more complicated.

Some kids have missed a lot of school, especially during prolonged virtual learning. Many have become anxious and depressed. Some have experienced family hardships – or tragedies. For educators, the constantly shifting rules and guidelines, continual pivoting, worry over students who can’t access needed supports, and anxiety over their own personal safety at school all add up to a high risk of stress overload and exhaustion.

So how are we doing? How can we even tell how we are doing?

What should we consider to be “success” for our students, both in these strange times and beyond? And what do we envision a “successful” school or school system to be?

We asked four researchers to tackle this question from the perspective of their respective specialties. Their feature articles address pandemic recovery (focused on learning and mental health), racial equity, and preparing kids to “live well” in the 21st century. But these articles are just one element of this conversation. I invite you to also listen to their interviews with our partner Stephen Hurley of voiceEd Radio (www.voiced.ca), and to join them in our live conversation later this spring, when our four contributors and webinar participants will have a chance to share their reflections and questions and connect research to practice.

We are learning a lot from the pandemic – about ourselves, about the weaknesses and cracks in our society, and about our strengths and priorities. The challenge will be to gather and process this learning, and then use it make things better. EC

DE TOUS LES TEMPS, l’école vise le succès. Le succès des élèves, évidemment, le succès des programmes d’études, le succès du système scolaire, le succès des finissants après l’école. Par souci de redevabilité, ces différents types de succès sont souvent représentés par des notes, des pourcentages ou des salaires. Plus récemment, l’avènement du vif intérêt pour la santé mentale, pour la conciliation travail-vie personnelle et pour les divers enjeux sociaux et environnementaux remettent en question la représentation conventionnelle du succès qui semble contribuer à de multiples iniquités et injustices systémiques. Lorsque Éducation Canada tente d’aborder la question, le concept même du succès semble enfoui sous une multitude d’autres préoccupations. La pandémie et les risques sanitaires qu’elle entraine ont certainement compté parmi ces préoccupations. Doit-on insister sur la question? Que devient de nos jours la notion du succès?

Dans ce numéro, Rocque et Côté (p. 30) présentent les conséquences de la pandémie sur des personnes hautement redevables du succès scolaire des élèves : les directions d’école.

La multiplication de leurs tâches et les innovations administratives forcées par la pandémie ont certainement priorisé la sécurité et la santé des jeunes. Ces efforts ont-ils contribué également à redéfinir le succès des élèves? Peut-être que les analyses postpandémiques des différentes mesures implantées le révéleront. Dans un autre ordre d’idées, Bissonnette et Boyer (p. 36), d’une part, évoquent les recherches faisant état des effets néfastes que l’enseignement à distance peut avoir sur le rendement des élèves au cours de confinements à répétition. D’autre part, Allaire et Tremblay (p. 40) avancent des preuves qui suggèrent les mérites des technologies, notamment pour l’apprentissage des mathématiques et déplorent la tendance générale des détracteurs d’enseignement à distance d’omettre la contextualisation adéquate des situations d’enseignement – d’apprentissages, optant pour des généralisations qui leur semblent plutôt réductrices.

Il appert que proposer une nouvelle définition du succès des élèves et même du succès de l’école plus adaptée à notre époque, à ses avancées technologiques et à ses enjeux divers n’est pas chose faite et passera forcément par de nombreuses lentilles avant de se rapprocher d’un quelconque consensus.

Bonne lecture! ÉC

Write to us!

We want to know what you think. Send your comments to editor@edcan.ca – or join the conversation by using #EdCan on Twitter and Facebook.

Écrivez-nous!

Envoyez vos commentaires à redaction@edcan.ca.

Joignez-vous à la conversation en utilisant le #EdCan sur Twitter et Facebook.

www.edcan.ca/magazine

EdCan Network | March/mars 2022 • EDUCATION CANADA

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network voices / voix du réseau BY / PAR GWEN KEITH

What’s STRONG with Us in Mental Health and Well-Being?

Gwen Keith is CEO of Holy Family School Division in rural Saskatchewan. She is part of local, school division, provincial and national groups supporting the wellbeing of staff, and sits on the EDCan Network Advisory Council.

Gwen Keith est présidente et chef de la direction de la Holy Family School Division, qui réunit des écoles rurales de la Saskatchewan. En plus de siéger au conseil consultatif du Réseau ÉdCan, elle fait partie de regroupements locaux, scolaires, provinciaux et nationaux qui soutiennent le bienêtre des employés.

WELCOME TO FLIGHT 2022! We are taking off into this new year with our positive attitude and gratitude secured in the upright position. We have turned off and stowed away all self-destructive devices, like worry and negativity. Our leadership, activated by hope, connections, strategic planning, and grit, will be assisting other passengers in activating their leadership. We will celebrate our efforts and enjoy this flight!

Educational leaders are trying to refuel their wellbeing and mental health while in full flight. Part of the flight path for Saskatchewan is shared here.

The Ministry of Education in Saskatchewan has established a two-year plan to address mental health and well-being in K–12 education. Led by a committee of senior educational administrators in partnership with the provincial Ministry, the plan includes: • An inter-ministerial working group to streamline provincial initiatives in mental health and well-being, for comprehensive awareness of offerings and grant opportunities.

• A well-being plan for staff and students constructed by each school division, with a provincial template available if needed.

• A regular provincial newsletter featuring activities and successful well-being practices of school division practitioners.

• An annual provincial symposium on mental health and well-being, bringing keynote speakers and school division presenters together to share initiatives.

• A database of mental health and well-being resources.

At the school division level, school leaders are working within their local context to support students and staff.

School-based well-being plans include local committee initiatives, specific programs, surveys, and community partnerships. Schools are supported by system-level initiatives including professional development, speakers, strategic messaging, system need surveys, and various grants.

The EdCan Network, via its Well at Work staff well-being initiative, has come into Saskatchewan as a welcomed “objective, critical friend” to support our mental health and well-being efforts: • EdCan designed and delivered a leadership wellbeing module and keynote at the Saskatchewan League of Educational Administrators, Directors and Superintendents AGM and Spring Conference.

• Well at Work Advisory Services are being provided in a few school divisions to help them identify workplace

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well-being issues and develop an actionable plan to strengthen staff mental health.

• EdCan Well at Work Design Team members will present at the provincial well-being symposium in May to an audience of senior and school-based leaders.

Educational leaders need to support each other to meet the challenges of staff and student well-being with wisdom, strength, and confidence. There is a hunger for economical and proactive supports that educational leaders can readily apply and share. Educational leaders also want to know if their pathways and initiatives are really positively impacting as intended. The exciting part is that there are “beacons of brilliance” that exist across schools, school divisions, and provinces.

The authentic, safe connections and networking of educational leaders onsite and in virtual ways to face these challenges together is a brilliant opportunity in 2022. Our leadership connections will inspire us and help us be that needed steady light for our students, staff, communities and for ourselves as we rebound in 2022–23.

Have a safe landing! EC

ENVOL des initiatives de bienêtre et de santé mentale BIENVENUE À BORD DU VOL 2022! Nous décollons cette année munis d’une bonne dose de gratitude et de pensées positives, en redressant nos manches et notre fauteuil. Nous avons éteint et rangé tous les dispositifs autodestructeurs, comme l’inquiétude et le négativisme.

Notre leadership – activé par l’espoir, les connexions, la planification stratégique et le courage – aidera d’autres passagers à développer leur leadership. Nous allons célébrer nos efforts et profiter pleinement de ce vol!

Pendant le trajet, les chefs de file du secteur de l’éducation s’efforceront de recharger leurs batteries, en se concentrant sur leur bienêtre et leur santé mentale.

Comme la Saskatchewan fait partie de la trajectoire de vol, voici quelques précisions.

Le ministère de l’Éducation de la Saskatchewan a mis en place un plan de deux ans visant à aborder les questions de santé mentale et de bienêtre dans les écoles primaires et secondaires. Dirigé par un comité d’administrateurs chevronnés du secteur de l’éducation, en collaboration avec des membres du ministère provincial, ce plan comprend les éléments suivants : • Un groupe de travail interministériel chargé de www.edcan.ca/magazine

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rationaliser les initiatives provinciales en matière de santé mentale et de bienêtre afin de faire connaître l’ensemble des offres et des possibilités de subvention.

Un plan axé sur le bienêtre à l’intention du personnel scolaire et des élèves qui sera créé par chaque division scolaire, à l’aide d’un modèle provincial si nécessaire.

Un bulletin provincial régulier sur les activités et les réussites du personnel de la division scolaire en ce qui concerne les pratiques en matière de bienêtre.

Un symposium provincial annuel sur la santé mentale et le bienêtre animé par des conférenciers et des présentateurs de la division scolaire qui décrivent leurs initiatives.

Une base de données sur les ressources dans le domaine de la santé mentale et du bienêtre.

À l’échelle de la division scolaire, les dirigeants des écoles se chargent de soutenir les élèves et les employés en tenant compte de leur contexte local. Les plans de bienêtre en milieu scolaire incluent des initiatives de comités locaux, des programmes précis, des sondages et des partenariats communautaires. Des initiatives à l’échelle du système d’éducation – comme le perfectionnement professionnel, des conférences, des messages stratégiques, des sondages sur les besoins internes et diverses subventions – sont en place pour appuyer les écoles.

Par l’intermédiaire de son programme Bien dans mon travail, qui favorise le bienêtre des employés, le Réseau ÉdCan a été accueilli en tant qu’« allié important » de la Saskatchewan pour l’aider à orienter ses initiatives de santé mentale et de bienêtre : • ÉdCan a conçu et présenté un module sur le leadership en matière

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de bienêtre lors de l’assemblée générale annuelle et conférence printanière de la League of Educational Administrators, Directors and Superintendents de la Saskatchewan.

• Les services consultatifs du programme Bien dans mon travail sont offerts dans quelques divisions scolaires afin de cerner les enjeux entourant le bienêtre au travail et d’élaborer un plan réalisable pour améliorer la santé mentale du personnel.

• En mai prochain, des membres de l’équipe de conception du programme Bien dans mon travail d’ÉdCan feront des présentations dans le cadre du symposium provincial sur le bienêtre, devant un auditoire de hauts dirigeants et de chefs de file du milieu scolaire.

Les dirigeants du secteur de l’éducation doivent s’épauler pour être en mesure de relever avec sagesse, force et confiance les défis inhérents au bienêtre du personnel et des élèves. Il y a un réel besoin de mécanismes de soutien économiques et proactifs que l’on peut facilement mettre en place et partager. Les dirigeants ont également besoin de savoir si leurs initiatives et les voies empruntées ont vraiment les effets positifs escomptés. La bonne nouvelle, c’est qu’il existe des initiatives phares dans l’ensemble des écoles, des divisions scolaires et des provinces.

Nous avons une occasion unique en 2022 d’établir des relations et des liaisons authentiques et sécuritaires – qu’elles soient en personne ou virtuelles – entre les dirigeants du secteur de l’éducation afin de relever ces défis ensemble. Ces liens sauront nous inspirer et nous aideront à devenir ce phare solide et essentiel pour nos élèves, nos communautés et nous-mêmes à la reprise des activités en 2022-2023.

Bon atterrissage! ÉC

EdCan Network | March/mars 2022 • EDUCATION CANADA

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well at work

BY CHARLIE NAYLOR AND BRIAN ANDJELIC

PHOTO: ADOBE STOCK

System-wide Implementation of K-12 Workplace Well-Being Some ideas from B.C. and Alberta Charlie Naylor is the Lead Advisor and B.C. Strategic Consultant in the EdCan Well at Work Advisors’ Team. He was formerly a Senior Researcher with the B.C. Teachers’ Federation and is an Affiliated Scholar with Simon Fraser University.

Brian Andjelic is the EdCan Network’s Alberta Stakeholder Relations Lead. For the last three years, he has served as the College of Alberta School Superintendent’s Director of Leadership Learning for Wellness.

MANY WORKPLACE well-being initiatives in Canadian school districts originally developed approaches focusing on the individual, such as mindfulness, improving sleep patterns, doing more exercise, and improving diets. This approach was critiqued as limited by those who felt such a focus ignored systemic factors, like class size and workload, that can impact teacher and staff well-being.

As Chelsea Prax, programs director of children’s health and well-being at the American Federation of Teachers, said in an Education Week article: “You can’t deep-breathe your way out of a pandemic; you cannot stretch your way out of terrible class sizes; you cannot ‘individual behavior’ your way out of structural problems. Those are effective coping measures, but they don’t change the problem” (Will, 2021).

The notion of systemic change in some literature states or implies system transformation: radical overhauls of K–12 school systems to replace allegedly creaking systems

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with brand-new models in a brave new world. Well, brave new worlds come and go. Concepts and trends emerge, peak, and falter, yet education systems somehow continue, adapting and evolving. Or not, depending on your perspective.

In the world of workplace well-being, the notion of systems change is gaining greater credibility as an approach to improving staff well-being. Corporate Canada recognizes that organizations need to change and adapt to promote employees’ mental health, yet it can be argued that provincial governments and school districts have been slow to focus on their systems rather than on individuals when addressing workplace wellbeing in Canadian schools. So how to consider systems change concepts that provide direction for systemic implementation to improve workplace well-being?

Let’s consider what we mean by systemic implementation by looking at three ways to change systems:

Structural changes within a school district

This might include allocations for staff with responsibilities for staff well-being within or beyond the domain of district HR departments. It might mean focusing on workplace well-being in strategic plans and budgets, so that well-being is central to planning and funding, moving it away from the periphery to the core business of school districts. A focus on all staff – teachers, administrators, support and exempt staff – also suggests a major structural change in terms of focus.

Some examples: • Several B.C. and Alberta school districts have struck Wellness Committees with a mandate to consider workplace well-being approaches within a district.

Such committees enable stakeholders’ consultation, share information across schools, and sponsor initiatives.

• Other districts have written language focused on wellbeing into their strategic plan, provided staffing with time allocations for addressing staff well-being, and included well-being in budgeting.

• The College of Alberta School Superintendents has added the construct of well-being into the Superintendent and School Education Leader Practice Profiles (CASS, 2021), which align with the Superintendent Leadership Quality Standard (SLQS) (Alberta Education, 2018). This is in addition to the seven competencies in the SLQS and clearly demonstrates an understanding of the importance of the leadership commitment required to sustain structural changes. www.edcan.ca/magazine

Policy shifts (written policies or guidelines)

Changing policies, administrative procedures, and guidelines to address well-being can send both a powerful signal and impact educators’ work and the expectations placed on them. Such policies might be at a provincial or district level, establishing priorities, directions, and values.

Some examples: • At the provincial level, a 2019 B.C. Ministry of Education Mental Health Strategy for K–12 stressed “a system-wide approach to mental health promotion” (British Columbia Ministry of Education, n.d., p. 6). It included a focus on staff well-being in mental health guidelines, and funding for districts’ use in staff-focused well-being approaches.

• At the district level, one B.C. school district discovered from focus group data that many staff considered the volume and timing of communications to be problematic, adding to workload and negatively impacting well-being. As a result, the district is working, in consultation with staff, to create a policy or guidelines to reduce quantities of email and to limit after-hour and weekend use of the district email system.

• In Alberta, a number of school authorities (divisions) have clearly articulated their commitment to workplace well-being through policy, administrative procedure, and/or education plans, depending on their governance model and administrative

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The EdCan Well at Work Advisors Program A growing number of school districts in several provinces are participating in a new EdCan Well at Work project (https://k12wellatwork.ca/advisors).

This provides advisors to school districts wanting to further their workplace well-being efforts with the support of external expertise, acting as advisors and “critical friends.” We have developed a concept that includes individual approaches to well-being but goes beyond to propose and attempt new collaborative and systemic approaches to improve wellbeing for all staff in Canada’s K–12 schools.

EdCan Network | March 2022 • EDUCATION CANADA

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practices. In one example, a school authority has directly aligned an administrative procedure with the College of Alberta School Superintendents’ Workplace Wellness Guide to Planning and Implementation (College of Alberta School Superintendents, 2020). As well, a number of Alberta school authorities feature some variation of a 6:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. moratorium on emails and/or use of an email “delay send” feature. While this specific practice may not be written in policy, it might be evidenced in an administrative procedure. Other school authorities prefer to specify certain practices in their education plans, as these documents are referenced more regularly.

Figure 1: Combining three approaches to support staff well-being

School districts and unions as enablers of systemic action

This concept is emerging as one possible strategy for creating systemic change. As enablers, school districts fund, support, and disseminate collaborative and facilitated approaches to workplace well-being, which are intended to permeate a system over time rather than mandate one-off approaches that may or may not be implemented or sustained. In some provinces, union grants can also be applied to support collaborative inquiry into workplace well-being, which potentially positions unions as enablers of systemic action. With some co-ordination, district and union actions could combine to systemically address workplace well-being issues.

Enabling systemic action may be considered “slow” systemic change, requiring staff buy-in and participation, but it may be more sustainable than policy mandates over the long term.

Some examples: • In one Alberta school authority, conversations with administrators related to strategies and supports to establish boundaries and manage workload have begun. Data collected from one benefit provider, the Alberta School Employee Benefit Plan, including details such as health issues and demographics that contribute to the stress of staff and families, is informing new workplace wellness practices.

• After all employee groups in one B.C. school district identified poor professional relationships as a key barrier to workplace well-being, a Learning Group (Naylor, 2021) with teachers and education assistants from most of the district’s schools acquired and extended dialogue and communication skills and strategies and brought them back to their schools. They have since reported that this approach has improved both relationships and well-being.

The school district funded the Learning Group by providing some release time and paying facilitation costs.

• In the same B.C. district, an elementary school staff explored its actual and potential approaches to workplace well-being over one school year, with funding provided equally by the school district and the provincial union (the B.C. Teachers’ Federation). Thus, both the district and the union became enablers of collaborative inquiry and action.

Some of these approaches have been documented and are accessible on EdCan’s Well at Work website (https://k12wellatwork.ca) and on the B.C. K–12 Staff Well-being Network’s site (https://bc.k12wellatwork.ca).

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Systemic action is possible and can impact workplace well-being

We suggest that systemic action is possible through these three channels: structural change, policy initiatives, and school districts/ unions acting as enablers of actions that can become systemic.

By combining these three approaches, school districts can include but move beyond a focus on the individual to create a sense of shared responsibility through collaborative actions and systemic change. The combination of approaches might also help to bridge the gap between unions and governments/districts if more ways can be found to introduce systemic change initiatives that address workload issues.

As we expand our scope and focus, we hope to share what we learn, and to learn ourselves from multiple jurisdictions about approaches to improving workplace well-being. Join us! EC REFERENCES Alberta Education. (2018). Superintendent leadership quality standard. Government of Alberta. www.alberta.ca/professional-practice-standards.aspx#jumplinks-3 British Columbia Ministry of Education. (n.d.). Mental health in schools strategy.

Government of British Columbia. www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/erase/documents/mental-health-wellness/mhisstrategy.pdf College of Alberta School Superintendents. (2020). Workplace wellness. https://cass.ab.ca/resources/wellness/ College of Alberta School Superintendents. (2021). Practice profiles. https://cass.ab.ca/resources/practice-profile Naylor, C. (2020). The Powell River Learning Group: Improving professional relationships. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nSs5ZGmqQkYWCxqio42JehlV473kqm_l/view Will, M. (2021, Sept. 14). Teachers are not OK, even though we need them to be: Administrators must think about teacher well-being differently. Education Week. www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/teachers-are-not-ok-even-though-we-needthem-to-be/2021/09

www.edcan.ca/magazine

techsavvy

PHOTO: ISTOCK

BY KATIE ATTWELL AND RACHEL JOHNSON

Making Effective Instructional Videos This department is generously sponsored

by IPEVO www.ipevo.com

Katie Attwell is an enthusiastic educator to English learners, and she is currently a Department Head and teacher with the Halton District School Board.

She is also the co-host of The EduGals podcast: a podcast dedicated to helping support educators as they navigate technology in the classroom.

Rachel Johnson is a passionate chemistry educator with over ten years of classroom experience, currently working as an Innovation Coach with the Halton District School Board. Rachel is also the co-host of The EduGals podcast: a podcast dedicated to helping support educators as they navigate technology in the classroom.

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How all educators can embrace this blended instruction model and support student learning OVER THE PAST TWO YEARS, teachers have had to shift and change their teaching practices due to the worldwide pandemic. This has caused us to re-evaluate the traditional teaching methods that we have been using in the classroom. Instead, we have shifted to instructional practices that are more differentiated, and that attempt to meet the needs of all of our students.

As we shift away from traditional classroom practices, one strategy that has shown a lot of promising results is the use of short, teacher-created instructional videos.

When instructional videos are teacher-created and personal, they can also foster digital relationships with our students.

Why use instructional videos?

There are many reasons why this practice has shown so much promise. Here is a breakdown of some of the benefits to teachers, as well as students.

Teacher benefits: • More time to support students Videos take time to plan and record, but once you are done, you will have a lot more time to provide feedback and to support students who are struggling. This practice allows you to be responsive to the needs of your students – those who are ready can move forward, while you help those

who may need more support either one-on-one or in small groups.

• No need to catch students up when they are absent Students will have access to videos and tasks that they need to complete, so there is no need to review any lessons. They may need a bit of additional help, but they have everything they need to succeed.

• Clear and effective focus for planning As an educator, you will have spent a lot of time dissecting the curriculum into smaller pieces, which become your instructional videos. This planning allows teachers to have a very clear understanding of what students need to learn and demonstrate in that course or subject area. It allows educators to feel more confident about their curriculum area, and to see the bigger picture and how to support students to be successful.

Student benefits: • Closed captioning Videos give students the opportunity to use closed captioning so that they can read the text as they are listening to the audio. This helps many of our learners make sense of what they are learning.

• Speed controls Sometimes native English speakers speak very quickly without realizing it. Videos give students the chance to slow down the audio to a pace that is easier for them to understand, making the lesson more accessible to everyone.

• Auto translation features in YouTube For newcomer and/or multilingual students, the option of auto translation can be really helpful in helping them to access the lesson and make connections between what they are hearing/learning, and their first language. This will help ensure more effective understanding, and that they don’t miss any important concepts due to language.

• Control over time, place, and pace of learning Students can control their learning and play, pause, rewind, and re-watch as needed.

Planning instructional videos

The first step is to determine your learning goals. Go back to your curriculum, figure out which skills you want to target, and plan backwards from there. You want to make sure that your learning goals are very specific, and will allow you to chunk them out into short videos of approximately five to six minutes. This means that one curriculum expectation might turn out to be a series of several videos and that’s OK! In terms of which tools to use, it is completely up to you! If your board or district has rules around the tools you are permitted to use, then be sure to consult that list. If not, then there are a variety of options available – choose one that you are comfortable with, and that EdCan Network | March 2022 • EDUCATION CANADA

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fits your purpose. There’s no need to get fancy or to try out a new or complicated program.

Plan out the structure of your video. Start by deciding if you’ll be doing a presentation, using a whiteboard tool, or demonstrating something in a classroom. For subjects with practical components, such as labs or tech courses, it might make more sense to outline the steps of a procedure instead, so that you can physically demonstrate that skill in the video. Either way, you’ll want to make sure that you have a clear picture of the outline of your video structure before you hit record.

Once you have an outline in place, you will then want to create the visual component that you will use for that lesson. It can be a PowerPoint or Slides deck, a more complex Prezi presentation, your LMS, or even a physical lab set up with materials. It doesn’t have to be complicated, but whatever you choose, make sure you minimize the amount of text that you are using – too much text can be extremely difficult or cognitively overwhelming for many students. You should also try to find images that pair well with the text you are presenting; this will help students to make more meaningful connections to your lesson.

If using Slides or PowerPoint, you should also consider using transitions or animations to help chunk out the different steps or concepts that students need to know. This will allow students to focus on one thing at a time, instead of reading ahead and possibly missing out on an important concept.

Recording tips

• Make it personal. Show your face, your sense of humour, and your personality! Consider these instructional videos an extension of

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Tools of the Trade Possible recording tools to use:

n Video conferencing tools (Meet, Teams, Zoom, etc.) n Screencastify n Screencastomatic n Flipgrid Shorts n Explain Everything n Loom n OBS Studio n QuickTime Player n WeVideo Possible tools to add interactive elements:

n EdPuzzle n PlayPosit n Screencastify n NearPod n Google Forms n Canvas Studio

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•

•

•

•

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your classroom – incorporate anything you would do in a traditional classroom to make it more personal for your students.

Go for done, not perfect. Try to do it in one take and embrace your mistakes! You make mistakes in the classroom and this just captures your human nature. Plus, as an added bonus, you can use the mistakes as indicators of understanding and learning.

If students are not asking about those mistakes, that gives you a warning that there are misconceptions that might need to be addressed.

Make liberal use of your speaker’s notes and the pause button during recording. There’s nothing worse than getting partway through your video, making a mistake, and then feeling like you have to start all over again. By creating detailed speakers’ notes, you have a clear outline of all of the important concepts or ideas that you want to mention. Also, know how to quickly pause your video so you can take a breath, refocus your attention, and move forward when you are ready.

Do not make specific references to time or location. You want to be able to use this over and over again throughout your career.

Keeping your videos neutral in this way allows you to reuse many videos from year to year, even when you vary the projects or themes.

Use a tool that you are comfortable with and that fits your purpose. There’s no need to use the latest and greatest tool; use what you are comfortable with, and what will help you to get the job done.

Keep it short! Students will struggle to focus if the video is too long. So think of these as small pieces of a traditional lesson, with a short activity in between. In terms of length, videos should be no

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longer than 6–9 minutes, and even shorter for students in Grades 1–5.

• Add interactivity! Students can struggle with focus, so adding interactive elements, such as questions or reflection prompts, can help keep students engaged. Consider tools like EdPuzzle, PlayPosit, or Screencastify to add questions throughout your lesson. A good rule of thumb here is to have a question or prompt every minute or so for maximum engagement. EC

Useful Resources n Attwell, K., & Johnson, R. (Hosts). (2021, November 9). Creating effective instructional videos for the classroom - E067 [Audio podcast episode]. In EduGals. https://edugals.com/creating-effective-instructionalvideos-for-the-classroom-e067/ n Farah, K., & Barnett, R. (2019, August 20). A 5-step guide to making your own instructional videos.

Edutopia. www.edutopia.org/article/5-step-guide-making-yourown-instructional-videos n Modern Classrooms Project. (2021). Tech tutorials. www.modernclassrooms.org/tutorials

EdCan Network | March 2022 • EDUCATION CANADA

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WHAT IS SCHOOL SUCCESS?

DON’T MISS THE PODCAST! edcan.ca/podcast

Distress Undermines Learning

Positive mental health must be a key part of our post-COVID recovery vision for schools Claire Crooks is the Director of the Centre for School Mental Health and Professor in Education at Western University.

She is a registered psychologist and researches effective, feasible approaches to preventing violence and promoting mental wellbeing among youth.

BY CLAIRE CROOKS Shanna (eight) has always been a sensitive child. She feels nervous about many things, and these feelings have only increased during the pandemic. It is becoming increasingly difficult for her caregiver to get her to school in the mornings.

Yasmin (11) has struggled with her adjustment to Canada and gets frustrated that school is so difficult when she was a strong student in her home country. Her worries about her family that are still back at home can feel overwhelming, and often distract her from her classes.

Jesse (14) is finding it really difficult to navigate their queer identity in different spaces, including different levels of acceptance at the home of each of their parents.

They are feeling increasingly isolated and have thoughts of harming themselves.

WHAT DO THESE seemingly diverse students have

in common? They have different strengths and different challenges, but are all struggling with the everyday expectations placed on them, including at school.

Further, they could all benefit from opportunities to improve their mental health. For many students, mental health can be promoted through creating welcoming environments and teaching skills such as self-regulation,

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communication, and healthy relationships. For others, additional opportunities to learn coping strategies might be required. Still others may need more specialized services. As a major piece of children’s ecosystems, schools must be intentional in how they support positive mental health. We need to look beyond academic rankings for schools and recognize that successful schools support mental health, both for compassionate reasons and because strong mental health underlies future success.

Canada is often identified as a great place to live on international lists and rankings. However, our performance on children’s mental health is not a source of national pride. Even prior to the pandemic, the last UN report card ranked us 31st out of 38 rich countries on children’s mental health and happiness. We also have one of the highest rates of adolescent suicide. We would not accept such a ranking for our math scores; to score this low in mental health is cause for a significant call to action.

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected every aspect of our lives and routines. Not surprisingly, children and youth are paying the price with decreased well-being.

Data collected by SickKids looking at impacts during the second wave found that more than half of 750 kids aged 8–12 reported significant symptoms of depression; 70 percent of adolescents reported significant depression.

Furthermore, the pandemic has exposed and amplified www.edcan.ca/magazine

PHOTO: ISTOCK

the inequities that were there all along. Equity-seeking groups have been harder hit by pandemic impacts, and this includes worse mental health for youth who belong to marginalized groups. The jury is still out on long-term impacts of disruptions related to the pandemic, but there is no question many of the negative impacts will linger.

Before we talk about the central role schools can play in promoting student well-being, I want to clarify what is meant by mental health.

All too often, mental health is considered synonymous with mental illness, as if it only exists when there is a problem. Of course, we all have mental health the same way we all have physical health. Thinking about mental health in a deficit-based manner is analogous to saying we only have physical health when we are sick. The Public Health Agency of Canada defines positive mental health as, “the capacity of each and all of us to feel, think, act in ways that enhance our ability to enjoy life and deal with the challenges we face.” Within that definition, we can see there is significant overlap with the role of schools. We need to expand our ideas around what makes a school successful and recognize that one indicator of a successful school or school system is that proper mental-health supports are in place and education is seen as truly being about the development of the whole person.

There are many pragmatic reasons to think about an expanded notion of school mental health. Many skills that underlie positive mental health can be taught, often within a social-emotional learning framework. Promoting facets of mental health, such as self-regulation and optimism, improve learning outcomes. Most children and youth attend school, thus minimizing access barriers. Educators see children www.edcan.ca/magazine

daily and are familiar with a wide range of what might be considered normal and healthy in a particular age group; as such, they are well positioned to notice changes.

A tiered mental-health approach

Obviously, teachers are not social workers, nor should they be expected to take on that role. The answer lies in a tiered school mental-health approach, with role clarity at each tier. This tiered approach is often conceptualized as a triangle, and although different names are given to the tiers in different models, the notion of three tiers that represent universal, selected, and targeted intervention is widely understood in any comprehensive public health approach.

TIER 1 is where universal prevention or promotion happens. It can

include everyday practices that create welcoming spaces for all students. At Tier 1, educators can introduce social-emotional learning concepts in short activities and reinforce them during teachable moments. There are also excellent programs that are effective in promoting well-being and align well with curricular expectations.

Over the past five years, my team has partnered with the London District Catholic School Board to implement and evaluate a program called MindUP. In our research with students with 580 students in 42 kindergarten classrooms, we found that students in MindUP classrooms experienced significant benefits. Problematic behaviours were reduced (Crooks, Bax et al., 2020). Their prosocial behaviours and executive functioning showed gains, suggesting that new and mentalEdCan Network | March 2022 • EDUCATION CANADA

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health promoting skills were being developed. This project shows how mental health promotion can lead to much wider benefits than simply less depressed children. Improvements in executive functioning could be expected to translate to improved academic performance – a contention we were in the process of investigating when COVID hit and ended our research!

Furthermore, educators reported decreased burnout and an increased sense of personal efficacy (Kim et al., 2021). They talked about creating calmer classrooms that in turn led to a greater sense of personal well-being. By implementing a program that was aligned with curriculum and board priorities, this initiative reduced educator stress rather than leading to work intensification.

“I’ve become a lot more mindful as a teacher. You always recognize those kids who have difficulty, but there’s a whole different perspective now… as to how we look at children and how we deal with them.”

– MindUP educator

TIER 2 is where students who may be considered vulnerable can be

offered additional support. The source of this vulnerability may not be the individual child at all; effective programming at this level for identified equity-seeking groups might help buffer against experiences of discrimination or past trauma. Tier 2 work is often implemented by mental-health professionals, but educators still have an important role in identifying students who would benefit and supporting their involvement. We have developed or evaluated several programs through our intervention research over the past 15 years.

For example, our Uniting Our Nations mentoring program for Indigenous students promotes healthy relationship skills and coping, within a cultural framework. In the elementary school version, students meet weekly in groups with an adult mentor. The secondary school version uses student mentors and mentees who are also guided by an adult mentor. Our longitudinal evaluation found that students who were involved for two years had increased positive mental health, were more culturally connected, and achieved better credit accumulation than their peers (Crooks et al., 2017). This is an important study because it counters the prevailing notion that focusing on social and emotional well-being and cultural connectedness somehow competes with academic achievement. In this study, the opposite was true. By focusing on social and emotional well-being with an identity-affirming approach, students were able to shine with their academics.

Mentors are showing other kids that you can succeed and still be First Nations. That’s the key; it’s showing kids they don’t have to lose who they are in order to be successful. We are not asking you to assimilate or give up everything to succeed. We know that you can keep connected to your culture and succeed. – Indigenous educator Supporting Transition Resilience of Newcomer Groups (STRONG) is a small-group resiliency-enhancing intervention for newcomer students who are struggling with some aspect of their adjustment.

STRONG brings together groups of six to ten students with a clinician (and often a co-facilitator, who may be an educator) to teach youth resilience skills such as relaxation, coping, problem-solving skills, and goal setting. In addition to the individual skill development, youth benefit from the relationships they develop with other participants, and a decreased sense of being alone. Preliminary evidence suggests that STRONG increases coping strategies, connectedness, and resilience (Crooks, Kubyshin, et al., 2020).

HRP for 2SLGBTQA+ Youth is a group-based intervention for sec-

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ondary school students who identify as gender, romantic, and sexual minority youth (and their allies). It was designed to be facilitated by educators in schools in the context of gender sexuality alliances (GSAs). The program includes key relationship skills and coping strategies appropriate for all youth, but has an expanded focus on being identity affirming and addressing stressors that are more specific to 2SLGBTQIA+ youth. Our focus groups with youth and educators suggest that students enjoy the program and benefit from the skills they learn, as well as the connections they make to others (Lapointe & Crooks, 2018).

Clearly, having effective programs for equity-seeking groups does not reduce the need to fight racism, colonialism, and homophobia on a larger societal level, but these strengths-based programs can help students develop important skills and strategies while also developing a sense of community.

[Canada ranks] 31st out of 38 rich countries on children’s mental health... to score this low is cause for a significant call to action.

TIER 3 refers to the domain where students’ mental health needs are

of sufficient severity and complexity to require specialized services.

Within a comprehensive school mental health model, the vision is for schools to hand over the care of students to qualified mental health professionals in the community at this point, while staying involved as part of the circle of supports for the student. In reality, there is a significant shortage of mental health resources in the community and schools are often left trying to support students with Tier 3 needs.

Some boards are even exploring taking on this work more intentionally, in the face of the shortage of referral options.

The three tiers of a comprehensive school mental health approach are not isolated, and students may need different levels of support at different times. Also, referring to this integrated and comprehensive approach as school mental health does not let those beyond the school setting off the hook – we all have a role to play in promoting well-being for children and youth.

Steps to school mental health

So, what do we need to advance the vision of comprehensive school mental health in every school in Canada? We need to move beyond piecemeal initiatives and create a comprehensive and coordinated strategy. Organizations such as the pan-Canadian Joint Consortium for School Health (www.jcsh-cces.ca) can facilitate the sharing of effective practices across jurisdictions. This work cannot be achieved on the backs of individual educator and administrator champions.

We need all the implicated government ministries to commit to this work and provide the appropriate resources.

What would a co-ordinated, comprehensive approach include?

• Preservice education programs to ensure that educators are launched into the profession with a toolkit to recognize and respond to mental health challenges. Currently, few universities offer dedicated classes in mental health. Furthermore, many early career educators leave the profession due to challenges related to the mental health and behaviour of the students. Very few eduwww.edcan.ca/magazine

cators leave because they can’t figure out the math curriculum!

• Commitment to implementation science principles that move us beyond a train-and-hope approach to new initiatives. Educators and school-based clinicians require high-quality training, but training alone is not sufficient. Implementation science identifies the importance of coaching, communities of practice, and consultation (as examples) for a new initiative to be implemented with high quality and lead to sustained impact.

• Community-based services that are accessible and can offer service in a timely manner. Often at the point of crisis there is a window of readiness for students and their families to engage with professionals, yet they might be facing waitlists of 6–18 months to receive services. The extent to which services are attuned or linguistically accessible to the wide diversity of Canadian families is another issue altogether. As we build strength in school mental health, policymakers will need to avoid the temptation to reduce other parts of the system (i.e. use funding for community-based mental health to bolster school mental health).

• Effective programs (especially in Tiers 2 and 3) that have been developed and tested in a Canadian context to provide educators and administrators with evidence-informed options. Our School Mental Health Ontario Innovation and Scale Up Lab (www.csmh. uwo.ca/smho-lab/index.html) works at this intersection of evidence-based and implementation-sensitive to identify and test approaches that meet the needs of educators.

• Attention to educator and administrator well-being. Promoting educator well-being is important for preventing burnout, but beyond the impact on educators there is also a clear impact for students. Stress is contagious, and research has shown that edu-

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cator stress can be reflected in neurobiological markers of stress among their students. It is difficult for educators to model and promote well-being and social and emotional competencies if they are struggling in these areas themselves.

Finally, we need to remember that schools are embedded in and reflect larger societal values and dynamics. As Canada continues to navigate reconciliation and attend to systemic racism, we need to think critically about how school mental health initiatives can be aligned with these movements and not reinforce negative systemic influences. EC REFERENCES For two-page summaries of the research mentioned in this article, see “Research Snapshots” at: www.csmh.uwo.ca/research Crooks, C. V, Bax, K., et al. (2020). Impact of MindUP among young children: Improvements in behavioral problems, adaptive skills, and executive functioning.

Mindfulness, 11(10), 2433–2444. doi.org/10.1007/s12671-020-01460-0.

Crooks, C. V., Exner-Cortens, D., et al. (2017). Two years of relationship-focused mentoring for First Nations, Métis, and Inuit adolescents: Promoting positive mental health. The Journal of Primary Prevention, 38. doi.org/10.1007/s10935-016-0457-0.

Crooks, C. V., Kubishyn, N., et al. (2020). The STRONG Resiliency program for newcomer youth: A mixed-methods exploration of youth experiences and impacts. International Journal of School Social Work, 5(2). doi.org/10.4148/2161-4148.1059.

Kim, S., Crooks, C. V., Bax, K., & Shokoohi, M. (2021). Impact of trauma-informed training and mindfulness-based social–emotional learning program on teacher attitudes and burnout: A mixed-methods study. School Mental Health, 13(1), 55-68.

Lapointe, A., & Crooks, C. (2018). GSA members’ experiences with a structured program to promote well-being. Journal of LGBT Youth, 15(4), 300–318. doi.org/10.1080/19361653.2018.1479672.

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WHAT IS SCHOOL SUCCESS?

DON’T MISS THE PODCAST! edcan.ca/podcast

Taking Action to Limit Learning Impacts from the Pandemic

In the face of widespread impacts on learning, other countries are investing in effective strategies Kelly GallagherMackay is Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Liberal Arts at Wilfrid Laurier University.

Past roles include Director of Research and Evaluation for the Future Skills Centre, Director of Research at People for Education, and co-founder and Northern Director of the Akitsiraq Law School in Iqaluit, Nunavut.

Christine Corso is a former public school teacher and current PhD candidate at OISE/University of Toronto. She is a Canada Graduate Scholar studying the impacts of COVID-19 on student motivation and engagement.

BY KELLY GALLAGHER-MACKAY AND CHRISTINE CORSO DURING THE PANDEMIC, school closures affected

almost all the children on planet Earth, with billions more parents, educators, and school staff impacted as well.

In Canada, schools were closed for between eight weeks (in Québec) and 26 weeks (in Ontario) from March 2020 to June 2021. Many schools closed again in January 2022 because of the Omicron variant. By now, we know the drill. When schools close, classes move online: teachers use a combination of synchronous and asynchronous instruction and activities to help students learn, and parents of younger children pick up their unofficial teachers’ assistant roles.

Profound impacts on learning

Schools are where children and youth play, build relationships, create, develop their sense of selves, and need to be active. They are also, fundamentally, a place where students gain academic skills. Those skills include literacy and numeracy, which are the two most often measured.

They also include developing scientific foundations, and learning about history, geography, and citizenship. Students’ learning and academic progress is a key determinant of health, income, happiness, and civic particpation across the lifetime. Unaddressed gaps in these outcomes are very likely to contribute to the continuation, or deepening, of long-term social inequalities.

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The overwhelming weight of international evidence1 suggests that, on average, students made less academic progress during pandemic-related closures than they would have in normal years (e.g. Hammarstein et al., 2021). Research shows that relative to previous years, there were greater gaps for younger children and in math achievement as opposed to English/language arts.

Many studies looked at issues of equity. Where data is disaggregated, there have been consistent findings that such groups as low-income students, Black and Latinx students, students with special education needs, and English-language learners have fallen disproportionately far behind (see Gallagher-Mackay, Srivastava, et. al, 2021).

Those same groups have also been disproportionately affected by the hardships of the pandemic – a higher burden of illness, household stressors such as unemployment, less access to technology, and so forth.

More recent large-scale studies with data from spring 2021 – 15 months into the pandemic – have showed that students who experienced more time in remote learning did, on average, worse during the pandemic than those who had more time learning in person (Halloran et al., 2021). Further, students who gained ground with a return to in-person learning lost it again during subsequent closures – even with significant support from synchronous learning (Renaissance/Educational Policy Institute, 2021). www.edcan.ca/magazine

In Canada, most large-scale assessments – which might allow us to benchmark progress using comparable data – were suspended from 2020 to 2021. One of the few investigations using standardized measures was led by University of Alberta’s George Georgiou, who compared the reading scores of elementary students captured in an annual September assessment. He found that younger students demonstrated greater learning loss than older students, and those in Grades 1–3 who were already struggling before lockdowns were up to six months behind where they should have been by September 2020.

PHOTO: ISTOCK

What should be done to support academic recovery?

Though there have been investments in safety measures, Canadian commitments to educational recovery have been far lower than other countries (see Gallagher-Mackay et al., 2021). For example, the federal government in the United States has committed $25 billion (of a total $124 billion for K–12) to education recovery, alongside investments by individual states, which have constitutional responsibility for education.

Where there has been large-scale recovery funding there has also been a profusion of programming, research, and active experimentation into effective ways of helping students catch up. The resources www.edcan.ca/magazine

available through Brown University’s Annenberg Institute (https:// annenberg.brown.edu/recovery), for example, provide terrific roadmaps to best practices for learning acceleration and to address key challenges faced by educators and school systems. There are a number of specific approaches worth highlighting.

Tutoring

Small group tutoring (one tutor with up to five students) is a complement to – not a replacement for – the more complex work of a classroom teacher. Our recent evidence review (Gallagher-Mackay, Mundy, et al., 2021; see also Nickow et al. 2020) highlights evidence that “high dosage tutoring” – at least three times a week – is one of the most effective educational interventions, especially when it is closely linked to in-school curriculum. For example, in rigorous studies, fulltime college graduates in a national service program were able to gain two and a half years of learning in math over the course of one year.

School-based tutoring has been a key plank of recovery efforts in the U.K., U.S., and Australia.

Voluntary summer school programs

There is promising evidence that high-quality voluntary summer EdCan Network | March 2022 • EDUCATION CANADA

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programs of at least five weeks duration – programs that include both academic instruction and enrichment activities to promote attendance and pleasure in learning – can boost achievement for participating students (McCombs et al., 2019). Small groups (fewer than 15 students) and specialized supports for students with special education or English language learning needs led to more powerful impacts. This research was conducted on in-person summer schools, and many students – including those with the greatest needs – may not choose to participate.

Targeted class size reductions

Large-scale data from France showed a surprising outcome: most of the learning losses found in Grade 1, 2, and 6 tests from 2020 were regained by September 2021. Moreover, achievement gaps based on socio-economic status (SES) initially widened, but by September 2021, the gaps had narrowed (Rosenwald, 2021). One factor that may have played a role in the French case is class size: in 2017, a new policy halved class sizes for Grade 1 and 2 classes in priority (low-SES) areas across the country. During the 2020/2021 school year all priority-area Grade 1 and 2 classrooms served a maximum of 12 (rather than 24) students (OECD, 2020). It is possible that the smaller class sizes in targeted regions across the country helped swiftly mitigate learning losses among particularly vulnerable groups.

Wraparound services to reconnect families and community

COVID-19 has fractured or further damaged relationships between schools, family and community. Safety measures have kept families out of schools, while underscoring the need for broader social supports beyond what schools are set up to provide: from settlement services to social work, mental health supports or opportunities for recreation. Unfortunately, current staffing doesn’t make room to build these enriching connections. There is a long history of research on community schools (see Maier et al., 2017). Canadian research shows that even a 0.5-time position dedicated to strengthening community can be transformative – providing a great return on investment in terms of bringing resources into the school (Lamarre et al., 2020).

More harm than good: not all strategies productive

There is evidence to suggest certain approaches should be avoided.

In particular, having students repeat years of schooling is extremely expensive and has been associated with heightened risk of drop-out in a large volume of studies. Compressed curriculum – without additional supports – has not proved effective (Allensworth & Schwartz, 2021). Narrowing the focus of the curriculum to the purely academic, at the cost of physical activity, social-emotional learning, and opportunities to engage in creativity and citizenship learning would fail to reflect the many aspecs of children’s development supported by schools.

Ongoing need for tracking student outcomes

Whatever approach we undertake, tracking student outcomes matters. Consistent aggregation of teacher-administered diagnostic assessment data would support this goal, if large-scale assessments aren’t going to be used.

We need this data to identify gaps, to support an appropriate, targeted strategy for deploying resources, and to better understand the effectiveness of whatever recovery measures we finally undertake.

There have been significant learning impacts related to the pandemic, but there are also promising educational interventions and

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supports that can help students thrive and recover academically, support educators facing enormous challenges, and help address some of the system’s long-term inequities. Canada needs to get moving. EC NOTE 1 While the overwhelming majority of the studies reviewed show significant losses (e.g. Kuhfeld, Tarasawa, et al., 2020), some studies in Germany and the Netherlands found that many students improved in limited subjects through practice in online environments over the pandemic (e.g. Spitzer & Musslick, 2021).

Studies based on general tests of knowledge and skills – either national/state assessments or diagnostic, including in the Netherlands – all point to significant losses.

REFERENCES Allensworth, E., & Schwartz, N. (2020). School practices to address student learning loss.

EdResearch for Recovery Project. https://annenberg.brown.edu/sites/default/files/EdResearch_for_Recovery_ Brief_1.pdf Gallagher-Mackay, K., Srivastava, P., et al. (2021). COVID-19 and education disruption in Ontario: Emerging evidence on impacts. Ontario COVID-19 Science Advisory Table. https://covid19-sciencetable.ca/sciencebrief/covid-19-and-education-disruptionin-ontario-emerging-evidence-on-impacts Gallagher-Mackay, K., Mundy, K., et al. (2021). The evidence for tutoring to accelerate learning and address educational inequities during canada’s pandemic recovery. Diversity Institute at Ryerson University. https://bit.ly/tutoringinthetimeofcovid Halloran, C., Jack, R., et al. (2021). Pandemic schooling mode and student test scores: Evidence from US states (No. w29497; p. w29497). National Bureau of Economic Research. doi.org/10.3386/w29497 Hammerstein, S., König, C., et al. (2021). Effects of COVID-19-related school closures on student achievement – A systematic review. PsyArXiv. doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/mcnvk Kuhfeld, M., Tarasawa, B., et al. (2020). Learning during COVID-19: Initial findings on students’ reading and math achievement and growth. NWEA. www.nwea.org/content/uploads/2020/11/Collaborative-brief-Learning-duringCOVID-19.NOV2020.pdf Lamarre, P., Horrocks, D. & Legault, E. (2020). The community school network in Quebec’s official language minority education sector. Concordia University. https://learnquebec.ca/clc-history Maier, A., Daniel, J., & Oakes, J. (2017). Community schools as an effective school improvement strategy: A review of the evidence. Learning Policy Insitute/National Education Planning Centre. https://learningpolicyinstitute.org/sites/default/files/product-files/Community_ Schools_Effective_BRIEF.pdf.

McCombs, J. S., Augustine, C. H., et al. (2019). Investing in successful summer programs: A review of evidence under the Every Student Succeeds Act. RAND Corporation. www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR2836.html Nickow, A., Oreopoulos, P., & Quan, V. (2020). The impressive effects of tutoring on PreK-12 learning: A systematic review and meta-analysis of the experimental evidence. (NBER Working Papers, Vol. 1 – Working Paper 27476). National Bureau of Economic Research.

OECD. (2020). Education policy outlook: France. www.oecd.org/education/policy-outlook/country-profile-France-2020.pdf Renaissance Learning, Educational Policy Institute. (2021). Understanding progress in the 2020/21 academic year (p. 42). Department of Education. www.gov.uk/government/publications/pupils-progress-in-the-2020-to-2021academic-year-interim-report Rosenwald, F. (2021, November 29). The 2020 French school lockdown and its impact on education: What do we know so far? [Forum presentation]. OECDAERA forum: How education fared during the first wave of COVID-19 lockdowns?

International evidence, broadcast on Zoom. https://www.aera.net/Events-Meetings/How-Education-Fared-During-the-FirstWave-of-COVID-19-Lockdowns-International-Evidence Spitzer, M. W . H., Musslick, S. (2021). Academic performance of K-12 students in an online-learning environment for mathematics increased during the shutdown of schools in wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. PLOS ONE 16(8): e0255629. doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0255629

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WHAT IS SCHOOL SUCCESS?

Reimagining Student Success in the Aftermath of the Pandemic

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Dr. Ann Lopez is Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy in the Department of Leadership, Higher and Adult Education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto.

Her research examines school leadership across contexts. She is a former secondary classroom teacher and school administrator.

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Centring anti-racism and equity education

BY ANN LOPEZ THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC has impacted life across the

globe in every sector of society. As we move toward the third year of the pandemic, educators are examining the impact on student learning, educational outcomes, and well-being. Educators over the past two years have been adjusting practice and reflecting on what lies ahead for education and schooling in a “post-pandemic” world. We all acknowledge that it might be premature to think of

“post-pandemic,” as students, parents, educators, policymakers and communities are still experiencing effects of the pandemic.

The pandemic continues to impact Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities in devastating ways, and has exacerbated structural inequities that these communities experience. Research has shown that the pandemic has impacted student learning in significant ways, with many EdCan Network | March 2022 • EDUCATION CANADA

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students falling behind, experiencing challenges with persistent and ongoing virtual learning and the safety concerns with in-person learning, and suffering diminished mental health and well-being. There have been challenges for parents: supporting students with online learning, work and life balance, and child care issues, among others.

Educators have voiced concerns about ongoing safety measures as many return to in-person learning. The impact and consequences of the pandemic have been experienced differently by members of society depending on status, resources, type of work, racialization, ability, and other aspects of identity. Essential and frontline workers have borne the brunt of the impact and many are experiencing burnout, anxiety, and negative impact on their well-being. As Reyes (2020) argues, our different social identities and the social groups we belong to determine our inclusion within society and, by extension, our vulnerability to epidemics.

As educators and policymakers reimagine education and schooling in a post-pandemic era, there is a growing awareness that the experiences of the pandemic and the lessons learned should serve as motivation for radical new and alternative approaches to teaching, learning, and leading. Calls to “get back to normal” by some ignore challenges and structural inequities across all sectors of society that have been laid bare and exacerbated by the pandemic.

Students, educators, and community members all want teaching and learning to return in fulsome ways; however, those from global majority communities say “getting back to normal” must not include returning to oppressive policies and practices that prevent racialized students from achieving positive educational outcomes.

The pandemic widened gaps that already existed for Black, Brown, and Indigenous students. Students and communities are demanding new approaches and policies that centre their lived experiences and will no longer tolerate educational policies and practices that oppress them and negatively impact their futures. The pandemic has magnified historic systemic failures affecting Black students, families, and communities, causing increased racial trauma, issues of mental health and well-being for educators and students, and the erosion of trust in schools and institutions (Horsford et al., 2021). As a result, many children and youth have experienced disengagement, chronic attendance problems, declines in academic achievement, and decreased credit attainment during the pandemic, with the impact far deeper for those already at risk (Whitley et al., 2021). “The pandemic has not only added to the social and educational inequities among young people, it has exacerbated the racial injustice with which racialized and Indigenous youth must contend” (James, 2020, p.1), and this reality cannot be overlooked.

Against this backdrop, educators and policymakers are called on to reimagine education and schooling, to name and challenge the ways in which students are marginalized, and to question practices, policies, and “norms” of a pre-pandemic era that must not return.

The lessons of the pandemic must be learned and there must not be a return to business as usual. Instead, those most impacted by the pandemic are calling for inequities to be acknowledged and a commitment made to lasting systemic change.

To this end, critical educators see the pandemic as an opportunity not only to question oppressive educational policies and practices, but to take action and offer new and alternative approaches. One key issue that this article examines is the notion of student success. Measures of student success have traditionally focused on such areas as grades, credit accumulation, engagement in the school environments, and so

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on. What the pandemic (as well as student and community advocates) has highlighted is that student success is also about well-being, having a sense of belonging, and the ability to survive and thrive academically, emotionally, and spiritually. In this article I argue for rethinking student success through an anti-oppressive and decolonizing lens. To do so means naming systems of oppression and the ways coloniality and colonization continue to be perpetuated in educational practices, policies, and the framing of notions such as student success.

Rethinking student success through an anti-oppressive and decolonizing lens

Student success has been a long-standing goal of educators. Nonetheless, the term carries a variety of meanings within education, though it has commonly been identified with various forms of measurable student outcomes. Schools in their school success plans often define and contextualize student success to set organizational goals. In broad terms, student success has been understood in terms of outcomes such as academic achievement, graduation rates, persistence, increase in self-efficacy, increase in engagement, and initiative (Weatherton & Schussler, 2021). Research shows that there are differences in how

The failure of the system to provide adequate resources for students must not be laid at the feet of vulnerable students and used to render them as unsuccessful. teachers and students understand student success. Racialized students, for example, tend to define success for themselves, which often aligns with what matters to them and the kinds of supports they need for their educational advancement (Oh & Kim, 2016). Weatherton and Schussier (2021) argue that current discourse around the meaning of student success is maintained in part by social hierarchies that can be examined through the lens of hegemony and critical race theory, and which often hinder the success of certain student populations who may not define success in the same way.

Many have argued that markers of student success have been created to serve a predominantly white student population and do not sufficiently reflect or meet the needs of a diverse student population.

Students from global majority communities are no longer willing to be labelled as “unsuccessful,” “disadvantaged,” “at-risk,” and other markers of deficit in school while their educational, mental health, and well-being needs are not met, and racism and other forms of oppression that impact their educational outcomes persist. For example, throughout the pandemic students from low-resourced families could not participate effectively in the shift to online learning, as some did not have adequate access to the internet and computers.

The failure of the system to provide adequate resources for students must not be laid at the feet of vulnerable students and used to render them as unsuccessful. Instead, questions must be asked about what www.edcan.ca/magazine

success means for students from global majority communities, and what policies and practices need to be put in place in order for them to survive and thrive. Resiliency has emerged in the discourse when discussing success of students, and in particular students from Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities. While resilience is a worthy endeavour, students should not be called on to be resilient in the face of ongoing oppression. Oppressive systems, policies, and practices must change, instead of calling on some students to be more resilient.

Anti-oppressive and decolonizing education, which identifies structural inequities and practices grounded in coloniality and the resulting gaps in student outcomes, provides a framework for advancing equity that challenges all forms of oppression. This should be seen as foundational to student success.

Reimagining student success grounded in anti-oppressive and decolonizing approaches must prioritize the following elements: • adopting a student-centred approach to teaching that includes the lived experiences and voices of students in defining school success goals • embedding anti-oppressive and decolonizing education in everyday practice in teaching, learning, and leading • putting in place supports for students’ social, mental, and economic well-being • developing and nurturing connections to community.

These suggestions do not operate in an isolated linear fashion, but overlap and are interconnected.

Adopt a student-centred approach

Research shows that students often have different notions of what success means. In addition to grades, students want to feel that they are being heard. As well, students from global majority communities see success as being able to thrive academically and without spirit injury – not having to endure racism and other forms of exclusion that stand in the way of their academic success and well-being. In Canada, we have read story after story of Black students experiencing anti-Black racism in schools and Indigenous students experiencing anti-Indigenous racism in schools. In response to community and parental advocacy, some school boards have put policies in place to address anti-Black and anti-Indigenous racism, but there is more work to be done.

Student-centred approaches are not new; however a student-centred approach grounded in anti-oppressive and decolonizing education requires educators to examine their relationships with students through the lens of power, whiteness, white supremacy, ways that systemic forms of oppression can be manifested in those relationships, and ways in which practices grounded in colonial thinking and mindset define markers of success. Wells and Cordova-Cobo (2021) argue that it is impossible for educators to be student-centred, to engage in a holistic education focused on students’ social and emotional needs, without also being anti-racist. This approach means that success cannot be seen within paradigms of meritocracy, but instead through supports they need, acknowledging the impact of racism and other forms of oppression on their educational experiences. For educators in classrooms, this might mean examining assessment practices, pedagogical approaches, and curriculum context. For administrators this might mean examining discipline policies that penalize students instead of learning about what else might be happening in students’ lives. www.edcan.ca/magazine

Embed anti-oppressive and decolonizing education in everyday practice

Anti-oppressive and decolonizing education cannot be treated as an add-on to teachers’ and school leaders’ everyday work, but must instead be embedded in everyday practice. It must become the norm.

Students must experience curriculum, pedagogy, and school practices that reflect their lived experiences, address their needs holistically, and identify forms of oppression in all aspects of teaching, learning, and leading that stand in the way of their progress. Students’ school experiences must be wholesome and fulfilling, both academically and spiritually. Seeing the impact of COVID-19 on racialized students, educators must commit to this work and be provided ongoing support to make it a reality, not just theory. This will require educators to examine activities that they engage in on a daily basis, including morning greetings, conversations with students in the hallways, meetings with families, resources that are purchased, and knowledge used to frame decision-making. For example, examining the influence of Eurocentric knowledge in relationship to students from global majority communities; and asking questions about the use of deficit narratives to construct students’ experiences and success or lack thereof. Anti-oppressive and decolonizing education also requires the examination of self – for educators to examine their positionality and how this intersects with that of students; and to look for the tensions in the relationship and include student voice and experience as they work through these tensions. Educators must also be committed to ongoing learning, unlearning, and relearning. This is critical for anti-oppressive and decolonizing work to be sustained and create the lasting change needed.

Support students’ social, mental, and economic well-being

Students’ mental health and well-being has been a consistent conversation throughout the pandemic. For racialized students who are already experiencing racial violence and trauma in schools, the impact has been devastating. In addition to the already heightened challenges on their mental health and well-being, many students from lowresource families and communities work to earn extra family income, and thus shoulder an added layer of stress. These issues, illuminated and exacerbated during the pandemic, must now form part of the discourse, policy and practice as we reconceptualize student success.

The impact of these experiences should not be constructed as deficits when examining student success, but instead as a result of embedded structural inequities. I am suggesting here that when discussing student success, questions must be asked about students’ economic well-being and how that impacts their educational outcomes. Students’ economic lives are not separate from their educational lives; they are intertwined. New conceptualizations of success must include providing supports for students to overcome these challenges. These should be envisioned as the “new normal” and markers of success in a “post-pandemic” world.

Develop and nurture connections to community

As we begin to rethink education, schooling, and what student success means through an anti-oppressive and decolonizing lens, relationships with communities must be seen as central to student success.

Connection with their community deepens educators’ understanding of students in holistic ways and fosters greater understanding of their needs. This also means building into curriculum and pedagogy EdCan Network | March 2022 • EDUCATION CANADA

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knowledge that students bring from their communities, what Gonzalez et al. (2005) refer to as Funds of Knowledge. They suggest that families, especially those who are working class, can be characterized by the practices they have developed and the knowledge they have produced and acquired in the living of their lives. In other words, how is community knowledge part of the conversation about success?

How are the formal and informal activities that students engage in at the community level taken into account when discussing student success? Decolonizing approaches to education require educators to examine and disrupt notions about certain communities constructed and maintained through colonized frames, that disregard local knowledge as valued and valuable (Lopez, 2021). This knowledge is valuable to schools in supporting students’ learning and bringing about positive educational outcomes. We also need to support students to engage in cultural border crossing – drawing on knowledge from their own experiences, and getting to know students who are different from themselves – and to see other cultures through an affirming lens. Building positive relationships with community is a cornerstone of anti-oppressive and decolonizing education.

EDUCATION IN A “POST-PANDEMIC” ERA calls for radical action.

Student success can no longer be conceptualized only in terms of measurable outcomes and indicators such as graduation rates and marks. While it is important that students graduate and move to the next level, other markers of student success must be seen as equally

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Educators must be committed to ongoing learning, unlearning, and relearning. important – such as how well students are thriving in teaching and learning spaces free from oppression and marginalization. The relationship between students, community, and school, should become central to student success policies and practice. The moment we are currently in provides educators with a great opportunity to build deep, lasting, and respectful relationships with communities, examine ways that COVID-19 has exposed and exacerbated structural inequities, and construct alternative approaches and practices. This will prepare students to be successful in a fast-changing and diverse world. EC REFERENCES Horsford, S. D. et al. (2021). Black education in the wake of COVID-19 & systemic racism: Toward a theory of change and action. Black Education Research Collective, Teachers College, Columbia University. https://www.tc.columbia.edu/media/centers/berc/Final-BERC-COVID-Report20July2021.pdf González, N., Moll, L., Amanti, C. (Eds.). (2005). Funds of knowledge: Theorizing practices in households, communities, and classrooms. Lawrence Erlbaum.

James, C. (2021). Racial inequity, COVID-19 and the education of Black and other marginalized students. In F. Henry & C. James (Eds.) Impacts of COVID-19 in Racialized Communities (36– 44). Royal Society of Canada. https://rsc-src.ca/en/themes/impact-covid-19-inracialized-communities Lopez, A. E. (2021). Decolonizing educational leadership: Exploring alternative approaches to leading schools. Palgrave Macmillan.

Oh, C. J., & Kim, N. Y. (2016). “Success is relative”: Comparative social class and ethnic effects in an academic paradox. Sociological Perspectives, 59(2), 270–295.

Osmond-Johnson, P., Lopez, A. E., & Button, J. (2020, November 20). Centring equity in an era of COVID-19: A new twist on an existing challenge.

Education Canada. www.edcan.ca/articles/centring-equity-in-the-covid19-era Reyes, N. V. (2020). The disproportional impact of COVID-19 on African Americans. Health and Human Rights, 22(2) 299–307.

Weatherton, M., & Schussler, E. E. (2021). Success for all? A call to re-examine how student success is defined in higher education. CBE – life sciences education, 20(1), es3. doi.org/10.1187/cbe.20-09-0223 Wells, A. S., & Cordova-Cobo, D. (2021). The postpandemic pathway to anti-racist education: Building a coalition across progressive, multicultural, culturally responsive, and ethnic studies advocates. The Century Foundation. https://tcf.org/content/report/post-pandemicpathway-anti-racist-education-building-coalitionacross-progressive-multicultural-culturally-responsiveethnic-studies-advocates Whitley, J., Beauchamp, M. H., & Brown C. (2021). The impact of COVID-19 on the learning and achievement of vulnerable Canadian children and youth. FACETS 6(1), 1693–1713. doi.org/10.1139/facets-2021-0096

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WHAT IS SCHOOL SUCCESS?

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political engagement higher test scores happiness caring for others entrepreneurship time management computer literacy moral courage global awareness mental health democracy critical thinking good character kindness respect basic skills community resilience

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What Does It Mean to Be Well-Educated?

Now that the pandemic may be waning, we should ask ourselves what counts as a successful education

Joel Westheimer is Professor in Democracy and Education at the University of Ottawa and an education columnist for CBC Radio. Author, speaker, and education advocate, his latest book is What Kind of Citizen? Educating our children for the common good. joelwestheimer. org twitter.com/@ joelwestheimer.

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BY JOEL WESTHEIMER ON JANUARY 11, 2020, a 61-year-old man in the central

Chinese city of Wuhan succumbed to a new virus that had sickened at least 41 people. “There is no evidence that the virus can be spread between humans,” the New York Times reported at the time (Quin & Hernandez, 2020).

By April 2, the COVID-19 coronavirus had sickened more than one million people in 171 countries across six continents and had killed more than 51,000. In a recent report

for the Royal Society of Canada, my colleague Michelle Hagerman and I noted that nearly two years later, the pandemic had not only claimed the lives of millions but also upended nearly every public, private, and non-governmental institution around the globe (Westheimer & Hagerman, 2021).

Crises have a way of making us ask big questions. They focus our attention on what matters most – to us, our EdCan Network | March 2022 • EDUCATION CANADA

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loved ones, our fellow citizens, and the planet. For educators, prioritizing what is important became fundamental as teachers grappled with the new realities of online learning, spotty attendance, and the immense inequalities the pandemic revealed about the lives of students and their families. These new realities offer an opportunity to reshape our thinking about what matters in education. But opportunity is not the same as destiny. For lasting change to occur, we must focus our attention on using what we have learned.

What does it mean to be well-educated?

Can you name any of the fourteen plant phyla? What’s the difference between sine and cosine? When did the Assyrian empire’s reign over Mesopotamia begin and end? What roles do chloroplasts, vacuole, or mitochondria play in the basic functioning of cells? If you don’t know the answers, you’re not alone. The truth is that few adults (whose professions do not require such specialized knowledge) know the answers to these questions. And even fewer face social, civic, or career setbacks as a result.

If I could ban any two words from education talk for the next year or so, I would choose these: learning loss. The past two years of interrupted schooling has meant that countless children missed lessons in math, history, geography, science, and literature. Every day we read about children falling behind, but the curriculum is bursting at the seams. Falling behind what? Behind whom? Estimates are that nearly 90 percent of the world’s 1.7 billion students have missed a significant amount of school these past two years. So we shouldn’t be surprised if testing experts tell us that, on balance, the COVID generation is not performing as well on standardized assessments of progress as previous cohorts of children at the same stage in their schooling. We probably didn’t need the tests to tell us that predictable fact. But what if that model of teaching and learning is outdated and there are more important things for teachers to think about than whether they’ve “covered” the curriculum?

For certain basic skills such as numeracy and literacy, the language of learning loss is an understandable way of expressing concern over an achievement gap between high- and low- achieving students.

But for more than three decades, the school curriculum has become increasingly consumed with all the things students should know before they graduate. That has resulted in an unprecedented global obsession with micro-managing teachers’ work to ensure the right information is taught, and with standardized testing to find out if they’re succeeding. Yet those who seek to demonstrate the importance of coverage in the curriculum mostly use standardized measures of knowledge attainment to prove their point. This tautological approach should be easily dismissed, pandemic or no pandemic, when making the case that we need to move our priorities away from a mile-wide-inch-deep approach to teaching and learning.

Research in teaching and child development tells us that learning how to think analytically is much more important than cramming in material that students won’t remember weeks or years later.

We live in an age of instantly accessible information in an infinite number of domains. Living well in the 21st century does not require more information, but rather the knowledge and skills needed to sift, understand, and assess the quality of information. Teaching content matters, but covering every possible historical event and scientific or mathematical concept does not.

I would be thrilled if my child had the opportunity to read and discuss with her teacher and classmates the brilliant allegorical novel, The Alchemist. After all, many students learn valuable ways of thinking about the world from reading it. But I’d be OK if they had to miss that one and read only Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner or Yann

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Martel’s Life of Pi instead. What matters is finding topics of interest to both teachers and students, having the time to explore those topics in depth, and facilitating connections between subject matter and the outside world. A deep-dive into topics of interest is worth more than a stress-filled endurance swim in the shallows.

This is not a new idea. “Less is more” has been a common aphorism in curriculum development for more than 30 years. The harms wrought by trying to meet curricular standards bursting at the seams were well documented before the pandemic (see for example Kempf, 2016), but during the past two years, as teachers and school boards across the country were forced to recognize the impossibility of covering the entire prescribed curriculum, the very idea of breadth versus depth came under increased scrutiny. It has become clearer than ever that endlessly expanding content goals reduce teachers’ control over the curriculum, undermine their professional judgment, and limit student engagement.

Research tells us that learning how to think analytically is much more important than cramming in material students won’t remember weeks or years later.

Acknowledging inequality without making it worse

The COVID-19 pandemic functioned like an X-ray, revealing already existing fault lines in our nation and the world: poverty and economic inequality, hunger and homelessness, racial and ethnic bias, unequal access to high-speed internet and computers, and inadequate resources for those most in need. None of these are new challenges, but they are newly spotlighted for all of us to see – “pinned” in the vernacular of the now-ubiquitous video conferencing platforms. Online learning meant that educators were transported into students’ homes, making inequality difficult to ignore.

What bothers me about a focus on learning loss and “falling behind” is that it will increase these already existing gaps. Calls for economically disadvantaged students to keep up with their wealthier peers will not diminish the achievement gap between children from poorer and wealthier households. The problem is not that some kids will learn more than others as much as it is the consequences we tie to arbitrary benchmarks of learning in the first place. Since students are likely to be evaluated in the future using assessments of how much of the curriculum was covered, and since those evaluations continue to be used to sort students in ways that will affect their futures, we are, at least in part, creating the very problem we hope to eliminate by emphasizing the achievement gap. The more we value the acquisition of information over the development of intellectual, emotional, and relational capacities, the more we contribute to rather than ameliorate inequality.

I do not want to minimize the added supports some children need to make up for lost schooling in basic skills. A child entering Grade 3 after having missed much of the previous two years may not be able www.edcan.ca/magazine

to read. Some children will have missed the opportunity to learn or solidify basic mathematical literacy. These are significant liabilities, not really comparable to missing stories about some explorers in Canadian history. It is a significant handicap to be lacking these “basic skills,” and for most children, it would be difficult to acquire these skills on their own. To be sure, we should support additional funding for more teachers, smaller classes, and additional programming so that these gaps can be addressed.

But there is much more to schooling than basic skills alone, and we must be careful not to create arbitrary barriers to those students who, beyond common-sense basic skills, have not acquired the same level of curriculum coverage as their more well-resourced peers.

Schools have been stuck in the wrong paradigm for success, one in which individualized knowledge and skills are the end-goal instead of a means to develop students’ best selves within the community of their teachers and peers, and, by extension, improve society for all of us.

What counts as a successful education?

If we agree to move beyond an outdated paradigm of education centred around curriculum coverage, what kind of vision for postpandemic education can take its place? Two decades ago, Brazilian educator Paulo Freire wrote that education either functions to inculcate conformity in the younger generation or it becomes “the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world” (2000, p. 34). To Freire, the sense of pedagogical meaning-making that derives from curriculum is inseparable from the goal of improving society. In other words, improving society requires not only teaching basic skills and knowledge, but also engaging young and old alike in a process of collective meaningmaking and community-building.

For as long as I can remember, I have been interested in the ways people treat one another, learn from one another, and live together in local, national, and global communities – in short, how people see themselves as members of a community. Education has always seemed important to me, not because of the debates about passing fads and strategies (phonics versus whole language, new math versus old math, small classes versus big classes), but rather because choices about how we teach our children are choices about the kind of society we believe in and the kind of people we hope will emerge from our schoolhouse doors. Will they be concerned only with their own individual success and ambitions without regard to the welfare of others? Will they form healthy and happy relationships with others?

Will they value democratic values such as self-governance and social justice? Will they learn how to develop convictions and the courage to stand up for those convictions if and when it becomes necessary to do so? Will they be able to engage in work and community activities they find meaningful? These values are manifestations of a sense of both personal and civic identity and form the basis of community life.

You can see, then, that I think about schools not only or even primarily as vehicles for the transmission of knowledge, but also as places where children learn about the society in which they are growing up: how they might engage productively, how they can fight for change when change is warranted, and how to know when it is warranted. Schools have always taught lessons in areas such as citizenship, moral values, good behaviour, and “character.” Schools teach children to follow rules, to wait their turn, and (ideally) to cooperate with others. Schools (again, ideally) also teach children how to acquire and process information and how to articulate their ideas to others – all necessary skills for democratic community life. Some schools also www.edcan.ca/magazine

help students consider whether being a “good” citizen or member of the community ever requires questioning rules, or what might be the proper balance between rule following and thinking about the origins and purpose of rules.

Schools teach these lessons regardless of whether or not they aim to do so explicitly. How classrooms are set up, who gets to talk when, how adults conduct themselves, how decisions are made, how lessons are enacted – all these inevitably serve as lessons in how to live together. Whether teachers explicitly “teach” these subjects or not, students learn about community organization, the distribution of power and resources, rights, responsibilities, and of course, justice and injustice. These same lessons are mirrored in students’ online interactions. Curricular choices and the relative importance we put on covering all the content standards contain both overt and hidden lessons as well.

When policy-makers focus obsessively on learning metrics, teachers are forced to reduce their teaching to endless lists of facts and skills, unmoored from their social meaning. But when we consider what a successful education might look like more broadly and we think about the impact our curricular choices have on the people we hope students will become, we create new ways of seeing the complex work of teaching and we form new expectations for the purposes of a public education.

Content matters, coverage does not

Schools should teach subject matter content. There, I said it. I do not want to entertain strawman arguments about progressive educators who don’t care whether children learn to read and write, add and subtract numbers, or learn facts about things. As far as I know, there is not a group anyone can join called “Parents and Educators Against Children Learning How to Read.”

What I am suggesting is that schools should teach content without becoming overly concerned with teaching all content. The need for such a shift in thinking is not new but was made newly possible by the disruption brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Eliminating the need for each and every student to cover the exact same material at the same time would free teachers to help their students create meaning, develop a sense of purpose, belonging, wellbeing, and the chance to learn more deeply about things that excite their curiosity. A paradigm for education that embraces these kinds of goals encourages teachers and students to develop content knowledge and skills by drawing on the local passions, interests, and resources of the school and community. As high school history teacher Michael Berkowitz likes to say: content matters more than coverage.

Most importantly, a successful education should be one that allows each child to become the best version of themselves, and to envision a future for their communities and the planet that isn’t yet realized – but that they can help bring about. EC REFERENCES Freire, P. (2000). Pedagogy of the oppressed. Continuum.

Kempf, A. (2016). The pedagogy of standardized testing: The radical impacts of educational standardization in the US and Canada. Palgrave.

Qin, A. & Hernández, J. C. (2020, January 10). China reports first death from new virus. The New York Times. www.nytimes.com/2020/01/10/world/asia/china-virus-wuhan-death.html. Para 4 Westheimer, J., & Hagerman, M. (2021). After COVID: Lessons from a pandemic for K-12 education. In T. Vaillancourt (Ed.), Children and schools during COVID-19 and beyond: Engagement and connection through opportunity. Royal Society of Canada. https://education.uottawa.ca/en/news/royal-society-canada-policy-briefingchildren-and-schools-during-covid-19-and-beyond

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La santé de la direction et la qualité de ses pratiques en pandémie

Premier pas vers le succès des élèves Jules Rocque est professeur titulaire et chercheur à la faculté d’éducation de l’Université de SaintBoniface (Winnipeg) depuis 2006 et ancien praticien en éducation de 1986 à 2006.

Cynthia Côté est étudiante de quatrième année en psychologie à l’Université du Manitoba (Winnipeg) et assistante de recherche.

PAR JULES ROCQUE ET CYNTHIA CÔTÉ Introduction

Parler d’une vision du succès de l’élève pour l’après-pandémie semble prématuré, même si la communauté planétaire marque le deuxième anniversaire de cette crise sanitaire sans pareille. Cela dit, cet article donne la parole aux membres des équipes de direction d’école, car le succès des élèves repose en grande partie entre les mains des personnes qui ont la lourde responsabilité de coconstruire cette vision du succès des apprenants qui fréquentent nos écoles. Depuis la pandémie, les professionnels de l’éducation n’ont pas eu beaucoup de temps à réfléchir à la notion du succès, car la gestion de cette crise sanitaire les a placés dans un mode de survie. C’est à peine s’ils gardent la tête hors de l’eau. Qu’importe, ils n’ont pas perdu l’essentiel : l’élève, ses apprentissages, sa santé et son bienêtre demeurent au cœur de leur quotidien.

La recherche le confirme : après le personnel enseignant, c’est l’équipe de direction d’école qui a le plus d’influence sur la réussite des élèves (Leithwood, 2012; Leithwood, Seashore Louis, Anderson et Wahlstrom,

30 ÉDUCATION CANADA • mars 2022 | Le Réseau Édcan

2004; Waters, Marzano et McNulty, 2003). Cela est d’autant plus vrai dans un contexte sociétal complètement bouleversé comme c’est le cas depuis le début de la pandémie de la COVID-19.

Cet article présente les résultats d’une étude qui a pris naissance dans un contexte de crise sanitaire mondiale.

Elle porte sur l’incidence de la pandémie sur les pratiques de gestion, sur la santé et sur le bienêtre des équipes de direction. Elle cherche à établir un lien entre les efforts des équipes de direction et le succès des élèves.

Contexte

En mars 2020, l’Organisation mondiale de la santé (OMS) déclarait que l’éclosion de COVID-19 était devenue une pandémie. C’est alors que les autorités dans plus de 190 pays à l’échelle mondiale ont fermé leurs écoles touchant plus de 1,6 milliard d’élèves du primaire au secondaire (Bryant, Chen, Dorn et Hall, 2020). « Horaires de cours déraillés; fermeture de jeu; réorganisation des cohortes d’élèves; sentiments d’insécurité face à l’inconnu : le grand dérangement » (Rocque et Côté, 2021, p. 13)! Onze www.edcan.ca/fr/magazine

mois plus tard, en février 2021, la situation sanitaire demeurait aussi précaire et l’impact de la pandémie sur le système scolaire se poursuivait. C’est dans ce contexte que l’équipe de recherche1, en collaboration avec le Conseil scolaire Centre-Nord (CSCN – Alberta) et la Division scolaire franco-manitobaine (DSFM – Manitoba), a mené son étude dont les principaux objectifs visaient 1) à recueillir l’opinion des équipes de direction d’école du CSCN et de la DSFM sur la pandémie et ses effets sur la gestion de l’école et 2) à examiner le niveau de santé et de bienêtre de ces équipes durant la crise sanitaire.

PHOTO : ISTOCK

Méthodologie

Au total, 63/70 personnes, provenant des équipes de direction du CSCN (n=31) et de la DSFM (n=32), ont participé à l’enquête, donnant un taux de participation de 90 %. Un questionnaire2 portant sur la gestion, la santé et le bienêtre a été envoyé aux participants à la mi-février 2021. Suite à la collecte des données, des analyses ont été réalisées à l’aide d’un logiciel3 qui a signalé les résultats statiquement significatifs (p ≤ 0,10). Le Comité d’éthique de la recherche de l’Université de Saint-Boniface a donné son approbation à l’équipe pour la réalisation de l’étude. www.edcan.ca/fr/magazine

Présentation des résultats

Soucieux de vouloir apporter un éclairage susceptible d’alimenter la réflexion sur la façon dont l’équipe de direction contribue à l’épanouissement des élèves en contexte de pandémie, les auteurs ont choisi de présenter les résultats de l’étude en portant une attention particulière à ces trois questions : 1. Quelle incidence la pandémie a-t-elle eue sur les pratiques de gestion pédagogiques des équipes de direction?

2. Quelle incidence la pandémie a-t-elle eue sur le bienêtre et la santé mentale des équipes de directions?

3. Quelle incidence la pandémie a-t-elle eue sur le niveau d’anxiété des équipes de direction?

1. Incidence de la pandémie sur les pratiques de gestion pédagogiques et administratives

Les élèves réussissent mieux dans les écoles où les équipes de direction accordent une priorité à l’enseignement et à l’apprentissage (Archambault, Garon, Harnois et Ouellet, 2011; Huber et Muijs, 2010).

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à la réussite et à la persévérance des élèves, sont nombreuses dans l’étude : • Préparer et réviser l’horaire des élèves et des membres du personnel.

• S’occuper de la sécurité à l’école.

• Préparer des notes et des messages courriel destinés aux membres du personnel, aux élèves et aux parents.

• Préparer et animer les réunions du personnel.

• Assurer les activités reliées à la supervision et à l’évaluation du personnel.

• Assurer les activités reliées à l’évaluation du rendement des élèves.

• Résoudre des problèmes de conflits ou de discipline chez les élèves.

• Conseiller et aider les enseignants avec leurs pratiques pédagogiques.

• Encourager et motiver les enseignants.

• Participer à des réunions d’ordre pédagogique avec le Ministère ou le conseil scolaire.

• Préserver le bienêtre du personnel.

• Recevoir des parents à l’école.

• Participer à des formations professionnelles destinées à l’équipe de direction d’école.

direction d’école qui « met beaucoup d’énergie à instaurer un milieu de vie agréable pour les élèves [et qui] fait le nécessaire pour instaurer un environnement calme, ordonné et sécuritaire » (p. 12) contribue à soutenir les enseignants dans leur enseignement et les élèves dans leur apprentissage. En raison des conditions sanitaires changeantes, les répondants de l’étude ont reconnu avoir consacré plus de temps à s’occuper de la sécurité, de la gestion des espaces et de la préparation/ révision des horaires, et ce, presque au quotidien.

Fullan (2014; 2021), Leithwood (2013) et Dupuis (2004) ont tous étudié les conseils scolaires performants et les écoles efficaces. La qualité des relations humaines entre la direction et le personnel enseignant est fortement associée à la réussite des élèves. Presque la totalité des répondants (97 %) qui ont participé à l’étude a reconnu qu’en situation de crise, il faut « Préserver le bienêtre du personnel ». « Les encourager » et « les motiver », deux autres fonctions de gestion des relations humaines ont aussi augmenté à 90 % et plus durant la pandémie. Développer des relations de travail saines, ouvertes, chaleureuses et productives à l’intérieur des écoles dans des circonstances exceptionnelles ne peuvent faire autrement qu’appuyer les enseignants qui se soucient de l’apprentissage de leurs élèves.

Parmi cette liste, nous avons retenu les six pratiques qui ont fait l’objet d’un fort consensus parmi tous les répondants à la suite de cette question : « En comparaison à votre situation avant la pandémie de COVID-19 (avant mars 2020), évaluez combien votre temps consacré aux différentes fonctions de gestion a changé (diminué/augmenté) ». Les résultats peuvent être regroupés en deux catégories : a) la gestion des lieux, des espaces et du temps et b) la gestion des relations humaines (figure 1).

L’étude s’intéresse à la perception des membres des équipes de direction d’école des deux autorités scolaires sur leur bienêtre et leur santé mentale en effectuant leur travail durant une crise sanitaire. Il est pertinent de s’y arrêter, car la recherche l’affirme depuis longtemps : les conséquences du stress, d’une mauvaise santé et d’un haut niveau d’anxiété qui perdure mènent à un éventuel épuisement émotionnel, à une déshumanisation des relations interpersonnelles et à une diminution du sentiment d’accomplissement (Poirel, 2009). Selon la durée de ce mauvais état de santé, « [c]ette spirale de détérioration du rendement aurait comme conséquence une perte de productivité pouvant conduire à la dépression nerveuse (Shirom, 2003, cité dans Poirel, 2009).

Face à une montagne de données, nous avons dû effectuer des choix judicieux. C’est pourquoi nous présentons les réponses statistiquement significatives en fonction des années d’expérience des membres des équipes de direction pour illustrer leur bienêtre et leur santé mentale. Le tableau 1 nous présente les figures portant sur six différents indicateurs de bienêtre et de santé : Je n’ai jamais assez de temps pour effectuer mon travail au quotidien.

1. Je suis la plupart du temps détendu.

2. J’ai beaucoup d’énergie.

3. J’ai un bon équilibre famille/travail.

4. Décrivez votre état de santé.

5. J’ai une haute estime de soi.

Figure 1. Fonctions de gestion pédagogiques et % de répondants qui affirme qu’elles ont augmenté/beaucoup augmenté * (a) : gestion des lieux, des espaces et du temps; (b) : gestion des relations humaines 90 87

(a*) S’occuper de la sécurité à l’école (désinfecter, distancier)

94 90

(a) Voir au fonctionnement quotidien de (entretien, logistique)

97

(a) Préparer/réviser l’horaire (élèves et membres du personnel)

87 97 97

(b) Préserver le bien-être du personnel

93 90

(b) Encourager/motiver les enseignants

100

(b) Préparer des notes et des courriels (communication) DSFM (n=32)

CSCN (n=31)

87 0

10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

Collerette, Pelletier et Turcotte (2013) affirment que l’équipe de

32 ÉDUCATION CANADA • mars 2022 | Le Réseau Édcan

2. Incidence de la pandémie sur le bienêtre et la santé mentale

Chaque indicateur nous aide à brosser un portrait global des répondants. Les résultats démontrent que pour l’ensemble des indicateurs, à l’exception de la description de l’état de santé (figure 6), les membres des équipes de direction ayant moins d’expérience font moins bonne figure que ceux ayant plus d’expérience. Le niveau d’estime de soi (figure 7) est tout de même favorable chez les deux groupes (70 % et 89 %), cependant, chez les répondants ayant moins d’expérience, 13 % sont « incertain » et 17 % sont « en désaccord » avec l’affirmation : « j’ai une haute estime de soi ». www.edcan.ca/fr/magazine

Tableau 1. Portrait global du bienêtre et de la santé mentale en fonctions des années d’expérience (données statistiquement significatives)

Figure 2. Résultats en % en fonction des années d’expérience : ne jamais avoir assez de temps pour faire le travail au quotidien 100 80

100

84

80 55

60

Figure 3. Résultats en % en fonction des années d’expérience : je suis la plupart du temps détendu

40 16

20

17 0

Plus/moins

1 à 5 années

20

Pas d’accord

D’accord

6+ années

80

80

20

38 35

28

16

0

6+ années

40 20

50 28

25

25

17

0 D’accord

Plus/moins

1 à 5 années

Pas d’accord

D’accord

6+ années

100

80

80 62

60

34

60 38 6

0 Bon/ satisfaisant

1 à 5 années

www.edcan.ca/fr/magazine

6+ années

89 70

40

20 Excellent/ très bien

Pas d’accord

Figure 7. Résultats en % en fonction des années d’expérience : j’ai une haute estime de soi

100 60

Plus/moins

1 à 5 années

Figure 6. Résultats en % en fonction des années d’expérience : décrivez votre état de santé

40

55

60

47

Pas d’accord

Figure 5. Résultats en % en fonction des années d’expérience : j’ai un bon équilibre famillle/travail 100

38

Plus/moins

1 à 5 années

100 60

22

13

35

31

0

Figure 4. Résultats en % en fonction des années d’expérience : j’ai beaucoup d’énergie

40

35

40

28

0 D’accord

66

60

0

Mauvais

6+ années

17

13 10

20

0

0 D’accord 1 à 5 années

Incertain

En désaccord

6+ années

Le Réseau Édcan | mars 2022 • ÉDUCATION CANADA

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3. Incidence de la pandémie sur l’état d’anxiété⁴

Le dernier indicateur retenu est celui de la présence de l’anxiété et de sa fréquence dans la vie des participants (figure 8). Nous constatons que 80 % des membres des équipes de direction d’école éprouvent de l’anxiété durant la pandémie, cependant, seuls 18 % affirment qu’elle se manifeste « la plupart du temps ou toujours ».

Tableau 2. Portrait global de l’état d’anxiété de l’ensemble des répondants Figure 8. Résultats en % : faites-vous de l’anxiété?

Figure 9. Résultats en % : faites-vous de l’anxiété – la plupart du temps ou toujours?

que la thérapie individuelle/de groupe et l’automédicamentation s’y retrouvent au bas.

Figure 10. Résultats en % : façons de gérer le stress (ordre décroissant) Sport Méditation/pleine conscience Consommation d’alcool

20

18

80

82

Yoga Médicaments (ordonnance) Thérapie/counseling

Oui

Non

Automédicamentation (y compris cannabis) 0

À la lecture des résultats présentés, nous voyons que la pandémie a eu une incidence sur : 1) le temps consacré aux pratiques de gestion pédagogiques et administratives; 2) le bienêtre et la santé mentale et 3) la présence de l’anxiété dans la vie des membres des équipes de direction des autorités scolaires de l’Alberta et du Manitoba. Malgré le fait que 80 % des répondants affirment vivre dans l’anxiété, 97 % d’entre eux consacrent plus de temps à « préserver le bienêtre de leur personnel » et 90+ % à « encourager/motiver les enseignants » durant cette crise sanitaire. Ces pratiques de gestion axées sur la qualité des relations interpersonnelles entre l’équipe de direction et le personnel enseignant contribuent sûrement à maintenir un environnement qui permettait le maintien d’un certain engagement de la part des élèves, et ce, à l’intérieur d’une organisation qui a subi d’importantes transformations de fond en comble depuis l’arrivée de COVID-19.

10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

Le tableau 3 présente différents aspects de gestion des pratiques pédagogiques et de bienêtre, tant pour les enseignants que pour les membres des équipes de direction, ainsi que des actions prises pour les illustrer. La communication se voulait fréquente, accueillante et favorisant une approche consultative. La gestion se voulait simplifiée, malgré la complexité des exigences, collaborative, rassurante et stratégique selon les priorités. La technologie servait d’outil d’appui et les répondants se souciaient de leur bienêtre ainsi que de celui du personnel en cherchant un équilibre à leur vie.

Tableau 3. Aspects de gestion des pratiques pédagogiques/bienêtre et actions ASPECTS et actions concrètes

L’expérience des équipes de direction de ces autorités scolaires offrira-t-elle un éclairage partiel sur les nouveaux défis à relever...

Retombées sur le terrain

Cette tranche de l’article propose quelques éléments pratico-pratiques. D’abord, les répondants ont reconnu l’importance de gérer leur stress afin de maintenir une gestion de leur établissement, et un accompagnement des gens qui les fréquentent, en contexte de pandémie. La figure 10 illustre ces différentes façons. L’activité physique et la méditation/pleine conscience se trouvent au haut de la liste tandis

34 ÉDUCATION CANADA • mars 2022 | Le Réseau Édcan

COMMUNICATION • assurer une communication fréquente, transparente, régulière, authentique et honnête • favoriser l’approche « porte ouverte », accueillante envers le personnel, les parents et les élèves • demeurer à l’écoute du personnel et apporter des changements selon la rétroaction reçue • utiliser une approche consultative pour prendre le pouls de la santé mentale du personnel STRATÉGIES DE GESTION • simplifier les procédures et formuler des attentes claires et précises • assurer des suivis ponctuels auprès des membres du personnel et des élèves • accroître sa présence dans les salles de classe et ailleurs dans l’école www.edcan.ca/fr/magazine

• travailler de près et avec d’autres collègues • prendre en main son développement professionnel • appuyer le personnel en matière de pédagogie, de planification et d’évaluation des élèves • s’attaquer ensemble aux défis et établir des priorités • rassurer les parents et les élèves TECHNOLOGIE • utiliser des plateformes virtuelles pour les rencontres et pour l’enseignement/l’apprentissage • faire appel à de nombreux outils pour appuyer la pédagogie • offrir des formations sur les techniques d’enseignement en ligne • améliorer mes compétences technologiques BIENÊTRE • éviter de lire mes courriels pendant au moins 24 heures en fin de semaine • éteindre le portable à compter de 20 h • choisir des aliments sains pour mes repas à l’école • parler à des collègues • prendre du temps pour moi • faire de l’exercice tous les jours • surveiller les membres du personnel pour évaluer leur état de santé • réaliser une activité zen avec son personnel • suivre une formation sur le stress et l’anxiété • adopter la méthode des « petits pas » (cibler de petits objectifs chaque jour) • tenter d’avoir une vie équilibrée • rire!

Conclusion

La pandémie de la COVID-19 aura fait bien des victimes humaines, regrettablement. Mais que fera-t-elle des structures et des organisations, telles que le système d’éducation et la redéfinition du succès des élèves qui les fréquentent? Cet article cherchait à démontrer l’incidence de cette crise sanitaire sur les membres des équipes de direction qui soutiennent les responsables de l’enseignement. En adaptant leurs pratiques de gestion pédagogiques aux nouvelles réalités et en se préoccupant du bienêtre de leur personnel, les autorités scolaires ont donné de nouvelles formes à l’enseignement et à l’apprentissage.

L’expérience des équipes de direction de ces autorités scolaires offrira-t-elle un éclairage partiel sur les nouveaux défis à relever quand viendra le véritable « après pandémie »? C’est alors qu’il sera possible de s’ajuster et de répondre aux attentes qui se pointeront à l’horizon pour nos élèves et les membres du personnel de nos écoles. ÉC

RÉFÉRENCES Archambault, J., Garon, R., Harnois, L, et Ouellet, G. (2011). Diriger une école en milieu défavorisé : Ce qui ressort des écrits scientifiques et professionnels (mise à jour du document 2006). Université de Montréal et Programme de soutien à l’école montréalaise (MELS), 17 p.

Bryant, J., Chen, L.-K., Dorn, E. et Hall, S. (2020). School-system priorities in the age of coronavirus. McKinsey & Company.

Collerette, P., Pelletier, D. et Turcotte, G. (2013). Recueil de pratiques des directions d’écoles secondaires favorisant la réussite des élèves. Recueil de pratiques. Université du Québec en Outaouais.

Derogatis, L. R. (1987). The Derogatis Stress Profile (DSP) : quantification of psychological stress. Dans G. A. Fava et T. N. Wise (dir.), Advances in Psychosomatic Medicine : Vol. 17. Research Paradigms in Psychosomatic Medicine (30-54). Karger.

Dupuis, P. (2004). L’administration de l’éducation : quelles compétences? Éducation et francophonie, 32(2), 133-157.

Fullan, M. (2021). Les moteurs efficaces de la réussite systémique. Centre for Strategic Education.

Fullan, M. (2014). The Principal. Three Keys to Maximizing Impact. Jossey-Bass.

Huber, S. G., et Muijs, D. (2010). School leadership effectiveness: the growing insight in the importance of school leadership for the quality and development of schools and their pupils. In S. G. Huber (dir.), School leadership - International perspectives. Springer Science.

Leithwood, K. (2013). Les conseils scolaires performants et leur leadership. Une étude commandée par le Council of Ontario Directors of Education et l’Institut de leadership en éducation.

Montgomery, C., Bujold, N., Bertrand, R. et Dupuis, F. (2002). Les caractéristiques psychométriques des indicateurs de stress et de la capacité de résolution de problèmes sociaux chez les étudiants en enseignement en milieu majoritaire et minoritaire francophone; une comparaison entre deux contextes. Étude.

Poirel, E. (2009). Le stress professionnel des directions d’école au Québec : sources du stress, vécu professionnel et ajustements (Thèse de doctorat, Université de Montréal).

Rocque, J. et Côté, C. (2021). COVID-19, les équipes de direction d’école en milieux francophones minoritaires (Alberta et Manitoba). Impact sur la gestion, la santé et le bien-être. Rapport de recherche. Université de Saint-Boniface.

St-Germain, M. (2011). Le leadership et la gestion du temps. Dans J. Rocque (dir.), La direction d’école et le leadership pédagogique en milieu francophone minoritaire – considérations théoriques pour une pratique éclairée (p. 219-256).

Presses universitaires de Saint-Boniface.

NOTES 1 Jules Rocque, chercheur et Cynthia Côté, assistante de recherche.

2 Questionnaires adaptés de Derogatis (1987) et St-Germain (2011).

3 Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS, version 27).

4 Anxiété : une émotion désagréable qui combine des symptômes physiques (battement accéléré du cœur, difficulté respiratoire, sueurs, tremblements, étourdissements, mains moites, muscles tendus) et des pensées anxieuses (inquiétudes, ruminations, obsessions, doutes, craintes). Adaptation de la définition de l’Association des médecins psychiatres du Québec (https://ampq.org).

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QU’EST DEVENU LE SUCCÈS?

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Est-ce que l’apprentissage à distance s’est réalisé aussi bien qu’en salle de classe?

Les recherches indiquent que la réponse est plutôt « non »¹

Steve Bissonnette, Ph. D. est professeur titulaire au Département Éducation de l’Université TELUQ. Il s’intéresse aux travaux portant sur l’efficacité de l’enseignement et des écoles, à la gestion efficace des comportements ainsi qu’aux approches pédagogiques favorisant la réussite des élèves en difficulté.

Christan Boyer est consultant en pédagogie et chercheur indépendant (Éditions de l’Apprentissage, SESSIONS) à Montréal, Québec.

PAR STEVE BISSONNETTE ET CHRISTIAN BOYER DEPUIS MARS 2020, la pandémie de COVID-19 a forcé

les écoles à délaisser l’enseignement usuel en présence des élèves pour la mise en place d’un enseignement à distance en mode virtuel. Ce contexte inédit représente pour les apôtres des technologies une occasion rêvée de transformer radicalement l’enseignement ordinaire au profit d’une école virtuelle favorisant enfin, soi-disant, le développement des compétences du xxie siècle, une personnalisation accrue du parcours d’apprentissage de l’élève et une véritable différenciation pédagogique (Cavenaghi et Senécal, 2020). Ce discours lyrique accorde aux technologies un pouvoir mirifique qui n’a pourtant pas été observé jusqu’à maintenant lorsqu’elles sont employées en salle de classe, et ce, avant même la Pandémie 2019-… : […] même les partisans les plus enthousiastes de l’utilisation de la technologie en éducation commencent à reconnaître que si la technologie peut être utile pour améliorer les résultats de l’apprentissage, elle n’a pas encore eu un impact révolutionnaire sur l’apprentissage de la lecture ou des mathématiques2. (Slavin, 2019, p. 1)

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En effet, les résultats compilés par Slavin (2019) montrent que le recours aux technologies en salle de classe a un effet positif sur le rendement des élèves, certes, mais oscillant entre faible et négligeable. Par conséquent, est-ce que l’effet des technologies aurait pu être plus élevé en période de confinements, lorsque l’enseignant est physiquement absent et que l’élève est en ligne?

Les effets de l’apprentissage à distance sur le rendement des élèves

Un an après la fermeture brutale des établissements scolaires, en mars 2020, des recherches et des rapports d’évaluation des effets du premier confinement de la pandémie et de l’enseignement à distance ont commencé à être publiés. Boyer et Bissonnette (2021) ont recensé 19 études ayant analysé les effets du premier confinement et de l’enseignement virtuel sur le rendement d’environ 13 millions d’élèves provenant d’écoles primaires et secondaires, et ce, un peu partout dans le monde (Angleterre, Australie, Belgique, Canada, États-Unis, France et Pays-Bas). L’organisme Education Endowment Foundawww.edcan.ca/fr/magazine

PHOTO : ISTOCK

tion (EEF, 2021) expose également les résultats de 12 des 19 études présentées par Boyer et Bissonnette (2021). Les conclusions de ces deux recensions se recoupent. L’ensemble des recherches tendent à démontrer que les effets du premier confinement de la COVID-19 et de l’enseignement à distance sur les élèves ont tendance à être généralement négatifs en lecture, principalement pour les élèves du primaire, et parfois plus fortement négatifs en mathématique. Les écarts de rendement au primaire entre les élèves à risque et les autres élèves semblent s’accentuer, et ce, même dans l’un des pays les mieux préparés à basculer en enseignement à distance comme les Pays-Bas (Engzell, Frey et Verhagen, 2021). Sur la base des effets observés, Dorn et ses collègues (2020) ont estimé que les élèves pourraient avoir perdu en moyenne de 5 à 9 mois d’apprentissage en juin 2021, et que les élèves plus vulnérables pourraient accuser un retard de 6 à 12 mois.

Sur la base des résultats cités précédemment, qui reposent principalement sur un confinement de 10 à 15 semaines au début de la pandémie, il est possible d’appréhender des résultats encore plus www.edcan.ca/fr/magazine

négatifs dans les prochains mois pour l’ensemble des élèves. Dorn, Hancock, Sarakatsannis et Viruleg (2021) manifestent également cette appréhension : […] les élèves [de la maternelle à la 12e année] ont en moyenne cinq mois de retard en mathématiques et quatre mois en lecture à la fin de l’année scolaire [en juin 2021] … En mathématiques, les élèves des écoles majoritairement noires ont terminé l’année avec six mois de retard d’apprentissage, les élèves des écoles à faibles revenus avaient sept mois en moyenne de retard d’apprentissage […] (p. 2).

Deux synthèses de recherches plus récentes ont également montré des effets négatifs de la pandémie et de l’enseignement à distance sur le rendement des élèves. L’étude d’Hammerstein, König, Dreisörner et Frey, publiée en septembre 2021, révèle que : « Les résultats indiquent un effet négatif des fermetures d’écoles sur les résultats des élèves, en particulier chez les plus jeunes et les élèves issus de familles à faible statut socio-économique » (p. 1).

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Une étude réalisée par Donnelly et Patrino, publiée en novembre 2021, indique pour sa part : […] huit études ont été identifiées ; sept d’entre elles présentent des pertes d’apprentissage chez au moins certains participants, tandis qu’une des sept a également trouvé des cas de gains d’apprentissage dans un sous-groupe particulier […] En outre, quatre des études ont observé une augmentation des inégalités, certains groupes démographiques d’élèves ayant subi des pertes d’apprentissage plus importantes que d’autres. (p. 1) Patrino, l’un des deux chercheurs de cette synthèse, indiquait le 16 novembre 2021 sur son blogue : Depuis la rédaction de notre analyse systématique, plusieurs nouvelles études ont été entreprises, documentant des pertes d’apprentissage comprises entre 0,08 et 0,32 écart-type. Il s’agit notamment des pays suivants : le Brésil, la Chine, la République tchèque, l’Angleterre, l’Allemagne, le Ghana, l’Italie […] [et pour l’enseignement supérieur] la Norvège et la Russie [... ] Peu ou pas de pertes d’apprentissage ont été détectées au Danemark, en France et au Japon.

Bien qu’il n’y ait, à notre connaissance, aucune étude scientifique publiée au Canada ayant évalué les effets de l’école virtuelle sur le rendement des élèves en temps de pandémie, le chercheur George Georgiou, de l’Université de l’Alberta, a tout de même mesuré le rendement des élèves du primaire en lecture. Les résultats rapportés par le chercheur dans une entrevue accordée en novembre 2020 à la journaliste Elise Stolte du Edmonton Journal, sont inquiétants.

Avant la fermeture des écoles en mars 2020, le chercheur disposait des résultats d’évaluations standardisées en lecture provenant de milliers d’élèves de la 2e à la 9e année (environ 4 000 élèves pour chaque année). Les élèves ont passé les mêmes évaluations en septembre 2020. Les élèves de 4e année et des années subséquentes ont généralement amélioré leur rendement en lecture. Toutefois, les élèves de 2e et de 3e année ont montré une baisse du rendement en lecture représentant six à huit mois d’apprentissage. Dans une autre étude, Georgiou indique qu’il a mesuré les habiletés en lecture de 1 560 enfants de 1re année en septembre 2019 et en janvier 2020. De ce nombre, 540 élèves avaient été identifiés en difficulté avant la pandémie et devaient recevoir de l’aide. La fermeture des écoles et le passage en mode virtuel ont mis fin à cette intervention orthopédagogique. Lors de la rentrée des classes en septembre 2020, l’équipe de recherche de Georgiou a retracé et évalué 409 de ces élèves en difficulté, qui sont maintenant en 2e année. Les chercheurs constatent alors que 80 % (327/409) d’entre eux, maintenant en 2e année, ne connaissent toujours pas les sons des lettres, et que plus de la moitié ont des résultats inférieurs à ceux obtenus en janvier 2020, lesquels étaient déjà faibles.

Au Québec, l’enquête de Turcotte, Giguère et Prévost (2021), menée auprès de 175 enseignants du secteur primaire, montre que 78 % d’entre eux estiment que leurs élèves, lors de la rentrée de l’automne 2020, sont arrivés en classe avec des habiletés en lecture plus faibles que celles des élèves des années passées. En écriture, 71 % des enseignants affirment que leurs élèves sont plus faibles que ceux des années précédentes.

En résumé, les effets de l’école virtuelle et des confinements successifs sur le rendement scolaire des élèves sont évidents au niveau du primaire, et encore plus au début de la scolarisation et pour l’ensemble des élèves à risque, tous degrés scolaires confondus. Cela dit,

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les effets négatifs observés ne se limitent pas au rendement scolaire.

Les effets socio-émotionnels de l’apprentissage à distance et de la pandémie de COVID-19 sur le développement des élèves

L’Institut National de Santé Publique du Québec (INSPQ, 2021) a montré des effets négatifs de la pandémie sur le développement des enfants de 2 à 12 ans. L’INSPQ a recensé 14 études examinant le domaine du développement social et affectif, principalement en ce qui concerne les problèmes de comportements internalisés et externalisés. La provenance des études est diversifiée : l’Italie, le RoyaumeUni, l’Espagne, les États-Unis, le Brésil, les Pays-Bas, Israël et Hong Kong. Les problèmes de comportements internalisés réfèrent aux difficultés émotionnelles comme la dépression, l’anxiété, etc. Les comportements externalisés sont associés aux problèmes de conduite, à l’irritabilité et la mauvaise humeur, à l’hyperactivité/l’inattention, aux problèmes relationnels avec les pairs, à la manifestation d’agressivité ou à un trouble de l’opposition.

En somme, les effets socio-émotionnels de l’école virtuelle et de l’apprentissage à distance en temps de pandémie ont tendance à être nettement très néfastes.

L’INSPQ (2021) indique « [qu’] une majorité d’études rapportent une augmentation significative des problèmes de comportements internalisés et externalisés, comparativement à la période prépandémie, selon différentes manifestations […] » (p. 5). Voici quelques statistiques à ce sujet : • Chez les enfants d’âge préscolaire, augmentation des problèmes de conduite de 64 %, de l’anxiété, des troubles de l’humeur et de l’irritabilité de 45 %, 80,9 % et 66,2 %, respectivement, et plus généralement des difficultés émotionnelles et de l’hyperactivité; • Chez les enfants d’âge scolaire, augmentation significative des symptômes de dépression, ainsi qu’une augmentation de l’ennui (73,8 %), de la solitude (64,5 %) et de la frustration (61,4 %); • Chez les enfants d’âge scolaire, augmentation de l’anxiété, de l’agressivité et de l’irritabilité chez plus de 52 % d’entre eux; • Augmentation, au-delà des seuils cliniques établis, des difficultés émotionnelles chez les enfants de tout âge, entre 18,64 % et 39,9 %, selon les études. Augmentation également au-delà des seuils cliniques de l’hyperactivité/l’inattention (20,36 %) et des problèmes de conduite (35,10 %) chez les enfants de tout âge.

(INSPQ, 2021, p. 5) Les confinements répétés entre l’hiver 2020 et le printemps 2021 ont entraîné de multiples conséquences socio-émotionnelles chez les www.edcan.ca/fr/magazine

enfants des garderies, les enfants fréquentant l’école primaire ainsi qu’auprès des adolescents du secondaire en ce qui a trait au niveau d’anxiété, au taux de dépression, aux difficultés de concentration, à l’isolation sociale et à la diminution de l’activité physique (dos Reis et al. 2021; Moustafa, Mohamed et El-Houfey, 2021). Le sommeil des enfants et des adolescents semble aussi avoir été perturbé par le contexte de la pandémie (Bruni et al., 2021). Les jeunes adultes au niveau post-secondaire semblent vivre sensiblement les mêmes difficultés que les plus jeunes (Son, Hegde, Smith, Wang et Sasangohar, 2020). Les effets négatifs de la pandémie sur les variables autres que scolaires peuvent varier d’un pays à l’autre, entre autres quant à l’anxiété et aux sentiments dépressifs des enfants. Cela semble directement attribuable au degré de confinement imposé et au stress parental (Borbás et al., 2021; Orgilés et al., 2021).

En somme, les effets socio-émotionnels de l’école virtuelle et de l’apprentissage à distance en temps de pandémie ont tendance à être nettement très néfastes.

Conclusion

L’enseignement virtuel et l’apprentissage à distance, réalisés au cours des deux dernières années, montrent des effets négatifs sur le rendement scolaire et le développement socio-émotionnel des élèves, et ce en particulier auprès des plus vulnérables. Il importe de rappeler et de souligner que des synthèses de recherches ont montré les effets négatifs de l’école virtuelle sur le rendement des élèves, et ce, même en contexte non pandémique (Boyer et Bissonnette, 2021; Prettyman et Sass, 2020). En bref, les effets de l’école virtuelle, en temps de pandémie ou non, sont généralement négatifs (Boyer et Bissonnette, 2021).

Quoiqu’en disent les apôtres des technologies, l’école du xxie siècle, si cela peut exister, doit être en mode présence pour être optimale. Toutefois, en cas de fermeture des écoles en situations d’urgence, nous considérons quand même qu’il est nettement préférable d’offrir aux élèves un enseignement à distance plutôt que rien afin que l’école demeure en contact minimalement avec ses élèves.

Puisse les élèves fréquenter des écoles de briques et de mortier pour assurer leur réussite scolaire et favoriser un développement socio-émotionnel harmonieux et plus humain! ÉC NOTES 1 Ce texte constitue un extrait d’un chapitre de livre : Boyer et Bissonnette (à paraître). Quels sont les effets des technologies et de l’enseignement virtuel sur le rendement des élèves, avec ou sans pandémie? Dans Clermont Gauthier, Steve Bissonnette et Marie Bocquillon. Questions théoriques et pratiques sur l’enseignement explicite. Québec : Presses Université du Québec.

2 Nous soulignons.

RÉFÉRENCES Borbás, R., Fehlbaum, L. V., Dimanova, P., Negri, A., Arudchelvam, J., Schnider, C. B., & Raschle, N. M. (1er février 2021). Mental well-being during Covid-19 in adults, mothers and children: behavioral evidence and neural premarkers. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/pdj7n Boyer, C., et Bissonnette, S. (2021). Les effets du premier confinement, de l’enseignement à distance et de la pandémie de COVID-19 sur le rendement scolaire - Après la pandémie, faudrait-il généraliser l’usage de l’école virtuelle à toutes les clientèles et en toutes circonstances? Montréal : Éditions de l’apprentissage. https://tinyurl.com/f8aszks Bruni, O., Malorgio, E., Doria, M., Finotti, E., Spruyt, K., Melegari, M. G., Villa, M. P., & Ferri, R. (2021). Changes in sleep patterns and disturbances in children and adolescents in Italy during the Covid-19 outbreak. Sleep medicine, S1389-

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9457(21)00094-0. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sleep.2021.02.003 Cavenaghi, U., Senécal, I. (2020). Osons l’école d’après. Montréal : Éditions Château d’encre. 66 pages.

Dorn, E., Hancock, B., Sarakatsannis, J., et Viruleg, E. (2020). COVID-19 and learning loss—disparities grow and students need help. https:// mckinsey.com/industries/public-and-social-sector/ourinsights/covid-19and-learning-loss-disparities-growand-students-need-help Donnelly, R., Patrinos, H.A. Learning loss during Covid-19: An early systematic review. Prospects (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11125-021-09582-6 Dorn, E., Hancock, B., Sarakatsannis, J., et Viruleg. E. (2021). COVID-19 and education: The lingering effects of unfinished learning. McKinsey & Company. https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/public-and-social-sector/our-insights/ covid-19-and-education-the-lingering-effects-of-unfinished-learning dos Reis, F. P., Amaro, R., Silva, F. M., Pinto, S. V., Barroca, I., Sá, T., Carvalho Ferreira, R., Cartaxo, T. et Boavida, J. (2021). The Impact of Confinement on Children and Adolescents. Acta Médica Portuguesa, 34(4), 245-246.

Education Endowment Foundation (2021). Best Evidence on Impact of COVID-19 on Pupil Attainment. https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/guidance-for-teachers/covid-19resources/best-evidence-on-impact-of-covid-19-on-pupil-attainment Engzell, P., Frey, A., et Verhagen, M. D. (2021). Learning Loss Due to School Closures During the COVID-19 Pandemic. https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/ve4z7 Hammerstein, S., König, C., Dreisörner, T., & Frey, A. (2021). Effects of COVID-19Related School Closures on Student Achievement-A Systematic Review. Frontiers in psychology, 12, 746289. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.746289 Institut national de santé publique du Québec (2021). COVID-19 : Impacts de la pandémie sur le développement des enfants de 2 à 12 ans. Gouvernement du Québec: INSPQ. Repéré à https:// inspq.qc.ca/sites/default/files/publications/3157-impactspandemie-developpement-enfants-2-12-ans.pdf?fbclid=IwAR0jDVbj4LiYW_dFbEY2 kZyODLshQVUJwSXXWFzexkocrc2HSRySI8-lwec Moustafa, K. Z., Mohamed, B. M. et El-Houfey, A. A. (2021). Effects of Home Confinement due to COVID-19 on Physical, Social and Psychological status of Children and Adolescents. Egyptian Journal of Health Care, 12(1), 105-120.

Orgilés, M., Espada, J. P., Delvecchio, E., Francisco, R., Mazzeschi, C., Pedro, M. et Morales, A. (2021). Anxiety and depressive symptoms in children and adolescents during covid-19 pandemic: a transcultural approach. Psicothema, 33(1), 125-130.

Patrinos, H. A. (2021, billet de blogue). Learning Loss due to COVID-19: it’s real!

(News and Research 268). Education, economics and public policy, 16 novembre, https://hpatrinos.com/2021/11/16/learning-loss-due-to-covid-19-its-real/?fbclid= IwAR2x93_gH2Mn0xqFvHQwjl6x5AdmbcNqf1d_RhsYrCy8hLduoZp70TtOoYk Prettyman, A., et Sass, T. R. (2020). The Efficacy of Virtual Instruction in K-12 Education: A Review of the Literature. Georgia Policy Labs: Metro Atlanta Policy Lab for Education. https://gpl.gsu.edu/download/virtual-learning-in-k-12-education-literature-review /?wpdmdl=1952&refresh=603bfaae9bed31614543534 Slavin, R. (14 novembre 2019). A powerful hunger for evidence-proven technology [Billet de blogue]. https://robertslavinsblog.wordpress.com/2019/11/14/a-powerful-hunger-forevidence-proven-technology/ Son, C., Hegde, S., Smith, A., Wang, X. et Sasangohar, F. (2020). Effects of COVID19 on college students’ mental health in the United States: Interview survey study.

Journal of medical internet research, 22(9), e21279.

Stolte, E. (27 novembre 2020). Alberta must keep elementary schools open, online learning was a disaster for struggling kids. Edmonton Journal. https://edmontonjournal.com/opinion/columnists/elise-stolte-alberta-mustkeep-elementary-schools-open-online-learning-was-a-disaster-for-struggling-kids Turcotte, C., Giguère, M. H., et Prévost, N. (2021). Rapport d’enquête. Le point de vue des enseignantes et des enseignants du primaire sur la compétence à lire et à écrire de leurs élèves en contexte pandémique depuis septembre 2020.

Département d’éducation et formation spécialisées, UQAM. https://adel.uqam.ca/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/D-18096%20 -%20Document_Point-de-vue-enseignant_VF-Web.pdf?_ t=1614448101&fbclid=IwAR1etwFo7uqgxNENNleP58pKn3iI8AO3QQf6owjHnahC_ AXKlZ1j3DaoW_Y

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QU’EST DEVENU LE SUCCÈS?

NE MANQUEZ PAS LE PODCAST! edcan.ca/podcast-fr

S’opposer à l’enseignement à distance sans tenir compte des contextes différenciés Une attitude réductrice risquée

Mélanie Tremblay est professeure régulière à l’Unité départementale des sciences de l’éducation au campus Lévis de l’Université du Québec à Rimouski. Elle s’intéresse à la dynamique d’enseignementapprentissageévaluation en mathématique ainsi qu’aux interventions menées auprès des élèves en difficulté.

Stéphane Allaire, Ph.D, est professeur en pratiques éducatives au Département des sciences de l’éducation à l’Université du Québec à Chicoutimi. Ses activités d’enseignement concernent l’intervention pédagogique et la formation pratique.

Il est responsable de l’équipe FRQ-SC sur le partenariat recherchepratique en éducation.

PAR MÉLANIE TREMBLAY ET STÉPHANE ALLAIRE L’INTÉRÊT et les travaux de recherche sur les usages

des technologies numériques en éducation ne sont pas nouveaux. Dès la fin des années 1990, un corpus suffisamment solide existait déjà pour que les sciences de l’apprentissage en reconnaissent les apports pour l’apprentissage. Par exemple, en 2000, Bransford, Brown et Cocking parlaient déjà des technologies comme moteur pour guider et améliorer l’apprentissage d’une manière que jamais personne ne l’aurait imaginé à peine quelques années auparavant.

Le passage forcé à l’enseignement à distance (E.D.), au printemps 2020, a attisé nombre de défis relativement aux activités d’enseignement-apprentissage (E-A) avec le numérique. Au Québec comme ailleurs, l’accessibilité au réseau et au matériel informatique (Resta, Laferrière, McLaughlin et Kouraogo, 2018), la variabilité dans le développement professionnel offert aux personnes enseignantes, tant sur les outils technologiques que sur les modalités d’E.D. (Thomas et Knezek, 2008), les conditions organisationnelles, ainsi que la disponibilité

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de moyens permettant de répondre aux besoins particuliers de certains élèves étaient déjà différenciées, pour ne pas dire inégales. Ces défis, avec lesquels les acteurs du système éducatif devaient déjà composer, ont été amplifiés par la conjoncture sanitaire.

L’étude des pratiques enseignantes exige la considération des particularités des contextes sur lesquels on pose intimement les yeux. Les perspectives socio-historico-culturelles, qui se sont développées depuis une centaine d’années, entre autres sous l’impulsion de l’éminent psychologue russe Lev Vygotsky, sont riches d’enseignement. Il s’agit de faire preuve de sensibilité, à l’instar de l’ethnographe qui cherche à comprendre en quoi la constitution même d’un lieu, d’une communauté, etc. peut influencer ce qui s’y passe, ce qui en découle…

Les données recueillies sur un terrain de recherche ont donc un caractère situé que l’on a besoin de comprendre pour pouvoir en dégager des résultats qui ont un sens. Un regard historique, c’est-à-dire la considération d’éléments ou d’événements qui ont eu lieu antérieurement à la colwww.edcan.ca/fr/magazine

PHOTO : ISTOCK

www.edcan.ca/fr/magazine

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lecte, peut être nécessaire pour dégager des constats qui tiennent la route.

Ce texte propose une incursion dans une démarche d’investigation d’enseignants de mathématiques qui ont vécu l’E.D en 2020 et 2021.

Notre intention est de contribuer à la réflexion sur la pertinence, sinon la nécessité d’étudier les contextes éducatifs dans leur ensemble et leur dynamique, plutôt que leur faire une analyse réductrice, au nom de certains desiderata.

Enseigner à distance sans l’avoir planifié, c’est devoir se familiariser rapidement avec les outils disponibles en apprenant à reconnaitre leurs potentialités et leurs limites

Dans une étude réalisée en juin 2020 (Tremblay et Delobbe, 2021), nous relations que 44,6 % des 307 répondants enseignant les mathématiques au primaire et au secondaire jugeaient leur niveau d’aisance à recourir aux technologies comme moyen à nul avant ce passage forcé à l’E.D. Bien que la majorité reconnaisse avoir augmenté ce niveau à la fin juin, le recours aux technologies demeure parmi leurs principaux enjeux, auxquels s’ajoutent l’accessibilité aux ressources technologiques pour tous les élèves, l’orchestration d’un enseignement qui favorise la participation des élèves, ainsi qu’un questionnement sur le développement d’une compréhension en profondeur.

Des recherches (p. ex., Hoyles et Noss, 2009; Jackiw et Sinclair, 2009) qui se sont intéressées à l’intégration d’outils technologiques (p. ex., environnement de géométrie dynamique, simulateurs) expliquent comment leur usage transforme l’activité d’E-A usuelle, donc la nature même des savoirs qui sont en jeu. La formulation de problèmes (p. ex., vidéo ou fichier dynamique), les stratégies de résolution et même les possibilités pour l’enseignant de rendre compte de l’évolution des productions des élèves deviennent toutes autres. Les outils (p. ex., traceurs et géométrie dynamique) facilitent la coordination de différents registres de représentation (graphique, table de valeurs, règle et même simulation vidéo) d’un même objet donnant lieu à une compréhension unique par l’accroissement des significations (Drijvers, Boon et VanReeuwijk, 2011). Le processus et le produit sont en quelque sorte imbriqués et il est périlleux de chercher à comprendre le dernier en faisant fi du premier.

L’expérience mathématique avec la technologie amène une nouvelle manière de percevoir et de façonner les objets mathématiques.

Dans le cas de l’E.D., comme le rapportent Passaro et ses collègues (2021), les séances synchrones cherchent d’abord à reproduire des séances en présentiel ; les documents utilisés sont alors souvent les mêmes. Les exposés magistraux prennent d’abord le pas et l’engagement des élèves change. Pour effectuer une réelle transition vers un E.D. favorisant une riche activité mathématique, la mobilisation d’une expertise spécifique, tant épistémique, technique que pédagogique et didactique est nécessaire. On peut référer ici au concept de technological pedagogical content knowledge de Kohler et Mishra (2009). Ces auteurs ont donné une extension au modèle initial de construction des savoirs professionnels de Shulman (1987) en incluant l’incidence du contexte technologique. Au bilan, il est donc peu surprenant de constater que le caractère urgent de la situation au temps de la COVID19 ait davantage mené à une transposition du présentiel au distanciel plutôt qu’à l’engagement dans un réel processus de transition (Villiot-Leclercq, 2020).

Enseigner à distance ou en présence, c’est envisager les usages possibles des technologies en ayant en tête ce que l’on souhaite faire apprendre

Dans le projet de recherche collaborative ECRAN (FRQSC) se déployant

42 ÉDUCATION CANADA • mars 2022 | Le Réseau Édcan

sur différents sites de la province, le passage à l’E.D. a ramené en avant-plan les finalités du Programme de formation de l’école québécoise (PFÉQ) en mathématiques, lesquelles privilégient une conception des savoirs à faire apprendre non pas comme des objets à transmettre et à assimiler (savoir redire, savoir refaire), mais comme des objets dont l’appropriation sera rendue possible par l’entremise d’une orchestration didactique qui s’approche progressivement de l’activité « véritable » des mathématiciens. Différents chercheurs (Ball et Bass, 2003; Lampert, 1992) argumentent que l’activité d’E-A des mathématiques doit être le lieu où les élèves émettent leurs idées, les justifient à leurs pairs pour les convaincre de la valeur de leurs propos. La technologie peut contribuer, d’une part, à favoriser la participation espérée des élèves et, d’autre part, à rendre compte de cette participation de façon différenciée, par exemple, avec des outils tels que Virtual Math Team (voir Figure 1) ou Desmos (voir Figures 2 et 3). Cela est toutefois possible pour autant qu’il s’agira de visées pour l’enseignant.

Figure 1. Capture d’écran VMT – espace de collaboration des élèves et défilement vidéo permettant de revoir les actions d’une résolution en équipe

Ce fut le cas de Maélia, une enseignante de 2e secondaire (8e année), qui a illustré au fil des rencontres les multiples allers-retours pour planifier et expérimenter des situations où elle pourrait visualiser les démarches de ses élèves, offrir une rétroaction différenciée tout en cherchant à favoriser leur participation. À titre d’exemple, à partir d’une situation qu’elle utilisait habituellement en classe, mais sous la modalité papier/crayon, un travail d’ingénierie pédagogique a été effectué afin de l’adapter en utilisant le séquençage de tâches que permet Desmos par le biais de multiples écrans où la progression attendue est réfléchie (voir Figure 2).

Figure 2. Exemple de fenêtre de l’enseignant sous Desmos

Dans son orchestration de la séance, l’ensemble des écrans n’est pas disponible aux élèves. Elle subdivise plutôt la période d’enseignement en différentes phases, donnant ainsi accès à différents écrans.

Elle entrecoupe alors le travail en individuel à des retours en grand groupe qui invitent les élèves à expliquer aux autres leur raisonnement. Maélia joue un rôle important dans les relances afin d’assurer www.edcan.ca/fr/magazine

l’engagement et la progression de ses élèves. La figure 3 illustre la planification d’une période réalisée entièrement à distance sous la modalité synchrone :

Figure 3. Phases d’une période d’enseignement à distance

Comme elle le précise, plusieurs outils technologiques tels que Desmos permettent de développer des occasions d’apprendre et d’offrir une rétroaction personnalisée, mais la richesse d’une situation menée en classe dépend de façon importante des intentions pédagogiques de l’enseignant et du temps qui sera consacré à planifier cet enseignement en appréhendant les différents raisonnements et stratégies de résolution auxquels les élèves pourraient recourir selon les savoirs en jeu.

Il faut penser à comment on pose nos questions. Elles [ne] doivent pas trop être dirigées sinon on perdra les différentes stratégies des élèves […] C’est pratique de voir toutes les réponses d’un coup. Ils savent que je les vois entrer alors ils participent. Dans les retours en grand groupe c’est souvent les mêmes qui parlent. Ben c’est comme en classe. – Propos de Maélia La qualité d’un enseignement, qu’il soit offert en présence ou à distance, ne peut se résumer au choix d’une formule pédagogique ou d’un outil. Ceux-ci peuvent, au mieux, être des leviers potentiels pour créer des occasions d’apprendre. Dans le cas de Maélia, ses multiples itérations au fil des rencontres s’accompagnent d’une prise de conscience toujours plus grande des potentialités – et des limites – de Desmos et de la façon d’y recourir pour, d’une part, bâtir son enseignement à partir des différents raisonnements de ses élèves et d’autre part, favoriser leur engagement.

Situé dans un contexte particulier, l’activité d’E-A prend vie dans chacun des groupes classes. L’activité singulière façonne les objets ainsi que les individus. Juger de la valeur et de la qualité d’un enseignement, qu’il soit en présentiel ou à distance, est une activité fort complexe qui exige un minutieux travail de compréhension du contexte et de ses contraintes. Les conceptions de l’enseignant sur la discipline enseignée, les savoirs en jeu, les intentions pédagogiques, les outils, les questions, les reformulations, les propos et les actions différentes menées par les élèves et par l’enseignant constituent la texture d’un phénomène que l’on cherche à comprendre. ÉC

www.edcan.ca/fr/magazine

RÉFÉRENCES Ball, D. L. et Bass, H. (2003). Towards a Practice-Based Theory of Mathematical Knowledge for Teaching. Proceedings of the 2002 Annual Meeting of the Canadian Mathematics Education Study Group. 24-28 Mai, 2002. Edmonton, AB, 3-14.

Bransford, J. D., Brown, A. L., et Cocking, R. R. (2000). How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School. Washington DC: National Academy Press.

Drijvers P., Boon P., et Van Reeuwijk M. (2011). Algebra and Technology. Dans Drijvers P. (Dir) Secondary Algebra Education. Sense Publishers. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-6091-334-1_8 Hoyles, C. et Noss, R. (2009). The technological mediation of mathematics and its learning. Human Development, 52(2), 29-147.

Jackiw, N. et Sinclair, N. (2009). Sounds and pictures: dynamism and dualism in dynamic geometry. ZDM,41(4), 413–426.

Koehler, M.J., et Mishra, P. (2009). What Is technological pedagogical content knowledge? Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education (CITE), 9(1), 60-70.

Lampert, M. (1992). Practices and problems in teaching authentic mathematics in school. Dans F. Oser; A.Dick et J.-L. Patry (Dir), Effective and Responsible Teaching: The New Synthesis (p. 295-314). NY : Jossey-Bass.

Passaro, V., Venant, F., Boucher, M. et Verret, C. (2021). Passage à distance de l’enseignement en mathématiques au secondaire dans le contexte de la pandémie de COVID-19 : entrevue avec deux conseillères pédagogiques. Revue hybride de l’éducation, 5(1), 136–150. https://doi.org/10.1522/rhe.v5i1.1223 Resta, P., Laferrière, T., McLaughlin, R. et Kouraogo, A. (2018). Issues and challenges related to digital equity: An overview. Dans Voogt J., Knezek G., Christensen R., Lai KW. (Dir) Second Handbook of Information Technology in Primary and Secondary Education. International Handbooks of Education (pp.

985-1004). Cham : Springer https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-53803-7_48-2 Shulman, L. S. (1988). The dangers of dichotomous thinking in education. Dans P. Grimmer and G. Erickson (Dir) Reflection in teacher education. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.

Thomas, L.G. et Knezek, D.G. (2008). Information, communications, and educational technology standards for students, teachers, and school leaders.

Dans J. Voogt et G. Knezek (Dir), International Handbook of information technology in primary and secondary education (p. 333-348). Springer.

Tremblay, M. et Delobbe, A.M. (2021). Enseignement et évaluation des mathématiques à distance durant la Covid-19. Canadian Journal of Learning and Technology, 47(4). https://doi.org/10.21432/cjlt28098 Villiot-Leclercq, E. (2020). L’ingénierie pédagogique au temps de la Covid-19.

Distances et médiations des savoirs. Distance and Mediation of Knowledge, 30. https://doi.org/10.4000/dms.5203

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