The Alberta task force suggested that this practice would ensure effective and competent teachers in the classroom throughout their careers, without providing specifics about the who, why or how of doing that.
Predictably enough, the Alberta Teachers’ Association responded that such a practice would “strip teachers of fundamental employment protections, and fail to recognize fundamental differences between policing conduct and reviewing teacher professional practice.”
It is a fact that in most provincial jurisdictions in Canada, teachers receive permanent certification after graduating from teacher-education programs, and are not required to participate in regular professional development. Most B.C. teachers do participate in annual professional- development days, but these have no bearing on certification.
Several jurisdictions, the Alberta task force points out, including New Zealand, require teachers to renew their licences every few years based on assessments and professional-development requirements. That’s true, but it is only half the story.
New Zealand is an interesting case in point because upon graduating, a new teacher must then complete two years of supervised teaching following the completion date of their teaching qualification.
A recommendation and endorsement for full registration may be signed and dated only in the eighth term of supervised teaching, and no earlier. Provisional teachers must participate in the supervised induction and mentoring program until the end of the eighth term of teaching.
There is no mention of any of this in the Alberta proposal.
Again, in New Zealand, when a teacher holds full registration, renewal of a practising certificate is required every three years.
Unless otherwise cancelled, a fully registered teacher’s practising certificate expires after five years.
All good, but the requirement has to be viewed and understood in the context of how teachers are introduced, and subsequently supported, into independent professional practice as occurs with most other professions.
Another often-quoted and copied system is the Toledo, Ohio, program. Newbie teachers are assigned an experienced senior teacher mentor during their first year.
Beyond that and for the next 12 years, teachers can voluntarily continue to upgrade their qualifications. This in turn provides a parallel 12-step salary increment added to the normal 12-step salary scale.
Both the New Zealand system and the Toledo system, with their accompanying professional incentives, were jointly developed between teacher representatives and legislated governing bodies.
For many professions and careers, staying current is necessary and critical to successful practice.
The best teachers, and fortunately they are by far in the majority, do their best to keep up with innovative developments and new understandings about how kids learn.
Of more concern to teachers is that ideas like Alberta’s might have a tiger by the tail for government, inasmuch as many government-driven program developments — B.C.’s personalized learning as one example — have significant implications for class size, class composition, the allocation of learning spaces and the application of technology in classrooms, even school architecture.
Legislating teachers to “keep up” implies that government itself understands its own responsibilities.
If the expectation is that new professional knowledge is to be employed in the traditional 860-square-foot classroom space to a class of 30 kids, including a number of children with learning difficulties we are only beginning to understand, then simply mandating recertification might be missing the point.
Without some steak to go with the sizzle, Alberta’s recertification proposal is doomed to fail.
Progress in the nature and delivery of public education implies further obligation on the part of government to move past philosophical revitalization (and B.C.’s new Education Plan is a good example) to the realities of classroom implementation.
Geoff Johnson is a retired superintendent of schools.
