We have just announced a deconfinement plan and, if a new variant (or something else…) does not come to blur the cards, we will (perhaps…) soon see an (almost…) return to normal .
We will therefore possibly have a moment to take stock, to reassess our decisions and to seek to understand the consequences that these two terrible years will have had on so many aspects of our lives, on so many people and on our institutions.
In education, work will not be lacking and I express here the wish that we prepare for it seriously.
Here are examples of what awaits us.
Major construction sites
An assessment of the effects of digital technology at all levels of education is essential. We will have, in spite of ourselves, carried out a kind of experimentation which should enlighten us on the real effects of these tools, which we know are highly praised, in particular by sincere technophiles, but also by companies whose petticoat often exceeds considerably.
We will also have to look at the repercussions of these tragic times on young people, among other things on the academic delays they have accumulated and on the psychological effects caused by everything they have experienced and everything they have been deprived of. Early data from around the world already suggests that these delays and effects will be significant, especially among the poorest and those at risk. We must now prepare to take the necessary measures, and to do so determine precisely what happened, including the causes and effects.
Teachers will be essential to accomplish all that lies before us. But we have a serious problem here.
Teacher training
To begin with, there is a shortage of teachers in Quebec, and the tragic episode we are going through has reminded us of this by forcing us to ask for help from retirees, teachers in training, and even… parents. .
Among the causes of this shortage, we find what the literature calls professional desertion: these trained teachers, graduates, who began their career but who, after a few years, abandoned the profession.
To these people must be added those who undertake university studies in education but do not complete them. Without counting the (relative) poverty of the files of the people admitted in the faculties of education, whose first responsibility, it should be recalled, is precisely to train masters.
If all this happened in another faculty training other professionals (medicine, dentistry, etc.), it would be serious and we should urgently look into the matter. It is even more so here, since this is precisely the place specializing in the training of teachers: in this discipline more than elsewhere, such shortcomings must be studied.
You probably know it: voices are being raised more and more to say that the training given to future teachers is inadequate and that this is one of the causes of the teacher shortage. Some of these voices even call for teacher training to be entrusted to new institutions, perhaps to national teacher training institutes, which have yet to be designed. Others consider this proposal inadmissible and exaggerated what motivates it, or even entirely false, and they invoke other factors, such as the undeniable and unprecedented difficulties of being a teacher today, in our society.
The stakes are crucial and I would like to get the facts straight on all this, which, it seems to me, requires work carried out by parties independent of the people and institutions involved.
I dream, for example, of interviews conducted with a large sample of practicing teachers, but also with people who have abandoned their training along the way and others who have deserted the profession, to find out what made them motivated to make these decisions, what they find problematic in the trade and what they think of the training they have been given.
We should take the opportunity to find out what future teachers have learned during their training, what they have retained from all this vast baggage of knowledge that all should have, according to the best credible experts. Cognitive load, you know? Working memory? Follow through ?
We should also seek to know to what extent are right those who claim that faculties of education sometimes teach false ideas and theories and pedagogical legends. For example, were you taught learning styles during your training? Left brain and right brain? If so, what were you told?
Finally, we should seek to identify what knowledge, on the philosophical, sociological and historical levels, has been transmitted to them. Do you know John Dewey? The habits? Human capital theory? And so many other things…
I dream, for my part, of what I have sometimes called hussars and hussars of the Republic, teachers solidly trained both in terms of evidence and the practices they command and in philosophical and cultural terms, who nurture a deep sense of the mission of those whom Bertrand Russell rightly called the guardians of civilization.
These people deserve all the public confidence in them and the best working conditions they receive.