One thing that I find interesting is that here in Quebec, since the 1990s, secondary school teacher initial training takes the form of a four-year bachelor's of education that is entirely under the purview of a university faculty of education (unlike in other places in North America where high school teachers typically have a bachelor's degree in their subject and then spend only one or two years in a faculty of education). This was ostensibly done in order to "professionalize" teaching work, and in fact, ever since the government started introducing shorter graduate-level programs allowing people who have completed a bachelor's degree in their subject to become officially licensed to teach and help alleviate the teacher shortage, faculties of education have been slow to implement these programs and have complained that their existence risks unprofessionalizing the teaching profession. So you would think that our faculties of education would be all about the science of learning, since they claim to want teachers to be professionals in teaching and learning, but that's not really the case. Initial teacher training in Quebec is of spotty quality and not very informed by science, as it is in many other places, and academics in faculties of education are quick to fire off letters to the media to reply to their notorious colleagues and media commentators who are known to favour explicit teaching and the science of learning, claiming the need for "nuance", when said colleagues publish something they object to. There is currently a debate about creating a National institute for excellence in education which would serve as a clearinghouse for education research that can help make useful recommendations for teachers (the current government officially supports the creation of said institute, but I don't know at what point we are in the process), but education academics keep complaining that the institute would favour some types of research (quantitative research with experimental protocols which can help make predictions) to the detriment of the research that they themselves do (mostly qualitative, case studies, that doesn't have a lot of predictive power).
Excellent article. Thanks.
So glad you are bringing this piece to more eyes. It is so spot-on!
One thing that I find interesting is that here in Quebec, since the 1990s, secondary school teacher initial training takes the form of a four-year bachelor's of education that is entirely under the purview of a university faculty of education (unlike in other places in North America where high school teachers typically have a bachelor's degree in their subject and then spend only one or two years in a faculty of education). This was ostensibly done in order to "professionalize" teaching work, and in fact, ever since the government started introducing shorter graduate-level programs allowing people who have completed a bachelor's degree in their subject to become officially licensed to teach and help alleviate the teacher shortage, faculties of education have been slow to implement these programs and have complained that their existence risks unprofessionalizing the teaching profession. So you would think that our faculties of education would be all about the science of learning, since they claim to want teachers to be professionals in teaching and learning, but that's not really the case. Initial teacher training in Quebec is of spotty quality and not very informed by science, as it is in many other places, and academics in faculties of education are quick to fire off letters to the media to reply to their notorious colleagues and media commentators who are known to favour explicit teaching and the science of learning, claiming the need for "nuance", when said colleagues publish something they object to. There is currently a debate about creating a National institute for excellence in education which would serve as a clearinghouse for education research that can help make useful recommendations for teachers (the current government officially supports the creation of said institute, but I don't know at what point we are in the process), but education academics keep complaining that the institute would favour some types of research (quantitative research with experimental protocols which can help make predictions) to the detriment of the research that they themselves do (mostly qualitative, case studies, that doesn't have a lot of predictive power).