Shortening Canadian teacher education risks devaluing the profession of teaching

Recently, shorter teacher certification programs have been introduced in different Canadian provinces.

These programs are being implemented in Alberta , Nova Scotia , Ontario and Québec .

The move towards shorter or “fast-track” teacher education programs in Canada, where candidates complete a short post-graduate qualification after an undergraduate degree, follows trends seen across OECD countries including Australia, Finland, New Zealand, Norway and the U.S.

Some of these programs are targeted at upskilling the high number of unqualified or unlicenced teachers already teaching in Canadian schools, while many fast-track routes are offered to people who hold non-teaching undergraduate degrees and wish to become teachers.

Shorter teacher education programs are seen as more accessible .

As the Ontario government has emphasized, they also reduce the cost of becoming a teacher for both individuals and governments.

At a time when policymakers are concerned about teacher shortages across the country, the Nova Scotia government has also underlined how shorter teacher education programs will educate “more” teachers in order to “meet the needs of students.” In Ontario , the province has argued the changes will “strengthen the pipeline of highly skilled K-12 teachers.” Devaluing teacher professionalism? These assumptions suggest that shorter teacher education programs make entering the teaching profession more attractive and help to relieve shortages.

Yet, findings from my research in England, where the majority of new teachers enter the profession via post-graduate routes, indicates that shorter teacher education pathways may weaken the extent to which teaching is valued as a profession.

In turn, this devaluing could actually discourage some people from entering the profession.

The professionalization of teaching Whether an individual chooses to pursue teaching is informed by multiple overlapping factors.

Research has found that there are many individual, social, cultural, political and economic drivers that influence teacher recruitment.

Across Canada, these factors include the availability of permanent versus temporary teaching contracts , the country’s complex geography and differing population density in different areas, an aging teacher workforce, teaching workloads and French and English language requirements for teachers working in different provinces and for different school boards.

In my study tracking young people’s teaching aspirations over 11 years, I found that aspiring teachers maintained or dropped their teaching aspirations for multiple complex reasons.