The showdown between Minister Jean-François Roberge and the committee of experts responsible for evaluating teacher training reveals a malaise within the profession, according to historian Julien Prud’homme. This education specialist believes that the Committee for the Accreditation of Teacher Training Programs (CAPFE), which has been associated for nearly three decades with “educational renewal” and which does not meet today’s needs, must be reformed. today in the school network.
Concerned about the shortage of teachers, Minister Roberge authorized in recent months four short training programs for future teachers despite reluctance from CAPFE, reported Wednesday The duty. These decisions by the Minister of Education did not surprise Professor Julien Prud’homme, from the University of Quebec at Trois-Rivières (UQTR). He criticizes the “excessive role” played by this committee of experts since its creation in the mid-1990s.
“For 25 years, everyone has acted as if CAPFE’s word had the force of law, as if it were a kind of heresy not to follow its recommendations,” he laments.
Yet it is the Minister of Education who has the final say in approving teacher training programs, under the Education Act. All the predecessors of Jean-François Roberge in Education have endorsed the opinions of CAPFE: either they were unaware of the law, or they did not want to make waves with this very polarizing file, advances Julien Prud’homme.
“Minister Roberge is confronted more than his predecessors with the negative results of this policy, because he has to manage a major staff shortage,” explains the historian.
Paths other than the baccalaureate
The Minister of Education claims to act urgently so that each class has a homeroom teacher. In interview at To have tohe argued that he could not afford to delay the implementation of the four qualifying master’s degrees leading to the teaching certificate, but he still demanded that the universities make the corrections to their training programs highlighted by the committee of experts.
Julien Prud’homme believes that the minister is making the right decision by opening up other paths to the teaching profession than the four-year baccalaureate. He believes that qualifying master’s degrees should multiply and improve, despite CAPFE’s resistance to this fast track leading to a teaching certificate. CAPFE experts have pointed out shortcomings in these training programs aimed at aspiring teachers with a bachelor’s degree in a discipline, such as French, mathematics or history, for example.
“If the baccalaureate in secondary education were a clear success, we could live with the disadvantages of the CAPFE, but it is not true that the work of the CAPFE has led to very convincing results”, says the professor.
Divided profession
Julien Prud’homme specifies that he respects the members of this committee, recognized for their expertise in education. He nevertheless stresses that the CAPFE “is very politically charged, because it was created to implement the reform of education and the pedagogical renewal”.
Nearly 30 years after its implementation, this reform continues to divide the teaching community. The school must teach “skills” and not just knowledge. And the sciences of education are torn between two currents: one insisting that future teachers first learn the subjects to be taught, and the other advocating training in pedagogy. Proponents of pedagogy neglect strategies inspired by “evidence-based data” such as explicit teaching, emphasizes Julien Prud’homme.
The CAPFE has tended to “snatch disciplinary credits to put them in pedagogy” in teacher training, analyzes the historian.
He calls for a review of the structure of CAPFE so that it becomes a ministerial committee framed by law rather than an independent body animated, according to him, by an “ideology”.