On June 6, 2023, Steve Bissonnette and Mario Richard appeared at the National Assembly to deliver their comments on Bill 23, the reform of the Minister of Education, Bernard Drainville. They extolled the benefits of “effective teaching” and positive behavior support (PBS), drawing on their decades of experience in the school environment.
“Is effective teaching being taught in education faculties right now? » Bernard Drainville asked them. “Very little,” replied Steve Bissonnette.
The duty communicated with the faculties of education of the universities of Laval, Sherbrooke, Montreal and Quebec in Montreal. They all assured that effective teaching is one of the topics covered in the Bachelor of Education. But they highlight the limits of this approach.
The dean of the Faculty of Educational Sciences at the University of Montreal, Ahlem Ammar, warns about “pre-made recipes”. “There are many colleagues who have many reactions [face] aware of effective practices, which speaks of absolute effectiveness. We cannot say that the same practice can work in all contexts. This is not possible,” she warns.
“What there is no consensus is to think that there is a single method for teaching and that it will work for all children,” also affirms Christine Hamel, vice-dean of the Faculty of Sciences of the education from Laval University.
At the University of Sherbrooke, Professor Sabrina Moisan says she sees a “resistance to easy recipes for solving complex problems.” Result: “each method that is presented at the university comes with its critique”. Éric Dion, from the Department of Education at the University of Quebec in Montreal, sees that effective teaching is more or less anchored depending on the areas taught, from word decoding (where it is “super well integrated”) to mathematics (where there is “resistance”).
Focus on discovery or efficiency?
But what is effective teaching? “It’s teaching that focuses on clear explanations, that addresses concepts from the simplest to the most complex, and there is often an application that is integrated,” explains Professor Dion.
Mr. Bissonnette divides effective teaching into three categories: “what to teach”, “how to teach” and “behavior management”, which includes support for positive behavior.
The SCP caught the attention of the Committee on Scientific Results and the School Environment, the CRSMS, a confidential group created by the Ministry of Education to produce opinions on the school network. In a recommendation on “classroom management and externalizing behavior problems”, he suggested that “the ministry be the manager of the implementation of the SCP”.
The Drainville reform grants the Minister of Education a right of review over the continuing training of teachers. During Mr. Bissonnette’s visit to the National Assembly, the Minister of Education asked him if the SCP could become continuing education. “Quite,” replied the professor.
The opposite of “effective teaching” is the social constructivist approach, focused on the discovery and acquisition of skills. This has serious limits, according to Mr. Bissonnette. “A student in difficulty, when we put him on discovery, he discovers that he is incapable. That’s what he discovers,” he says.
TELUQ offers a short graduate program in “teaching and school effectiveness,” underlines Mr. Richard. The first course, which addresses the foundations and practices of “effective teaching,” “is an adaptation of continuing training developed by the Proxima Group that my colleague Bissonnette and I offered as consultants before becoming professors at university,” he wrote.