Catharine Kavanagh is the Western Stakeholder Director at Cardus.Alberta’s education system serves 835,000 students and 53,000 teachers. Change is hard in systems that big. There’s a heavy bias toward doing things “the way they’ve always been done,” because, well, they are the way things have always been done. But when challenges add up — and students, parents, and teachers have certainly faced a lot of challenges in this past year — they offer an invitation to identify what’s not working and develop new solutions. New ideas provide hope.Alberta’s four new expedited paths to teacher certification — for students in their final BEd year, for internationally trained teachers, for tradespeople, and for specialized professionals — are a great illustration of hope-filled, possibility-rich solutions.Each of the above pathways requires applicants to complete several courses, including those on teaching quality standards and the Code of Professional Conduct, before receiving an interim certificate. Further courses are required alongside the applicant’s time in the classroom before a permanent certificate can be issued.This is one of the most practical, impactful policies that Alberta has introduced in a long time. And it means more for everyone.Our world is not static. Students need exposure and training in new technologies, sectors, and methods that are being developed or updated every day. To provide this, the K–12 education system must be able to tap into knowledge from the very individuals who are the creative forces and skilled users behind these new innovations, or Alberta’s graduates risk falling behind..Then there’s the clear effect on numbers: Alberta’s current teacher shortage is an ongoing challenge. More pathways to teaching certification mean a larger pool of potential teachers, giving schools more resources to address compounding issues such as class sizes and complexity.The Trade Teacher Certificate has the greatest potential for wide-reaching impacts. Cardus research shows that Alberta is already deep in a shortage of trades workers, and that the problem will only increase over the next decade. It’s a society-wide problem if we don’t have enough construction workers to build new houses or mechanics to fix our cars.Where do trades teachers come from? Not from BEd graduates, regardless of their best intentions. Trades are highly specialized fields, with serious safety implications if not taught or executed properly. Up to now, there has been no easy pathway — short of pausing their careers and returning to school full-time for multiple years — for trades workers to pass on that knowledge to the next generation.With this new pathway, it will be possible for tradespeople to take not only their craft-specific experience but also the entrepreneurship lessons of running a business, and the wisdom gained through apprenticing new hires, and share that in high school classrooms..Equally encouraging is the impact that all four of these new pathways will spark inspiration and innovation within the teaching sector itself.And there is room for improvement. In 2023, a survey of Alberta teachers and school board members found that only 73% agree that teachers were prepared for teaching. That is a shockingly low confidence level from within the sector itself. It’s not fair to students, who bear the brunt of poor teaching; it’s not fair to parents, who pay taxes and trust the system to provide a good education for their child; and quite frankly, it’s not fair to teachers, either, who are essentially being put into classrooms with the equivalent of a life raft and a cheery “good luck” but insufficient preparedness for the task at hand.By diversifying the backgrounds and experiences of teaching staff while maintaining the high standards and ongoing learning for quality of teaching and classroom management, we increase the depth and breadth of ideas, creativity, and inspiration that teachers can draw on and offer to each other.“The way things have always been done” is clearly no longer cutting it. Alberta’s schools imminently need more ideas, more course offerings, and more teachers. The government’s approach to innovation with these four new teaching certificates is a great blend of commonsense policy and “let’s try something new,” which is going to create opportunity for everyone — both students and teachers — to flourish.Catharine Kavanagh is the Western Stakeholder Director at Cardus.
