Objecting the Subjective: Manitoba Education’s Positivism Reform
*This post has been written as part of my journey as a Ph.D student through University of Regina
Manitoba sits at a crossroad in their quest for educational reform. After 3 years of external consultation and widespread planning the current Progressive Conservative party has backtracked on their Better Education Starts Today (BEST) strategy. Interim premier, Kelvin Goertzen, who oversaw this campaign in his role as Minister of Education, announced on September 1, 2021, that he would be pulling the associated Bill 64 legislation from the fall docket (Gowriluk & Bernhardt, 2021). While the future of what public education looks like in Manitoba remains to be seen, what is evident is that current approaches pull from a positivism epistemology that is hyper fixated on the province’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) ranking. Both Premier Goertzen and current Minister of Education, Cliff Cullen, utilize Manitoba’s PISA position to posit the need for wide-sweeping changes that include everything from curriculum rewrites to the elimination of school boards.
Pillar 2 of the provincial BEST strategy focuses on high-quality learning outcomes with the primary indicator of success looking at Manitoba’s results on international assessments such as PISA (Better Education Starts Today, 2021, p. 13). Created by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) the PISA is completed on a three-year cycle by approximately 22,440 Canadian students alongside 500,000 of their peers from across 79 countries (Council of Ministers of Education, 2018, p. 2). The cyclical nature and standardization of PISA provides a positivism methodology for Manitoba Education in which their values clearly identify a benchmark to base their research (Lincoln, Lynham, & Guba, 2018, pp. 116-122). With historical data spanning back to 1997, Manitoba’s participation in PISA has provided data from a study that has been replicated reliably for eight cycles (Manitoba School Boards, 2018, p. 4). With PISA as a primary indicator of success, the BEST strategy aligns with the positivism consideration of validity which emphasizes a “gold standard” data source (Lincoln, Lynham, & Guba, 2018, p. 129).
Analysis of Manitoba’s quest to modernize education sees provincial authorities viewing the dichotomy of the provincial landscape through a positivism ontology that paints a cohesive portrait of public education. This assumption is evident in the language choice of the Manitoba Education Standards for Remote Learning which calls for a, “consistent application of remote learning across the province” (2021, p. 2). The belief in a single reality for all Manitoba students has resulted in educational programming that does not account for the fact that 85,000 children are living in poverty (Campaign 2000 MB Report Card, 2020, p. 4) or that rural and remote communities operate with the second lowest broadband speeds in Canada, at an average of 12.6mbps (Kotak, Leblanc, Martell, & Snider, 2021, p. 26). The landscape of Manitoba sees a student population that can vary drastically between schools, not to mention between urban and rural settings.
As Manitoba students walk back into the classroom this week it is not only the fourth wave of the Covid-19 pandemic that raises concern; while Bill 64 has been declared dead, the topic of educational reform and the BEST strategy are still being discussed by stakeholders at all levels. Analysis of both the proposed BEST strategy and existing documents, such as the Manitoba Education Standards for Remote Learning, displays evidence of a positivism epistemology: belief in a single reality, standardized and replicable data sources, “gold standard” validity, and objective application. At current time, Manitoba Education’s ontology leaves their programming blind to the societal factors that require a subjective rather than objective approach.
References
Better education starts today: putting students first. (2021). Manitoba Education.
Broken promise stolen futures: child and family poverty in Manitoba. (2020). Campaign
2000. https://spcw.mb.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Manitoba-Child-and-Family-Poverty-Report-2020.pdf
Gowriluk, C., & Bernhardt, D. (2021, September 1). Manitoba education minister looks to build
relationships damaged by anxiety around Bill 64. CBC.
Kotak A., Leblanc S., Martell T., & Snider N. (2021). Manitoba and a digital-first future: the
implications of connectivity for equity and education. Information and Communications Technology Council (ICTC). Ottawa, Canada.
Lincoln, Y.S., Lynham, S.A., & Guba, E.G. (2018). Paradigmatic controversies, contradictions,
and emerging confluences revisited. In N.K. Denzin & Y.S. Lincoln (Eds.), The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research (pp. 108-150). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE
Manitoba education standards for remote learning.(2021). Manitoba Education.
O’Grady, K., Deussing, M. A., Scerbina, T., Tao, Y., Fung, K., Elez, V., & Monk. J. (2018).
Measuring up: Canadian results of the OECD PISA 2018 study. Council of Ministers of Education. https://www.cmec.ca/Publications/Lists/Publications/Attachments/396/PISA2018_PublicReport_EN.pdf
The facts on PISA (programme for international student assessment). (2018). Manitoba School
Boards. http://www.mbschoolboards.ca/documents/Advocacy/PISA%202018.pdf