The Interuniversity Research Center on Training and the Teacher Profession (CRIFPE) has just been released the report of a vast national survey on education students in education in Quebec. The responses of 2,900 teaching students, from the different programs of the 1is a you 2e university cycle, are presented there.
There are data on the profile of students, their motivations to choose teaching, and the main difficulties they say they have encountered during their studies.
We learn that women remain largely in the majority in education (80.6%), that almost a third of students have a dependent child (30.5%), that almost half of the students thought of abandoning their studies during training (47.2%) and that more than 90%have experienced difficulties in reconciling their studies and their personal life.
Let’s see it more closely.
TECFÉE: When mastering the language is deemed “ridiculous”
Among the reasons for abandonment mentioned, the Tecfée comes first. The certification test in French written for teaching, which aims to ensure a minimum mastery of the language among our future teachers, is qualified as “ridiculous” and “useless”, and its “super stressful” character would discourage more than one. Remember that around half of the students fail the test at the first handover, and many students must do two, three, four … Twelve times before succeeding. This is not a novelty, it will be rightly said. On the other hand, what is so is the uninhibited attitude with which we trivialize the importance of the language in education. The value of such a test is no longer recognized. Having to work hard to succeed is no longer obvious. We simply do not see the interest that it is difficult. In fact, his difficulty is conceived as an obstacle to success.
Students complain that TECFE slows down the progress of their studies. Currently, a student can do his courses 3 and 4 before having successfully succeeded. The formulation of their complaint is important here: it is the TECFÉ which constitutes an obstacle to their success. They are not their gaps at the language level. The problem is the Tecfée. Rather than seeing it as a rampart necessary to ensure the quality of the candidates who will then teach several generations of children, it is indignant that it does exactly what it was designed: to discriminate.
This feeling of injustice expressed by students in the face of any obstacle to their success reminds me of this fourth year student who had not presented himself at any course and who had given me a completely bogus work. After applying for a note review (what a cheek!), He had written a long email to blame me for his failure. By failing my course at the last session of the bac, you see, I penalized it (these are his words): because of me, he would not get his patent within the scheduled time. Pardon?
Regarding the TECFÉE, no problem! Last June, it was announced that a revised version was going to be tested. In this version, students will likely be authorized to use correction software. The text they will have to write will be more glued to the “reality of teachers”, and will take the form of an email to send to parents or management concerning a situation lived at school. Let’s be reassured: no more students will have the traumatic experience of the Tecfée.
It is still paradoxical to read that 90% of students engage in teaching to transmit knowledge, while mastery of the language, which is the keystone, seems to them accessory.
Too heavy a workload
The second reason for the abandonment mentioned by the students is the workload, which they consider too heavy. The readings would be too numerous, and the intensive sessions which precede the internships would be too demanding.
We must recognize that the profile of our students has changed. Few students whose timetable is entirely devoted to study. Many work. Some already teach, sometimes even full time. The third of them must also reconcile studies with parental responsibilities. We should still question this strange paradox: our students no longer have time to study!
-We can, of course, be sensitive to their reality. Let the students accommodate so that they can meet the training objectives is one thing. That we reduce the workload to accommodate them is another … Unless we agree to make training in teaching a technique or a DEP. University level training must remain so, in its content as in its requirements.
The report also concludes on “the urgency of an in -depth reflection on the adaptation of training to teaching which will take into account the growing heterogeneity of the profiles of students while maintaining its quality, its rigor and its scientificity”.
Quality training, rigorous and based on science?
Recently, a hundred university professors published an open letter to denounce the decrease in ministerial requirements in terms of teaching qualification. According to the signatories, it hinders the fundamental law of students to quality education. However, the quality of the initial training, strangely, has never been seriously evaluated. However, there are many students who claim that their university training is poorly preparing them for the task that awaits them. Several research on the professional integration of teachers report it, and this is also what the report highlights.
First, we do not systematically teach the teaching methods deemed more effective by the evidence. Young teachers hit a wall when faced with the reality on the ground. Whether in terms of school learning or behavioral management, the methods recommended by teachers and lectures – many of which have never taught – are often disconnected from reality. There are, of course, exceptions. But we can move forward, without exaggeration, that the initial training, at present, is of very uneven quality.
Second, initial training is rather poor in disciplinary knowledge and general knowledge. It is mainly focused on pedagogy and didactics. The teacher is designed above all as an accompanist at the service of the student in the construction of his learning. That he barely knows more than he should not concern us! He is, himself, a co-learning. Let us be serious, the authority of a teacher is based on his great mastery of content and on the vast culture he holds. A teacher who does not master his discipline is a little confident teacher, likely to make mistakes, and little equipped to help students who are experiencing difficulties. A little cultivated teacher, moreover, may make the vehicle of all kinds of ideologies.
These ideologies, moreover, are very likely that it was introduced to university. I am talking about these ideas that circulate abundantly in our faculties, wanting that it is necessary to decolonize history, to teach anti-racist mathematics, or to conceive of sex as a social construction.
In short, if we need to improve initial training, it would be better to entrust the responsibility to an independent body and not to the faculties of education. It is urgent that we would reframe on teaching around the learning of fundamental knowledge, from the best known methods, and with the help of teachers who act as masters and not as animators …
Pascale, bourgeois
Lecturer
Department of Education and Pedagogy, Faculty of Education Sciences
University of Quebec in Montreal (UQàM)
