Under the auspices of the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies International Visiting Research Scholar Program, Drs. Mark Bray and Ora Kwo (University of Hong Kong) are visiting UBC.
On May 13, they will be presenting some of their research under the title “Shadow Education: Comparative Perspectives on the Global Growth and Local Implications of Out-of-School Supplemental Education” (12:30-14h, Room 310, Neville Scarfe Building)
Some years ago, I coordinated a mini-census of supplementary education institutions in Metro Vancouver. I reported on this project in an article in Education Canada in 2008. I have continued to keep an eye out for the appearance and growth of supplementary education in Vancouver since then. (See the appropriate Canada/Vancouver category in Jukupedia).
In June 2012, Janet Steffenhagen, the education reporter for the Vancouver Sun has written a nice piece on supplementary education in Vancouver.
Ms Steffenhagen reports on her visits to two supplementary education schools in Vancouver. She draws on my research on Japan in looking at the possible factors not just in the global growth of supplementary education, but also in the motivations for students/parents in Vancouver to begin to avail themselves of supplementary education.
If you’ve been reading other entries in the Jukupedia, you will not be surprised that I disagree with some of the implications of an explanation for participation in supplementary education in Canada as rooted in “cultural” preferences, as one interview in this article with a Vancouver Sylvan Learning Centre director notes. There are many institutional and structural reasons for the growth of supplementary education and any explanations that emphasize culture (by which most people seem to mean, national origin, coupled with some kind of immutable preferences for certain social interactions over others) neglect the mediation of any cultural preferences by the institutional conditions of schooling.
Yet, even a more complex understanding of cultural factors as they play into more general institutional conditions, would note that there are real differences in expectations of education across demographic categories, including ethnic communities and origin-of-immigration. As the BC government is considering revisions to the BC curriculum through the BC Ed Plan, it would be well worth considering the impact that such revisions could have on schools (public and private) via supplementary education businesses.
Posted in Canada, Press and Media, Supplementary Education Researchers, Vancouver
Tagged Julian Dierkes
Here’s another flyer. I picked this one up in Kerrisdale.
Juku Flyer Vancouver V
Note that the time table shows some emphasis on (provincial) exam preparation, but also some emphasis on English. In that context, it seems surprising that some of the English text is a bit awkward suggesting a non-native writer (i.e. someone like me).
Juku Vancouver V Timetable
Posted in Advertising, Vancouver
Following my recent post on abacus education in Japan, I feel like I have to report on my daughters’ (6 and 9 years old) encounter with the abacus here in Vancouver. They have been attending an abacus school here since September, going once a week. A very good friend of ours mentioned that her daughters were going to abacus and given my past experience with abacus schools in Japan, we were eager to try this out for our girls, especially the older one who is very keen on math.
They’ve taken to it like fish to water and go with great anticipation.
When I told my good friend in Japan who is quite involved in abacus education that the girls were going, he sent two “one-touch” abacus for the girls so that they’re all equipped now.
The school that they attend was recently at the centre of a story in the Globe & Mail.
Some of the things that I find fascinating largely based on my research on juku in Japan:
Interestingly, our teacher is the daughter of an abacus teacher. When I was doing research on juku in post-disaster Tohoku last week and mentioned that my girls were in abacus juku, some questions led to the observation that my interlocutor knows (of) our abacus teacher’s father. Small world.
An abacus juku that I visited in Sendai was a reminder of how astonishing abacus skills can be. Students there were doing something called “フラッシュ穴算”, i.e. flash calculations in their head. This is computer based and the program is pre-set to different levels of difficulty in the computations. A student will sit down and the program will flash a succession of numbers on the screen that the student adds, subtracts, multiplies or divides. For the younger students a series of four single-digit numbers might flash for a second each, while older students will be shown series of 10 3-digit numbers over a short time span. Amazing!
In her abacus article for the Globe and Mail, education reporter Kate Hammer picked up quite nicely on the amazing calculations, but also on the almost physical learning that the manipulation of beads seems to foster. I have found this a fascinating aspect of instruction in juku for some time and it is something that the correspondent for The Economist also picked up on in describing the rhythmic chanting of chemical elements at a juku he visited.
A Facebook ad – of all things – recently pointed me toward the website of a seemingly new juku in Vancouver. It’s difficult to reproduce elements of the website without identifying the site itself, but the opening paragraph of the website’s “An Introduction” reads as follows:
Research has shown that life and work have changed, not just technologically, but also in the way we do things. It is no longer enough to have expertise in one skill area; rather, companies expect employees to be knowledgeable and capable in a variety of skills and subject matters. Current educational methods do not meet the needs of either the economy or the children they serve. Children leave school and university lacking the skills they need to be successful and contribute to the growth of Canada’s economy.
This is certainly one of the nicest-looking and most extensive websites for Canadian juku. Pretty, clear design, extensive content including a moderately active blog.
Interestingly, the content and methodology offered is somewhat original – a rarity in the supplementary education field in my experience. The claim at least is that this juku is integrating various subjects around specific themes and offering collaborative learning that parallels BC schools, but focuses on specific themes. It’s not clear at first glance whether this is meant to be remedial, supplementary or accelerated instruction. However, the frequent claim at newness and 21st-century-ness suggests that it is something between supplementary and accelerated instruction.
Unusually for a Vancouver juku, this seems to be neither a tutoring broker, nor is catering specifically to an ESL or immigrant audience. The location is close to Kitsilano Secondary in a neighbourhood that is less dense in juku than many other neighbourhoods.
Posted in Vancouver
In today’s Globe and Mail Mark Mackinnon had a folio about primary and secondary education in Shanghai. This piece basically started with last year’s PISA results where Shanghai students scored highest among comparison “countries” to tell a story of a narrow focus on exams and test-taking. While the article describes the situation in Shanghai well and fills this description out with some interested quotes from officials, the situation in Shanghai as it is described will be quite familiar to readers from other hypereducation societies.
This also confirms my long-standing prediction that China is quickly headed to hypereducation on a national and thus massive scale.
One element in Mark’s article that I noticed was that he wrote that “In faraway North America, there was the usual handwringing that children there are falling further behind studious (and numerous) Asian kids.” I would contend that at least for Canada there was relatively little of that handwringing in part because participating Canadian provinces consistently do well on PISA and similar comparative standardized tests. This seems to have given the Canadian public a certain self-confidence that borders on the self-satisfied when it comes to the discussion of education elsewhere.
The other element I noticed in the article was that Mark didn’t mention the doubts about the results from Shanghai in last year’s PISA. PISA results have been subject to extensive methodological scrutiny in almost all participating jurisdictions. Some commentators suspect that some of the test-to-test improvements in students’ achievement are primarily the result of gaming the test system on the part of education authorities rather than of substantive improvements, especially when no policy changes have been implemented between test iterations.
One obvious methodological challenge with the Shanghai results is that these compare students in a single city (and one that can be assumed to be particularly resource-rich and filled with ambitious parents compared to the national Chinese average) to entire countries. This is also true of Hong Kong and Singapore results, of course, but brings with many fewer sources of variation in achievement through rural-urban inequalities, etc.
The Shanghai results in some ways seem so outlandish that it’s difficult not to doubt their veracity. 600 on math when the next closest score is 562 (Singapore) and other point differentials tend to be in the single digits between countries? Hm…
Finally, I couldn’t help but notice that Mark repeated the OECD’s claim that 80% of Shanghai students attend supplementary education. Little further information has emerged about this claim, though I suspect that most of it is in the form of private, one-on-one tutoring, but there have been numerous discussions about the pressure that this exerts on all Shanghai students. This, of course, will once again be familiar to parents and observers of many other hypereducation societies.
Posted in Canada, China, Competition, Hypereducation, PISA, Press and Media
In an editorial for the Globe & Mail on Oct 11, 2011 (“Alberta’s Education System Offers Lesson in Competition“), Tom Flanagan, a professor at the Univ of Calgary and presumed confidant of Prime Minister Harper, extolled Alberta schools for their status as higher ranking than “those of any other English-speaking jurisdiction in international tests of education competence”.
The editorial asks the question why exactly Alberta has been doing so well. This is a very worth while question to ask, even after considering whether standardized scores have much to say that’s meaningful. While many countries (who have done poorly, e.g. Germany, but also some who have done very well, i.e. Japan) are somewhat obsessed with PISA scores, these scores are largely ignored in Canada.
However, Dr. Flanagan hardly provides an answer to this question. He merely lists the many alternatives that are open to students and parents in Alberta. From the number of alternatives, Dr. Flanagan concludes that there is vibrant competition among these alternatives. By some unspecified leap of faith, he then concludes further that this competition must produce the excellence that is observable in Alberta.
It is this logic that underpins many of the arguments for supplementary education as well. Choice leads to competition among schools (or supplementary education institutions) which leads to excellence as only excellent options “survive” competition.
Yet, there is little more than apparent logic that speaks in favour of these links. Empirical evidence is scant at best.
For example, on charter schools, research in the United States has questioned whether such schools actually open up competition because geographic mobility inhibits further-away choices. Dr. Flanagan counters with bussing strategies in Albertan cities that bring options closer to interested students. Fair enough, yet ultimately the number of options that students and parents look upon as reasonable to consider is still very small.
Next, does choice actually produce competition and if yes, competition on what? The choices that Dr. Flanagan points to (from charter schools to various language immersion options) sound great and many of them would certainly be options that I would consider with my children (disclosure: my children are all enrolled in public French immersion schools in Vancouver), but few of these alternatives explicitly aim at pedagogical or outcome excellence, they seem to emphasize content options instead. By which logic does the presence of French or Mandarin immersion programs raise math achievement scores?
Some pedagogical alternatives do exist, of course. How do students and parents evaluate these options? Presumably on the basis of some kind of standardized testing and word-of-mouth. The latter is probably somewhat unreliable, even in smaller cities, but somewhat meaningful, while the former may be fairly reliable, but only meaningful for broad comparisons, much less so for the individual fate of a student within a given school.
It is precisely questions that emanate from a discussion about the role of choice and excellence that have driven me to research about supplementary education in Japan. Here’s an entire sub-education system that’s built around for-profit competition with no shortage of options and parents in metropolitan regions who are not inhibited at all about sending children 90 minutes on public transport to a specific juku. Yet, a diversity of options? Excellence?
The diversity of options is entirely restricted to a diversity of delivery methods (individual, small group, less and less large group, on-line, worksheets, etc.). There is virtually no curricular diversity in a supplementary education system that shadows conventional schools quite closely. The same holds for other countries where hypereducation has taken root, i.e. Korean or Taiwan in E Asia, or Brazil, Egypt, Turkey elsewhere around the world.
So in the end, I would certainly agree with Dr. Flanagan that choices, especially substantive and curricular choices for students are a good thing. However, I’m not sure what part, if any, of the observed excellence in standardized testing is due to the presence of choices.
Posted in Canada, Competition, Diversity of Offerings, Hypereducation, PISA
Another flyer contributed by a participant in my Continuing Studies course earlier this summer.
First I find this flyer appealing, but not over-the-top in its design and professionalism.
I would note the cost for a 5-week course here. At five days a week for a nearly full day, this works out to $60/day which certainly is not terribly expensive compared to other camps/daycare options.
What was entirely new to me on this flyer was the “earn course credits” opportunity.
Perhaps because of home schooling, but also because of the existence of remote, small secondary schools with limited course offerings, I imagine, BC offers extensive options for long-distance learning. Typically, these are based on some kind of exam-for-credit system.
It is this possibility that this particular tutoring service is relying on. In their 5-week course, one of the grades 10, 11, 12 math course’s subject matter is covered and a student can thus apply to receive the credit for that course via an exam. Potentially, this offers the opportunity to a student to jump a grade of math in their secondary school or to substitute other electives instead.
This exam-for-credit is not an option in Japan and other Asian education systems. In part the absence of such a system, produces the double-schooling that I have lamented.
The “enrichment tutoring” also seems to offer possibilities beyond course credit, though “remedial tutoring” is also mentioned on this page.
The “top ten reasons” seem to be aiming at students more than parents which may be appropriate given the older age groups targeted (16-18-year olds).
Here’s the back page of this flyer:
Posted in Advertising, Vancouver
Here is one of the Vancouver juku flyers that a participant in the Continuing Studies course I taught contributed.
Single-side, basic flyer from Vancouver Juku
This is a very basic flyer that’s black and white and doesn’t really include any information for parents to base a decision on.
Note some of the key terms in the English text: “professional”, “system”, “tailor-made”.
Also note the “Can arrange pick up if needed”. This is quite typical in buxiban (Taiwanese juku) and there was additional information at this juku that it has strong Taiwan links, though it clearly doesn’t cater to Taiwanese immigrants exclusively.
The “free special gift” if obviously enticing.
Posted in Advertising, Vancouver
This flyer is from a specialized juku (learning differences) around the corner from where we live in Kitsilano.
Inside of three-fold brochure
Some of elements that are frequently emphasized in juku advertising and also appear here:
Less typical is the reference to a specific pedagogical approach, Orton-Gillingham. While I am not familiar with this approach, the mention in this flyer certainly suggests a concern with a research-foundation for approaches adopted in tutoring.
A quick check on Google Scholar reveals close to 100 articles that refer to this approach in 2010 and 2011 (as of June 2011) suggesting that it is at least widely-cited, though I am unable to sift through these citations to note whether the citation is approving, critiquing or name-dropping.
The outside of this folder flyer mainly contains some branding, contact details and a column “About ???”:
??? is a learning center that specializes in one-to-one remedial tutoring for children who struggle in school and/or have learning differences. Tutoring is based on the highly-effective and widely-recognized Orton-Gillingham approach, which combines the proven success of phincs with a multisensory delivery method of teaching.
Not sure whether the U.S. spelling of “centre” suggests that this is an American approach or juku, though nothing suggests a chain and the website only mentions the single Vancouver location.
It is pretty unclear to me what exactly “multisensory” means here, though the inside of the flyer (see above) mentions that,
Visual, auditory, tactile and kinestehtic modalities are all used to teach and to learn.
Hm… still don’t really know what that means, though it sounds like it may be akin to some of the learning strategies that seem almost physical in their practice that I see in juku, i.e. rhythmic repetition of terms, vocabulary, etc. The website also offers a FAQ entry on “What is multisensory tutoring?” but it offers more fancy terminology rather than information.
Note that the focus on learning differences is one that is rare in Japan though I’ve discussed two examples of a focus on special needs education in the juku context.
Posted in Advertising, Special Needs, Vancouver
