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
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
In 2008, I wrote an article for Education Canada, published by the Canadian Education Association, that a) reported on the current state of (research on) supplementary education in Japan, and b) speculated a bit about what an understanding of juku implies for the trajectory of Canadian education. In this discussion of the Canadian context, I relied on a quick-and-dirty survey of supplementary education institutions in the Lower Mainland that I did together with intern Sabrina Lohner in the summer of 2007.
In this survey, we found 74 tutoring centres and other supplementary education institutions in the Vancouver area.
Roughly half of these supplementary education businesses promoted themselves in more languages than just English and many of them seemed to be branding themselves specifically in a way to appeal to Asian-Canadians.
The full article is freely available on the Education Canada website or as a PDF.
Posted in Advertising, Canada, Supplementary Education, Vancouver
Tagged Juku in Japan, Julian Dierkes
I have not been making good use of any of the multimedia capabilities of a blog, so I thought I’d start scanning in some of the flyers for supplementary education from around the world that I’m collecting. If you have similar flyers, I would be delighted to add them to this series with some brief comments.
For now, I will blur out brand names/contact details, though I’m not entirely sure whether I will be able to keep that up in the long run. Note that I’m not including flyers for any of the juku where I’ve conducted research, in part to safeguard their anonymity.
A Vancouver Tutoring Service Flyer
So, what do I notice when I look st this flyer?
[Apologies for the black-and-white, will have to fiddle with the copy machine settings to make this colour for the future].
For the front side of the flyer (on the left), the quote by a satisfied parent is very common on this kind of advertising. Here it speaks to one of the two main claims by tutoring companies: better grades and better attitude. The quote acts at once as advertising the service’s main claims, but also providing evidence of their success, though obviously not in any replicable way.
Unusually for Vancouver, none of the students pictured are Asian-looking. This is contrary to what I found together with an intern some years ago when we surveyed Vancouver tutoring services.
Reverse Side of a Vancouver Tutoring Service Flyer
I should note, BTW, that this flyer showed up on our doorstep in Kitsilano.
For the back side of the flyer, the paragraph here hits on all the main points that almost all supplementary education emphasizes: “unique methodology”, “custom-tailored”, “unique needs”. Presumably that is one of the main selling points, i.e. the ability (in contrast to conventional schools) to be able to tailor tutoring to a student’s learning goals. Whether this tailoring involves anything other than a different pace of progress is unclear, of course.
As is the case for many tutoring services in North America, the one advertised here is offering at-home tutoring, i.e. the equivalent of 家庭教師in Japan.
Something that his quite rare in juku promotional materials in Japan, but much more common for supplementary education in North America, is the claim of some kind of accreditation, in this case through membership in the “National Tutor Association“.
While this association does offer certification, all that’s advertised on the flyer is membership, and that is open to anyone, so it is essentially a useless piece of information that is most likely meant to hint at some kind of professional status.
Note that this particular tutoring service is a “home-based” franchise.
Posted in Advertising, Canada, Supplementary Education, Vancouver
