EDUCATION TRANSFORMATION IN BRITISH COLUMBIA

Inquiry and Indigenous Education encourage teachers to share their learning through case studies, which is the required annual output from each inquiry team, as well as at a large annual gathering. District leaders and principals talk of going into schools and talking to students to find out how things are changing, and will start meetings with short accounts of what they have witnessed. The book Street Data (Safir and Dugan, 2020) took considerable inspiration from B.C. TIPPING POINTS IN ELEMENTARY AND SECONDARY Most B.C. educators have agreed for some years that the curriculum, including the use of core competencies, is bedding down well in elementary and middle schools. Here, the teacher can operate like a sole provider, making autonomous decisions that the "demand" side has to accept-unless things change too radically and parents choose to exit the system entirely. While the change is more incremental, it is also much more widespread: Most elementary classrooms seem to be making use of the core competencies. In contrast, in high schools, there had been more frustration about the slow pace of change. Here, supply and demand operates at the level of student course choices. Any new course or program offering has to build up sufficient demand-and it is then constituted by the kind of students who are attracted to it. This had enabled some radical departures in high school course design-involving multi-year, interdisciplinary, place-based learning-but they had tended to remain small. Moreover, in what is evidently an unintended consequence of the reform, some innovative new curriculum courses had been susceptible to stigmatization where they are not deemed adequate preparation for college. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, however, educators speak of reaching a province-wide tipping point to normalize more student-centered practice in high schools, as well as elementary. B.C. schools experienced partial closures for several months in 2020 and weeks in 2021. During and in the aftermath of this disruption, the core competencies came to the fore as what to focus on. The sense that there is "no going back" for education in B.C. was reinforced when, in 2021, the province was shaken by the uncovering of over a thousand previously undiscovered children's bodies at the sites of residential schools. The ensuing public conversation about this part of the province's history and its ongoing impact on generations of First Nations families is ongoing, but it has brought increased public attention to the role of Indigenous educators in creating more holistic and sustainable cultures of schooling. The curriculum reform that started in 2011 may yet prove only a small part of the larger story of educational transformation in British Columbia. Lessons for policy MORAL PURPOSE, NOT MANDATES B.C.'s reform has multiple goals and many elements, but the message that has remained core and consistent throughout is that it is about orienting the system to the needs of learning and children. Reform proponents have continually voiced the mantra "focus on learning" and the question "is this the right thing for kids?" as a way to make decisions. This message has been helped build bridges across political differences. In the midst of job action and the government-BCTF court case, for example, educators in the ministry and union leaders could agree on their shared desire to create a curriculum that enabled more meaningful learning for kids. In addition, principals speak of being motivated by seeing a difference in student engagement, particularly students who had problems with attendance now coming to school. Teachers speak of being motivated by individual moments when kids respond or grasp something differently. It is important to balance this lesson, however, with a recognition that the reform in B.C. is centered on much more than a loose vision. Many progressive efforts at system change start with loose "design principles" or guidelines. The idea is that distributed individuals should take these and work with them. In contrast, the B.C. curriculum, while stripped back from previous iterations, is quite detailed. It provides clear material foundations for teachers to work with and fall back on. EDUCATION TRANSFORMATION IN BRITISH COLUMBIA 9

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