Empowered Educators in Canada: How High-Performing Systems Shape Teaching Quality

Part of a series, with a main volume by Linda Darling-Hammond and Dion Burns: EMPOWERED EDUCATORS: HOW HIGH-PERFORMING SYSTEMS SHAPE TEACHING QUALITY AROUND THE WORLD. This work delves into a number of high-performing educational systems, and describes how they create a coherent set of policies designed to ensure quality teaching in all communities. The authors also closely examine how these policies are translated into practice. The series spans systems across three continents and five countries, In EMPOWERED EDUCATORS IN CANADA, the authors describe a country that is proud of its education system. In Canada there's a high value on – and participation in – publicly funded education. Teachers are highly qualified and, generally, a respected profession. The Canadian population is, by international comparisons, well-educated and inequities linked to socio-economic status or immigrant status or lower than average compared to the OECD. There are, however, national issues of concern, particularly recognition, reconciliation and appropriate resources to support Aboriginal students and communities. The Canadian system is not uniform across the country; instead there are local variations affecting teachers and teaching.