PAUC (Provincial Academic Upgrading Committee) Meeting - Tracy Black

On Friday, May 11 I attended the PAUC (Provincial Academic Upgrading Committee) Meeting on the new math curriculum along with representatives from Concordia, SAIT, RDC, Medicine Hat College, Lakeland, Portage, Grande Prairie, MRU, Norquest and Grant Macewan. Kris Reid, Math Team Lead from Alberta Education, spoke to us on the new curriculum.  It was very interesting to hear what other colleges are doing with the new math courses. Here are some highlights:

Purpose of the new curriculum – improve transition between grade 9 and 10, reduce the number of topics and go deeper, greater transfer ability between streams, help transition to post-secondary

Philosophy and Pedagogy of the new curriculum – focus on conceptual learning, learning through problem solving, simple to complex and concrete to pictorial to symbolic representations, using multiple methods of solutions, mental math and estimation (appropriate calculator use), personal strategies, algebraic reasoning (starting all the way back to grade 3), mathematical processes

Highlights

·         We are the only college of the ones at the meeting to offer high school courses for Alberta Education credit. Everyone else offers equivalency courses for all levels. This means that many of them were only covering 80% of the curriculum.

·         Many of the colleges wrote their own textbook/materials for their courses

·         Many are just starting to offer the new curriculum this coming fall

·         Teachers should think of the processes (C, CN, ME, PS, R, V, T) as the content of the curriculum and the program of studies just as the context in which to teach the processes

·         Specific outcomes are now less ‘specific’. Stressed that the achievement indicators are just recommendations and do not have to be followed strictly.

·         Math 31 and the -4 stream (Knowledge and Employability) will not be changing

·         The -2 stream is designed to have the majority of students in it

·         Students finishing Math 30-3 and wanting to upgrade a stream must go back to Math 10C

·         Post-secondary programs requiring the -1 stream are sciences, engineering, education (math majors, science majors only), and some business programs. All others will most likely accept the -2 stream. Some programs actually prefer the -2 stream over the -1. For example, Nursing at U of C now states in their requirements that -2 is preferred over -1 because of the statistics units in the -2 stream. There is no guarantee from post-secondary institutions that they won’t change their mind on what to accept for each program.

·         Workbooks are not accepted because they do not have multiple methods of solving, do not consider all of the mathematical processes and all the front matter in the program of studies

·         Applied/Pure diplomas will be offered until 2014. As long as a student has started the course at the beginning of the 2012-2013 school year they have one year to complete the course for credit

·         The level of difficulty on the new diplomas will not change but he thought there may be more numeric response and more conceptual and problem solving style questions

·         SAIT uses placement tests and enforces the decision. If students do not want to start at the level indicated then they recommend MRU or Bow Valley. Norquest and other colleges use placement tests as well and make students sign a waiver if they do not follow the recommended path.

·         Norquest does not allow rewrites but will transfer the weighting of one unit exam to the final exam.

·         Norquest uses common exams for all classes. Instructors must have their class write the exam on the same day.

·         All other colleges had 50% as the grade to get into Math 10C from Prep Math 10. Our current requirement is 70%

·         RDC uses 75 hours for each class and 90 hours for the 30 level courses. Grande Prairie has only 65 hours but uses 80% equivalencies. Norquest uses 90 hours.