Land-based Activities - Calculating Local Stream Discharge and Freshwater Availability - elementary through postsecondary curricular advance
In 2019, Commissioners reflected a provincial reality collected from eleven workshops, pruning 6 comprehensive areas of focus into ‘10 Imperatives’ and ‘4 Concluding Remarks’ to questions posed by Education Minister Kelvin Goertsen. Identified was a sense of urgency in improving ‘achievement’ as students were not performing satisfactorily (p.7-26). Commission expectations listed rigorous student assessments, relevant curriculum, equity in distributed excellence inclusive of newcomers-refugee-Indigenous students and ‘girls in science’ with a special interest in STEAM (p. 101). When the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) re-evaluated PISA in 2018, Manitoba students had precipitously dropped 35 points in reading, 51 points in math, and 38 points in science (in 2 decades), placing the province last in the country (O’Grady, Deussing, Scerbina, Tao, Fung, Elez & Monk, 2019). Noting a decline of 30 points is equivalent to a full year of formal education, Manitoba now has the greatest percentage of students performing below Level 2 (the baseline level required to participate fully in modern society). Decreases in attention, concentration, numeracy and literacy (p. 27), combined with the lack of ‘evidence-based tactics’ and ‘cross-disciplinary approaches’ (p.36) have led students to increases in disengagement, cognitive lags and chronic absenteeism. Math and physics, regrettably taught in isolation, obscure relevance to daily functioning and the decline in performance signals a multi-pronged approach. More than ever, careers in resource-related disciplines require communication and computational skills blended with an understanding of environmental sustainability. Contemporarily, too many students entering college and university are without foundational knowledge and skills. Inappropriately, Manitoba now has the lowest level of postsecondary education attainment in Canada for the 25-44 age group (p.69). Desperately needed are research-informed strategies that pilot new initiatives.