The evolution of professionalism - Centre for Policy Studies in ...

This fi nding effectively echoed teachers’ persistent calls for better support
for inclusion. The NSTU argued that inclusion was just one more thing piled on
teachers who were already dealing with massive restructuring and curriculum
change, teacher cuts that resulted in heavier workloads, a series of provincial
administrations that demeaned their work and the way they in which it was done,
and played power games with the collective bargaining process. For teachers,
inclusion was yet another example of the way in which chronic under-funding and
overextension was making the public education system increasingly vulnerable and
diffi cult to operate. In the classroom, teachers were now expected to include more
children with limited support.
The latter years of the 1990s also saw the introduction of more paraprofessionals
into the classroom in support of inclusion initiatives. The NSTU saw this as a
threat, fearing that, as the numbers of paraprofessionals rose and the numbers of
teachers fell, the strength of the collective bargaining unit would decline and the
exclusive right of professional teachers to teach would be weakened. In May 2002,
the NSTU Annual Council passed a resolution that backed away from inclusion
on the grounds that the government was not providing the resources necessary to
support it implementation.
The report of the Special Education Implementation Review addressed special
education issues clearly, but it also went well beyond narrow visions of inclusion
and integration. The implementation committee report supported a broad view of
inclusion, which in an increasingly ethnically diverse and economically unequal
Nova Scotia, has come to mean support for opening schools up to traditionally
under-serviced populations. Many critics of public education in Nova Scotia — from
minority lobby groups to school boards to the NSTU — remain concerned about
persistent under-funding of, and lip service support for inclusion. The question
is whether recent concerns about achieving more or less uniform outcomes and
standards herald a return to the kind of exclusive back-to-basics standard practices
that established and justifi ed the traditional system of exclusion in the fi rst place.
On the other hand, others argue that current neo-liberal educational initiatives, such
as outcome-based practices and the publication of standardized test results, will
help disadvantaged groups make a case for better services.
The 1990s saw the Department establish divisions dedicated to the promotion
of education in two historically marginalized ethnic communities. In response to
the recommendation of the Task Force on Mi’kmaq Education (now the Council
on Mi’kmaq Education), the Department established the Division of Mi’kmaq
services in 1997. The Mi’kmaq Education Act (Nova Scotia, 1998) set a basic
framework at the provincial level in the context of federal legislation, for the
operation of First Nations schools in Nova Scotia. Currently the province operates
nine First Nations schools in seven communities. The Mi’kmaq Services Division
has developed curriculum resources and courses for the public schools generally,
and has supported cultural awareness programming throughout the province. The
division has also supported Mi’kmaq language instruction and cultural awareness
programming in First Nations schools. From the beginning of the 1990s, it appears
the larger First Nations bands in Nova Scotia have made the move toward locally
controlled schooling, mirroring similar trends in other Canadian jurisdictions.
158 Section 4: The Atlantic Region