Evidence of meeting #77 for Status of Women in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was teachers.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Sean Fraser Liberal Central Nova, NS
I would hate to suspend and miss out on a great opportunity. If we could just keep burning through until the witness shows up, that would be my preference.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Karen Vecchio
Since that seems to be the situation, we can continue.
There's one Conservative, one Liberal, and one NDP, and then we can go back to the top and start our third round.
We have three minutes with somebody from the Conservatives.
Martin or Rachael, who would like to start?
Conservative
Conservative
Martin Shields Conservative Bow River, AB
You brought up a topic, and it's basically what I would call thematic learning, in the sense of using all of the skills possible to learn about a particular topic. Thematic is bringing all the skills, and part of that would be computational.
Where I find that does occur is at the elementary level. Beyond the elementary level, as people get more specific in their subject areas of instruction, it lessens.
Have you dealt with that particular challenge?
Director, Youth Programming, Canada Learning Code
So far, we have not encountered that.
Most of our work, currently at least, is at the primary school level. We are just starting to work with high school teachers. Most of our experience right now is with the primary school level.
Conservative
Martin Shields Conservative Bow River, AB
Which can be thematic, because it's not subject specific to the instructor.
Conservative
Martin Shields Conservative Bow River, AB
Is there any possibility that you might be more successful in—
Director, Youth Programming, Canada Learning Code
Yes, we're looking to work closer with more and more educators.
Through our teachers in the code community, a part of that process, a part of designing a lot of those solutions, involves, to a great deal, a lot of our workshops for teachers learning code. Part of that involves having an open discussion of what we, as an organization and other like organizations need to design for high school teachers to be a better resource.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Karen Vecchio
I'm just going to interrupt.
At the request of Bonnie, she's going to appear with our next panel.
We're going to continue with Carolyn.
We'll continue with these rounds, and then we'll do the next three.
Martin, you still have two minutes left, if you like, because I did interrupt.
Conservative
Martin Shields Conservative Bow River, AB
In the sense of the workshop strategies, the challenge, in the sense of the population of instructors, is you had mentioned that the majority of instructors are female and not male.
How does that, in the sense of working with you in that relationship, understanding that the end goal is to change that mentality of the lower number to get it up to a higher percentage, what role have you played, working with the professionals who are in there, to recognize that?
Director, Youth Programming, Canada Learning Code
Could you clarify your question?
Conservative
Martin Shields Conservative Bow River, AB
The majority of instructors, as you mentioned, as I know, are female. The goal is to increase the participation of females in the computational area. Have you had any discussions with the professionals who are involved in providing that instruction?
Director, Youth Programming, Canada Learning Code
We currently have not entered that level of assessment.
As you mentioned, and from something I shared earlier, a lot of our instructors are from industry. For example, we will have the senior software developer from Google come to instruct our young girls.
We haven't mapped our assessment in research to assess what the impact of that is within the organization.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Karen Vecchio
Thank you very much, Martin.
We're going to switch over to Bernadette Jordan, for three minutes.
Liberal
Bernadette Jordan Liberal South Shore—St. Margarets, NS
Thank you so much for appearing today. It's a really interesting conversation.
I'm going to move a little from Mr. Shield's point.
The majority of teachers are women, and yet the struggle you have is getting women to learn code. Is that kind of a catch-22, where now you have to teach the teachers so they can teach the girls?
Director, Youth Programming, Canada Learning Code
Absolutely. It hasn't been easy. A lot of our teachers in the code initiatives address those barriers that these teachers, specifically these female teachers, are facing.
I think as adults—whether you are an educator, a mom, a mentor—we carry our own fears and beliefs and perceptions of how the technology industry works. When we are in a classroom full of teachers, they are learning as much as the youth in our classrooms.
Women were a huge part of the history of computational thinking. I think women have been, again, marginalized, underserved, and kind of erased out of the history books in relation to computational thinking.
A lot of our education for teachers involves making them aware of the history of technology, and addressing some of those fears head-on in terms of why there is this hesitancy and fear associated with teaching computer science.
Liberal
Bernadette Jordan Liberal South Shore—St. Margarets, NS
You said you used computational thinking outside of the STEM fields, and you were talking about physical education, art, and music.
Can you elaborate on that? I find it fascinating.
Director, Youth Programming, Canada Learning Code
Sure. We worked with an elementary school teacher last year to develop a lesson for her students on sharing with the classroom who in Canadian politics they felt has had the most impact on a certain area. In your typical politics class or history class, students would write a book report on it in a word document or in a journal. We empowered this teacher to guide her students in telling that story through building a website or creating a Wikipedia page on the person.
That's an example of how we would do that.
