Skip To Content

From humble beginnings to international impact: the University of Alberta’s Faculty of Education

By Fern Snart, dean of education
 
As Alberta took its place within Confederation in 1905, public education reflected society and the economics of the time; the province was predominantly a rural population and agriculture was key.

Immigrants to Canada were arriving steadily as federal efforts were underway to “settle the west.” Schooling often took place in the framed one-room schoolhouses across the prairies; at one time there were over 3,000 in Alberta.

School attendance was a challenge, as young people provided necessary labour on family farms. Similarly, since attainment of the “three Rs” was felt to be an adequate education, high-school completion was relatively rare.

The life of teachers in this era was not to be envied. Those teachers, typically young women, often found themselves in run-down schoolhouses and were required to live in similarly neglected teacherages or granaries, or even in the school itself. The job description included janitorial tasks and sometimes even the care of the horses used as transportation by some of the students. They were ill-prepared for the range of students’ educational needs; students represented a wide range of ability levels, ages, and even spoken languages in the case of immigrant children.

By 1906, things had begun to change as the provincial legislature of the new province began to sit in McKay Avenue School—Edmonton’s oldest brick school house—and teacher preparation was an early agenda item.

From 1906 through 1945, teacher education in Alberta was provided by the Provincial Department of Education at three Normal Schools, located in Calgary from 1906–1945, Camrose from 1912–1930, and Edmonton, first housed in Corbett Hall, from 1920–1945.  These “Normal Schools” were created to educate high-school graduates how to be teachers, with an underlying purpose of establishing teaching standards or norms, hence the name.

By 1928, a School of Education existed at the U of A within the faculties of arts and science, which allowed students to obtain a degree in education if they had previously completed another degree.

The school became a college in 1939; Milton Ezra LaZerte was named as the first director, and pre-service teachers were allowed to register directly in an education program. The notion was that the college would educate those who would become high-school teachers while preparation for elementary-school teachers would still occur primarily in the Normal Schools.

The faculty opened its doors in 1942 as the first Faculty of Education in Canada, and named Lazerte as dean. By the mid-forties, the Normal Schools closed and the U of A was given the responsibility of providing teacher education for the entire province. The foundation was thus provided for the requirement that was initiated in the 1970s, which said those entering the teaching profession must have a university degree. 

The Faculty of Education today is one of the largest and most vital in Canada. With 3,400 undergrad-uate students, 800 graduate students and world class-researchers and teachers as professors, graduates are making a difference in educational and professional spheres across the globe.  The faculty’s collegial relationship with the profession through the Alberta Teachers’ Association is strong, placing roughly 2,300 student teachers annually with excellent mentor teachers in Alberta classrooms. 

The innovative work of education professors has taken the faculty to new and exciting arenas, such that its contribution to the public good—locally and globally—can be increasingly noted.

For instance, off-campus collaborative programs provide opportunities for students to obtain U of A Bachelor of Education degrees by completing two years of study at a home college, with the Faculty of Education bringing years three and four to the community. Students are studying in unique cohorts through Red Deer College, Grande Prairie Regional College, Keyano College, Medicine Hat College and within the Aboriginal Teacher Education Program through Northern Lakes College, Blue Quills First Nations College and Maskwachees Cultural College.

Through the faculty’s Education Clinic, over 100 graduate students are supervised while providing counselling, assessment, reading and language services to clientele who may be unable to access or afford such services elsewhere.

Student programs have also been enriched by 50 visiting scholars over the last 18 months, including researchers from Australia, Ireland, South Africa, South Korea, China, Ukraine, South America and the United States. The faculty’s international exposure reached China in October of 2007 when a faculty delegation visited universities and national research organizations in the Far East to embark on research collaborations and exchange opportunities. In fact, 10 international memoranda of understanding have been signed with schools in every corner of the globe over the past two years to promote research collaboration and faculty and student mobility.

Further, the Faculty of Education is the only North American member of a consortium formed by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s Teacher Training Network for Iraq, created to assist in rebuilding the education system in that country. Fifteen teacher educators from Iraq visited the faculty for 17 days of professional development in mathematics, science and technology teaching in November 2007.

Another unique initiative for the faculty has been the delivery of a Global Citizenship Field Experience course for 18 undergraduate students in Ghana during the summers of 2007 and 2008. The co-instructor for the course is Kwasi Ansu-Kyeremeh, a professor from the University of Ghana and an Ashanti chief who previously received his master’s of education degree at the U of A.

A little closer to home, the faculty is leading a Global Citizenship Curriculum Development initiative, which involves all 18 faculties across campus.

As well, a Community University Research Alliance award has helped Cora Weber-Pillwax. a professor in the Department of Educational Policy, provide an historic opportunity for aboriginal scholars in Western Canada by creating the opportunity to examine the writings of the early Oblate missionaries. The Oblates are partners in this research, and the process is framed as one that will contribute to healing within the context of understanding language and history.

Finally, over the past two years the faculty has begun collaborative initiatives with the Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry, including the joint proposal for a master’s in health sciences education, offered through the Faculty of Education to practicing professionals who wish to improve their skills in pedagogy and educational research.

The University of Alberta’s Dare to Discover vision exemplifies the achievements of Alberta’s early educational pioneers: to inspire the human spirit through outstanding achievements in learning, discovery, and citizenship in a creative community and by building one of the world’s great universities for the public good. The commitment and personal inspiration of young teachers, their contextual need for creativity and discovery in reaching and teaching the students and their families and their ultimate contribution to the public good, suggest that these were early professionals of whom the first President of the University of Alberta, Henry Marshall Tory, and the current President, Indira Samarasekera, would be equally proud.