1.
- THESA Uses a Teacher Inquiry Group to Gather Data on the State
of Home Economics in British Columbia
10. Interviews with Teachers
- Theme 1 -the impact of lack of easy access to a home
economics-equivalent degree
- I think there are people out there in education who want to be
teachers but still dont know [about home ec]. I dont know if they
know you can go to university and study home ec.
- A s a young home ec teacher I see a lot of my colleagues are
older than me and I worry that theyre going to be retiring, going
on mat leave, people are leaving for different reasons, and there
isnt anyone coming into the profession. (teacher with 3 years
experience)
11. Interviews with Teachers
- Theme 2 -class size and composition
- My main challenge is the diversity in the classroom and classes
with multi levels of ability .(teacher with 35 years of
experience)
- Larger classes and class composition have made the job more
challenging.The integration of ESL and resource room students (some
with and some without classroom assistants) makes teaching more
difficult.(teacher with 25 years of experience)
- What are your worries about home economics?Class sizes.If
classes get larger can I still teach the way I do now? (teacher
with 23 years of experience)
12. Interviews with Teachers
- Theme 3 -concern about budgets.
- What are your worries about home economics?
- Budgets.If boards dont fund and we cant charge fees, how can we
continue . (teacher with 35 years of experience )
- Budgets are always a concern.So far our district has been
pretty good about covering what was lost when fees were abolished
but you never know what might happen in the future.(teacher with 25
years of experience)
- Cut backs in financing the program and not allowing programs to
naturally grow as the demand from the students is there, for most
courses.(teacher with 8 years of experience )
13. Interviews with HRPersonnel
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- I've tried to fill 3 home ed jobs in the past last year.I had
one qualified applicant for the lot.They were almost as tough to
fill as tech ed jobs.However, we were willing to live with an
unqualified foods teacher, where we would cancel a metalwork course
if we had no qualified teacher.I foresee a big shortage coming up
soon....(school district in South Central BC)
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- We have found it nearly impossible to find qualified applicants
for Home Ec positions.Where we have had interest the applicants are
nearly always from out of province.We aren't anticipating a
shortage - its already here!(school district in Northern BC)
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- We no longer have any qualified [home economics teachers] on
our TOC list and have 2 jobs to fill for Sept 2009 . (school
district in the Okanagan)
14. Using PBWiki
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- 18. Does your school double book rooms in Home Economics (i.e.
book 2 foods classes in one room and expect the teachers to
alternate use?)Do you want this to be a yes/no answer and that's it
or do you want to find out how often this occurs? If it is the
latter then I think you will want to follow up with some kind of
question but I am not sure how to ask this (for example if you are
a semestered school with two foods labs then you can have 16 blocks
of foods in one year -- if you have 21 blocks then that means that
5 classes have to be put back to back with 5 other classes -- so do
we want to know that there are 5 extra courses running or do we
want to know that 10 classes will be sharing one foods lab and a
classroom??? Do you see what I mean??I see your point. Would the
question then be: If the answer is yes, how many blocks does this
happen a year?
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- I think our intent was to just get an indication of the use of
home ec rooms - are there enough resources in your school? We
didn't need a great amount of detail. JGI think this question can
be deleted and 19 below expanded. GS
15.
- We have learned that seeing ourselves as producers of research
gives a sense of empowerment.The issues addressed in this research
have been festering for years but this is the first time that any
action has been taken.The sense that this teacher inquiry can
really make a difference inspires us to continue.