To stream or not to stream

These readings made me critically reflect on my own practice. I have often thought that I don’t think streaming is necessary, but nor have I spoken out against it.

I started teaching Secondary school in Ontario, destreaming had just happened for grade 9 and all the teachers in my school were in an uproar "how can we teach all these different levels". I wondered what all the fuss was about as elementary teachers did it all the time and I had attended an unstreamed secondary school and did very well (turns out that it existed in BC but my school was too small to actually have any streamed courses- instead students chose academic subjects or tech ones)

In that first year of streaming year, teachers made no effort to integrate the levels- some students were taught from one textbook, and the weaker students a different textbook. There was no attempt to improve the instruction so it was meaningful to more students. With no support for changing teacher practices, the change was not successful and shortly there after became applied and academic.

If we are to destream we need to support teachers in examining and changing their pedagogy. I am looking forward to the studies in Mar 9 that will have some ideas how to teach inclusively and well.

Even in streamed classes, some teachers really don’t meet the needs of their math students. I currently have 5 students in my Workplace 11 math because the failed the grade 11 college last year when it was taught by a teacher how strongly believed in traditional mathematical rigour and didn’t take into account for different students’ learning needs. One student after two weeks of being bored silly in workplace math retried the college level math –this year taught by a former elementary teacher who teaches in many different ways- and she is getting a mark in the high seventies.

Having said that, like MP, I have taught many students in workplace & locally developed math classes that were math anxious and very glad to be out of the stressful regular math streams, happy to feel competent and accepted in my classes. Would we still have these math anxious students if we made every preceding math class more meaningful and accessible for students?

Often streaming is more about work habits than ability and I think students in the workplace streams would benefit from having students around with work habits. When my workplace math class went from 13 students to 20- the work habits of all the students decreased. I think the students just realised they could get away with doing less in the bigger class.

An issue for me with streaming is that students from low SES backgrounds and immigrants don’t have the tools to argue against streaming or even the awareness that they should until it is too late to do anything. I was very moved by the stories in the Sefa Dei et al. paper of how students were streamed and how stereotyping was seen to play a role. I know that my sister-in-law, whose father moved her from advanced to business courses because they were more suitable for a woman still feels the resentment 40 years later.

With all the reforms going on in math education in Ontario, I think we should revisit streaming and how can we teach math without it.