There has been increased calls for a more diverse Canadian teaching workforce for decades, but progress towards this has been slow. For 20 years the answer to diversifying the teaching workforce was to hire more male teachers.the student population represents a wide range of backgrounds – including a mosaic of varied racial, cultural, gender, religious, and socioeconomic backgrounds. Therefore, there is an immense need for a diverse workforce of educators that possess the ability to empathize and relate to students, parents, and the wider communities in which they teach.
It takes more than academic ability to thrive in an initial teacher preparation program and ultimately become a great teacher. Our recent blog post discusses how holistic review can help diversify the teaching workforce.
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Altus Assessments’ mission is to create a world served by exceptional professionals. One of the ways that we do this is through Casper, our unique open-response situational judgment test (SJT) that evaluates applicants’ social intelligence and professionalism skills.
Only 32.3% of Canadians consider their ethnic origin to be Canadian suggesting the majority of Canadians identify with a culture outside of the country in which they live. Canada’s LGBTQ+ population is now 4%. However, the teaching workforce doesn’t reflect the social fabric of Canadian society.
For 20 years the answer to diversifying the teaching workforce was to hire more male teachers. Now, the need for diversity goes beyond this. Despite a rise in students being from a visible minority, a 2016 Census found a lack of diversity still exists within Canada’s teaching workforce 1.8% of elementary and high school teachers were black with a total of 7.6% of teachers identifying as a visible minority.
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This is why empathy is an important skill to possess: the ability to walk in another person’s shoes, understand their struggles, and be able to adapt the curriculum and differentiating instruction to ensure those students have the opportunity to learn. By creating a more holistic admissions process, you are able to see the person behind the application and understand what non-cognitive skills they possess.
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