Commentary: The Nineties

I moved to Saskatchewan in the late 1990s, and had travelled extensively in the province prior to my move. I conducted teacher inservice sessions across the province, and presented many conference sessions at the SMTS conferences (both FOCUS and Sciematics) around the implementation of the ‘new’ Saskatchewan program during the mid 1990s. My experiences as a teacher educator in the province frames my comments below.

Policy documents such as the Core Curriculum were in the stage of implementation in 1990s. Saskatchewan completed a review of the K-12 education system in the early 1980s. In 1987, the Core Curriculum was published. Core Curriculum outlined sixteen recommendations. Thurgood Sagal (2007) describes the sixteen recommendations as: seven required areas of study for all children in Saskatchewan; six Common Essential Learnings through which children would study the seven required areas of study; schools would be able to offer locally determined options in the curriculum; there was recognition of diverse student needs and that teachers should be able to adapt curriculum expectations to meet the needs of diverse students; and there were initiatives related to resource development and instructional practices, initiatives such as resource-based learning, Indian and Metis content and perspectives, gender equity, multicultural education, career education, instructional approaches, and evaluation practices. In this reform, the Saskatchewan mathematics program of studies was also reviewed and a new high school mathematics structure was introduced in the early 90s, Mathematics 10, 20, A30, B30, and C30.