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Cooperative education provides secondary school students with a wide range of rigorous learning opportunities connected to communities outside the school. It is designed to recognize and respond to the diversity of Ontario’s student population, and it can engage all students. In cooperative education, students learn in safe, culturally responsive environments in the community, and they are actively involved in determining what they learn, how they learn, when and where they learn, and how they demonstrate their learning. Participation in cooperative education can lead to transformational change, engaging students in unique experiences that they will remember throughout their lives. Cooperative education promotes the acquisition and refinement of skills, knowledge, and habits of mind3 that support education and career/life planning and fosters positive attitudes towards learning that help students become independent, lifelong learners. Cooperative education contributes substantially to a comprehensive education and career/life planning culture by focusing on: • helping students acquire skills and knowledge related to the community experience; • providing opportunities for students to inquire and reflect on their experiences in order to gain a greater knowledge of themselves and their opportunities and a growing understanding of how they can shape their future; • providing personalized experiences to meet students’ particular learning and motivational needs.
OVERVIEW OF THE PROGRAM
The cooperative education program provides opportunities for all students in secondary school, including adult learners, to apply, refine, and extend, in the classroom and in the context of a community outside the school, the skills and knowledge outlined in the cooperative education curriculum. Two cooperative education courses are included in the Ontario curriculum: • Cooperative Education Linked to a Related Course (or Courses) • Creating Opportunities through Co-op The inclusion of these two courses in the curriculum is intended to ensure that all students have access to cooperative education, to meet the diverse needs of individual students, and to support a broad range of experiential learning opportunities. Schools are encouraged to offer both cooperative education courses.
The expectations identified for the two cooperative education courses describe the skills and knowledge that students are expected to develop and demonstrate in the activities in both the classroom and community components on which their achievement is assessed and evaluated. Two sets of expectations – overall expectations and specific expectations – are listed for each strand, or broad area of the curriculum. (Cooperative Education Linked to a Related Course [or Courses] has two strands, numbered A and B. Creating Opportunities through Co-op has four strands, numbered A, B, C, and D.) Taken together, the overall and specific expectations represent the mandated curriculum. The overall expectations describe in general terms the skills and knowledge that students are expected to demonstrate by the end of each course. The specific expectations describe the expected skills and knowledge in greater detail. The specific expectations are grouped under numbered headings, each of which indicates the strand and the overall expectation to which the group of specific expectations corresponds (e.g., “B2” indicates that the group relates to overall expectation 2 in strand B). This organization is not meant to imply that the expectations in any one group are achieved independently of the expectations in the other groups. The numbered headings are used merely to help teachers focus on particular aspects of skills and knowledge as they develop various lessons and plan learning activities for their students. Students may take Cooperative Education Linked to a Related Course (or Courses) more than once, linked to a different related course (or courses) each time. The same set of cooperative education course expectations is to be achieved every time this course is taken. However, every time the course is taken, students’ learning in connection with the strand A expectations of the cooperative education course is tailored to be appropriate for the specific placement for the community component – that is, students learn not only about legislation on health, safety, and well-being, but also about the potential hazards they could encounter at the specific workplace. Their learning in connection with the strand A expectations is therefore differentiated each time the cooperative education course is taken. Students’ learning in connection with the strand B expectations of the cooperative education course is also differentiated each time the cooperative education course is taken, as strand B focuses on applying, refining, and extending skills and knowledge associated with the curriculum expectations selected from the related course(s). For both strands of the cooperative education course, the learning is expected to be at a level consistent with the grade level of the related course(s). Students and teachers collaborate on the development of the Student’s Cooperative Education Learning Plan, which reflects the depth, scope, and level of complexity and sophistication of learning that is expected in particular cooperative education courses (see also pages 17–18 and 24–26). Most specific expectations are accompanied by examples and “teacher prompts”, as requested by educators. The examples, given in parentheses, are meant to clarify the requirement specified in the expectation, illustrating the kind of skill or knowledge, the specific area of learning, the depth of learning, and/or the level of complexity that the expectation entails. The teacher prompts are meant to illustrate the kinds of questions teachers might pose in relation to the requirement specified in the expectation. Both the examples and the teacher prompts have been developed to model effective practice and are meant to serve as illustrations for teachers. Both are intended as suggestions for teachers rather than as exhaustive or mandatory lists. Teachers can choose to use the examples and prompts that are appropriate for the classroom component and/or community component of a cooperative education course, or they may develop their own approaches that reflect a similar level of complexity. Whatever the specific ways in which the requirements outlined in the expectations are implemented, they must be inclusive and reflect the diversity of the student population and the population of the province
Cooperative education teachers use the information gathered through conversation, observation, and assessment of student products, along with comments, responses, and/or constructive criticism provided by the cooperative education placement supervisor, to inform their professional judgement in determining a grade. Gathering evidence of student learning from multiple and varied sources ensures that the evaluation will be both valid and reliable and will most accurately reflect the learning that has occurred in the cooperative education course. As stated earlier, the cooperative education teacher is solely responsible for evaluating students’ achievement and for assigning student grades. Teachers evaluate student achievement of the expectations set out in the cooperative education curriculum, using the success criteria in the Student’s Cooperative Education Learning Plan (see pages 24–26) and the performance standards set out in the achievement chart provided on pages 52–53. All curriculum expectations must be accounted for in instruction and assessment, but evaluation focuses on students’ achievement of the overall expectations. Each student’s achievement of the overall expectations is evaluated on the basis of the student’s achievement of related specific expectations. The overall expectations are broad in nature, and the specific expectations define the particular content or scope of the knowledge and skills referred to in the overall expectations. Teachers will use their professional judgement to determine which specific expectations should be used to evaluate achievement of the overall expectations, and which ones will be accounted for in instruction and assessment but not necessarily evaluated.
