Report on the Status of Facilitating Science Programs in Calgary Board of Education Schools
There are currently nineteen science technician positions in the Calgary Board of Education.There will be twenty positions in September 2016 with the opening of Nelson Mandela High School.
Educational science laboratory technicians:
There is no Canadian specific training or career path for the position of educational science laboratory technician. While the school science program umbrellas all science and science related disciplines, technicians are selected from a variety of identifiable science professional backgrounds. Science technicians have the science knowledge and laboratory expertise specific to those professions, but lack the breadth of knowledge and expertise in the multiple disciplines that they must facilitate in a school.
High schools offer at least eleven distinct science courses, some having GATE, AP, IB or ELL mirror courses. Select schools offer additional courses such as outdoor education, pre-engineering, horticulture and forensics. Science technicians have to be familiar with the curriculum and the laboratory experiments and demonstrations for all these courses.
Science technicians receive general CBE orientation materials and generic training in Occupational Health and Safety (OH&S), WHMIS, Transportation of Dangerous Goods (TDG) and respirator usage. To ensure their own safety and the safety of science staff and students, science technicians are responsible for the application and compliance of these and other regulations within CBE high school science departments. In addition to the generic training, under OH&S, technicians are required to have job and site specific training for their personal safety and to enable them to perform their duties. To ensure the safety of science staff and students, science technicians are also responsible for the application and compliance of these and other regulations within CBE high school departments.
Science technicians need to recognize and know how to use and care for a wide range of expensive, specialized educational laboratory equipment. Technology is advancing at a rapid pace. New laboratory technologies have been and are continually being added to the traditional equipment found in school laboratories. Technicians must have knowledge of these and be able to incorporate them into science programs while also upskilling teaching staff with their usage and capabilities. As an illustration, a student, insufficiently supervised by an untrained teacher in how to use the equipment, resulted in eight hundred dollars in broken probe ware.
Currently, science technician training to acquire necessary knowledge and skills is largely carried out in-house through consulting published resources, conferring with other science technician colleagues and attending CBE science technician meetings, professional development days and conferences. Due to overwhelming workload, not all technicians are able to take advantage of these learning opportunities. This type of training is non-uniform and does not always address the specific skills and knowledge that particular individual technicians require.
There is currently no CBE system provision for the development or maintenance of a science laboratoryprocedural handbook/manual for guidance on standard methods for trainingand orientation purposes. Science technicians have had to develop such resources for themselves, for the most part outside of work hours. The online manual developed and maintained by science technicians can be found at: extent of the position has broadened, the number of technicians increased and the logistics of compiling, updating and uploading to the internet has made the group’s ability to efficiently do this necessary task increasingly difficult.
“There is a simple, foundational rationale: the better trained technicians are, the better the support and advice they will be able to offer science teachers. Better supported science teachers lead to improved science education for young people.”1
Science technician staff turnover:
Each year there are CBE high schools that find themselves without science support, whether as a result of temporary leave or a permanent vacancy. There is a significant lag time in filling the position with a fully functioning, competent temporary or permanent hire. Schools at times go for months without replacing a science technician, putting the school in the position of not having TDG trained personnel on hand to receive or ship dangerous goods or respirator certified staff to deal with serious chemical spills.
The position of science technician within CBE came into existence roughly 25 years ago, with technicians being hired en masse to fill positions in all the identified senior high schools. The technicians from that initial hiring have been more or less of the same experience level. They received the same initial group orientation and training and collectively grew into their positions. Since that time, there has been the natural and moderately manageable technician turnover, but now the technicians of the mass hiring have started to retire. There are now ten or more of the current twenty technicians planning to leave. There are new high schools about to open (Nelson Mandela this year, Seton in a few years) with science support positions to fill.
To estimate the future of science laboratory support, science technicians were surveyed for target retirement dates and projected school openings were used to produce the following table:
Projection of the Experience Rollover of Science Technician Expertise:
Fall 2015 / Fall 2016 / Fall 2017 / Fall 2018 / Fall 2019 / Fall 2020 / Fall 2021Total # of techs / 19 / 20 / 20 / 20 / 21 / 21 / 21
0 - 2 yr. techs / 0 / 7 / 9 / 4 / 5 / 5 / 1
2 – 5 yr. techs / 1 / 1 / 0 / 6 / 9 / 9 / 7
5 – 10 yr. techs / 3 / 3 / 3 / 1 / 1 / 0 / 7
10 plus yr. techs / 14 / 9 / 8 / 9 / 6 / 7 / 6
Vacancy / 1
Note: This table does not take into account the annual need for at least one temporary or permanent annual replacement for leaves from the casual roster.
Entry level technicians (0 to 2 years of experience) need orientation and induction, followed by training, preferably with supervision. Technicians in the two to five years of experience range still rely on colleagues for guidance, but can safely perform their duties independently. On the basis of their professional knowledge, skills and professional attributes, there are now identifiable career levels of educational science laboratory support professionals.Refer to the CBE science technician developed orientation information for new hires and career development training binder: “Educational Science Laboratory Professionals Career Development” At present, there is no provision for or recognition of the career development of science support professionals.
Science technician workload:
The responsibilities, accountabilities and expectations of the science support position have evolved and expanded over the twenty-five year span that the position has existed within CBE. The technicians have been endeavouring to have their position revised and re-classified for over twelve years to reflect the changes.
From class sizes of 25 to 30 students, science class sizes are now often closer to 40. The greater number of students necessitates increasing the quantity of materials and equipment and subsequently impacting purchasing, storage, maintenance and disposal.
CTS class sizes have enforced maximums, but even though science lab rooms may be designed for 24 studentsfollowing building code specifications, 40 or more students are fit into science lab classes.
The closing of CBE Stores at Highfield has impacted the work of science technicians. Techniciansnow have to shop locally for many household and other items rather than simply placing an order. Purchasing off-site is in the science technician position description, but the expanded number and variety of items requires more work time. Other science specific items, previously stocked by CBE stores, must be sought and comparison pricing is necessary before ordering.Vendors and supply companies are constantly changing as well as their quality and availability of products and their level of customer support. Agreements with CBE purchasing and science vendors may be out dated and not useful. Each science technician doing this requires more system work time rather than consulting one resource person for the information.
Transportation of Dangerous Goods responsibilities have increased. In most cases, the science technician is the only certified TDG staff at their school. In addition to the science department, the technician is called upon to process waste from various sources, such as automotives, electronics, photography and facilities. The hazardous materials requiring TDG disposal has increased not only with increased volumes produced by increased class sizes, but with changes in the materials having to be TDG shipped, e.g. preserved biological tissues and their storage solutions are now required to be TDG shipped.
The Alberta Education mandate to increase inquiry based learning and individualized student laboratory work, has affected how science activities are facilitated requiring additional personalized preparation from science technicians and individualized risk management. For example, students often ask for chemicals that are dangerous and even outside the scopeof the CBE and Alberta Ed safety documents. Guidance is required from the technician to find alternate safer procedures and/or a substitute chemical.
Science technicians work extra hours and bank the time to get the work done, but finding convenient times in order to take the time in lieu is often difficult, if indeed feasible. To get the work done, science technicians quite often miss coffee breaks and eat lunches on the run. Some schools use unpaid students to perform unionized science technician duties and there are other instances when teaching staff with unfilled teaching loads have been assigned to do the work overload of a unionized science technician.
Despite the factors impacting the workload of individual science technicians being varied and all factorsnot being quantifiable, an attempt to reflect the workloads has been carried outby calculatingschoolscience “service factors”. Service factors arederived by dividing the total number of science classes at a school by the weekly hours of thescience technician at that location.
Science Technician Service Factors Prepared November 2015
Service factor is calculated by dividing the number of science classes by the weekly science technician hours.
High School Service Factors sorted by Location (CBE Area):
There are 9 schools that are functioning with less than the mean science technician support.
From the tables, it can be seen that a large number of school science programs could benefit from additional support, especially the Sir Winston Churchill High and Western Canada High science programs. The data is not presented here, but an average science technician processes approximately 25 – 40 laboratory requests per week, while at Churchill and Western more than double that are often processed and during peak times as many as 120 requests have been fielded.
When new textbooks were being written and being prepared for publication, science technicians were hired to review the experiments, give suggestions for experiments and give their input on the labs themselves as well the safety considerations related to the procedures. The resources have been in circulation for some time, but science technicians continue to routinely develop new lab experiments and modify ones already in use. This work is best done when there is time and space to dedicate the technician’s attention solely on the task.
Large purchase orders generally are ordered to arrive during the summer for the “new” year. Other orders are special funding such as from parent council. Such orders are quite often class sets of more expensive items (e.g. microscopes, water baths) or large and awkward (e.g. lab carts) that require assembly, inventorying and storage. Tasks that could be more efficiently performed when there is empty space to spread out. Inventorying of tens of thousands of dollars of equipment and tracking of the maintenance/repair of that expensive equipment does not happen for lack of time because there are labs in progress. Balances and hotplates, each worth five hundred dollars, gradually become insufficient in number and no one knows where they have gotten to. Before long a whole class set needs to be ordered for seven thousand dollars. The same with the countless smaller lab items, e.g. multiple class sets of thermometers can vanish over the summer. Schools have hundreds of microscope slides, some costing thirty dollars each, that are often not inventoried and accounted for. How many disappear is vague because of limited tracking, for which there is no time. Lack of time during the busy school year, results in equipment in need of repair or needing to be sent away for repair, sits on shelves for years sometimes, rather than being available for student use.
The work overload has resulted in technicians becoming ill (ulcers, hernias, back injuries, leg injuries) or having to take medical stress leaves. This is a physical job and it can be a dangerous job if one does not take the necessary precautions. Not everything can be controlled by the worker. Technicians rushing to get multiple tasks done to meet lab starts and class period changes can compromise staff and student safety when wrong solutions may put out. There is increased chance of the technician bashing or cutting fingers, bumping into counters and having slips and falls. The physical conditions in old schools have caused harm to science techs, e.g. fume hoods not working. Some science technicians are expected to carry heavy loads of science equipment up and down stairs without elevators or additional support. It is a mentally strenuous job, as well with the pressure of deadlines and concentrating on multiple ongoing events, while being interrupted frequently and worrying about how to get it all done or how to make do when supplies are short.
Schools in need of science support:
There are CBE schools that do not have science laboratory support staff, e.g. senior high schools like Jack James, Louise Dean Centre, the Alternative High School and all the junior high schools. These schools have chemicals to be inventoried annually, SDSs to be maintained and waste to process for disposal. Chemicals have shelf lives and periodically need replacing. The chemical management of these sites is approached every decade or so, by a “putting out of the fire” approach, rather than in a routine and consistent manner.
Senior high science technicians receive requests from junior highs for assistance, but for the most part, do not have the time to give more than advice. Schools without technicians will borrow equipment and chemicals from senior highs via the technicians (requests also to LL’s and administration are then handed on to the technician to prepare). Materials and resources are shared with the other schools (e.g. new WHMIS labels prepared by the science technicians and also by having the science technician manual online for them to access). Curriculum specialists contact technicians for advice and information on a variety of matters on behalf of elementary and junior high science programs.
High schools with resident science technicians have occasions of being overburdened with work or a position is empty as a consequence of a personal leave. Science technicians return from leaves with increased workload due to the unmanaged hazardous waste and chemicals.
Newly hired, casual roster science technicians do not receive site and job specific training, and therefore,are not yet competent employees by CBE definition.They should not work unsupervised,but do, unaware of their need to be supervised.
By CBE definition: acompetent employee is an employee who is adequately qualified and suitably trained, and who has sufficient experience to perform safely at work without supervision, or with only a minimal degree of supervision. It is CBE’s obligation to ensure that new employees are competent to work safely or to work under direct supervision of an employee who is competent to perform the work safely.
Implementation of these three recommendations will help ensure the provision of adequate deployment of competent science laboratory support throughout the Calgary Board of Education, while ensuring that the facilitation of the science programs is consistent, standardized, safe, cost efficient, regulatory compliant and adaptable to meet current and future needs.
On behalf of and with the assistance of CBE science laboratory support staff, this report and recommendations was compiled by Sir Winston Churchill High School science technician, Rebecca Michaels, February 19, 2016.
1. Supporting success: science technicians in schools and colleges; The Royal Society and the Association for Science Education, UK, January 2002, page 7.
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