National Comparison

In Canada, there are no federal government levels directly responsible for education.

Instead, the responsibility for public education under the Canadian Constitution falls to the provincial and territorial governments. As a result, the K-12 curriculum across the nation varies, not only in curriculum content but in user accessibility. Our concern is less with the localization of curriculum - approaches that honour Canadian locations and traditions - but rather the inconsistencies in how the curriculum is presented and accessed.

Our scan of provincial and territorial curriculum websites found a range of usability, from easily navigated interactive online tools to 300-page text-heavy documents. However, we also noticed that many provinces are updating their websites and improving usability features, which is promising. The following summarizes the current state of Canadian curriculum websites, as of August 2022, in the context of four of Issa & Isaias's (2015, p. 33) usability criteria:

Learnability refers to how easy it is for new users to interact with the system and information.

Flexibility refers to the different ways users and systems can exchange information.

Efficiency refers to how quickly a user can gain information or perform tasks, once on the site.

Satisfaction refers to how much users enjoy being on the site and interacting with content.

Provincial review

It is important to note that the following evaluation of usability criteria is focused solely on the websites that contain the information and the format of curriculum documents. This is not an evaluation of the curriculum itself in terms of content or quality, but rather a look at the usability of curriculum websites considering the experience of navigating the websites, accessing the curriculum content, and the format in which the content is presented (e.g., summarized on the website vs large, text-based PDF).

Territorial review

The Government of Yukon uses BC's curriculum with some changes to ensure Yukon content and Yukon First Nations' ways of knowing and doing are included in their school curriculum. Read more here.

The Government of Northwest Territories (NWT) recently announced they would also begin phasing in BC's curriculum and highlighting its flexibility to more easily fit NWT content into the curriculum. Read about the announcement here, and about NWT's curriculum renewal here.

The Government of Nunavut's curriculum and resources are organized into four strands that transcend subject-specific content areas. Unfortunately, there is limited access to specific curriculum content and thus it was difficult to fully include it in our review.