By JL Dutaut
ResearchEd was a fascinating experience. Helen Pike’s closing compliment about the
exceptional commitment shown by so many teachers to attend an educational
conference on a Saturday, and her comment that there was a feeling throughout
the day that something like a movement was beginning to form were welcome and
accurate. Tom Bennett’s quip that it wasn’t a movement but a cult drew the
laughs, and in a few words stated exactly what this movement’s main driver is:
to reclaim the profession from all those who seek to influence it for political
ends and from ideological standpoints.
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Tom Bennett: He's not the Tsar. He's a very naughty boy. |
The educational cultists are legion, from back-to-basics
conservatives to 21st-Century-Learning reformists, chalk-and-talk
traditionalists to technology evangelists, subject hierarchists to creativity
gurus, defenders of canonical knowledge to crusaders of skills-centred learning
to name but a few.
From the lowliest believer to the most exalted cult leader,
through to all the noble souls whose calling is teaching, all can agree on one
thing: education is in flux.
What ResearchEd has done (and it’s going global in doing it)
is to undermine the tyranny of education cults, a tyranny whose primary victims
are teachers and school leaders, and whose collateral damage is inflicted on
students, by way of trends with all the depth of a fashion catwalk, monitoring
with all the scrutinising power of the eye of Sauron and the impartiality of a
tabloid paper, and initiatives with all the knowledge-base of your average
troll’s tweet and the consistency of jelly.
It looks solid, until you prod it.
In all the confusion sown by the cult of personality in
education, it’s been hard to unite as a profession. If the teacher retention and recruitment
figures tell us anything, it isn’t simply about the government, school
leadership, the media or other top-down bogeymen; it’s about the lack of an
idea to rally around. Teachers’ unions
are ostricised from the political discourse, rarely making a dent in the media
frenzy. Blame the government and the
media as they might, they’ve repeated the same top-down, ideological, cultist
attitudes they so readily identify in others.
I’m pro-union, by the way, and have much to thank the NUT
for, as do we all, but if they are to stay relevant as advocates, over and
above the admirable role they’ve found themselves relegated to as professional
organisations, they are going to have to be the change they want to see,
because the rest of us aren’t waiting around.
We’ve found our rallying call, and it is this: Stay out of my classroom.
I realise this needs some fleshing out, so bear with me.
Billy Connolly once came back at a heckler with this: “Don’t
tell me how to do my job. I don’t come to your work and tell you how to sweep
up.” I think the teaching profession needs to have the same chutzpah.
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Billy Connolly: When he knew how to handle hecklers.
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Omnipresence is the cultist’s favoured tool for ensuring
adherence to the cult’s principles: it’s achieved through unannounced visits,
routine inspections, group sessions, charismatic leadership, goal-setting and
performance reviews. Recognise these
from your school experience?
Of course, all of these can be benevolent and beneficial,
but when applied for the wrong purposes, they are destructive to all but the
cult’s core membership, the hardliners, the believers, the adherants, in short,
those that need monitoring the least and gain the most in professional
confidence by it.
As a profession, we shouldn’t wish away the classroom
observations, the learning walks, the Ofsted inspections, the performance
management, the CPD or indeed charismatic school leaders and politicians, but
if their intentions are to be benevolent and beneficial to us all, then the
myth of ‘the right way’ needs to be totally and irreparably dismantled.
Stay out of my classroom (unless I’ve invited you).
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The Panopticon: Mr Jones. Please report for your observation feedback. |
The only circumstances under which anyone should disrupt the
atmosphere and relationships a teacher creates with her students, so crucial to
learning, are if they are invited to do so, or are obliged to do so because of
safeguarding concerns.
That won’t be popular with a particular brand of leader, and
it is undermined by a particular brand of teacher, too, but if it is in the
power of a leadership team to do anything, it is to create a climate within their
organisation, much as the teacher creates the atmosphere of her classroom.
For a culture to pervade, as opposed to a cult, only one
thing needs to happen: inclusion. No
culture can exist that doesn’t reflect all the voices of those who create and
consume it. In a culture, we are all
creators and we are all consumers.
You want to observe my teaching for performance
management? Sure, and when is my
observation for yours scheduled? You
want to do a learning walk? By all
means, and when is my learning walk scheduled for? We have CPD on Tuesday? Great. I can’t wait
to see what I can choose from and I’m already working on the one my colleagues
asked me to deliver next Tuesday. Time
to scrutinise my books? Have you got all
the governor and SLT meeting minutes ready for me to read?
Reciprocity is one facet of inclusion, and openness is
another. How much more welcoming will a
teacher be when being observed on standards she has ownership of, for targets
she has set herself, by colleagues she, too, will be observing? How much more legitimate will a leader be
when being appraised by the staff she manages?
How much more honest will a culture be when everyone’s doors are open by
choice rather than coercion and when asking for support is a mark of
professionalism, not weakness? How much
better will students be served by teachers working together to find the right
way through the curriculum for them.
If your school already exhibits such amazing reciprocity and
openness, that’s fantastic news, but you haven’t won yet. Why do so many schools not, for
starters? And for seconds, why are so
many education myths still going unchallenged? Why has it taken a student-led petition to
ensure Edexcel includes female composers in its music curriculum? Ofsted has already moved towards being far
more inclusive of teachers: its new framework is the result of extensive
consultation (and research, would you believe it?), and it has committed to
ensuring 70% of its inspectors are practising professionals, but can more be done
so that inspections feel like less of a threat?
The absolute prize pudding, though, will be when ministers of education
serve educators, and not the other way around.
Direct instruction and student-centred learning, teaching
from textbooks and project-based learning, pen and paper and iPads, individual
endeavour and teamwork, knowledge development and personal development, English, Maths, Science,
Languages and Humanities, and Art, Music, Drama, Food tech and PSHE, discipline
and self-expression, logic and creativity, career guidance and relationships
guidance, tradition and progress - the list of potential binary opposites is
seemingly endless, and it is the list of all the things we teachers do. And you know what? It’s okay for us to say we need
help with that.
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Leadership: In this context, who wouldn't want to be at the top? |
Trust no one who tries to convince you one is more or less
important than all the others. Trust no
binary set-ups. Trust no one who makes
you feel it’s your fault when things are hard. Trust no one who tells you
there’s a right way, or that you’re doing it the wrong way. Trust no one who comes uninvited. Trust no cult
leaders.
We don’t need a cult, we need a movement. We don’t need a leader, we need a cause. I hope its rallying cry will be, once and for
all, “Stay out of my classroom.”
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