Is teachers’ ‘voice’ enough?

Howard Stevenson (University of Nottingham)

howard.stevenson@nottingham.ac.uk

@hstevenson10

howardstevenson.org

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Come and be part of the teaching revolution! The first

Northern Rocks Education Conference #NRocks was held

on Saturday 7th June 2014 at Leeds Metropolitan

University. 500 teachers gathered in the rain to reclaim

their profession, to stand up and say that whatever policy

makers do and think, we’ll carry on working on behalf of

children, hoping not moping and doing the job in hand.

And we liked it, so we will do it again next year.

https://northernrocks2015.wordpress.com/

Northern Rocks . . . Reclaiming Pedagogy

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• What?

• From whom?

• For whom?

• How?

Reclaiming . . .

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My argument here is very simple. It is time to get back to

basics – to think seriously about what the purpose of

education is, what it means to be educated, what schools

are for, and concomitantly and crucially, who should

decide these things. Such a profound rethinking needs to

move beyond the views of ‘experts’ and policy

entrepreneurs and those with business interests in

education, to hear what parents, students and teachers

have to say about what they think education should be for

– ‘about what education might be, rather than what it has

become.’

Ball (2015 p7)

Putting the politics back into education . . .

Education has proved easier for the producers (teacher and administrators) to capture than other industries, partly because its shortcomings can be disguised by jargon. The school with poor examination results can claim that knowledgeable educationalists nowadays hold ‘school spirit’ or ‘awareness’ more important. Although the consumers (parents and children) demand examination passes and other measureable achievements from their schools, education producers are able to argue that they, as ‘professionals’, know better . . . .

Adam Smith Institute Omega Report (1980)

How did we get here?

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• Schools Council . . . abolished 1982

• Burnham Committee . . . abolished 1987

• Social Partnership . . . abolished 2010

• General Teaching Council of England . . . abolished 2012

The teachers’ voice . . . silenced?

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‘Teachers were significantly more likely to indicate

the existence of a collaborative school culture in

jurisdictions where they also reported that staff had

opportunities to participate in decision-making,

suggesting a positive association between

distributed leadership and a collaborative school

climate. Teachers’ involvement in school decision-

making was also linked with self-efficacy in most

jurisdictions, and with job satisfaction (with very

large effect sizes) in all jurisdictions.’

Burns and Darling Hammond (2014, p45) discussing OECD TALIS Report

(2013)

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‘However teachers and principals differed in the

extent to which they perceived opportunities for

staff decision-making and there was no association

between principals’ reporting of staff opportunities

for decision-making and teachers’ perceptions that

they experienced a collaborative culture . . . ’

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‘. . . On average, 98% of principals in each

jurisdiction agreed or strongly agreed that teachers

had opportunities to actively participate in school

decisions, compared with 74% of teachers . . . The

greatest differences were found in Korea, Mexico

and, especially, England, where the average

responses were apart by 39.4 percentage points.’

Burns and Darling Hammond (2014, p17-18)

What does the future look like . . . ?

Business Capital Model:

o Emotionally demanding but technically simple

o Requires only moderate intellectual ability

o Hard at first, but easily mastered

o Driven by data about ‘what works’

o Due to enthusiasm, raw talent, hard work

o Often replaceable by online instruction

Professional Capital Model:

o Technically sophisticated and difficult

o Requires high levels of education and long periods of training

o Perfected through continuous improvement

o Based on wise judgement, informed by evidence and experience

o Reflects collective effort and achievement

o Maximises, mediates and moderates online instruction

Adapted from Hargreaves and Fullan (2012:14)

Pedagogical

practice

and

professional

values6/12/2015 Event Name and Venue 11

A new democratic professionalism

Pedagogical

practice

and

professional

values

Enhancing

professional

knowledge and

professional

learning

Shaping learning

and working

conditions

Developing and

enacting policy

Professional

agency

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Three domains of professional agency

The CPD I am driven to do by my headteacher is stultifyingly

boring. It doesn’t give me any new skills at all. It’s deadly. It’s

tedious. It’s ‘let’s jump through a few more hoops’ and if I don’t do

it, it’s a stick to beat you.

From: Stevenson, H. (2012) Teacher leadership as intellectual leadership: Creating spaces for alternative

voices in the English school system, Professional Development in Education 38 (2) 345-360.

Enhancing professional knowledge and

professional learning

But I like learning. I need learning. I need that

stimulus.

Shaping learning and working conditions

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This is what teachers want to do: PLAN, COLLABORATE

and IMPROVE – NOT write endless action plans! There is

far too much interference from management which stems

from government interference – no one ever seems to ask

teachers what do we need or want! I don’t ever recall

being asked!! We need time to plan, write, devise

resources every year and evaluate them. If we are just

allowed that to begin with it would be a start . . .

Classroom teacher, NI.

Developing and enacting policy

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Well this is part of the divide and rule thing. It is difficult

for them [teachers] because they are frightened - they

are frightened of losing their jobs and we have already

lost two teachers, and to be honest, I think that they are

right to be frightened. The Governors are likely to lose

their posts and the Head is likely to lose his job, and the

deputy is likely to lose hers. There is a real atmosphere

of intimidation.

Parent campaigner discussing forced academisation (from Stevenson forthcoming)

Pedagogical

practice

and

professional

values

Enhancing

professional

knowledge and

professional

learning

Shaping learning

and working

conditions

Developing and

enacting policy

Professional

agency

Government

School

Classroom

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Professional agency - everywhere

Pedagogical

practice

and

professional

values

Enhancing

professional

knowledge and

professional

learning

Shaping learning

and working

conditions

Developing and

enacting policy

Professional

agency

Government

School

Classroom

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A democratic professionalism

– from ‘voice’ to agency

Transactional Activist

Individual agency

Collective agency(‘disorganised’)

(‘organised’)

Teachers who are unreflective about their teaching . . . often

uncritically accept the everyday reality in their schools and

concentrate their efforts on finding the most effective and

efficient means to solve problems that have largely been

defined for them by [the] collective code. These teachers

often lose sight of the fact that their everyday reality is only

one of many possibilities. They often lose sight of the

purposes and ends toward which they are working and

become merely the agents of others. They forget that there

are more than one way to frame every problem. Unreflective

teachers automatically accept the view of the problem that is

the commonly accepted one in a given situation.

(Zeichner and Liston, 2010:9)

A self-reproducing school system?

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Stuff to read . . .

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Connecting ideas and activism. . .

www.reclaimingschools.org

http://www.wwwords.co.uk/forum/

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• The full text version of this presentation, and the powerpoint

(with links) available at howardstevenson.org

• Thank you for listening – enjoy #NRocks2015

The dictatorship of ‘there is no alternative’

cannot be overthrown without ideas . . . (Fielding and Moss, 2011)