Annual Conference 2007
Daventry
Servants of a Passionate
Profession?
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•
Pleasantries
Presumptions
Platitudes
Prejudices
Polemic
Vague Meanderings
• Teaching as an expression of
self
• The world today and tomorrow
• The role of the profession in
this new era
• How GTCs can best serve the
profession.
Freid R L 1995 “The Passionate Teacher: A
Practical Guide” Beacon Boston Mass.
“Passionate people are the ones who make
a difference to our lives. Sometimes that
passion burns with a quiet refined
intensity; sometimes it bellows forth with
thunder and eloquence.”
“ We Teach Who We Are”
Parker J Palmer
The Courage to Teach
Jossey-Bass 1998
The man who has no inner
life is a slave to his
surroundings.
Amiel,Henri-Frederic
Sacred Fire
“ Holding ideals is not exhibiting warm and
fuzzy feelings but needs to be valued as part
of the intensive educational debate about
fundamental purposes….the absence of
which undermines the heart of
professionalism.”
»
Sockett H.
» The Moral Base for Teacher Professionalism>
Teaching:
A Complex Interaction
“… a public recognition that effective learning
involves, essentially an ‘interactive chemistry’
between learner and teacher, which depends on
process as much as content and is an
expression of personal values and perceptions
as much as competences and knowledge.”
Day, C. “Teachers in the twenty-first century: time to renew the vision.”
Teachers and Training: Theory and Practice,
6, 1, pp 101-115. 2000.
Passion
Values
Convictions
Emotions
Idealism: Moral Purpose : Mission :
Vocation: Stance
Teaching the Vocation of
Vocations
• Shapers of the Future
• Custodians of Culture
• Makers of Meaning
• Vestigages of Immortality
• 40th anniversary dinner
Educational leaders as caring teachers
Noddings School Leadership and Management Vol 26 No 4
Education worthy of its
name will help students to
develop as :
•Persons
•Thoughtful citizens
•Competent parents
•Faithful friends
•Capable workers
•Generous neighbours
•Lifelong learners
It avoids coercion and
prefers the language of:
•Invitation
•Offering
•Encouragement
•Guidance
•Sharing
•Advice
Rather than compulsion,
prescription, testing and
assignment.
Children Need
•
•
•
•
Ears that hear the whispers of life
Eyes that see both things & possibilities
Mind that understands uncertainty
Heart that knows the joy of success & the fun
of failure
• An abiding sense of curiosity and
wonder
Teaching an Exercise in
Vulnerability
 Teaching is all about mastery but is never far
from mystery
 Teaching transcends the acquisition of skills
and is rooted in values and emotional
connectedness
D. J. Reitz: 1998 Moral Crisis in the Schools; What Parents and
Teachers Need to Know Baltimore Cathedral Foundation Press
The impersonal teacher is saying in effect:
‘‘I am here because I am paid; you are
here because you have to be. We will both
be satisfied if you get passing grades. I
can’t be concerned about how you
develop as a person or what you do in life
with the information I am communicating. I
teach you what I am told to teach and that
is the limit of my responsibility for you.”
Our Work in Context
Past Experiences: Present Realities
• Political interference
• ‘Marketisation’ of
education
• Prescription
• Central control –
– Delegated responsibility
– Kentucky Fried
Curriculum
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•
•
•
•
•
New Right
Globalisation
Connectivity
Diversity
Pax Americana
GTcs
–
Servants or Agents of
Control?
• Codes?
• Standards?
• Disciplinary
Function?
Fielding, M. (Ed) 2001 Taking Education Really Seriously: Four
Years Hard Labour, New York: Routledge/Falmer Press
England’s reforms have no place for
values or how people should live their lives
and care for others:
“no place for either the language or
experience of joy, of spontaneity, of life
lived in ways that are vibrant and fulfilling
rather than watchfully earnest, focussed
and productive of economic activity.”
Discourse of Derison
• Education isn’t Wurking
• Free- Market Stalinism
• Era of Distrust- Professionals viewed as self
interested groups
• Specificity and density as means of control
• Kentucky Fried Curriculum V’s The Julie
Andrews Model
Present Realities:
Cultural Revolution
Health Warning
Tesseract
Reagan ‘81
Thatcher ‘79
NEW RIGHT AGENDA
New Right – culture ?
“The most obvious hallmark of the Thatcher and
Major governments has been a ferocious onslaught
on institutional autonomy, diversity and stability in
the name of the rationality of the market place.
Almost all of the institutions which used to shield an
unusually stable and diverse civil society from the
arrogance of the politicians in temporary command
of the state, or which embodied values and practices
at variance with those of market economies have felt
the lash of this Tory Jacobinism.”
Marquand, D 1994- Guardian, 16th of July
Erosion of Social Capital
“No such thing as society” : Liberal individualist Agenda
Individualism
Competition
Performance
vs
vs
vs
Communitarian
Cooperation
Service
“What we risk losing, many agree, are those communal spaces
where meaningful social interaction broadens people’s sense
of self beyond the “me” and “I” into the “we” and “us”.”
(Crossman et al 2000)
The Economic Revolution
Knowledge Society :
Global / Knowledge Economy
Consumerist Society
New Right Consensus
Chindia Syndrome
China / Brazil
India / Russia
Post Industrial Age : New Economic World
Order
China-------------India
• 3rd largest economy
• Will be largest user
of oil by 2009
• Largest exporter of
info technology
goods
• 50% of world’s
cement
• Graduates exceeds
UK population
• Oil demands will
increase 300% in 10
years
• India now major
source of services
such as Tax
Management
OutSourcing
• Outsourcing work to “developing
countries” brings75% reduction in
wages and 100% rise in productivity
• Tradable Services -outsourcing no
longer confined to unskilled jobs-(
accountants, computer programmers etc. more readily outsourced
than taxi drivers etc. –Alan Blinder Princeton Univ.)
• SEAGATE move to Indonesia
Globalisation- the Impact
• Globalisation –Homogenisation ??
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–
–
–
“Sameness” coupled with fluidity
Cash rich time poor
Work as source of income not pride
Decline in Social Capital—Common Good?
•
Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone
• Those who don’t share in the economic benefits turn
inwards:
• Culture / Ethnicity / Religion
• Escapist disengagement
Parisian Riots
Working Class Loyalist Disenchantment
Hedonist Lifestyle
Suicide –major problem in N. Ireland
Alain Michel-- Inspector General of France’s of Education system
2001 OECD publication on future of education
“Globalisation, because of the risks it brings
of soulless standardization, can lead to
fragmentation and a reduced sense of
belonging to a wider community. The
excesses of unbridled markets, in which
prices and the market are more important
than social or cultural relationships, are
being met with a reaction of narrow
nationalism, regionalism and parochialism.”
Globalisation : Delors Report
“People today have a dizzying feeling of
being torn between a globalisation
whose manifestations they can see and
sometimes have to endure, and their
search for roots, reference points and a
sense of belonging.”
“Learning the Treasure Within” Delors et Al 1996
Unesco Report: Paris
Sennett, R.(1999) The Corrosion of Character: The Personal
Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism. London WW Norton
The conditions of the new economy feed…on
experience that drifts in time , from place to
place, from job to job….. Short term capitalism
threatens to corrode (the) character which binds
human beings to one another and furnishes
each with a sense of sustainable self.
How can a human being develop a narrative of
identity and life history in a society composed of
episodes and fragments.
SYSTEM
LIFE - WORLD
GOVERNMENT
VALUES
BUREAUCRACY
BELIEFS
ECONOMY
DREAMS
MYTHS
HABERMAS 1984
“SYSTEM IS COLONISING THE LIFE WORLD”
Breaking News
“ It’s more of the same.” says
Carnegie Trust.
Contexts
Uncertainties
Personal Values
Limits of Economics
Socio-economic
inequalities
•
Rising
individualism
•
Cultural &
religious diversity
•
Fluid work
patterns
•
Shifting
identities
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•
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Falling Cost of
Technologies
Increasing
Migration
•Corporate power
•Pressure on global
resources
Shifting Activism
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•
Aging
Population
State and Individual
•Disengagement from
formal politics
•Single issue politics
Increasing
Role of
Devolved
Government
•Pervasive technology
•Rise of digital natives
•Visibility of
security state
•Regulation of civic
life
•Increasing importance
of rights agenda
NEW TIMES: BEST OF TIMES?
• Disconnected Times
• Progression Dislocated
• Logic confounded
• Simple stories no longer suffice
Passivity = Complicity
“A dominant force may legitimate itself by
promoting beliefs and values congenial to
it; naturalising and universalising such
beliefs to render them self evident and
apparently inevitable, denigrating ideas
which might challenge it, excluding rival
forms of thought.”
(Eagleton 1991)
Call to Arms
Teacher Activism:Mobilising the
Profession
Plenary Address bera Conference
2003
Judith Sachs bera 2003
“….the possibility of an activist teaching
profession is not the imaginings of an
armchair activist or a utopian idealist but
rather it is socially responsible strategy
for improving education provision across
the board. Hope is not enough –
mobilizing the teaching profession, the
media and various community groups in
the interests of intelligent education
policy is the priority!”
Idealism as Antidote
• Passion
– Nurtures Conviction
– Facilitates Freire’s “Loving Pedagogy”
– Creates Fullan’s “Moral Purpose”
– Sustains us on that wet Friday afternoon.
Ideals prosper in Community
Ideals whither in Isolation
Social Capital
Moral Visionary Profession
“…making teaching into a moral, visionary profession once more
where teachers know and care about their world as well as and
as part of their work.
It means teachers recapturing their status and dignity as
some of society’s leading intellectuals, and not being the
mere technicians, instruments and deliverers of other
people’s agendas………..
Those who focus only on teaching techniques and curriculum
standards and who do not also engage teachers in the greater
social and moral questions of their time, promote a diminished
view of teaching and teacher professionalism that has no place
in a sophisticated knowledge society.”
Hargreaves A. Teaching in the Knowledge
Society2003
GTCNI Response
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Promote a Sense of Moral Purpose
Competences transcending utilitarian
Promote Communities of Practice
Encourage Wider Debate
Re-intellectualise the Profession
Moral Purpose
• Code of values
– developed in partnership with the profession
– expressed as commitments
– not as a series of commandments
• Charter for Education
– agreed by all stakeholders
– Identifying the core purposes of
education:
• eschews the merely utilitarian
• places holistic development at the centre of
our endeavours
Code of Values & Professional
Practice
• Celebrates the unique relationship between
teachers and those entrusted to their care
• Commitments –beneficent approach
– Learners
– Colleagues & others engaged education
– the Profession
• Makes Explicit Values long Implicit
• Included in our Competences
Statement of Purpose: CHARTER
UNESCO
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Learning- to KNOW
Learning- to DO
Learning- to LIVE TOGETHER
Learning- to BE
Competences & Professional
Knowledge
Professional Knowledge Sharpe
R, 2004 How do professionals Learn and Develop? Implications for Staff
and Education Developers.
“ Professional knowledge is no longer viewed
as just consisting of a standardised, explicit
and fixed knowledge base. It is now seen as
knowledge which exists in use, is ethical in
its use and is changed by experience. The
distinctive nature of professional knowledge
lies in the interplay between its construction
and use. When teachers use their knowledge,
use changes what that knowledge is.”
Meaningful Competences
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Competences not Standards
Teacher as a Moral Agent
Reflective
Contextually Situated
Professional Knowledge seen as Organic
Cognitive underpinning / knowledge
values
Competence: developmental continuum
• Life-long— hence Code Commitment
• Competences- never fully mastered!
– the nature and level of the teacher’s experience
and their personal effectiveness;
– the work-based context; and
– the roles teachers have experienced and the
development opportunities arising from such
experiences.
Hayes,D. Opportunities and Obstacles in the Competencey-Based
Training of Primary Teachers in England. Harvard Educational
Review Vol 69 Number 1 1999
If competence statements are used as a basis
for informed discussion and reflection upon
classroom practice between tutors, students,
and classroom teachers, they will fulfill an
important function. If they are used mechanically
within an inflexible assessment regime
framework, it is likely that the preparation of
teachers…. will become miserably rigid,
unsympathetic towards the realities and rigors of
classroom life, and at worst, an impediment to
creative and innovative teaching.
GTCNI VISION
Our Collective Responsibility
To be….“active agents in the production of a new
pedagogic discourse, rather than merely the
consumers of the professional knowledge produced by
academics and educational researchers.”
(Edwards & Brunton)
Cautionary Note
Price of Failure
• “ …do their job, nothing more nothing
less, aided in this by codified rules,
timetables and lesson plans. The
restrictiveness of their (assigned) texts
and regulations serves them to adhere to
their minimalist assiduity….the sacred fire
which once lit their work gradually dies to
a smoulder.”
»
Hamon & Rotman
PS
The “Hargreaves Agenda
• Andy
Don’t be “Too busy rescuing drowning
people to look to see what’s causing them
to fall in.”
• David
Remember “ A society of sheep breeds a
government of wolves”