My presentation at northern rocks 2015 conference

1. Is teachers’ ‘voice’ enough?
Howard Stevenson (University of Nottingham)
howard.stevenson@nottingham.ac.uk
@hstevenson10
howardstevenson.org
6/12/2015 1Event Name and Venue

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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 . . .

5. 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)

10. 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)

11. Pedagogical
practice
and
professional
values
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A new democratic professionalism

12. Pedagogical
practice
and
professional
values
Enhancing
professional
knowledge and
professional
learning
Shaping learning
and working
conditions
Developing and
enacting policy
Professional
agency
6/12/2015 Event Name and Venue 12
Three domains of professional agency

13. 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.

14. 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.

15. 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)

16. 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

17. 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’)

18. 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)