Teaching:%20a%20Passionate%20

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Teaching a Passionate Subversive Profession?
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Initial Thoughts
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• Men at some times are masters of their fates.
  The fault dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but
  in ourselves, that we are underlings.

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Martha Nussbaum, Loves Knowledge. New York
O.U.P. 1998

• In its determination to see only what can enter
  into utilitarian calculations, the economic mind
  is blind blind to the
• separateness of its people, to their inner
  depths, their hopes and loves and fears, blind to
  what it is like to live a human life and try to
  endow it with meaning

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Cautionary Note 1.
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)
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• Our Work in Context

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• Teaching the ultimate reality show.

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Preparing to Teach in Secondary Schools Edited
Brooks V. Abbot I. Bills L. OUP 2004

• Multidimensionality Many people / personalities
• Simultaneity question-listen-motivate-assess
• Immediacy momentum- pace-no downtime for
  reflection
• Unpredictability unexpected events- serendipity
• Publicness fishbowl syndrome
• History classes socialise into norms.

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A Model of Learning
Content- Knowledge, principles, skills and
abilities
Dispositions to Learning Learning to Love
Learning
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TeachingA 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.

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• We Teach Who We Are
• Parker J Palmer
• The Courage to Teach
• Jossey-Bass 1998

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Idealism Moral Purpose Mission Vocation
Stance
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• An Activist Profession

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• 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)

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• Staff Development

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• For too many teachers.staff development is a
  demeaning mind-numbing experience as they
  passively sit and get. That staff development
  is often (prescriptive) in nature.and evaluated
  by happiness scales.
• Sparks 2004

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• Tragically, however, many come with a
  convincing feeling that what is inside them is
  not valid because it is only personal to them.
  Somewhere along the line, many have learnt to
  seek the expert outside but deny that there may
  be a potential expert within.
• Dadds 1997

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Vision Mission Antidote
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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 societys leading
  intellectuals, and not being the mere
  technicians, instruments and deliverers of other
  peoples 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

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GTCNI Approach
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Reflective Activist Professional 1.

• concerned with the purposes and consequences of
  education, as well as what might be called
  technical proficiency
• prepared to experiment with the unfamiliar and
  learn from their experiences
• have an approach characterised by open-mindedness
  and wholeheartedness

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Reflective Activist Professional 2.

• committed to professional dialogue in school and
  beyond
• have working patterns characterised by a process
  of action, evaluation and revision and
• assume, as life-long learners, responsibility for
  their ongoing professional development

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Standards?

• Exemplifications of Competences

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Competences

• The Council takes the view that the notion of
  competences goes well beyond the simple
  acquisition of skills and that, although
  curricular knowledge and pedagogical skills are
  important, teaching is both an intellectual and
  practical activity with important emotional and
  creative dimensions. Essentially, teachers,
  while reflecting on and evaluating their
  professional context, use acquired professional
  judgement to select the most appropriate options
  from a repertoire of teaching strategies, and in
  the process of teaching refine and add to their
  professional knowledge.

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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 (standard) statements are used as
  a basis for informed discussion and reflection
  upon classroom practice between tutors, students,
  and classroom teachers, they will fulfil 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.

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Dimensions of Development 1

• greater complexity in teaching e.g. in handling
  mixed-ability classes, reluctant learners,
  classes marked by significant diversity, or
  inter-disciplinary work
• the deployment of a wider range of teaching
  strategies
• the ability to adduce evidence of ones
  effectiveness
• basing teaching on a wider range of evidence,
  reading and research

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Dimensions of Development 2

• extending impact beyond the classroom- fuller
  participation in the life of the school
• the capacity to exercise autonomy, to innovate,
  to improvise and
• a pronounced capacity for self-criticism and
  self-improvement the ability to impact on
  colleagues through mentoring and coaching,
  modelling good practice, contributing to the
  literature on teaching and learning and the
  public discussion of professional issues, leading
  staff development, all based on the capacity to
  theorise about policy and practice

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• Final Thoughts

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Professionals exhibit but also inspire
confidence!

• We trust in their
• Competence
• Commitment
• Conduct
• Judgement
• All Underpinned by GTCNI Competence Document

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• Teachers with high self-esteem know how to
  value both themselves and others...
• This basic sense of self-worth is internalised,
  deeply imbedded, so it is not easily susceptible
  to any gross distortion by life events, however
  calamitous
• Day et al 1998
• Equally such teachers are better placed to
  resist the pressures of the old guard, the
  blandishments of political short-termists and
  the stresses of the paradox that is teaching.

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Competences as a BULWARK

• YOUR TASK IS TO
• Define the Mission
• Reinforce the Vision
• Bolster self confidence
• Build Communities of Practice
• Initiate sustain the conversation
• BE LEADERS

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• Competences offer
• A statement of moral purpose or mission
• An understanding of what competence might look
  like----mediated via context and
• The basis for self evaluation and whole staff /
  individual development via SDP and PRSD

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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