Teachers in Control

Cracking the Code

Martin Powell, Jonathan Solity

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9780429893773
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

In an increasingly centralized education system, how can teachers recover the freedom to make their own decisions?

Originally published in 1990, the teaching profession had seldom been under greater pressure. Teachers in Control aimed to help teachers to understand the forces that shaped their personal and professional development and their relationships with children at the time. It identifies the pressures that teachers faced, from both the school and the educational system as a whole, and then examines the internal, psychological influences that lead people into teaching and direct their future careers. The authors argue that an understanding of these influences can give teachers more control of decisions that affect their practice in the classroom and will still be very relevant today.

Chapter One
Introduction: Cracking the code

A teacher sits at her desk in the classroom one afternoon, after all the children have gone home. In front of her are a pile of mathematics books. Behind her, on the wall, is a schematic plan of the maths project that the children have been tackling, involving petrol consumption figures for cars. On the plan, she and other colleagues have listed the specific attainment targets in the National Curriculum and some steps that lead to these targets. As she glances at some of the children's work, she thinks about the wide disparity of skill levels among the children and how she needs to find better ways of checking whether they have the necessary skills for each part of the project. This is a departmental project so she will also need to discuss her ideas with the other teachers in the project team. She wishes that it had a subject content that appealed more to the girls, although she and the other teachers in her department are thinking about how to balance the mathematical content in terms of gender interest.

It has not been a bad lesson. Just a couple of the children had found it difficult to understand what to do. She had paired them with more able children and that had seemed to work, but was that really fair on those more able children? She wasn't sure. What had really annoyed her was the way that Jody had messed about. He is quite able verbally, but like a number of the children in the class, when it comes to reading and comprehending mathematical information embedded in a problem, he finds it hard-going and plays up. Often he plays up even when he can manage the work. She really must talk to the head of year about him, he seems to be getting worse. She had felt herself getting really angry with him. He always manages to appear really insolent in the slow way he does everything and the challenging looks he gives her. Now, as she thinks about the lesson, her memories of it tend to be tinged with annoyance about Jody.

She collects the books together to take them home with her tonight. Now it's time for a whole staff meeting to look at the work she and a couple of others have been doing on school rules as part of the school's approach to discipline. Both the school's adviser and the psychologist are going to be there. It's going to be another late night. At least some of the rush-hour traffic will have gone by the time she goes home. She remembers that she needs to do some late-night shopping on the way home or there will be nothing for her meal.

This scene is imaginary, but, we hope, not so fanciful that you will not identify with some parts of it. We have begun in this way in order to illustrate that the issues that concern us in education are not unusual or out of the ordinary. What our scene depicts is a conscientious teacher making sense of her job. She is trying to find ways of coping with the considerable demands on her time and still give of her best within the classroom.

The scene depicts the teacher neither totally in control of all the events in her professional life nor totally unable to control events. She is performing a balancing act. On the one side of the fulcrum are all the external pressures and demands on her; on the other side are her personal skills, ability to organize herself, and commitment. Our experience in talking to teachers and watching them working in schools is that this balance is maintained with extreme difficulty. Teachers find themselves not having the time or energy to step back and think about how to deal with the very problem of not having time for planning. Problems without solutions become sources of stress to teachers.

One view of teachers in such circumstances is to see them spread along a line. At the one end of the line are the teachers who feel totally powerless: they feel they have no means to influence what happens to them professionally. At the other end of the line are teachers who feel totally in control of their work and their professional lives. Most teachers are at some point along the line between these two extremes. In our experience, external pressures on teachers tend to force them further down the line towards the powerless end.

We wanted to write a book that might be of help to teachers to counter some of the external pressures, so that, while not being independent of influence, teachers would feel able to manage their own decisions. This has been our intention, but our approach to how we might do it has changed as we have gone along. This chapter outlines the content of the book and introduces some of the themes that run through it related to combating feelings of powerlessness. Before going on to look at those themes directly, it may be useful to spend a little time examining how the book came to take its current shape.

When we came together to plan this book, we had a couple of major themes that we wished to pursue to help teachers gain the necessary evidence upon which to base their decisions. We felt that one useful approach to evidence in the classroom was through behavioural psychology. We were aware, however, that such an approach was not universally popular in education. We had visions of producing for teachers an account of behavioural psychology that emphasized its ethical virtues. This reflected our opinion that behavioural psychology had been much maligned in the educational literature. Our second theme was concerned with the way decisions were made. It seemed to us, at least, that in education at a national, local, school, and classroom level, decisions were being made that were not based on evidence. As psychologists, we took the view then that the careful collection, presentation, and consideration of data was the only way to approach decision making. It will not take you long, as you read this book, to realize that our views have changed considerably.

We still believe that behavioural psychology has had an unfortunate press. In many ways, the emphasis within behavioural psychology on the observable and the measurable makes it more open and less inclined to inference than other types of psychology. Its practitioners have taken to negotiating contracts with clients that rely less on interpretation and analysis than do other branches of psychotherapy. Moreover, both in its clinical application with children and families, and its curricular application in terms of measurable products of learning, behavioural psychology has had substantial impact. We shall argue in later chapters that its proponents and opponents, particularly in relation to the curriculum, often have more in common than their initial stances might suggest. Despite rising here to the defence of behavioural approaches, however, we have forsaken any claim to be exclusively based within that camp.

As regards our other theme, we 110 longer argue that decisions made in education that are based on evidence will be the solution to all our problems. Our position has become more complicated. We have come round to viewing evidence, like beauty, to be in the eye of the beholder. Whereas, at first, we thought that teachers only needed access to evidence to be able to make good decisions in the classroom, we began to realize that life was more complicated than that Evidence is not neutral, it is selected and interpreted. We began to take the view that each of us has a singular view of the world and that some part of our energies in social interaction is taken up with trying to influence other people's views – just as we are doing now! This made us realize that teachers are subjected to enormous influence on their professional work from all directions. Our experience as psychologists has given us a particular position from which to view the process of influence, since, in no small measure, our job too involved attempting to affect how teachers work.

At first, we thought that one of the best ways of helping teachers to sort out all these influences on their work would be to explore ways of helping teachers to collect evidence that would contribute to better classroom problem solving. As we began to think about how to help teachers deal with and sort through all this influence bearing down on their practice, however, we uncovered a key theme to do with values. We came to the view that influences on teachers are by no means always obvious. While much energy is spent on trying to influence the views of others, a great deal of energy is spent on hiding one's own views, and, more critically, the values and other factors that underpin them.

As well as face-to-face influences, arising from people with whom teachers come into contact as part of their job, we also recognized that our model of influence needed to extend into organizational factors and societal factors. We looked at how key elements interrelate in the organization of education in our society and at how they shape classroom practice. We began to ask questions about the values that are implied or contained in the way these elements control education in the classroom. As we did so, we realized that we also needed to explore personal values and influences on the individual. Educational administration, inspection, and advice are undertaken by people who have been attracted by aspects of such work. What attracts some people and not others? What attracts teachers to teaching? These are questions which direct us towards looking for ways of understanding individuals.

No doubt all writers on educational matters have the same thoughts about their timing, whenever they happen to be writing, but we think this has been a particularly difficult time to choose to write a book about factors that affect the way that teachers work. With so many changes emanating from the 1988 Education Reform Act and the ensuing Orders and Regulations, it has been hard to sift out the transient from the permanent Attempting to map the major structural elements of the educational system as they break away from their moorings and float away on the outgoing tide has not been easy. Moreover, we have seen at this time a teaching profession 'punch-drunk' not only by the changes but also by the rate of change.

Our initial purpose in writing this book was to help teachers to have more say in the professional decisions about practice in the classroom. Now we are even more convinced of the need for this. A balance has to be struck, of course, between teacher autonomy and teacher accountability. No one will be happy at the prospect of individual teachers operating as mavericks within their own classrooms, with the door shut, totally impervious to outside influence. It seems to us, however, that with the National Curriculum, pupil profiling, and assessment and teacher appraisal, the scope for such individualism has been substantially reduced; we think, on the whole, that is a change for the better. On the other hand, teachers, already open to the undue influence of outside experts, have now to operate within a more imposed system. The curriculum seems to have been packaged and presented to teachers, and there is a danger that their own wisdom and expertise will be diminished by that process. As you progress through this book, you will see that we believe that the imposed changes have by no means removed the need for using imagination and inventiveness, for developing teaching methods and theories about the processes of education itself. Because teachers may have been pushed further down the line towards powerlessness and because some measure of independence is still very much needed, we would like to find ways of helping teachers to establish a basis for validating and having confidence in their own decisions.

We have said that we see scope for many aspects of work to remain very much within teacher control. But if teachers lose confidence in their own powers to make decisions and in the acceptability of their decisions to parents, governors, and others who judge their worth, then there are bound to be problems. The classroom is a dynamic setting with a huge number of social interactions, bits of information to be mentally processed, and decisions to be made by the teacher every few seconds. Any damage to the teacher's confidence to do the job would substantially interfere with effective teaching.

The Education Reform Act has had enormous influence on teachers and teaching. Whatever its merits and faults, there is a danger that its imposition, although providing a framework in which to operate, will have reduced the level of teacher initiative. Our view is that with a determination to examine the sources and nature of influences on their practice, teachers are in better shape to make accountable decisions in which they, and others, may have confidence.

This book seeks to help teachers to develop a means of analysing the influences on their practice - a means, if you like, of cracking the code. We don't provide the cypher that simply enables the code to be broken: if only life were so simple. We shall have succeeded in our aim if we have encouraged you to assume a more critical perspective towards educational practice and the theories and evidence on which it is based, or not based as the case may be. We also hope we will have encouraged you to continue the long journey of self-understanding, and to undertake the more immediate task of finding out who you are in relation to teaching. This is not a comfortable process, nor do we think this book is comforting. We do take a positive view, none the less, especially regarding the way that we might move towards resolving the differences that stem from the unique views all of us have on life.

One part of resolving the interpersonal differences that can bedevil co-operative progress depends on greater openness about our values and a willingness to negotiate with others. In advocating a willingness to negotiate, we are not suggesting that we should all abandon our fundamental values, but that we should be prepared to hear what others are saying and should actively seek common ground if possible. We explore some of the factors that might stand in the way of our negotiating with others, with the view that such self-knowledge can help us overcome our own barriers.

Being willing to declare your values is not a comfortable exercise and we discuss the implications of doing so in a later chapter. Our values include the view that keeping hidden the purposes behind attempts to influence the behaviour of others is a form of manipulation. Our concern about the way in which teachers are subjected to pressures and influence from so many quarters is not only the stress this puts teachers under, but also the limited extent to which these influences are open, understandable, and non-manipulative. Influence need not be manipulative, but, whatever the moral value of the ends it promotes, if it hides its purpose and steals up on folk, then it is manipulative. In their book, Teaching as a Subversive Activity, Postman and Weingartner (1969) stress the need for schools to become centres for 'crap-detection'. In their view, human survival, no less, requires students to acquire from their education a capacity for intelligent resistance to propaganda, a point we shall consider in a later chapter. It is unlikely that students will acquire this resistance to propaganda unless their teachers have done the same.

We see influence as an integral part of social interaction, and, as we have already acknowledged, it is a process that we are using at this very moment Manipulation and openness are at opposite ends of a dimension that we can use to describe influence. We should like to think that we are trying to influence you in an open way. (We should also like to think that you will feel more able to make up your own mind about that, once you have read this book!) Manipulative influence can take many forms and can be dressed up in the most respectable and persuasive language. One way of presenting arguments and evidence that reduces the vigilance of 'crap-detectors' is to adopt the form and language of science. We seek to alert teachers to some of the implications of such neutral sounding words as 'evidence', 'facts', 'knowledge', and 'truth'. Bronowski (1960) in The Common Sense of Science, reminds us of the need to use these terms with care. He states:

[Truth] is common to all systems of value, and is fundamental to most of them, and it is a value. We cannot take it for granted as something self-evident in science any more than in art or morals or religion. In all of them truth rests on an act of free human judgement In none of them of course can this judgement be exercised without experience: there is no truth, not even religious truth, which calls for no sanction from fact. There are other values: goodness, beauty, right conduct. They have their echoes even in science; and there is one value, freedom of human ideas, which is the essential condition for the health of science.

Because we recognize the seductive dangers of arguments and evidence presented as science, we spend some time discussing the importance of values that underpin science. We also look at the need for care in how language is used. Attempts to analyse influence and to counter manipulation require careful attention to the use of language. We spend time considering the implications of this for interpersonal communication as well as for countering propaganda. To help you counter our propaganda, it might be helpful if we said a little more about our values. This will give you more of a context in which to consider the views we present.

In brief, we are committed to free state education, which strives to offer equal opportunities to all and actively seeks to eliminate discriminatory practices, particularly those based on gender, social class, ethnicity, and ability. We are also committed to educating children in such a way that they learn to accept responsibility for their actions, to think critically and independently, and to become active participants in negotiating the nature of their learning experiences.

We also, in a paradoxical way, believe in doubt. We consider that uncertainty is the only tenable stance in facing the unknown. Uncertainty and doubt are not negative characteristics, however, since on them is based a true acceptance of the right of others to hold a different point of view. Our paradox is that we are certain about doubt and doubtful about certainty. Of course there are some aspects of our experience that we hold with certainty. At least, our experience has taught us to act as if we were certain that fire bums and ice freezes. But as we move from the tangible and observable towards the interpretative and thoughtful, we become less certain.

Another of our values is that since much of what we know belongs to each of us as private experiences, it behoves us to negotiate our knowledge with others and not impose it. We discuss later in the book some ways we can get over the problem of not having common experience. It follows from these values that we see children as people with rights, having an entitlement to a view of their world. According status to children's views and negotiating rather than imposing knowledge, in our view, enables adults to model the behaviour that we are advocating and helps children to progress towards that behaviour.

The book is in four parts. In Part I, we identify some of the main elements of the education system that exert influence within that system. We also look at what it is that people most seek to control in education, namely the curriculum. We conclude the section by looking at some of the issues that surround the curriculum and the way those issues are presented. We also look at how views are promoted or discredited and the likely impact this has on teachers.

Part II begins with a look at how organizations promote collective values and how these influence the individual. We also look at individual values and how these are often hidden. Chapter Six looks at the way that practices in education can be sustained by social processes such as myths, rather than by more recognizable theoretical justifications. Chapter Seven then looks at how language can reveal underlying values and how it can be used to manipulate.

Part III addresses some psychological factors that shape the lives, behaviour, and career choice of teachers and, ultimately, the pattern of interacti...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Original Title
• Original Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction: Cracking the code
• PART I
• PART II
• PART III
• PART IV
• References
• Index
• Subject index