Being a Teacher

The trainee teacher′s guide to developing the personal and professional skills you need

Carol Thompson,Peter Wolstencroft

• Publisher: Learning Matters
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781529758832
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Elementary Education

There are many elements to learning how to be a teacher. As well as developing subject knowledge for teaching and building practical classroom skills, new teachers mustdevelop the personal professional skills and behaviours needed to Be a Teacher. This book outlines the skills and behaviours involved in Being in Teacher and explores how to develop these attributes and build your teacher identity. It supports you to:

·enhance your personal effectiveness and your teaching;

·understand the importance of communication and learn to communicate with clarity;

·realise that your reality creates the classroom environment;

·create a positive and purposeful learning adventure.

1 Thinking about teaching

In this chapter we will explore:

• Perceptions of the purpose of education
• How this impacts on classroom practice
• Ways of responding positively to change

Introduction

You may have already completed your initial teacher training or be close to doing so and you probably have a good idea about what the role involves – you may be in your first year – or perhaps you are a more experienced teacher who is mentoring a trainee? Whichever it is, you are likely to have already formed an opinion on the key components of the teaching role and how to manage it most effectively, but how often are you able to stop and think what it really means to be a teacher? It is quite likely that your view on the role has been influenced by things such as the environment you work in, your phase of education (early years, primary, secondary or post-compulsory), your initial teacher training, the Teacher Standards (or the Professional Standards) and your experiences on placement or in the job. Hopefully, amongst all of that, you have maintained some of your initial ideas about teaching and have remembered the reasons why you thought this would be a great job for you. In this chapter we will explore some of the things that have influenced education as a whole and the impact that has had on the teacher’s role. We will also consider how you can maintain autonomy and authenticity in the role and continue to take a creative approach to it.

A little bit of history

Whilst it isn’t the aim of this book to go into great depth on historical developments in education, it is useful to have an understanding of how things have evolved over the years and the impact this has had on the role of the teacher. The examples provided in this section are mostly based on the English education system but there are a number of similarities with education in other countries. In our experience of working with colleagues in Europe and North America, the process has been quite similar, even if the specific steps are different.

Historically, the teacher’s role would have been depicted as a purveyor of knowledge, enforcer of rules, maybe even a disciplinarian. More recently, ideas about the facilitation of learning have become more popular alongside a focus on either a customer or consumer model whereby teachers ‘deliver’ knowledge linked to specific outcomes, which in turn leads to the achievement of a range of qualifications. This is a challenging shift as ‘learning’ is very difficult to package as a tangible product; you can’t simply pick it off a shelf and pay the appropriate price, yet the overall commercialisation of education does suggest that in some ways education is viewed as a product, or at the very least, a service that learners buy into. The difficulty here is that this service cannot be one-way, teachers cannot simply provide learning; the process requires a two-way interaction for it to be effective. The teacher may be required to ‘deliver’ but the student must contribute as well – an important point to remember when faced with classes who simply want to receive information passively and are reluctant to interact!

Education has evolved over time and Figure 1.1 provides an outline of some of the key influences over the last 100 years or so.

Figure 1.1 A brief history of education

The Purpose of Education

We can see some of the key changes to education policy in Figure 1.1 and it is worth thinking about what these say about the overall purpose of education. When we are caught up in the day to day activities of teaching, this is often something that is forgotten. The many tasks teachers have to complete don’t always seem to have an obvious connection to teaching and learning and it can be very easy to forget how what we do connects to the bigger picture.

Reflection

Try to forget most of the day to day tasks that take up your job role and get right back to basics. What do you see as the main purpose of education?

There are varying views on the purpose of education. To some it is seen as an end in itself, something to be cherished and nurtured on a lifelong basis. Others view education as a means to an end, perhaps the completion of an examination or the gaining of skills that will enhance career opportunities. Perhaps it is even reasonable to suggest that education is both of these things … and more. That said, day to day teaching can feel like a whirlwind of activity with an ever-increasing list of tasks to complete and, at times, it might even seem that the purpose of education is to gather lots of data and complete even more paperwork!

Education as a route to meritocracy

Early pioneers such as Robert Raikes, Hannah More and George Birkbeck stressed the importance of educating the workforce to ensure that a degree of meritocracy could be introduced into British society (this is where the most able members of society are chosen to lead rather than selection being based on historical factors such as social class), but they also talked about the increased role individuals could take on when educated. Remember that during the Industrial Revolution, universal education was not always seen as a good thing as there was a worry that if you educate the masses then they might begin to get ideas ‘above their station’. In this sense education is seen as something of a leveller – the idea being that by educating everyone we are providing a more level playing field and individuals can progress based on their ability rather than their position in society. This is of course assuming that education is the only factor at play here – it doesn’t take into account culture, access to resources, class prejudice and so on.

Education as a vehicle for social change

The notion that education can be used as a vehicle for social change is one that came out of the campaigns from the early pioneers. Mary Wollstonecraft stressed education’s role in her fight for greater rights for women, whilst in South Wales the importance of education in helping the working classes gain influence in UK society is encapsulated in the inscription over the old library in Pillgwenlly, Newport: ‘Libraries give us power’. These are indeed commendable aims and it is interesting to consider whether education is seen in the same way today. Think about your role as a teacher: have you got the power to help your students to achieve their life goals, or maybe a better question is, are you able to change your students’ life goals by showing them alternative ways of thinking and being?

Education for economic development

If you take another look into the motives of the forerunners of education change, you might begin to see that providing education was rarely a philanthropic action but had a more fundamental purpose. For Birkbeck it was encouraging his workers to know more about the machinery they were being asked to use. Other pioneers stressed differing objectives; William Hesketh Lever, who built much of Port Sunlight to house and educate his workforce, used education as a way of encouraging people to take an interest in the business as well as the wider world. In that way he encouraged greater worker participation and what he termed ‘prosperity sharing’. Whilst Lever’s philanthropic aims are clear to see, the underlying desire for a more organised, more highly skilled workforce clearly shows philanthropy grounded in pragmatism.

Education for social control

For Raikes and More, there was a strong religious element to education, with a focus on being able to read and understand the Bible. At first glance this might seem like an outrageous suggestion – after all, education is about freeing minds not controlling them. However, the idea isn’t that unusual or that new. Notions of power are embedded into our culture and for some, formal education is the ideal arena for reinforcing this. In The Republic, Plato portrayed his ideas about the ideal society in which a ‘guardian’ class would organise matters of importance whereas others, such as artisans and workers, would be educated to know their place within society.

Reflection

All of this raises a number of questions:

• Are we educating people to have the skills required to enhance economic development?
• Is education a form of social and moral control?
• Is education the basis for encouraging change within society?
• Or is it for the benefit of individuals with a focus on engendering a love of learning that will last for the rest of their lives?

It is not our intention to tell you the answers to these questions; however, it is something that you might like to think about as it will help you understand your motives for becoming a teacher. What is even more important is recognising the impact of what you do in the classroom.

The ‘Great Debate’

One significant development in the way our education system has developed is captured in what is referred to as ‘the great debate’ that followed the then Prime Minister, James Callaghan’s speech at Ruskin College in 1976. Callaghan talked about how education can be used as a vehicle to support industry and how part of the government’s role should be to encourage this objective. His speech has been cited by numerous subsequent governments as an inspiration for policy initiatives that have sought to exert influence over aspects such as the content of the curriculum, the way education is managed and funded and the ways that teachers are trained. Examples of this include the introduction of a National Curriculum in the Education Reform Act (1988), the introduction of increased influence from the private sector in the Further and Higher Education Act (1992) and the current discussions regarding the funding of degrees, which have stressed the importance of starting salaries as a measure for judging the success of higher education courses.

The bigger picture

We all have our individual views on the purpose of education and as a part of this it is important to recognise the connections it has to other aspects of life. Its purpose is widespread and incorporates:

• Economics – education provides individuals with skills to earn a living and provides the economy with a more skilled workforce.
• Culture – education develops our understanding of the world around us.
• Personal development – education develops individual talents and abilities (Robinson 2017).

What is clear is that at different points in time, these elements become more or less significant as they mirror what is happening in society. When economic development is a focus, then so too are workplace skills; when social issues rise, so does the need to enhance cultural knowledge and acceptance of diversity. After all, education is the panacea to the world’s ills!

Whilst some views of our current systems of education can seem a little negative, there are very few people who would question its value and the importance it plays in meeting the needs of society. As Robinson suggests: ‘In the twenty-first century, humanity faces some of its most daunting challenges. Our best resource is to cultivate our singular abilities of imagination, creativity and innovation …. Education is the key to the future, the stakes could hardly be higher’ (Robinson, 2017: 38).

In a similar vein it is also difficult for most people to differentiate education from teachers and to accredit the success of the former with the skills of the latter.

What does this mean for teachers today? The honest answer is that it can mean different things to different people. There are many stakeholders in education (including, but not limited to, students, parents, politicians and employers) all with varied wants and needs and then there are the education leaders and teachers who try to make it all happen. This in itself creates something of a tangled web. We also need to consider that we operate in a changeable environment where the focus fluctuates with the wind – this makes it difficult to pinpoint exactly what we should be doing at any one time and it’s hard to keep track of whether this week’s focus is about developing literacy and numeracy skills or health and well-being … and of course, getting caught up in that debate probably isn’t going to be helpful in finding a way through the maze. What does seem to be apparent is that all of the change is based on a dual premise:

Figure 1.2 Tangled web

• Education is a good thing and has a widespread influence.
• To improve the quality of education we need to improve the quality of teaching.

Whilst the second point might seem harsh, most of the teachers we have worked with would probably agree with it and most of them strive to be the best teachers that they can be. They do this despite initiative overload and constant change – they do...