The fraught issue of teacher representation

                                           

  

Teacher activism and discussion has centred around the concept of improving the esteem of our profession and improving the reach of our profession’s voice. Teachers feel that for too long politicians have dictated terribly flawed and faulty policy ideas to our workplaces. Stripped of our agency, we feel powerless ad this contributes to our sense of burnout. Or as Gabbie Stroud would say, “not burnout, but Demoralisation”. We are demoralised and disempowered.

The Parliamentary Inquiry into the teaching profession typifies this thrust from teachers into the public sphere, supported by the rise in status of Eddie Woo and the more recent emergence of Gabbie Stroud as our spokespeople. Stroud’s genius is the way that she has been able to put into words an idea that is understandable to politicians, shows strong feeling, but without turning to mere bitterness. The emergence of teacher’s voices into the public and media landscape is a relatively new movement.

One aspect of this populist teacher movement into the public sphere, is far more challenging however. The goal is to get teachers onto key decision-making bodies that dictate to the teaching profession. This movement is heavily supported by our Teachers’ unions primarily, but builds on the public profiles of teachers within the media.

This idea is one that I wholeheartedly support, but there remains a burning question:

Who would represent us?

This question is especially difficult because of our defensiveness of our own profession, of the title of ‘Teacher’. As teachers in Australia, we are quick to damn those who we deem ‘no longer teachers’. These people include people delivering external Professional Development, consultants and even at times, academics. The phrase ‘refugee from the classroom’ and other more subtle forms of disrespect are important to clinging to our own sense of esteem and mutual respect within the profession. They are however, not helpful when it comes to the issue of teacher representation and improving our voice on key decision-making bodies. It is worth noting that this sense of defensiveness of who is and who isn’t a teacher are linked to survival of the sheer life-threatening weight of our workload.

However, this defensiveness can cause negative consequences and lead teachers to mistake their classroom expertise for expertise in the broader field of education.   

My conception of education can be broken into these four spheres:

-          Politics – Policy – School – Classroom

Teacher workload is monumental, and at least partly self-inflicted, but it also precludes that teachers cannot be across each of the above four spheres.

This can be illustrated through the slow crawl of edu-twitter during the school holidays. A time notorious for political decisions around education being snuck through whilst most teachers are napping.

Typically the process runs like this, a news article, short and easily digestible appears on twitter and various groups jump on to weigh in on the policy or change in approach. The groups and networks having discussions can be grouped into the four spheres provided, but glaring issues arise when these groups or networks cross-pollinate and debate. The gaps in knowledge become most clear.

As an example, most recently,  the issues of minimum ATARs (here, here and here) sparked wide debate. Points made were valuable and interesting across all of the levels of debate. However, it became clear to me (and I am definitely including myself in this group) that teachers are not aware of the parameters around university entry, where the Government’s control starts and ends and the market forces associated with university students and their entrance into the workforce.

In short, the vast majority of teachers are not aware of the policy level of discussions within education, indeed, it might be worth considering that this is not necessary or essential. But this idea is incongruous with the thrust for teacher representation on key decision-making bodies.

This is the core issue of ‘not knowing what we don’t know’ and the teaching professions defensiveness around the mantle or ownership of the title teacher. It leaves us not allowing experts to represent us but often not possessing the necessary knowledge ourselves.

Of the four spheres provided above, it is simply put, impossible for a teacher, with a full-time teaching load to be across one perhaps even two of these areas.

This may not seem to be an issue, but if you are a teacher representing the profession raising issues that can be solved at a school-level or issues that arrive within the classroom at a discussion of politics or policy you will be of little use to that discussion.

As a recent example, the continued issue of Early Career Teacher (ECT) attrition, a number of teachers raised the issue of behaviour management as a leading cause of teacher turnover. This fact would, and is, incredibly difficult to establish through data (trust me, I wrote a thesis on it: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/330205663_Teachers'_career_intentions_school_facilities_and_resources. But not only that, it also shows the idea explored above, this response is beyond the sphere of control of the person who proposed it. State and Federal policy cannot directly influence behaviour management which is an issue that needs to be largely addressed at the school level and within classrooms.

In short, who would be an appropriate teacher representative for the profession in regards to broad policy discussion?

Any solutions, thoughts or ideas welcome, comment below, or address them to me in twitter 

@steven_kolber

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