Teacher Autonomy Part 2

Yesterday I blogged about the background to the issue of teacher autonomy and the dilemma facing traditionalists who, when progressives were in control, argued for autonomy, but now see it used to justify bad practice.

Although I still tend to favour teachers’ freedom to make their own judgements, I think what is needed is not a blanket declaration that teachers can do what they like, but rather it is important to follow a number of principles for when autonomy can or cannot be restricted. In particular, it should always be remembered that there is both positive and negative variance from any given model of teaching, and restrictions on autonomy should remove negative variance but protect positive variance. I think these principles will help with this.

Principle 1: Outcomes must be considered before processes. There is no point reducing teacher autonomy where teachers are already making decisions that result in desired outcomes. In practice this means that where teachers get good results, they should be left alone, or at least given only informal guidance. Where teachers are getting poor results, managers can be less respectful of autonomy.

Principle 2: Schools should be upfront about what they want. This is difficult when teachers are scarce, and schools would rather have a teacher who doesn’t fit the ethos of the school, than no teacher at all. However, there is nothing more likely to drive out good teachers than telling them once they’ve signed the contract how they are now expected to teach, having failed to mention it during the interview process. In particular, if you give somebody a job after seeing them teach in a particular way, then you’d better not tell them it is the wrong way to teach once they start working for you. A clear statement of what you want may reduce the number of applications for a position, but it will increase the chances that those you do appoint will be happy and be retained over time.

Principle 3: If you can’t write down clearly, concisely and objectively what you want, you have no right to ask for it. One of the worst features of the days of excessive observations and lesson gradings, was the feeling that you had to play a game whereby you had to guess what your managers wanted to see and, just to make it even worse, this would change between observations. Very many teachers can tell you horror stories of having changed their teaching style to meet what their last observer wanted, only to be told that this is no longer what was wanted.

Principle 4: The best justification for restricting autonomy is where a teacher’s behaviour will undermine colleagues. When expectations of effort or behaviour are lowered in one classroom, it makes it harder for everyone else. In secondary schools, whatever is normal becomes acceptable. If kids have even one lesson a week where rules are not enforced, then they will test every new teacher they have to see which rules they will enforce. It is consistency, not flexibility, that is vital for effective whole school discipline. Discipline policies should be clear and universal and no teacher should suffer for following them to the letter. Nothing has been more obvious from my experience of teaching in schools than the fact that in good schools teachers are told “you must enforce the rules” and in bad schools they are told “you are at fault for enforcing that rule”.

Principle 5: Don’t take the piss. Any kind of restriction on teacher autonomy can be misused to bully, undermine or force people out. If you are worried that the teachers will leave or go off with stress as a result of enforcement of standards then you should reconsider how standards are enforced. The nightmare scenario, for both school and teacher, is where a teacher is criticised for behaviour that is actually a result of the stress they have been put under by having their behaviour scrutinised. If teachers seem panicked, angry or disorganised when you observe them, then there is a strong possibility that you are not seeing what they are usually like. They will not improve if you point this out, they will get worse or they will leave.

Please notice that at no point here have I said “you can restrict autonomy where the evidence shows the best way to teach”. This is fast becoming the go-to straw man for critics of traditionalism, i.e. that we all believe that where evidence exists, then teachers must be compelled to follow it. Evidence does not overrule debate; it informs it.  If we were to enforce positions justified by evidence, then we’d soon be enforcing practices justified by some pretty shoddy evidence. First and foremost evidence should be used to persuade not to compel.

However, when you have a debate about methods and people say, “We do that anyway.”, or “Yes, I do that as part of a mix of methods.” then they lose the right to later complain that they are being forced to do it. The obvious example of this is over the phonics check. In that case, phonics denialists claimed for years that they were teaching phonics, they just differed about the best type of phonics, or how to mix phonics with other methods. Then a test was introduced that tested whether kids had learned phonics and they immediately complained that their kids wouldn’t pass it and it was forcing them to teach phonics. Nobody can complain that their autonomy has been harmed by being exposed as a fraud. Teachers should have autonomy because they can be trusted, and nobody’s autonomy stretches to a right to lie about what they are doing.

Finally, and perhaps most controversially, please note that I have not argued against accountability for outcomes. This is not because this is always fair and reasonable, but because I don’t consider it to be an issue of autonomy. We should welcome being told what outcomes we are meant to achieve, if they are reasonable. Having agreed outcomes should improve our autonomy, if the first principle above is being followed. Of course, we could probably discuss for hours all the times accountability for outcomes hasn’t been reasonable, but it is not a bad thing a priori.

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