Why Our Coercive System of Schooling Should Topple

Why Our Coercive System of Schooling Should Topple by Peter Gray click here asan application of John Holt's view of children's learning.

1. Denial of liberty on the basis of age.
Education now intrudes on time with family and friends when reallearning takes place, for example through hobbies.
2. Fostering of shame, on the one hand, and hubris, on the other.
We rely on a system of incessant testing, grading, and ranking of children compared with their peers. We thereby tap into and distort the human emotional systems of shame and pride to motivate children to do the work. Children are made to feel ashamed if they perform worse than their peers and pride if they perform better. Shame leads some to drop out, psychologically, from the educational endeavor and to become class clowns (not too bad), or bullies (bad), or drug abusers and dealers (very bad). Those made to feel excessive pride from the shallow accomplishments that earn them A's and honors may become arrogant, disdainful of the common lot who don't do so well on tests; disdainful, therefore, of democratic values and processes (and this may be the worst effect of all).

3. Interference with the development of cooperation and nurturance.
Restricts teamwork and discussion.

4. Interference with the development of personal responsibility and self-direction.
The above restricts opportunities for young people to become active and responsible members of the community and also leads to ....

5. Linking of learning with fear, loathing, and drudgery.

6. Inhibition of critical thinking.

7. Reduction in diversity of skills, knowledge, and ways of thinking.

The Joy and Sorrow of re-reading John Holt's How Children Learn

The Joy and Sorrow of re-reading John Holt's How Children Learn, by Peter Gray, click here

•  Children don’t choose to learn in order to do things in the future.  They choose to do right now what others in their world do, and through doing they learn.

•  Children go from whole to parts in their learning, not from parts to whole.

•  Children learn by making mistakes and then noticing and correcting their own mistakes.

• Children may learn better by watching older children than by watching adults.

• Fantasy provides children the means to do and learn from activities that they can’t yet do in reality.

• Children make sense of the world by creating mental models and assimilating new information to those models. 

Inserted into 1983 edition (p.126): “The spirit of independence in learning is one of the most valuable assets a learner can have, and we who want to help children’s learning at home or in school, must learn to respect and encourage it.”

The transformative power of Values-based Education (VbE)

The transformative power of Values-based Education (VbE) by Dr Neil & Jane Hawkes

www.valuesbasededucaton.com, © Dr Neil and Jane Hawkes

Values-based Education (VbE) is being successfully adopted in schools worldwide, as an
effective form of moral character education. The VbE approach to teaching and learning, as
exemplified by West Kidlington School in the UK, underpinned the Australian Government’s
program of Values Education (Lovat et al 2009). The promotion of VbE is based on research
evidence that students learn and reflect about moral values most effectively when schools are
explicitly values-based (Hawkes,2005). The key purpose of Values-based Education is to develop
ethical intelligence – ability to think and act morally. This capacity is nurtured when young
people develop an understanding of an ethical vocabulary, based on positive values words (e.g.
respect honesty and cooperation). This vocabulary could be the basis of a transformational
common ethical narrative that potentially could help to bring peace to the world. By the time
students leave school they will have developed personal holistic competence (PHC): the ability
to deal with the complexity of life in an ethical manner, whilst maintaining personal integrity
and well-being: The purpose of adopting VbE is to inspire young people to live the moral values
in their lives so that they develop positive character traits, becoming the best people that they
can be.

The need for Values-based Education
It is our understanding that for the continued flourishing of our world there is an urgent need
for humanity to adopt a new universal common language, centred on universal positive human
values, such as compassion, respect and tolerance, which can embrace all cultures, religions and
non-religions. Societies across the world are being subjected to the growing influence of limiting
values: selfishness, excessive materialism, greed as exemplified in the recent western banking
crisis, the dismissal of climate change and the growth of terrorism. Such influences are creating
cultural entropy, which if not stemmed will lead to further human unhappiness, social
disintegration and widespread fear. Our observations lead us to the understanding that at the
root of such disharmony is a growing lack of meaning and purpose in people’s lives; a
misunderstanding of what conditions create happiness and a lack of focus in educational
systems on what we have termed the inner curriculum of thoughts, feelings and emotions.

What can be done?
A transformational movement for positive change has begun in many schools and educational
systems worldwide to address such destabilising issues. The purpose of this movement
promoted by the International Values-based Education Trust (IVET) is to enable young people to
learn about and experience an ethical vocabulary founded on positive values: to give children a
powerful moral language that will enable them to base their self-leadership on concepts that are
life-enhancing. We have observed that when young people have the opportunity to know that,
values are principles that guide their thinking and behaviour, and put them into practice in their
daily lives, they develop what we have described as ethical intelligence – the ability to think and
act morally: having the capacity to be attuned to other human beings. We propose that the
development of ethical intelligence should be seen as a core entitlement for all children in all
countries: the outcome of instilling a transformational common ethical narrative that potentially
could help to bring a lasting peace to our world. The Australian research (Lovat et al, 2009) into
the effects of adopting Values Education demonstrated a range of positive outcomes: including
agency, improved values consciousness, increased academic diligence, communicative
competence, enhanced relational trust, well being and personal transformation. To this list we
add self-leadership and the capacity to be self-reflective. We have coined a term that describes
the summation of these outcomes - personal holistic competence (PHC), which is the ability to
deal with the complexity of life in an ethical and empathetic manner, whilst maintaining
personal integrity and well being. No formal exam can determine a person’s level of PHC. It’s
qualities can however be observed in people as they go about their daily lives in work and at
home.

How can ethical intelligence and personal holistic competence be developed?
From research and anecdotal evidence we would humbly submit that the key to
transformational change is to ensure that positive human values are explicitly taught about and
learned in schools. We suggest that a blueprint can be used to help in this process. We recognise
that cultures and communities are diverse so we recommend that the blueprint is adapted to
your particular setting and context and not rigidly applied. Of paramount importance is the
process of thinking about how moral values are currently considered and taught about in
schools; crucially how these values are modelled by adults.

Values-based Education (VbE) Blueprint

The Values-based Education Blueprint sets out the VbE approach to teaching, learning and
leadership. The success of VbE is based on research evidence that confirms that students learn
about positive human values most effectively when schools are explicitly values-based
(Hawkes,2005). For instance, the adults in values-based schools agree to model the values that
members of the school community decide are important for children to learn about. Authentic
modelling is crucial to the learning process, which depends on teaching and support staff
understanding the essence of VbE. This Blueprint provides the basic essential background
knowledge of VbE. However, a more comprehensive account of VbE is contained in Dr Hawkes’s
book, From My Heart, transforming lives through values (Hawkes, 2013). I
It is important to appreciate that the Valuing Philosophy of Education, expressed as Values-
based Education (VbE) aims to underpin every aspect of the life and work of school
communities, colleges, and other settings, including the home, so that they are authentically
values-based. The term values-based implies that all aspects of life, both personal and
professional, is founded on the way that positive human values are used as principles to guide
our thinking and subsequent behaviour. This highly practical philosophy is transformational, in
that it drives a cultural change, which is based on equity and respect for all. It is challenging, as
it calls on us to ask what we can give to life, as opposed to what can we get from life? It
promotes a way of being that values the self, others and the environment. Its impact is wide-
ranging and comprehensive, as it develops an awareness of the importance of understanding the
central role that values play in our lives.

VbE is a developmental process that connects with the intrinsic qualities of human beings and
actively nurtures them. It invites the individual to be aware of the potential power for good or ill
of their inner world of thoughts and feelings; how the way that these are used affects our own
general well being, that of others and potentially the world. It sees the purpose of education as
the flourishing of humanity. The purpose of adopting the values philosophy is to inspire young
people to live the values in their lives so that they develop positive character traits, becoming
the best people that they can be; actively demonstrating the values in their daily lives, thereby
creating a sustainable world.

Useful definitions
Values-based Education (VbE) occurs when universal, positive human values underpin
everything a school or other organisation thinks about and does. Its aim is to develop humane
self-leadership, founded on the capacity to inwardly reflect about thoughts and consequent
actions.

Values Education is any activity, which promotes the understanding and enactment of positive
values, which develop the skills and positive dispositions of adults and students so they can live
the values as active members of the community. It is considered as a very successful form of
character education. Values are the principles, fundamental convictions and standards that act as the general guides to our thinking and behaviour. They include: Peace, Justice, Respect, Love, Patience, Happiness, Caring, Trust, Honesty, Humility, Courage, Compassion, Tolerance and Hope.

Blueprint
The VbE blueprint has become an inspiration for schools worldwide and is founded on the
original innovative work at West Kidlington School in Oxfordshire, UK. The key elements about
how to introduce VbE may be summarised as follows but please adapt to your cultural context:
1. Why VBE?
First, be clear about why you want to develop your school to be values-based. It is imperative
that the leadership of the school is fully committed to the development of a values-based school.
Have you seen one, read about one, or considered the research evidence for introducing VbE?
Who will take the lead or will a mixture of people lead VbE from the school and community? Are
you prepared to invest the necessary, time, energy and resources? Think about timescale for
implementation, success criteria, monitoring and evaluation. Have colleagues realised that VbE
is about cultural transformation and challenges personal assumptions and mindsets about the
nature of education and schooling? It is important to audit how things are at present. For
instance, with their full agreement, audit the staff’s personal values and their perception of
current and desired values of the school. To achieve this consider using the tools of the Barrett Values Centre and the survey on the VbE website www.valuesbasededucation.com. The surveys will give staff a greater understanding of the school’s current culture. Ensure that you think about the current climate for teaching and learning; relationships; level of synergy/cooperation in the staff; the level of cultural entropy (aspects of the school that work against it being values-based). Ask, how does our school currently impart values to pupils? What are these values? Are they taught implicitly or explicitly? What do we hope the benefits will be for adopting the values-based approach?

2. Shaping policy
The whole school community (staff, pupils, parents and community representatives) is involved in shaping a values-based education policy. A process of values understanding/identification takes place involving the school’s community. A meeting/forum is set up to facilitate this process. The forum will propose that the school adopt universal, positive human values such as respect, honesty and cooperation. These are chosen through a careful process that involves thinking about what qualities (values) the school should encourage students to develop. These values are then circulated to all parents for consultation and endorsement so that everyone is aware of the values that have been agreed. This is the most effective way of engaging the community in the values process. In secondary schools it is imperative that students are actively involved in the development of the VbE policy.

3. Ethical Intelligence
The key purpose of Values Education is to develop what Dr. Hawkes has termed ethical intelligence. This capacity is nurtured when young people are introduced to an ethical vocabulary, based on positive values words (e.g. respect, honesty and cooperation). The model recommended for Primary Schools contains 22 values, introduced over a two-year cycle: one value being the focus for each month. Schools may decide to have fewer values with a longer focus time but it is important to have enough values to create a common ethical vocabulary. This vocabulary, if adopted at national level, can be the basis of a transformational common language bringing peace to the world. In secondary schools that build on the work of their primary feeder schools, it is advisable to have a fewer number of values with supplementary values that are the focus for the development of character traits such as fairness, perseverance and honesty.

Working in and with the community in service learning programs creates opportunities for living the values and character traits. By the time students leave secondary school they will have developed what Dr. Hawkes refers to as personal holistic competence (PHC), which is the ability to deal with the complexity of life in an ethical and empathetic manner, whilst maintainingpersonal integrity and well being.

4. Deciding Principles
In the light of the values identified, the school decides the principles that will guide the way adults behave. Elements will be discussed to determine these such as:
• how adults will care for their well-being and mental health and be mutually supportive;
• how adults will be consistent in their behaviour, i.e. students will experience the same care and respect from all members of staff;
• the emotional, intellectual, physical, moral and spiritual needs of the students will be considered to ensure that the curriculum is holistic i.e. nurtures all aspects of the pupil;
• the way pupils are treated, in terms of the school’s relational (behaviour) policy.

5. Role Models
Adults in the school must be willing to commit themselves to work towards being role models for Values Education. Its success, in terms of improved standards and school ethos, will only come about if the school Principal/Headteacher and all staff (teaching and support staff) understand that it is primarily through their behaviour, in modelling the values that sustainable improvements will develop in the school. The adults therefore identify and agree positive behaviours that will model the values e.g. to remain calm when dealing with challenging student behaviour; to invest time in really getting to know their students; to helping students to sense and shape their future by finding meaning and purpose for what they do; at all times being respectful. Such an agreement may be recorded in job descriptions and form part of performance management.

6. School's Institutional Values
The school’s institutional values i.e. how the school is perceived by the community through aspects such as how parents are welcomed, school signage, state of the buildings and grounds, cleanliness, sports days, concerts, parents’ meetings are reviewed to ensure consistency with the values education policy.

7. Reflection
The school considers how it will encourage the key skill of reflection (sitting silently and focusing mental energy) that nurtures greater self-control, emotional balance, better relationships, responding appropriately to others and their own conscience, which will lead to values-based behaviour. Time needs to be devoted to understanding and training in this important skill, as in many schools it will be seen as something outside of the normal work of the school and only linked to faith communities. Dr. Hawkes cannot over emphasise the importance of this skill that has the backing of scientific research (Siegel, Bryson 2011) as well as thousands of years of human wisdom.

8. Experiential Programme
An experiential programme is established for learning about values, which may include:

• Introducing and deepening the understanding of values in a programme of well constructed assemblies; one value being highlighted each month or other agreed period of time e.g. January= Respect; each class teacher (primary schools) preparing one values lesson each month; the value of the month being the subject of a prominent display in the school hall, reception area, Principal’s/Headteacher’s office and in each classroom; values being a integral part of tutor time, all subject lessons, and a specific area of the curriculum (secondary schools) lessons having a values focus as well as a learning intention.

• The language of values used implicitly in all lessons e.g. well done, you showed great respect to each other. Thank you for cooperating/caring/being tolerant etc.

• Reflection should be a key component of lessons e.g. let’s have a minute of silence so that we can be fully present in our lesson; let’s pause and check out in a few moment’s of silence what we are thinking and feeling in this lesson and what will make our learning more productive, etc.

• Pupils are encouraged to be involved in action teams, using a values perspective to consider school and community issues e.g. how can we improve our break time experience? What can we do to make our learning experience both pleasurable and effective so that we get the most out of school life? In what ways can we encourage our parents and community to be more involved in the life of the school? What can we advise the council to do about litter in the shopping centre?

• Regular newsletters sent to parents, explaining what the value of the month is and how it can be developed at home.

9. Integrate the curriculum
Aspects of the curriculum (everything that the school does) are identified that could make a specific contribution to VbE e.g. Philosophy for Children (P4C), Learning Power, Mind Sets, Roots of Empathy, Enquiry-based projects, Outdoor learning, Forest School, Technology supported Learning, Service Learning, Sports Program, School Concerts/Shows and other events. The range of skills, knowledge, attitudes and understanding to develop from VbE is identified. Of crucial importance is to ensure that the process of developing VbE is well planned (construct an action plan/road map) and that there is continuity and progression in the student’s school experience, which is monitored, evaluated and celebrated in order to keep the process alive and constantly under review. Ensure that VbE is visible in all subjects and aspects of the curriculum. The school’s values leader or a group of staff, which may include representatives of the student body and community, may lead this process.

10. Values Statement

The school agrees a Values Statement that may be prominently displayed in school and included in the school’s prospectus/website. It considers working towards achieving the International Values Education Trust’s (IVET) Quality Mark for being a values-based school. Finally, it celebrates being a values school and continues on a process of continuous school improvement.

11. The Headteacher/Principal as a values-led leader
Effective values-based schools only develop if the headteacher sees the relevance of VbE as a key driver for creating a world-class school. It is not a soft-option, as it is demanding in terms of personal commitment and drive. However, as Pete Dumall, Head of the Fielding School in London says:
Values enable leaders to share their vision in a common and consistent vocabulary. Values have helped me provide a framework for decision-making – especially around people – for all of the things where there is no guidance and you’re left on your own. Decisions are taken in the best interest of the organisation and the person themselves: the values vocabulary helps me to explain where the decision has come from. Values provide a framework for reflective thinking, enabling my personal growth and development following every experience – ‘how might I have managed that better?’

12. Next Steps
We recommend that schools and other settings that want to embed Values-based Education allocate a training day, when all teaching and non-teaching staff can attend and be an active part in the process of transformational cultural change. There are many useful documents to support this active process, which can be found at www.valuesbasededucation.com. Involvement, partnership and ownership by all stakeholders are the keys to the success of VbE.

References

Hawkes, N (2005). Does teaching values improve the quality of education in primary schools? OxfordUniversity. D. Phil Thesis. Published by VDM (2010), an imprint of Crown Publishing.

Lovat, et al (2009). Final Report For AUSTRALIAN GOVERNMENT Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations Project to Test and Measure the Impact of Values Education on Student Effects and School Ambience. Professor Terence Lovat, Professor Ron Toomey, Dr. Kerry Dally, Dr. Neville Clement. The University of Newcastle Australia, January 12th, 2009

Siegel, D & Payne Bryson, T (2011). The Whole-Brain Child: 12 Revolutionary Strategies to Nurture Your Child's Developing Mind, Survive Everyday Parenting Struggles, and Help Your Family Thrive Random House

© Dr Neil and Jane Hawkes

Research, Pedagogy and Power

Stephen Bigger.  The last two months has been a baptism of fire in twitter-feed. Especially between 'Tell them things then test them" pedagogy and the broader learning which includes inquiry, activities, drama and so forth. As a teacher I did both, mixed in different ways, sometimes even in the same lesson. I embalmed a mummy and directed the class to act out bits of whatever we were talking about. A whole-school Passover, including 100+ pupils in the hall crossing the Red Sea was remembered a year later (pupils called me Rabbi) and a narrated and acted out Rama and Sita story was acted out for whole year assembly. This work was knowledge-rich, resulting in quality writing and was examined in the normal way - but it was delivered in as exciting and entertaining ways as I could muster. And definitely no worksheets, and few books either because suitable books were not available. Knowledge-rich need not involve droning teachers and unthinking pupils - it should encourage thinking and discussion.

My own education, primary and secondary, was of the tell them and test them variety with rewards (gold and silver stars) and punishments (normally public shaming). I was banned from being str monitor when I sabotaged the whole exercise, not discovered for several weeks. I was a bright pupil who didn't want external rewards (stars) so I laced my work with deliberate errors. Looking back, this damaged my progress until I was 14, but I was looking after two younger siblings (7 and 3), a house and a garden. I had older siblings, but they were away at boarding school. My head was not focused on school-work which generally involved teacher bullying and sarcasm, with canings from time to time.  At 14 I discovered self-study, became an avid book buyer and got on with it. At university I noticed that I was the only one in class who had not been 'spoon-fed'. I am emptying  my attic and looking at the notes I took for myself from A level onwards, in tiny handwriting I could not emulate today. In research terms, much of it is still usable.

So calls for bullying 'tell and test' leave me cold. I don't remember any teacher with pleasure, and I do remember most teachers. At least caning has been outlawed.  Why revert to what didn't work educationally sixty years ago?

So to my thoughts on research into pedagogy. First a truism not always appreciated. Education is not the same as schooling, and vice versa. Schooling is forcing children/YP to attend a particular place and do as they are told. Education is learning, developing, becoming curious and becoming exited about life and the world. The Unschooling Movement argues that education is better done outside school, drawing on the work of John Holt about children failing and succeeding to learn. It is possible to go through school and pass exams without learning much.

So we start with what is education and what is learning. Well before the age of 5 I really enjoyed picture books. Donald Duck, I remember. We weren't allowed comics since mother (a coal face miner's daughter with delusions of grandeur) thought them working class. Enid Blyton was middle class so that was our reading diet. I can still sing the Noddy and Big-ears records. Coming to the point, home was reading-rich and picture-book rich. I don't remember learning to read, but I do remember teaching others to read.I remember laughing during silent reading and having to turn it into a cough.

Coming out of this, motivating pupils to learn could be higher on the agenda than becoming passive receptors. Managing learning through fear, linked with expulsion of recalcitrants, seems poorly fitted to develop motivation. In saying this I am not saying that anything goes, since good self-discipline will benefit both the individual and the class. In the short term, some pupils may have developed negative attitudes over time so the teacher is trying to turn them around by building a good relationship which takes the sting out of their past experiences.

Ethics.  This gives us a key question to ask of pedagogy, To what extent does it value the pupils and respect their various needs? Does their experience in school promote their happiness and well-being? Are the benefits of the class experience appropriately shared? Our focus is on motivating pupils by being supportive, helpful, empowering and not being authoritarian, bossy and unfair.

Critical Pedagogy.  The word critical means a range of things in different contexts but always from the action of offering criticism. That criticism may be logical - i.e. the argument doesn't follow. It may be evidential, that what is said is not based on evidence. It could be ethical, where the argument made is not fair. Critical Theory asks all these questions but since the first two are common to all disciplines, the focus on social justice provides it with a very distinctive set of questions. Stimulated by the rise of the Nazis in Germany, its philosophical message of social justice was the stark opposite of the oppressive policies of the brown-shirt thugs. Many were secular Jews and the social message of the prophets is clearly visible. The Critical Theorists moved from Frankfurt to America for their safety. Their distinctive philosophy against oppression across society fed into feminism, anti-racism, studies of class and more recently sexuality. It has been applied to education as Critical Pedagogy, encouraging democratic schooling, hearing pupil voices (opinions) including school councils, the involvement of pupils in their learning and school lives, social justice in schools, respect for pupils with special needs and so on. In brief it is a philosophy of respect. Critical theory tends to be a grass roots movement against top-down instrumentalism making judgements and disrespectful authoritarianism based on punishment, sarcasm and belittling. The early stages of critical pedagogy is well summed up in Teaches As Intellectuals: Toward a Critical Pedagogy of Learning by Henry Giroux (1988 and still available). His chapter (9) on 'Teachers as Transformative Intellectuals' emphasises that teachers are "transformative intellectuals who combine scholarly reflection and practice in the service of educating students to be thoughtful, active citizens" (p.122). This was an argument against a more instrumental view if the teacher's role "devaluing and deskilling", an insight still relevant today.

Self  Study. There is not a great deal written about self study and different things are meant so I will be careful to define my meanings. One meaning is studying oneself, a kind of personal psychotherapy. That is not centrally what I mean but reflexivity (which I take this to be) is not unimportant. A second meaning I see online seems to be supplementary education, offering additional supervised schooling when they come home from school. This is not self study though is advertised assuch This sounds to me of unhelpful cramming when the children should be out playing.In my case play would have included free unsupervised reading of books I had chosen, but would also have included climbing trees and taking long bike rides.

I preferred to find out for myself than be told, and regarded (and still do) what I am told with some suspicion. This applied before the age of 5 when I campaigned to deny the existence of Father Christmas. I gather local mothers used to knock on the door to tell be to shut up. I didn't of course. My favorite  school activity was finding things out for myself. we had radio but no television, and of course home computers were not yet invented. I had the umpteen volumes of the Children's Encyclopedia (second hand) and was a voracious reader; and I remember trying to reduce a dead bird to a skeleton (age about 8) and helping with the harvest in days when horses still ploughed.

Up to the age of 14 I did not engage in study.I don't remember what was taught, but I do remember the derision were were held in by many staff. "You are going to learn this whether you want to or not"; "You will learn Latin even if it kills you". Teachers who were bullies remain most firmly in mind, bearing in mind that physical assault was allowed. I was brought up as an evangelical Christian (I have been an agnostic since age 18) and this caused me not a little stress in my teens, particularly as church elders were abusive and I was close to excommunication. I jumped before being pushed.

I did two A levels by self study (Latin and Religious Studies) the latter in nine months supported by a correspondence college. At University, learning Hebrew, Greek, Akkadian, Ugaritic as well as broad reading requires self-study discipline. Moving on the PhD straight after requires more of the same. I had been well set up. Later I completed PG Cert and later still MA by self study. The question is how can self study be encouraged earlier in school as a matter of routine. The internet provides a different context so research using it needs to establish criticality - testing the evidence for claims on social media and other internet sources. Don't accept it, test it. I am aware of schools in which this is taking place. If this becomes established generally, changes to assessment will have to take place. Self-study requires agency (feeling in control) and motivation (feeling the task is worth doing).

Authority as Relational.   I take my subtitle from a book by Charles Bingham. What is Authority? You can hear Trump saying 'I have Authority. I am President' as if it is a cloak he puts on when taking office. 'You have to obey or take the consequences' (that was Mugabe, not Trump yet). Authority is something earned, and may not be earned by authoritarianism. Ruling by fear and not relationship may produce compliance but not cooperation or collaboration. Model 3 he calls 'critical' meaning that all involved, pupils and teachers declare themselves to have equal status and voice. Self motivation and self discipline is the name of the game. The big task of schooling is how to achieve that goal. Within a framework of curriculum appropriateness, it has to involve pupils having some say over what they choose to study and letting them explore how to research properly. That authority is relational assumes that classrooms (and schools) are relational, that they are dominated by positive and helpful interactions and relationships, and that authority grows out of those interactions and their implied respect both ways. Resisting authority assumes that authority is claimed by particular individuals (teachers and leaders). If authority is distributed in a context of collaboration and cooperation, resisting authority means opting out of the group dynamic altogether. In a sense this form of group authority could be called distributed authority or perhaps collegial authority. It would need operating principles like keeping safe and showing respect, and some sort of mechanism to balance dominant personalities/voices.

Tom Sergiovanni spent his academic life reconceptualising leadership including Moral Leadership.
He regards competence and virtue as the two major principles of leadership. Most recently The Lifeworld of Leadership: Creating Culture, Community, and Personal Meaning in Our Schools explores the broader implications of school relationships. Whilst his initial thoughts focus on senior management, distributed leadership operates throughout the institution and throughout the community. He sums up:

"the more leadership is emphasised, the less professionalism flourishes. The more professionalism is thriving, the less need there is for leadership."

Pedagogy is an ethical and moral activity in which the whole community (in this case the school) create culture and personal meaning. This requires interpersonal relationships of a high order.

Alfie Kohn

Teaching without being authoritarian -
https://www.tes.com/news/school-news/breaking-views/tes-talks-alfie-kohn?amp

National Curriculum

By Stephen Bigger.  Response to Benjamin Doxtdator regarding my Twitter response to the post: 1990 called. They want their 'jobs of the future' skill list back (with photocopied text). My response there: This was a battle we fought in the early 1990s when the 'knowledge' National Curriculum was published. The result was Cross Curricular Skills and Themes. These enabled a degree of legal subversion.

BD asks for further information.

In 1987 I sat through a half hour diatribe by Kenneth Baker giving the reasons for the National Curriculum. The HMI Curriculum Matters booklets were part of the journey, which was a reaction to William Tyndale School excesses. Mrs Thatcher's opposition to ILEA and Schools Council which identified creative curriculum solutions. The National Curriculum, developed by the National Curriculum Council (NCC) would be subject based applying secondary school subjects even to infant schools.

Many of us were involved in NCC discussions and conferences and the common complaints from the floor were: where do skills fit? where does multicultural education go? and environmental education? and politics/citizenship. The response that subjects would include these as appropriate seemed to most as resulting in nothing being done. So, with an already packed curriculum package (remember there were 18 science ATs at this time), these cross curricular aspects would have to be shoehorned in. After more planning committees, cross curricular skills and themes were published. We pointed ot that you could base the whole curriculum around cross curricular themes, especially in primary schools. The good thing was that cross curricular themes allowed a degree of subversion away from a boring knowledge-centred litany of facts to be remembered. I recall that we welcomed the first draft of the Geography curriculum as it was values and issues based. Unfortunately by its final form it had become factual and uninteresting. History caused a bitter debate over those wanting world history and others wanting British history and Empire. The latter won. English had its battles over the literature canon, multicultural or white middle class. Those debates still go on today.

A number of colleagues worked with me to unpack curriculum subjects in terms of these themes. This resulted in the book Spiritual, Moral, Social and Cultural Education: Values across the Curriculum. Each chapter demonstrated how subjects can operate on broader issues.

My two contributions to Leicester, Mogdil and Modgil were a) on anti-racist spiritual and religious education (volume V) and b) on the work of Birmingham Compact with whom I worked 1992-4 (volume III).

First (a) I was a religious education teacher and lecturer and was also deeply into anti-racist education. In my years religious education was being redefined as multi-faith education until the 1988 Education Reform Act brought it back to a Christian Education agenda. I supported multi-faith education; but I am currently hostile to a Christian Instruction curriculum we moved away from in the 1970s.

Secondly (b) Birmingham Compact worked mainly with KS4 and KS5 increasing motivation and skills. My paper demonstrated its effectiveness; but the agenda of Ofsted and league tables persuaded schools not to work with all pupils but to concentrate on those few who might be mentored to achieve a C and not a D.

In conclusion the debate between teaching so-called 'knowledge' and critical assessment is still live.  It is not either-or but both-and. Knowledge cannot morally be taught as final and unchallengeable. All academic effort focuses on challenging and testing knowledge-claims.

Literature:

Bigger S and Brown E (1999) Spiritual, Moral, Social and Cultural Education: Values across the Curriculum

Leicester, M, Mogdil C and Mogdil S 1999, Education, Culture and Values, volumes I-VI.

Welcome to Schooling.

This is a true story, happening even now. It is of a little 4 year old boy, bright, curious, with caring professional parents and a doting infant-teacher grandmother. He was really looking forward to his first day at school. Before lunch he had been sent to the head of year and shouted at, and before the headteacher when he was shouted at again. By the end of the day he had been sent out of class, and put in isolation for five minutes with a timer, no talking and no eye contact. He doesn't yet know what he had done wrong, and nor does he now, but he had breached some rules somewhere. He arrived home saying be was a bad boy (he isn't), a wicked boy (he certainly isn't but who spoke the word to him?). He cried himself to sleep. End of the first school day. Next morning he asked to stay at home because he is good at home and wicked at school. The teacher had never taught reception before, was not teacher trained but came via TEFL. The school website is very coy about what her qualifications actually are.
Does this ring any bells, anyone? Deep learning going on. A day to remember - indeed a day never to be forgotten.
A month later: He dislikes the school and he doesn’t want to go there! He says this every night, He gets the prospectus out,  marks it with a big cross and says this. He is just 4, from a curious bubbly child to an unhappy mess. Now a month after starting school he has lost his childhood enthusiasm and in trauma rejects friends who might get him into trouble. he has drawn right into himself. The parents are trying to negotiate  change of school.

Sue Cowley, The Artful Educator

The Artful Educator: Creative, Imaginative and Innovative Approaches to Teaching Crown House, 2017.


A book full of great advice about creating a learning culture to motivate pupils. It is affirming. When I started teaching in the 1970s, this is how I taught, first in secondary school and later in primary. Pupils would come to me years later and say "Do you remember when we ..." and recount some off the wall activity. Many creative teachers found the oppressive 1990s unappetizing and went off to do other things. I do hope the wheel is turning full circle again.


Educators don't do learning to other people, people have to do their learning for themselves. If children are nervous, pset, bored or disaffected, they might even go backwards in their learning, rather than forwards. But if we can inspire a love of learning, the children will carry on learning outside of school time and continue this when they become adults. Elsewhere Sue names the 'cardinal sins' - winding pupils up, being rude, being confrontational, being bad tempered and being negative.


Two different friends' daughters could read fluently before going to school. I tested one as having a reading level above 11. But she couldn't (for which read wouldn't) read at 6. Another friend's daughter was alert and creative at 6 with a two hour attention span, but a nervous wreck by 8 leading to a change of school. Why? In each case the influence of one teacher.


I don't remember learning anything either at primary school or secondary school. I passed the 11+ and was put in the top class, but that was not by being taught. I read before school, I read during school, I was proactive in my own learning. I made it to uni by organising my own learning, which served me well at uni. I have looked through the secondary school staff list and spotted the usual bullies, the headteacher who caned 40 boys in a single morning. One teacher taught me to listen to Beethoven's Fifth Symphony with a score, and showed us the structure of a blues line. For that I am grateful. I learned in spite of the staff for the most part.


The Artful Educator is mainly about teaching art, making it approachable, accessible, fun, experience-based, broad, challenging and the many other useful epithets. All these are generalisable to other subjects. I explored this with some Oxford colleagues in Spiritual, Moral, Social and Cultural Education across the Curriculum (SMSC was the language of the day) how relevant and motivating teaching can improve learning in every subject.


After 8 years as a secondary teacher, I retrained in early years education, which in those days was play-based and experiential. My work thereafter crossed over primary and secondary education. My curriculum field (as was Sean's) was religious education. We differ only in that Sean is a Christian and I am of no religious allegiance, an observer rather than a participant. This does not mean i am part of the aggressive atheism that is fashionable today. My work with Viv Bartlett empowering disaffected pupils was motivated by Baha'i religious philosophy. I was fortunate to be asked in 1987 to organise and lead a week-long school project (year 5-6) on religious festivals and elsewhere a one-day project on Jewish Passover. These were essentially experiential, including art, drama, music, story and designing artefacts. I recall a group of the children rehearsing the divali story, and performing it at the end to the year-group. Lots of making and doing saw the classroom (actually an open-plan bay) filling up with models and displays. I have often quoted my question "what is wisdom, a wise person" (when telling the story of Hindu goddess Saraswati) which received the immediate response of an 8 year old girl, "a wise person is someone who knows a lot about a lot of things, but is humble and not proud and uses what they know to help other people". I asked the same question to teachers in in-service discussions and never received so clear an answer. The Passover day was tricky in that I was presented with 120 children in the hall and expected to "get on with it" as teachers melted away. I discovered I could organise a mass drama (about the Moses and the exodus) off the cuff with a veritable "children of Israel".. Fortunately, the teachers returned to help with art and craft activities. The school children greeted me ever after as "the Rabbi". Experience of the main world religions has been central to the subject since I started my career in 1973.


The subject focused a great deal on moral and social issues, especially "difficult topics" (sexuality, the Holocaust and genocide, ethics). Open discussion and debate were key strategies. It is easy to see how English, History and Geography could become similarly experiential. Maths and Science may bring different challenges but our 1999 SMSC book showed that it is worth making the effort.

Paul Dix

The school behaviour debate is fuelled with emotion and ignorance. It is framed by a system obsessed with control and punishment. From desperate politicians cracking down on discipline to the tabloids who openly attack damaged children, the wider public debate on behaviour is laced with aggression directed at young people. The search for more severe punishment to beat down the most resilient is something of which we should be ashamed. Calls for corporal punishment and more exclusion are a desperate consequence of a system bereft of ideas, one that blindly insists on pure punishment in preference to reparation and rehabilitation.

Paul Dix, When the Adults Change, Everything Changes, 2017, p.107.

Gert J J Biesta

Gert J J Biesta, The Rediscovery of Teaching, 2017:2

what is often (conveniently) forgotton in such discussions is that authority is fundamentally a relational matter and not something that one person can simply impose upon another person.

No shaming!

Debra Kidd writes this on shaming pupils as a control strategy - don't do it, it is harmful.

When schools decide that they will default to shaming as a strategy for good behaviour, they place themselves onto the most volatile battlefield they can – what Brown calls “The Swampland of the Soul.” They can be seemingly winning that battle – they may force compliance from children. Perhaps even test results (especially if they kick the most resistant out of school altogether).  But as Sarah-Jayne Blakemore points out, adolescence opens up many windows to mental health problems. It is in this period of intense brain activity, where the hippocampus and limbic systems (linked to memory and emotion) are growing and grey matter is being pruned, that seeds are sown for future emotional health. Stings here can settle and grow. So can kindnesses. We need to tread with care and compassion.
It doesn’t take much. When you’re considering an action in your school or classroom, simply think about whether or not it is likely to cause shame. If it is, don’t do it. Rank ordering pupils, hanging signs around their necks, having lists of wrongdoers – these are all acts of shaming. There’s no justification for it. None at all.

No excuses?

Raymond Soltysek @raymondsoltysek has blogged (snippets below):

... an approach to behaviour that is authoritarian, damaging and, potentially, supportive of bad, bad teaching.

... you should – must – ‘build relationships.’

... behaviourist strategies cannot do that; they aren’t designed to.  Behaviourism focusses only on behaviour, not on minds and certainly not on hearts.  Dogs are conditioned to respond in a particular way to a stimulus, but it has nothing to do with understanding, since we can elicit exactly the same response quite quickly if we change the stimulus.  Similarly, schools which use ‘no excuses’ policies are frequently lauded for their ‘respectful ethos’, yet we cannot know that a policy that sends children to detention for forgetting their homework or for dropping litter or for talking in the corridor builds respect; all we can with any certainty say is that they are behaving in a conditioned way to a stimulus, as if they respect us.  They may not – indeed, it’s absolutely certain that some won’t – and, if we changed the stimulus we use to encourage respectful behaviour, we’d get just the same result.

That’s why I think that we have to be much lighter on our feet in terms of behaviour management, that we have to utilise not just the blunt tool of behaviourism, but cognitive constructivist and social constructivist strategies too.  It’s the core of the way I’ve been getting student teachers to conceptualise behaviour management for years now, and it’s something I’ll return to in later posts, perhaps.

But in the meantime, ‘no excuses’ is a stony ground for our classrooms, and for anyone who wants to build relationships with pupils.  Just think about it; what other human relationship imposes such conditions?  Would you marry someone who said there was no excuse for not having the dinner ready on time, and who put you in a room until you’d learned your lesson? How would you react if you visited acquaintances and they sent their elderly mother to the garden shed because she’d lost her purse through a hole in her coat pocket?   The notion of there being no excuse for behaviour is to deny the very essence of humanity, people making their way in a universe which is at times capricious and unpredictable, a universe in which in the face of things we can’t control we all have the right to make judgements which at times will be flawed or judgments which at times might be unfathomable to others.

Victoria Derbyshire programme

Discussion on school discipline and the great Yarmouth Charter Academy on Victoria Derbyshire (#VictoriaDerbyshire ) this morning. It seemed to focus on getting balance between rules and expectations on the one hand and producing contented, curious and motivated pupils on the other.

Discussion emphasised that clear expectations are good, but shouting, disrespect and constant punishment are not. The case under discussion seemed to have punishments for everything. There were even punishments for being shy.

A headteacher said Get the rules clearly understood, in non-confrontational ways, and then learning can be happy, purposeful and effective.

In #LivingContradiction we argue for non-confrontation, looking elsewhere for solutions which enhance learning and motivation.



On this interesting debate, check out @warwickmansell @debrakidd @imagineinquiry.

Gert Biesta is ending BERA 2017 with the question is learning a human right in these days of control.

Gert Biesta (www.gertbiesta.com) is Professor of Education and Director of Research in the Department of Education of Brunel University London. In addition he holds the part-time NIVOZ Professorship for Education at the University of Humanistic Studies in the Netherlands and has visiting affiliations with ArtEZ Institute of the Arts, the Netherlands, and NLA University College, Bergen, Norway. Since 2015 he is a member of the Education Council of the Netherlands, the advisory body for the Dutch government and parliament. His work focuses on the theory of education and the theory and philosophy of educational and social research. In recent years he has published on such topics as curriculum, teaching, teacher agency, democratic education and lifelong learning. His 2014 book The Beautiful Risk of Education won the 2014 Outstanding Book Award of the American Educational Research Association (Division B). His latest book, The Rediscovery of Teaching, is due to be published by Routledge in 2017.

Some Thoughts.

Living Contradiction is about the gap between what a teacher thought he ought to do in contrast to what he felt deep down he wanted to do. The journey from the first to the second was not as easy as it sounds. We all build up a picture of what is expected of us and try to live up to it, feeling guilty if we fail. Teachers build into this what they think the headteacher wants, what OFSTED wants - but we don't get around to consider what we want. Sean sat down one day eight years ago to decide what kind of teacher he wanted to be. He was a senior teacher, in charge of school discipline, and was good at it. His inner contradiction was the feeling that there must be more to education and learning than using adult authority to control young people.

Stephen's journey (the blog writer here) was slightly different, hoping for a university teaching position but starting with secondary school teaching for eight years when university staff recruitment collapsed in the 1970s. He joined an education faculty in 1981, teaching religious studies and education. There he retrained as an early years educator which at that time was far from a subject focused curriculum. All this led him to an interest in the relationships developed in schools: much he saw in secondary schools was negative, whilst some primary schools had the glimmer of good practice. But not all. Teacher training took himto many schools between 1981 and 1998 and in teacher research till the present, that is forty-five years of teaching. He was once told he was too moral for his own good, and it is certainly easier to keep one's head down. A few readers might remember my NASUWT union days. When given an area of responsibility, he regarded it as a solemn duty to train up those coming after, occasionally resulting in redundancy. He was never good at being compliant, preferring to be creative, pushing boundaries.

The following are issues arising from our book to stimulate further discussion. They draw on what is called 'critical pedagogy', organising learning to encourage critical awareness of social and ethical issues. The first five draw together into a climax at issue 6.

1. Pupils' ownership of their schooling, pupils feeling that they are respected members of a learning community, learning with others (teachers and pupils) encouraging them to experiment and learn by doing, being proactive, setting their own agendas. This needs to happen throughout primary and secondary schooling or resistance will develop.

2. Self discipline, individual learning versus regimented learning. A reasonable aim in bringing up children is to encourage them to be self disciplined and respectful of others. It is reasonable therefore to judge an education system on the extent to which this is encouraged. Forcing children to  keep quiet and busy, and be fearful of consequences will have the opposite effect. Much poor discipline is caused by stubborn resistance against authoritarianism.

3. Social justice and personal responsibility. Social learning in schools encourages collaborating with others, seeing things from various points of view, and reaching joint agendas through compromise. Recognizing the need to contribute to the community.

4. Development of values. Upbringing and schooling both contribute to the values that children and young people develop. Their values can be positive or negative, helpful or unhelpful, pro-social or anti-social. Values good and bad are modelled by family, friends and teachers. Sometimes a teacher can overcome attitudes that have already become entrenched.

5. Ambiguity. Assessment has an obsession with right and wrong answers when in fact many answers are ambiguous. Science has the built-in goal of reappraisal and testing models and theories, accepting nothing as final fact. The school curriculum and assessment needs to have the same criticality built in and rewarded.

6. Motivation comes from everything above and embraces  intellectual curiosity and the courage to challenge. Motivation should be a central goal of all schooling because if learners are motivated, achievement and discipline will happen naturally. Any school practice which demotivates, such as over-authoritarian repression, has to be rooted out, much as physical punishment (caning) was in the 1980s. At the extreme, some army discipline has ended with death. In these internet days, the whole concept of a canon of knowledge to be learn has disappeared (except in the exam system) and how to interpret has become much more central.

We are not pretending that we are giving easy advice for the short term. Sean spent three years working out what else can work apart from shouting. Yet to resort to shouting or sarcasm has its own consequences,establishing resistance in aggressive pupils. Sean was concerned to change his and his pupils' habits, knowing that other teachers were not following suit, and neither had teachers in their earlier years of schooling. It was all therefore very new. In this book we have tried therefore to set a long-term agenda for change.

Printed copies have arrived

We have been notified that printed copies are back from the printer. Exciting!  The publisher Crown House says:

I am pleased to advise that we have just taken delivery of your book and it looks great!

Your presentation copies will be sent out to you today, for delivery tomorrow, and the pre-publication reviewers will also be sent their complimentary copies.

We have received advance copies here with the bulk of the stock being delivered in to our distributors. In view of this we will make the book available on our web sites today and Tweet etc.  to make people aware that they can purchase advance from us and will amend the publication date on Amazon (currently 28^th of September) to the 15^th of September, to allow for delivery and distribution of the book. Up to the 15^th we will be Tweeting daily regarding the book and Tweet on the 15^th availability on Amazon. The e-book files are currently being worked on, so hopefully they will be live by the 15^th of September too.

Over the next few weeks we will be issuing a Press Release and sending out review copies.

Do let us know what you think of the printed version.

With very best wishes

The Authors

Our book explores the dynamics of schools and classrooms and in particular the effects of over-authoritarian attitudes. The authors are
Dr. Sean Warren, secondary school senior teacher in a mixed comprehensive, who successfully achieved his PhD for the research
Dr. Stephen Bigger his supervisor who led him through critical questions about pupil motivation, developing self-reliance, self discipline and citizenship development by adopting non-authoritarian practice. You can find more on Stephen's ideas here and his publications here.


Sean learned to base his work in school on mutual respect and collaborative learning. He explores his successes and his challenges.

Sean tells the story of his own education in East London which provided him with few options upon leaving school. A product of a broken home, he experienced himself as both vulnerable and resilient. He overturned his lack of qualifications by adult study at night-school leading eventually to teacher training. His subject, Physical Education provided a platform to convey his assertiveness as an adult in charge. In his third school he changed to Religious Education, a subject which has the potential to be challenging in that the RE teacher tends to meet the whole school for one lesson a week without the carrot of a qualification to come out of it. After his own life experiences, he found class discipline unproblematic and gradually rose to be in charge of whole school discipline. Conclusions from his Masters informed his proposal to start a part-time Doctorate. He considered himself a good disciplinarian and wanted to research how he might disseminate his habitual approach. But then cracks began to appear – he became increasingly aware of a gnawing sense of dissatisfaction but was unable to articulate it. Was he too controlling? Were his tried and tested disciplinary methods too authoritarian? Did they compromise his relationships? Was his professional practice incongruent with the values he claimed to hold? He began to wonder if there was a better way, where authority could be maintained but in a context of respect and cooperation? Involving 16 classes and 6 colleagues, this began a four year research project which is crystallized in this book.


Stephen entered secondary school teaching in 1973. He had finished his BA and studied for PhD in 1970-73. Married, and planning for a family, a job with a salary was imperative. The school was an overnight amalgamation of a boys' grammar and a secondary modern. The modern school became years 1-3 (7-9 in today's terminology). If you now fear the worst, multiply by ten. The year is referred to (not affectionately) as ROSLA, standing for 'raising of the school leaving age' to 16. In other words most of year 5 (year 11 today) had hoped and expected to have escaped but had been dragged back. By November my head of department had a breakdown - I found him crying in the toilets - and in all my inexperience I took his place. Out of teaching a 34 lesson week,  I taught 24 different classes and had to write reports for them all. Where I had more than one lesson a week, it was with ROSLA classes. No examinations were on offer. I remember looking up to one teacher, a disciplinarian, who cnfessed to me later he couldn't sleep on Sunday night for fear of Monday. A PE teacher liberally used his plimsol in the store cupboard. Despite this being my first year in teaching, I had no mentor or anyone to relate to at all. When a 5th year threatened me with a broken bottle he was made to apologise, but the one who ran in when drunk, smashed tables, chairs and a wall, was I gather dead within two further years of drunkenness.  I returned a few years later and the whole school had been blotted out. I have just read Charlie Carroll's On the Edge: One Teacher, a Camper Van, Britain's Toughest Schools and much seems familiar. I remember saying to a pupil leaving without qualifications having  signed to play for Everton, what happens if you break a leg when you are 25? He did break a leg when he was 25 and it ended his football career.

I moved on to a school which taught GCE and A level and all together taught in secondary schools for eight years. I recall some pupils getting a GCE pass for me and for no one else, to accusations that my subject must be easy. The truth was I made the subject interesting and relevant, trying to enthuse and not humiliating pupils who were struggling. I was taking with a long standing teacher friend who told a similar story, having been placed in a socially deprived area with extreme belligerence from pupils at first, but persisted by being nice to them. They surprised her in the end by putting together a leaving party and telling her she was the only teacher who had shown them respect. Some pupils of course were bad then and are still bad now. I remember a Facebook message from a naughty pupil then who managed to insult me and my wife  five times in ten lines. She was of course shown the door. We are not naive - some pupils were nasty and remain nasty. But not all.

Our simple message is to respect pupils as much as possible. Some may be difficult, and this is no magic bullet, and some may need to learn in a non-school setting. But it remains true that where good order is disrupted, it may be the teacher doing the disruption. John Holt saw this in the 1960s, as did Ivan Illich later. John Dewey argued earlier that democracy and pupil voice was better than dictatorship. In my school visits on teaching practice, a saw a great deal of good practice and happy relationships; but I also saw some abusive practice. Shouting, sarcasm and shaming for me should never be a normal disciplinary strategy. I took part in a programme with disengaged pupils (see Viv Bartlett, Nurturing A Healthy Human Spirit which I was happy to provide a Preface to). This essentially befriended pupils who had written themselves off, and offered them strategies to succeed, some even moving from complete failure to university degrees. Turning pupils around from failure to success is not part of today's agenda of quantifiable appraisal (league table) though it is the most educational of all school processes. 

More reviews

Living Contradiction: A Teacher’s Examination of Tension and Disruption in Schools, in Classrooms and in Self  Sean Warren and Stephen Bigger

Six more reviews have been received.

3. What I like most about this book is its collaborative nature and its honesty.  Sean Warren and Stephen Bigger exemplify a collaborative educational relationship. Bigger, as a doctoral supervisor, has enabled Warren to make explicit and evolve his embodied knowledge as a professional educator whilst sharing, without imposition, his own insights. The honesty is in Warren’s educational journey, from his steadfast adherence to institutional standards and expectations, to his recognition that he was losing some¬thing of himself in the process and then to his creative and critical responses to these contradictions, in living his values as fully as he can. I believe that Warren’s journey will resonate with your own experiences of the imposition of institutional power relations and  captivate your imaginations in Warren’s inspirational honesty and responses.

The book also shows how Bigger shared his understandings of critical theory. He encouraged Warren to see that autobiographical writings could produce a valid and academically legitimate contribution to educational knowledge in the generation of a living-educational-theory.  This contribution, whilst grounded in the embodied knowledge of the educator, engages with, and integrates insights from the most advanced social theories of the day.   I believe that this book will be of great value on initial and continuing professional development programmes in education and to all professionals in a wide range of workplace contexts who are facing their own contradictions in living their values as fully as they can.

Prof. Jack Whitehead

4. This is the book that I wish I had had when I embarked on a career as a teacher. The ‘living contradiction’ that is its starting point is painfully familiar to everyone who has stood in a classroom and wondered how they had ended up this way, with the energy-sapping task of keeping order becoming an end in itself. We had thought it was a precondition for learning, and we craved the respect of pupils and colleagues, but we had sacrificed the excitement that brought us into the profession. Sometimes we blamed our pupils for forcing us into an authoritarian role, for not sharing the love of learning that we were so miserably failing to instil in them. Sean Warren’s book breaks out of this sterile dilemma: discipline versus self-expression, strength versus weakness. He is no naïve idealist, and is well aware that teachers continue to be accountable to a regime that insists on measurable, quantitative and sometimes trivial outcomes. But he has been willing to reappraise every aspect of the professional skills that had brought a form of success and recognition, along with deep frustration, and to hold onto the conviction that a classroom can be a place where education happens. The breaking of familiar patterns is challenging for himself, for colleagues and for pupils. It is a rocky ride for everyone, but also an exemplary exercise in practice-based research. Armed with insights from educationalists, a rigorous methodology that enables him to analyse and interpret the results of his new approach, and fortified by a constant, questioning dialogue with Stephen Bigger, Sean Warren succeeds in changing the dynamic in his classroom, a hard-won achievement and a thrilling one. This is not an arid book – all teachers will recognise the day-to-day dilemmas, confrontations and compromises, recounted with honesty and wit. But it is nonetheless inspirational: here is someone who has had the courage to believe in his students, in himself, and in the power of education.

Dr. Ann Miller, University Fellow (Formerly Senior Lecturer), University of Leicester.

5. The first thing to say about this book is that it is deeply human. The second thing to say is that it is a model of how to turn a piece of academic research (a PhD in this case) into a beautifully written, highly readable, and truly inspirational book. This is a book for now and it addresses the urgency for a radical reassessment of what schooling should mean. Schooling it should be remembered is not the same as education but as this book so clearly demonstrates, too much schooling today provides an arid landscape that produces stressed out teachers and unhappy pupils.

With admirable self -awareness Sean Warren began to see himself as a living contradiction in that, increasingly, what was required of him professionally was in contradiction to his personal aspirations and values. He saw himself as a teacher moulded by an education system much of which he began to find incongruous with his own humanity. Being a well- respected and effective teacher with responsibility for pupil behaviour and discipline was the impetus to undertake the autobiographical research described and presented so well with his supervisor Stephen Bigger. So often in schools, discipline is seen as something ‘done to’ a child rather than a case of enabling pupils to develop self-discipline. Anyone who has spent large amounts of time in schools, particularly secondary schools, will be all too aware of the increase in what is termed ‘low level disruption’. As the authors state, ‘The very idea of questioning whether the relational and educational experiences offered might have contributed to the pupil’s objectionable behaviour is rare’.

Some of the source material, particularly extracts from pupils’ diaries are, frankly, shocking, and illustrate an alarming lack of respect for their human rights and dignity. Of course, not all schools are the same but all who are involved with the education of our young people will find here a fascinating and inspiring journey that grapples with the real issues of schooling and does not provide easy ‘off the shelf’ answers to complex problems. I’m certain that many teachers will, like me, find this a truly inspirational book; one that is deeply relevant to everyone involved in the education of our children.

Dr Geoff Teece, Honorary Research Fellow, University of Exeter Graduate School of Education

6. A fascinating insight into teaching and education. I can personally identify with so many of the aspects discussed. What is clear throughout, is that relationships in teaching are crucial. They underpin and determine the behaviour of students in our schools, whether we agree that this should be the case or not. I would recommended this as a read for anyone entering or already in the education profession.

Clare Gammons - Headteacher BSc, PGCE, NPQSL

7.  Fascinating, honest examination of that genuine contradiction faced by teachers – the effort to encourage young people towards independent critical thinking whilst simultaneously feeling a responsibility to instruct and insist on a particular behaviour.

As adults we entrust teachers with a significant influence over the futures our children will enjoy. It is good to know that there are thoughtful professionals prepared the think beyond the constraints of the curriculum and work hard to find a way forward that best benefits you ng people. It is heartening to read work that promotes empowerment and motivation over discipline and dictation whilst still insisting on a mutual respect. There is an acknowledgement that school itself is a community that can reflect the best, and worst, of the society we expect young people to fit into as adults and that teachers have a significant part to play in how that society can be influenced by the experience of young people in schools.

The methodology is robust, with a full discussion and acknowledgement of the benefits and constraints of autobiography in an academic research project.

 Interesting evaluation of the role of educational theorists set against the realities of teachers’ experience on the front line in schools, where years of academic research are set against the need to respond to a behaviour in a matter of minutes.

Thought-provoking use of the immediacy of blogging as a tool to record or diarise, and share, immediate experience. I would like to congratulate both Sean and Stephen on what is a ground breaking piece of work and of significant interest to educators and researchers beyond the field of education. It is a terrific piece of work. I certainly wish my son has had a teacher as thoughtful and committed as Sean.

Suzie Grogan  LLB (Hons) PGDip. Author of Shell Shocked Britain: The First World War’s legacy for Britain’s mental health  Pen and Sword Books 2014.

8. Drawing from a great wealth of research and the even greater wealth of their combined personal experience, Sean Warren and Stephen Bigger have written something rare - a book which not only deconstructs the thorny issues endemic in the British education system, but which also presents us with intuitive and achievable remedies.

'Charlie Carroll' (pseudonym), author of On the Edge about schools, and other books.

Proofs are out

To Crown House Publishers. 31st July.

1.
Warren and Bigger present a compelling and highly engaging account of a personal journey, from an authoritarian approach to discipline to one founded in respect and care: moving from discipline imposed by teachers, to developing pupils’ self-discipline that is the result of self-learning.  This is a powerful challenge to the ways in which schools work, underpinned by research and personal reflection.  Sean Warren’s sense of being a product of the education system, becoming a servant of the system and it’s agent and ultimately a reflective practitioner is made all the more powerful by the real life stories from young people and teachers, and from Sean himself.  The move from compliance and confrontation to cooperation and care is compelling in its challenge to readers to review their professional practice and relationships.

Dr Richard Woolley

Head of Centre for Education and Inclusion

Deputy Head (Research) in the Institute of Education

University of Worcester

2.

This book is an intelligent, sensitive and socially situated antidote to the macho, authoritarian ‘what works’ publications in education that cocksurely proselytize about what needs to be done to improve teaching and learning and how this needs to be done. In conceptualising teaching as a moral and ethical practice, Warren and Bigger’s book seeks to illuminate and confront some of the complexities involved in dealing with the thorny issues of behaviour and discipline in schools. But rather than providing spurious, short term solutions, this book takes the reader on a journey of critical reflection and self-learning as the authentic experiences of the authors’ professional lives are openly interrogated. The richness, sensitivity and depth of thought with which this book examines matters relating to behaviour and discipline in schools makes it very unique from many other publications.

Dr Matt O’Leary

Reader in Education

Birmingham City University

Philosophy as a school ethos

"Philosophy can give young people the skills and confidence, not only to question and challenge purported facts but also to see through the current attempts in some quarters to discredit the very notions of fact, truth and expertise."

Philosophy for children (and young people) encourages and enables clear lucid thinking and challenges misinformation, dubious information and indoctrination. It is not an occasional school lesson but a way of thinking across the whole curriculum. It requires a respectful school ethos in which teachers and pupils are able to engage in meaningful dialogues.

Harold Rosen, respectful teaching and researching.

I wish to share the insights of Harold Rosen given by the Institute of Education London here. This refers to a new collection of his life work published here

Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award

Wise words from Philip Pullman, who received the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award in 2005:

Children need art and stories and poems and music as much as they need love and food and fresh air and play. If you don’t give a child food, the damage quickly becomes visible. If you don’t let a child have fresh air and play, the damage is also visible, but not so quickly. If you don’t give a child love, the damage might not be seen for some years, but it’s permanent.

But if you don’t give a child art and stories and poems and music, the damage is not so easy to see. It’s there, though. Their bodies are healthy enough; they can run and jump and swim and eat hungrily and make lots of noise, as children have always done, but something is missing.

Susan David, Emotional Agility, 2016

Emotional Agility: Get Unstuck, Embrace Change, and Thrive in Work and Life

“Emotions are absolutely fundamental to our long-term success – our grit, our ability to self-regulate, to negotiate conflict and to solve problems. They influence our relationships and our ability to be effective in our jobs,” said David, author of the book ... Children who grow up into adults who are not able to navigate emotions effectively will be at a major disadvantage.”

Our book discusses how teachers can work alongside pupils to develop positive emotions together, talking calmly through crises, helping pupils get back on track rather than inflicting punishments that put them further off track.

Susan David describes emotional agility as “being aware and accepting of all your emotions, even learning from the most difficult ones” and being able to “live in the moment with a clear reading of present circumstances, respond appropriately, and then act in alignment with your deepest values.” Understanding emotions helps young people to make healthy decisions within positive social values.

Emotions are not good or bad. Everyone experiences difficult emotions — including sadness, anger and frustration. All emotions are normal and healthy.

“No emotion is here to stay,” said David. “You may feel really sad or really angry — but emotions are transient. Emotions pass.” Acknowledge them. Reflect on them nonjudgmentally. View your emotional responses with curiosity, gently asking, “Why am I feeling this way?”

Emotions are teachers. People can learn from difficult emotions. Ask yourself: What is this emotion telling me? How can I use this information to be stronger, better and more connected with the world?”

Courage is ‘fear walking’. “We are surrounded by people telling us to conquer our fears but fear is normal.” We should note it with interest but not let it stop us doing important positive things.

Values Affirmation is a recognition that core values are “the compass that keep us moving in the right direction”. Giving young people opportunities to affirm and articulate their values helps them in the face of inevitable challenges. They can talk about why school is important to them, who they want to be, what they care about, what they want to accomplish and what difference they want to make in the world.

A Stanford University project  found that asking minority (Black and Latino) middle school students to reflect on their schooling during stressful points in the school year resulted in significant academic gains.

It helps to develop what Susan David calls a ‘strong internal compass’. Teaching young people how to think, not what to think helps them work through emotionally charged situations. To support them, David uses the phrase: “I see you” — your emotions, your ideas, your strengths, your struggles, and your dreams. When pupils are very upset, the presence of an interested attentive person invites calm in.