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.