Education Policy Consultant

Tag: professionalism

Could becoming an ‘Activist Teaching Profession’ save education?

The front cover of Judyth Sachs (2003) The Activist Teaching Profession. Maidenhead: OUP

Teachers are agents of change, and this agency is key to recruitment and retention. At its heart, teaching is about supporting learners to change through thoughtful, contextualised, interactive teaching. Many teachers come into the profession because they want to inspire intellectual, social, and personal change. 

Teachers build agency by reflecting on evidence, researching practice, and discussing with colleagues and others. These opportunities for professional learning and formal and informal support for colleagues are important for retention. Teachers also work to build or challenge school culture to better support colleagues, pupils or families: the evidence clearly points to culture as an important component of improving teachers’ working lives. 

Teachers need to see themselves as active agents in their own professional worlds, and to be respected for the change they make.

To be active agents of change, teachers need time to engage with issues that relate, directly or indirectly, to education and schooling. In working to support children’s learning, teacher development or cultural change, teachers see at first hand what gets in the way, whether that’s about the individual, the school context, or the wider system. Sadly, the time and space to think about these issues constructively is constrained by high workload, increasing work intensity, and cultures of compliance locally and nationally.

Many teachers have strong ideas about what needs to change, and how. Their ideas and their energy could have a big impact on education, at school level and nationally, so when there are few opportunities for engagement, it’s not only frustrating for the individual, but we also lose out as a system. Teachers say that not being listened to by policy-makers is a key reason why they think about leaving the profession.

Telling stories about the purposes of school, pedagogy and education is at the heart of being an activist professional. Education has the power to change individual lives, society, and the future. Teaching is purposeful, inspiring young people to love a subject or learning more generally; developing skills for work, citizenship, caring; building knowledge that opens up new worlds; fostering disruptive curiosity and questioning. 

But the big vision that brings many people into teaching is easily shut down by the daily concerns about individuals, targets and getting through the day. And when school culture or national policy doesn’t align with the stories teachers tell, it can be hard to stay in the profession. 

Activist professionals work to understand what stories are being told by others, which includes making visible the stories which underpin policy, and asking whose interests are being served, to understand how to bring about change. 

Activist professionals use their own practices to inform discussions about education. Reflecting on evidence and on how it impacts on classroom practice can improve teaching. Working with others to study practice can help to systematise that improvement – or lead to further questions. Sharing the evidence and the questions can inform conversations about the purposes, the practices and the content of education. 

Conversations about practice, purpose or policy need to be rooted firmly in classroom experience. By bringing experience and expertise into policy conversations, changes are more likely to be realistic and manageable.

Activist professionalism is about community. This isn’t about the ‘hero’ teacher shouting their ideas from the rooftops and disparaging anyone who disagrees, and it’s not about pretending that any single ‘method’ will work in any context. It’s about understanding and learning from different perspectives. Activist professionalism is more than inclusive. It privileges the voices of those who are most affected by the issues. 

Changes are more effective, and safer, when they are made collectively, in communities of practice, and through networks and alliances. Working with others, at school, local, national or international levels, encourages greater learning and builds agency. Working with other professionals, academics, parents or employers brings new perspectives and encourages teachers to bring their knowledge ‘in dialogue with the knowledge of others’. It builds respect. And it builds better education for children, young people and their communities.

A new professional identity for new times

You and your work are essential to the change this government wants to achieve across the country, and I want our renewed relationship to reflect that.’

Bridget Phillipson’s words to the education profession are a far cry from being called ‘enemies of promise’ and ‘the Blob’ in years gone by. They’re also a great ambition. A new relationship between the profession and government is long overdue, but it can’t be dictated from the top. That new relationship needs a profession with a strong identity.

An activist professional identity

I’ve been re-reading Judyth Sachs, The Activist Teaching Profession. First written in 2003, but still remarkably relevant, it explores a professional identity based on expertise, altruism and autonomy, and rooted in principles of equity and social justice. Where ‘teacher knowledge and expertise are recognized and rewarded [and which] fosters new forms of public and professional engagement’. Teachers are ‘agents of change’, responsible for ‘changing people’s beliefs, perspectives and opinions about the importance of teaching, teachers’ social location and their role’.

Who defines teaching?

Many people have views on the role of teaching. It was pretty clear during the pandemic, when I was working for the National Education Union, that opinions were divided. Either school staff were lauded for stepping up, risking their health and building the greatest technological revolution in education ever in order to keep teaching remotely. Or they were dismissed as unwilling to work, technologically incompetent, and wanting to keep schools closed for as long as possible.

Parents and pupils have a different view too. As teaching went online, it became public for a while, and some parents took on an active teaching role themselves. Some felt that gave them a better insight into the work of schools, some began to critique the curriculum or the teaching, while others felt let down by a system that didn’t work for them. Young people, who used to see school as inevitable, started to see it as optional. They started to openly question why, in a crisis, their needs were last to be met.

And, more generally, society continues to believe that schools can solve all ills. The cost of living crisis, on top of a pandemic, on top of austerity, bringing children to school who are homeless, hungry: schools can find support. A climate crisis: teachers can teach children how to live in a deteriorating world and give them the skills to build a better one – while also helping them to manage their climate anxiety . The increasingly divisive rhetoric in politics, the press and online, amplifying a divided society, and fuelling racist and hate-filled violence: teaching will make sure pupils don’t fall prey to misinformation, challenge their stereotypes, engage in difficult conversations about controversial topics and report any extremist views. A rise in children with SEND, with mental health needs, still suffering the aftermath of a global pandemic: teachers can just adapt their teaching to meet all needs.

For many teachers, their identity could be best described as ‘tired’. They have been expected to be responsible for delivering the programme of government, be accountable to the data and to Ofsted, and be efficient in meeting the needs of pupils using dwindling resources, absorbing increased workload and filling the gaps as colleagues leave. And to do all this while being denigrated for speaking out about pupils’ needs, about school funding, and about their own workload and pay. It’s time to tell a new story.

So, in these new times, what should underpin a new professional identity?

It seems to me that these five attributes are key, but there will be more.

Resilience – not the ‘bounce back from everything that’s thrown at you’ sort of resilience that leads to a crisis of retention and recruitment, more an emotional honesty that looks for (and gives) support. A collective resilience, where it’s possible to say ‘no’ and to have each other’s backs.

Courage – the willingness and determination to be disruptive, and to speak out about the injustices of the current system. The bravery to dream of a new education where everyone flourishes, to work together towards those dreams, and to share and fight for those dreams.

Inclusivity – an openness to the perspectives, opinions, knowledge, and lived experiences of everyone involved in education, whether as classroom experts, academics, participants, supporters or users. With a bias towards hearing the voices of those who have been ignored and underserved by the system.

Agency – the space and expertise to try new things and build new knowledge, to make different choices and to learn from them.

Adventure – a sense of excitement at the possibilities ahead, a willingness to embrace the risk and uncertainty, and enjoyment of the journey rather than a constant measuring of the distance still to cover.

Sachs puts partnerships and practitioner research at the heart of the principles that underpin her activist professional identity – partnerships and networks to provide supportive structures, and research to provide the strategy and process for transformation. It’s clear that developing a strong identity can’t be done alone. Nor is it easy or a quick fix. But does it make a profession worth joining, and worth celebrating? What would you add?

Judyth Sachs (2003) The Activist Teaching Profession Open University Press. Quotes taken from chapter 8, The activist teacher professional.

Photo taken by me. A winter sunrise (because who’s up early enough to photograph a sunrise in the summer?)

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