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.
