I am putting out this piece on World Teachers Day which is celebrated on 5th October every year. This year, the theme is: "Valuing teacher voices: towards a new social contract for education". World Teachers’ Day marks the anniversary of a landmark document from UNESCO and the International Labour Organisation published in 1966 which established clear standards for ways in which teachers should be valued and treated as professionals.
Professional freedom and voice
The UNESCO / ILO document, Recommendation Concerning the Status of Teachers, underscores the idea of education as a human right which depends on “the qualifications and ability of the teaching staff in general and on the human, pedagogical and technical qualities of the individual teachers”. The document is substantial, covering everything from ‘preparation for the profession’ to ‘teachers’ salaries’. Looking again at this 58 year old document, I was particularly interested in what it said under the heading of ‘professional freedom’:
61. The teaching profession should enjoy academic freedom in the discharge of professional duties. Since teachers are particularly qualified to judge the teaching aids and methods most suitable for their pupils, they should be given the essential role in the choice and the adaptation of teaching material, the selection of textbooks and the application of teaching methods, within the framework of approved programmes, and with the assistance of the educational authorities.
I am delighted to have been asked by colleagues at UNESCO to participate in a webinar as part of the World Teachers Day celebrations. The theme for the webinar is ‘teacher voice and lifelong learning’, a topic which is right up my street.
The idea of teacher voice could perhaps be inferred from the content of article 61 quoted above, but the 1966 recommendation said nothing specific about it. In the webinar, I will be putting forward the argument that prospects for improving educational provision anywhere in the world require teachers to be empowered as agents of change. This of course entails teachers being free to voice their concerns and propose actions based on their professional judgement. However, freedom to do this is not enough. It might be supposed that teachers simply need to be encouraged or given permission to speak up. Many school principals may say that they have ‘an open-door policy’ or that they have such a sunny disposition and a friendly leadership style that teachers feel free to contribute their ideas. They are of course kidding themselves. As my colleagues and I argue in our forthcoming book, what is actually required is enablement.
Flipping the system
Along with a colleague at Education International, I produced a report in 2015 under the title: ‘Teacher self-efficacy, voice and leadership: towards a policy framework for Education International’ (Bangs & Frost, 2015). Central to the argument we put forward in that report is the idea that teacher voice goes hand in hand with the exercise of leadership. In a subsequent chapter for the ‘Flip the System’ book (Evers & Knebers, 2015), we drew on the report for EI, but went into more detail about how teachers can be empowered and enabled.
As the Global Teacher prize exemplifies, there will always be remarkable individuals who have the insight, confidence, ability and determination to transcend whatever circumstances they find themselves in and act to transform themselves and the systems in which they operate (GTP). This is to be celebrated of course, but I am rather more interested in the rest of the profession. The vast majority of teachers have so much to offer if only they could get the right kind of support. This is what was behind the title of a seminal book ‘Awakening the Sleeping Giant of Teacher Leadership’ (Katzenmeyer & Moller, 2001). In the UNESCO webinar I shall argue, as I have done many times before, that there is enormous scope for promoting a mode of teacher professionality in which teachers, regardless of their status, position or special abilities can be enabled to lead change.
Through our work with the International Teacher Leadership initiative, we developed the idea of ‘non-positional teacher leadership’.
(Teacher leadership) ….whereby teachers can clarify their values, develop personal
visions of improved practice and then act strategically to set in motion processes
where colleagues are drawn into activities such as self-evaluation and innovation.
This approach rests on the assumption that the enhancement of human agency within a culture of shared responsibility for reform and the outcomes for all students is essential for learning for all members of learning communities.
In the UNESCO webinar I shall make the argument that ‘voice’ has to go beyond mere consultation or participation in decision making processes. It has to be more proactive than that. I shall stress the need to create structures of support designed to explicitly enable all teachers to exercise leadership, working with their colleagues to bring them along on the journey of change. If we want both to extend educational provision and improve its quality, teachers’ voices have to be heard and this can be achieved by empowering and enabling teachers, all teachers, to become effective agents of change. This way, it isn’t about teachers being heard and then hoping to see action taken by those in authority or positions of influence. No, it’s about teachers’ voice being integral to their own change making.
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