This interesting new RSA Animate looks at a revolution that is needed in teacher development. Work consigns teachers, it argues, to becoming victims who are trapped by the systems they operate within.
The goal should be to make change-makers, who are authors of their own pedagogy.
The essay collection which supports the argument posits that schools are conditioned by a command and control culture, which ignores creativity in delivery. The teacher, it argues, strives to educate whilst coping with a top down culture of compliance.
To best serve learners, and the professional development needs of teachers, there should be a methodology available that echoes and supports the research which shows students, who have the best teachers, can learn at twice the rate of other students.
This accompanying essays, Licensed to Create: Ten essays on improving teacher quality is edited by Joe Hallgarten, Louise Bamfield and Kenny McCarthy.
The final essay from the collection is by Tristram Hunt, Shadow Secretary of State for Education. In the introduction to The Rationale for Revalidation: a movement to transform teaching, Hunt states…
The teaching profession is changing. One year into this job there are few things of which I am more certain. If this collection of essays achieves nothing else then it will be to highlight how the energy unleashed by this cultural shift has the potential to become a force for far-reaching education reform.
Whether you are just beginning your professional teaching career, ending it or are just passionate about education…there is much to think about in this RSA report.
To echo the perceptive analysis in this collection of essays, and to underscore how the change in pedagogy, the re-processing of education in general for the benefit of future generations is an ongoing project. We re-looked at Ken Robinson’s TED Talk How to Escape Education’s Death Valley.
Robinson, speaking and living in the USA, argues for change to support young people who drop out of school, and those who remain it, but who stay disengaged from the education process.
This is not a new message from Ken Robinson, but it is witty and discursive as well as telling, placing the young person at the centre of change in education.
A nice counterpoint to, and contextualision of, the thought processes and ideas revealed in our RSA essay collection above.
(Narrative updated 15:05 / 26.11.2014)
