Leading view papers – Days 1 to 7

The 21st century educator: what’s so different?

 

 

The literature, academic pontification and those in the wider community who make prognostications about key issues would have us believe that the way to the future is to forsake the practices and precepts of the past. Talk about preparing educators for a new role in the 21st century is understood by most leaders. Modern times and modern needs dictate the need for change. We need to ask whether change is for change’s sake or whether it is to better focus and direct learning inputs for the sake of enhanced student outcomes.

The danger of being an older educator, one who is still a practitioner, is that rose coloured glasses can colour perceptions, memories and experiences of the past. It is possible to look back with fondness, forgetting the challenges and the confrontations posed when yesteryear was contemporary. We faced challenges. They were confronting and real.

Many were about issues of child-centred learning and educators wrestling with issues about how to be better and more effective. The difference is that, back then, we were the bright-eyed neophytes. Now, we are the elder statespersons whose professional responsibility is to bring through, and substantiate, in solid foundational terms, those who are starting out as teachers in 2007.

That, I think, is a key task. Mentoring and developing within organisations our new teaching generation is critical if successful teaching pathways are to be forged and maintained. It largely comes down to the individual, for a modern day expectation is that teachers who enter the profession will turn over and exit regularly, indeed, rapidly.

Over half of the teacher graduates who begin teaching in 2008 will be gone by 2018. They will move on in part because of disenfranchisement, dispossession and disillusionment. That prognostication does not sit comfortably within a context of co-construction for the sake of establishing and maintaining a meaningful educational collaborative.

Part of the flux that happens within the mindset of beginning teachers can develop because of the constancy of change and the exponential increase in accountability requirements. These factors can act to take the joy out of teaching because children and students become quantum objects to measure, rather than being recognised and appreciated as people.

I am glad that I had the opportunity to complete the majority of my teaching years in the context of children being more to the fore, while reporting, testing, assessment and measurement requirements were more reasonably contextualised. It saddens me that these issues are now so predominant, with children being a means to the end (testing), rather than being the prime focus of education in a humanist sense.

Remember the Eedle exhortation

We all have strengths and weaknesses. One of my idiosyncrasies is that of remembering statements of past wisdom and I don’t know if that is foolish or wise.

However, it seems that we too often fail to remember what happened if the awareness is more that several days old, meaning that we tend to be re-inventors of the wheel. In many cases, new and exciting educational innovations are not new: they are simply a revisitation to what was, before it was disregarded or replaced by something new.

There have been some key exhortations put to me by prominent persons, which are essential positions of belief that 21st century educators and leaders should not forsake. The most outstanding and memorable was offered by the Northern Territory Department of Education, Dr Jim Eedle. In speaking with principals at Katherine (a regional centre south of Darwin) Eedle, in March 1978, told us that we were privileged and unique to be part of a (then) new system. The Northern Territory had just assumed autonomy for educational responsibility from the Australian Government based in Canberra and we could be part of a new frontier in educational development.

Dr Eedle told us on that day that we must never, ever forget, nor forsake, two key educational precepts. ‘Schools are for children’, he told us. He also said that the function of schools (educating children and engaging in teaching and learning processes) should always be paramount. Function should be supported by structure, but structure should never replace function in terms of its being the prime focus of education.

Over the years, it seems (to me, anyway) that the idea of schools being for children is an operational precept that has somewhat taken a back seat.  Rather, schools and systems have become self-perpetuating, focusing on the way things look and going ‘all out’ for peripheral trendsetting. Children, and the essences of teaching, learning and development, seem to have become lost in the flurry of activity that surrounds the apparent need to innovate with the planning, development and implementation that configures around these initiatives. We have become increasingly focused on institutional trappings and, sadly, more and more frequently disengaged from the realities of what children and students need.

The key element for me, in pointing educators of the 21st century toward meeting educational needs, is to ask that they be aware of, and contribute to, child development in a very real and meaningful way.

Their own development and continuing professional enrichment is important and they need to keep growing their awareness. However, they need (as we all do) to differentiate between the real issues and the substantive educational needs of children, separating them from the peripherals that look good, usually cost heaps, but add only marginally to meeting the needs of children. Part of this needs to be about the sharing of personality and experience and all needs to direct toward children grasping the nettle and seizing the challenge attached to being self-motivated learners. The best way teachers can do that is to give of themselves in meaningful and empathetic conversation, rather than feeding material resources to children, assuming that aids can teach.

Put another way, my exhortation to beginning teachers, is to teach rather than hiding from teaching behind a presentation of materialistic array.

Good teachers can’t be replaced by material objects. The materials themselves don’t teach and cannot substitute for teaching that comes from the heart. What I ask of our 21st century teachers is that they teach with personality and from the heart. As a leader, I hope I am able to develop with teachers an ethos and a principled approach to the challenges they individually, and we collectively, confront, so that in 10 years, they won’t be among those who feel so disillusioned and disempowered that they want to leave the profession.

Change and redesign ad nauseum

I confess to being a leader who does not constantly relish the notion of change leadership, change management and institutional redesign for the sake of the exercise. Organisations that are constantly shaken develop weak foundational principles upon which they are based. It gets to be that no one understands any longer ‘what is’ in terms of school focus.

No organisation should stand still and only a narrowly focused person would suggest that organisations should operate within vacuums. That would be to ‘silo construct’ and ‘balkanise’ in the worst possible manner.

I am not espousing the belief that leaders should connect with teams of ostrich's who hide their heads in the sand and allow change to go on unknowingly. However, it is of paramount importance that schools build on what has gone before, taking account of the fact that their contemporary position is based upon what should be valuable and appreciated history. Too often, organisations set their past at naught, dispossessing and disenfranchising those who have been contributors.

That diminishment may be locally deliberate, in order to clear the way for incoming personnel who want to make their mark. Or it may be systemically engineered for the sake of clearing the way for a new philosophical or methodological approach.

Whatever the case, realisation of change operating in this way can impact very negatively on those incumbent within organisations or those contemplating entry to a particular professional field. They may leave because they feel negated. Or they may reconsider entry because they believe their efforts may be trivialised.

Potential beginning teachers and those already within the profession need to know they will be appreciated and valued. To motivate staff and work in a way that builds them, and helps retain their enthusiasm, is a strategy that wins for children and students. While development is important, so, too, is an essence of predictability and focus.

I hope that leadership and the way in which we work with, and toward, our staff can be meaningful. If leadership becomes vacuous and teachers directionless, then education will be a sad loser. Its key clients, our children and students, could become hollow people and empty sets. That is not a futuristic vision of which I want any part.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mr Henry Gray commenced his teaching career in 1970, having entered training college as a mature age student. He has taught in remote, town and urban schools, in both Western Australia and the Northern Territory. His principalship in WA and NT schools encompasses the past 35 years and he holds several degrees. Mr Gray is a member of various relevant professional associations and was president of the Northern Territory Principal’s Association from 1992 until 1996. His concern is that the human side of education always remains at the forefront of teaching and learning. Schools should always be for children and students. They should be the focus of humanist endeavour.

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