Teachers Are Not Petrol Pumps

I was chatting to David Leat from Newcastle University a while back. (Those of you with long enough memories may recall his groundbreaking Thinking Through Geography work from the 90s.)

I started the conversation with a simple question – if we know what to do to make schools work for everyone, why don’t we do it?

He pointed out the research of Priestley et al that identified the five ‘sites’ of curriculum making, as follows:

With so many fingers in the school pie, changing schools for the better is hard work, especially when everyone is trying to change schools for the better.

What the research does make clear, however, is the power the classroom teacher has over the curriculum.

While governments like to think they have influence, either through determining what is taught (and watch out for this should the UK end up with Reform government any time soon) or by fervidly assessing, measuring and inspecting outcomes, it is the teacher who holds the real power.

Teachers are more than passive conduits

As Priestley et al point out:

“…teachers and school leaders are more than simply passive conduits implementing – or to use today’s fashionable policy parlance, delivering – somebody else’s curriculum product; instead, they are making the curriculum within their own contexts alongside a number of other social actors, including their students.”

One of the first headteachers I worked with over thirty years ago was no fan of the term ‘delivering’ either. ‘I am neither a midwife nor a petrol pump,’ was her memorably pithy response.

And neither are you.

Teachers are not passive deliverers of a top-down curriculum but active curriculum makers with real agency, professionals who ‘enact’, ‘translate’, ‘mediate’, ‘refract’ and ‘filter’ policy ‘via existing professional knowledge, dispositions and beliefs’.

Teachers as inventors

As I have written elsewhere, teachers are inventors – theorising, problem solving building, testing, iterating and in the right atmosphere, where teacher autonomy is encouraged not stifled, enjoying the process as they go.

Teachers have the power to make a difference, even at the nano level.

Don’t let anyone lead you to believe you otherwise.