[MUSIC] So one of the things that I particularly like about the idea, is that it emphasizes the intellectual work of teachers, that the thinking dimension of teaching and distinguishes that aspect of teaching from what is often quite a technical view of teaching. >> Yes, yes, yeah. >> The, the, the competency discourse kind of emphasizes. >> Yes, yes, yes, yep, that's right. It, it's to do with, yes it is, it's, it, it, it's understanding teaching, and, teachers as thinking, feeling people. Rather than, I should say, sort of this technicist approach. And the technicist approach really is, is almost saying well, you know, anyone can become a good teacher. Which I don't think is the case. [LAUGH]. >> Well that was going to be my next question. Can anybody be a good teacher? >> I don't think anybody can become, I mean, I'm often, often asked this question because one of the things about the competencies discourse is that one of the good things about it, I think, is that it can kind of demystify this idea. You know, some people do think oh I'm, you hear people say, oh I could never be a teacher. I don't have what it takes. I'm not cut out for it. I'm not that kind of person. So I think the idea, you know, the competencies discourse has a, has this positive aspect that it, that it actually can demystify it and say no look, actually. You know, you could be. You know, if you. if you, you know, if you work hard at it and if you develop these, these, these skills and so on. So I think that it, my, my position is that no, not everyone can be a good teacher. I think some people really, [LAUGH] genuinely won't ever be good at doing it. And they won't enjoy it. They don't want to do it. But I do think that there are a lot of people out there, you know, who would make excellent teachers and, and be very happy in the profession too. Who perhaps think that they, think erroneously, that they couldn't be. And that's, that's, to go back to the competence discourse,that, that, that's the positive of that discourse, I think. That it says not everyone can be a good teacher, but, you know, maybe a lot of people could be, who didn't think they could be. >> So, bearing that in mind, what do you think that we should do with poor teachers? >> Well, [LAUGH]. I suppose to start with, it depends on who we are, and what we mean by poor. My idea of a poor teacher, for example, might be very different from an Ofstead inspector's. You know, I might think a teacher is, you know, could be improved significantly if they were to try and empathize more with their students. This might not be a major criterion for a, for an Ofstead inspector. But, I think we all know that there are teachers who are, you know, who are struggling, you know, clearly that, you know, that their students are not learning as they should. What should we do with them? I think the first thing we should do is to try and help them [LAUGH], to get better, and of course this is what schools do. You know, I mean schools these days in particular, they, they, they have senior leadership teams one of whose briefs is to try and, you know, identify weaknesses, problems and to try and offer support and help. So that's always got to be, for me, the first, first step. If someone is, is not doing something, and the first thing is you need to create a, to encourage a culture in a school in which people are not afraid to come and talk about their problems, you know. I mentioned this earlier, but when I was teaching I remember very clearly once going to my head of department in tears, you know, saying I can't, I've just had this horrendous lesson. And, I felt quite happy about doing that. And he was very supportive, and we discussed things, and so on. I'm not sure, you know, I think often now there's a, you know, there's a culture in which people are kind of afraid to do this. You know, because they, they're worried about possible negative, impacts in terms of their future career or, you know, references they might have or so on and so forth. So, I think it's important t create this kind of, there's a word for this that John Smythe and his colleagues in, at Flinder's institute came up with some years ago which is schools, you know, he said, schools, there are two kinds of, there are three kinds of school culture actually. The third one I won't talk about because it's. You know, it's, it's perhaps more than we can expect of schools, but, but, but, but the other two, one is the fixed culture, in which, you know, we, we, where there's a very heavy management structure and nothing really gets changed and there's the collaborative school culture. On the first one is the stuck one, not the fixed, the stuck culture and the collaborative culture, and the collaborative school culture's precisely one in which people do feel comfortable about. You know, talking about problems they might have, sharing problems with other people. And, and at the same time offering support and help for people who are struggling. In the end, of course, you know, what happens with teachers who, who, who continue to struggle and, and can't be helped is the same I guess, as what happens in many other walks of life. You know they, they are encouraged to move on [LAUGH] but I think we need to get away from this very, this kind of knee jerk punitive kind of reaction that you know, it's going around hunting out the you know, the poor teacher. And also think very carefully about what we mean by, by a poor teacher. Of course it takes us back to the question. What is a good teacher? Another problem with that is that we all have different ideas. Some years ago, there was a report, the Hay/McBer report which was commissioned by the government. And I remember what the headline in the paper said now, now we know what a good teacher is. Because, you know, these consultants have been commissioned to do a, to do a study. And one of the interesting things in the study was that they very briefly, they gave a summary of what some children had said good teaching was. And it was nothing like, you know, the sort of, then you look at the summary at the end of the report. And, they, they were very, they were very dissimilar to each other you know. So, so the kids clearly had a view and most of it was to do with how, you know, teacher likes this, the teacher understands this, the teacher is fair you know, the teacher always helps us when we're stuck, and so on. So, it was very much to do with the, you know, the kind of personal relationships and the understandings, you know, the fact of those kind of personal qualities. Whereas the report itself focused very much on things like lesson planning, you know, circle managing behavior,. And then setting regular homework was another one, so it's, they were very different ideas of, of what a good teacher is, and conversely of they thought what a poor teacher would be. So I think we do need to be very careful before we answer these questions in deciding what we mean by good and not good. And who, who, who should be making these judgments as well? Obviously we're not. I'm not saying we should leave them to children, [LAUGH] to make, but, you know, there are, there are different, you know, different views according to, to who we are and, and, you know, we may not agree with each other. >> Thank you very much Alex, that's been really, really helpful. >> Thank you. [LAUGH] >> So I really hope that, that's given you some tools to help you think some more. About what makes a good teacher and has hopefully challenged some of your assumptions about the teachers that you've experienced and what you've always thought was good teaching.
