The Art of Teaching

Experiences of Schools

Cedric Cullingford

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781317833208
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

A central dilemma for teachers is finding ways to deal with the multiple perspectives and demands of pupils, parents, school management, and external forces.

The Art of Teaching explores the tension between teaching and learning that all teachers face. Presenting a series of insights into the art of teaching from the perspectives of those individuals most closely involved in the schooling process, the book explores pupil voice in schools, and experiences of teaching and learning from the pupil perspective. Providing an opportunity for self reflection, the book also examines teachers' relationships with parents, external agencies and their attitudes towards pupils.

Subjects covered include:

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• What pupils think of teachers

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• Teacher's views of themselves and self reflection

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• School hierarchies and the ethos of inspection

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• Using pupil insights to inform learning strategies

Essential reading for all teachers and students, this book offers a unique insight into school relationships and structures, giving readers an awareness of what is like to be a teacher.

Professor Cedric Cullingford's many books include "The Causes of Exclusion" (Taylor and Francis) and "How Pupils Cope with School" (Cambridge Scholar's Press).

Chapter 1

The children

There was once a book, fashionable at the time, which listed a whole series of dilemmas. This was to make an academic theory of all the different problems of being a teacher, and there were plenty from which to choose. For us as teachers, however, although there are many tensions and conflicts, it does not feel that there are theoretical dilemmas that need to be addressed one by one. Instead, the experience of teaching is an activity of constant and instant decision-making, the kind of chaotic circumstances that make theoretical positioning seem absurd and which draw attention to the experience, the latent knowledge and the instinctive intelligence that teachers bring to bear. With such pressure it seems difficult to be theoretical, but thinking about what we do is a necessity for teachers and a way to cope.

To stand back and think of a number of different dilemmas as if they were at the same level is all very well but the tension is far more immediate and far more real. Beneath the busiest activities teachers experience a number of very real tensions and conflicts between different forces and different influences. There is a constant need to resolve these by being aware of them.

Some of the tensions that teachers face are obvious. They are to do with the result of government policies and all the contradictions within them. Teachers are affected by the sheer number of instant policies being published and the pressure that is then put on schools to implement them at once. There are many conflicts of interest and a great deal of power being forced on teachers from external agencies.

In the kinds of stresses that teachers talk about, in fact, the government comes out on top. Its distaste for teachers and teaching, its constant desire to manipulate, is something by which teachers themselves constantly feel burdened. Underlying this is also the sense of being got at, or ‘picked on’, to use the pupils’ terminology, whether by managerialism or by the inquisition inflicted by Ofsted. The problem is that there is plenty of resistance to what is taking place but most of this is ineffective and ignored. There is much criticism of the politics of educational policy but this does nothing to help teachers. This is not the place to lament that fact but to address the main issues.

The main tensions

The real tensions that teachers face are deeper than those occurring presently, although we live in a time of particular discomfort. This book is about the real dilemmas of teaching which have always been on individuals’ minds. All the research about teachers consistently makes some of these tensions clear.

The first tension is between the private and personal as against the public and professional. At the present time such tensions are brought to the fore since there are deliberate attacks on professionalism, and the assumption that teachers are functionaries without personal lives and instincts of their own. The fashion for such disparagement, however, is not constant and not global. The time will come when such attitudes will change. They will change as will the fashions for different types of educational research or fashions for different approaches to the teaching of reading, swinging between the emphasis on methods, and then on psychology. It is important for teachers to remember how powerful fashion is rather than being burdened by what passes away in time.

The second tension for teachers is the extent to which they are able to respond to the needs of pupils against the extent to which they are accountable to the state. Teachers always tell me that what keeps them going is the teaching itself, the pupils and their interactions. Nevertheless, teachers are seen from outside as fulfilling the requirements of statutory orders.

The greatest dilemma of all is the tension between learning and teaching. This is the heart of the teacher’s problem. The teacher wants to be the person responding to individual needs, guiding and helping and fostering the natural desire to learn. Instead, a teacher is often put into the position of imposing, against other’s wills, matters which seem unnatural and which will be rejected. Learning is a matter of opening up ideas; the way teaching is interpreted makes it a matter of control, an imposition that actually inhibits or destroys the desire to learn. Teachers know this well.

Other dilemmas

All dilemmas overlap but there are a number that come to teachers’ minds as they discuss their work and their way of life.

The role of the teacher is a complex one. On the one hand he or she is there to deliver the curriculum. On the other hand he or she has a moral duty as a teacher who is in the position of having to keep order, demonstrate good conduct, and promote values. There are some teachers who are adamant that they are merely discharging their duties of delivery, but the expectation from parents, and the reality that all teachers understand is that they accept a responsibility for the welfare of their students and to help them learn not just facts but ideas, how to behave, values and duties. This might not be clear as a mission statement but it is the fact, even if it is inadvertent.

A teacher has a concern to help the individual learner fulfil herself. At the same time there is a pressure on the teacher to make certain that the pupil conforms, that he learns the skills that the state requires him to master. This is the kind of concern with the effects of schooling that Bowles and Gintis (1976) and King (1978), amongst many others, have highlighted. In the structure of schools there is always more than a hint of conformity, of a deliberate control, rather than the fulfilment of the individual.

Whilst the teacher is concerned with helping all individuals, there is a tension between concentrating on those who are willing and who wish to learn and excluding those who are so reluctant as to be difficult. Do teachers try to keep all reluctant pupils in the school, ignoring truancy, making certain that the school is so inclusive that all have to be there, or should the teacher accept that with the social problems that pupils bring with them, exclusion is the only answer and something that is inevitable?

Is the teacher responsible essentially to the parents of pupils as well as to the pupils themselves? Or is the teacher responsible to society as a whole, to the requirements of employment and employability, to citizenship and the responsibilities of being a useful member of society? The role of parents is an odd and complex one and, as another chapter will point out, an unused and very powerful support for teachers, but there is still a constant question of where control actually lies.

Parents are generally on teachers’ sides, despite the political will to turn them into police who control what takes place in teaching. The question is whether the parents should have more real influence, as they do in a latent way in private schools. The irony about private schools, dependent on the fee-paying capacity of parents is that teachers are more respected. Teachers are also aware of the conflicting demands of the pupils and their parents, and, indeed, the influence of the local neighbourhood, and the orders of their political masters.

To what extent should teachers accept the commands and criticisms of politicians and inspectors whose influence can remain purely destructive? At what point can teachers have the confidence to ignore statutory orders?

Pupils’ dilemmas

The puzzles and dilemmas of the pupils also affect teachers. One is the question of the purpose of the curriculum. Should it focus on things of interest to them or should there be a coverage of everything that needs to be known? Is there an agreement on this essential body of knowledge, or does each pupil find out what is relevant?

From the people’s point of view they are ‘doing a subject’. They are presented with what are often meaningless gobbets of fact and told that there are certain kinds of thought which they have got to cover. Pupils remain puzzled about the curriculum and, in the face of a lack of clarity, assume that they are there to do a core curriculum because they are told to, because it is taken to be essential, because the exams concentrate on them and because they are the underlying subjects for employment. Whilst pupils submit to this assumption they do not believe it, which creates a constant problem for them as well (Cullingford 1999).

The second dilemma for pupils is about the purpose of school. For them there is a lot of drudgery involved in school, waiting for things to happen, waiting for instructions, having to undergo a series of rote learning and meaningless tests. On the other hand, school is a place where they meet friends and can gain a great deal of satisfaction. If the purpose of schooling were made far clearer pupils would be far more content. Instead of all the factual information that is gathered together in the National Curriculum, packaged in artificial stages, there should be a reflective debate about schools. The problem is that the central issues are not addressed, partly because few dare challenge the system in case it is found wanting, and partly because it is taken for granted. The result is that teachers find themselves undermined by the pupils’ lack of a sense of purpose.

Pupils wonder who is really responsible for conduct. Is the school in loco parentis, taking on the responsibility for order and conduct, for discipline and behaviour, or does this authority lie with the parents? Who has the moral authority to tell pupils how to behave? To what extent are teachers finding themselves, despite the lack of clarity, and despite the ambiguities of their position, especially in such a climate of fear and suspicion involving any dealings with children, having to be moral policemen?

All these questions lead to an essential dilemma of the teachers; what is their purpose? What is the real responsibility of teaching?

What is clear is that the most powerful events in school lie in the hidden curriculum, in all the latent messages and ideas that are fostered in the classroom and in the playground. Teachers need to understand that the real events in school are not the formal ones which they are controlled into carrying out, but the other ambiguous and complex arrays of relationships and understandings that are idiosyncratically derived from the experiences that are most emotional and significant, as defined by the individual pupil. In these circumstances, which is the more important: the personality of the teacher or the role he or she has to play?

Teachers need to understand what is happening in order to cope. The system is far more complicated than the simple delivery of a broad and balanced curriculum, supported by inspection and statutory orders. It would be easy for some teachers to assume that all they need to do is to fulfil orders, but all teachers, once they go beyond the simple matter of coping, have an insight into the complexities of learning that matter far more. This should not be ignored.

There is also a genuine puzzlement by teachers at the state of the education system. Is it working in the way it is supposed to? Almost every day in the main newspapers there are articles about falling standards. This is shown in terms of subjects, or sometimes in terms of overseas comparisons, sometimes in terms of the lowering of standards of examinations, sometimes in the statistics of truancy and exclusion, and sometimes in all the complaints coming from the parents or the employers and all the other onlookers who scrutinise the system. What really angers teachers is that they are the ones who are blamed for the failures of the system. No one seems to say, ‘if standards are not getting better, could this be to do with policy and the way it is implemented?’ Every new detailed policy, like literacy hours, seems to do more harm than good. There seems to be more unhappiness in society than ever, more divisions, more inequality, fewer skills and more complaints. These worries pass the policy makers by. Instead, they transfer blame to others as if the party system were designed just for such deflections.

Ironically, this is why teachers should not be blamed except in so far as they are the ones that keep this failing system going somehow.

The problem is that the teachers, as well as the pupils who suffer from the failings of the system and those who are responsible for the system, make it even more of the same at every sign of its failure. They merely tighten their grip.

If the dilemmas of teaching are far more complex, more pervasive and far less detailed than one might think it is because they are felt as tensions. The word ‘cope’ is used in this book advisedly. There are different levels of coping. It is always difficult for a teacher at first to master the basic ordering of a class of reluctant learners. There is more than a hint of the absurd in having to learn to play the role of the psychologist in keeping command of a class. The detailed psychology of divide and rule, knowing when to step in and when to step back, all these complicated forms of interaction are the first concern for the new teacher. Coping starts with being able to keep command of reluctant pupils. This is a kind of parody of government policy; the intent to force matters through control. In the teacher’s case, however, this is done with great integrity and that is the difference.

After a time the concept of ‘coping’ takes on a somewhat different meaning. It is here that different kinds of tensions arise, when there is less distraction from day-to-day survival. The word ‘cope’ is used advisedly because teachers somehow have to strive in impossible circumstances. The book was going to be called Mission Impossible at one stage since the real problem for teachers is that they are doing something which, in the present system, is unnatural. This is made more poignant because what they love to do is the most natural thing in the world.

There is one big message: teachers are heroes but put into an impossible, even tragic position. Their missionary instincts are good. Teaching is not a selfish act but a personal one. Teachers should not be put upon in the way that they are.

From the pupils’ point of view there is a fundamental flaw. They should be free of institutions, and teachers should be free to do what they do best to foster particular interests, to respond to the needs of the pupil and not the requirements of institutions. Teachers are there to help those who want to learn but who are institutionalised in a way that makes their very desire and need to learn very difficult.

This book will try to help teachers overcome some of the impossibilities and to derive real satisfaction from seeing learning take place. It is important for teachers to remember that they do much more good than they know and demonstrate, through their personalities, their unselfishness and integrity, the kind of messages that pupils need to learn.

The irony is that teachers need to support each other, to seize command of the circumstances, to work not only individually but collectively against the unnatural external controls that are put upon them.

Chapter 2

The evidence

There are two major strands of evidence that belong together and which substantiate the major points of this book. The first is all the research which is to do with cognition and the functions of the brain. This neurological research has some consistent themes and agreements beneath the familiar academic arguments. The second strand of evidence comes from the pupils themselves and derive from a series of research studies that explore what and how children think, and how they analyse the experience of home and school.

Attitudes to research

It is important to remind ourselves that the research evidence over many years has been consistent, if ignored. There is a body of work that demonstrates that we know about the difference between the needs of individual children and the system that we impose on them. Much research tends to be repeated, partly because people have to learn things for themselves, as well as make their academic reputations, and partly because there is a tendency, despite the literature searches, to ignore what has been done before, especially if it is not up to the minute. The research that is referred to here, however, is more basic and unchanging, yet the findings are consistently ignored as if we did not quite dare to accept what the research tells us. Those who are offended by the conclusions of research always excuse their response by attacking the research methods. There should be no excuses for ignoring the research, especially its implications for action. This research is useful for teachers, not at the level of techniques to try out but to aid understanding of the circumstances.

If neurological research is at all instructive in its analysis of the patterns of thinking and the types of thought that are developed as a consequence, then it follows that we should take seriously what the pupils themselves say. If human beings have the capacity to criticise, analyse and understand, then all the research shows that they do so from a very young age. The problem is that although it seems fashionable to talk about listening to children, it is not really fashionable to hear what they say. We know, however, that children’s views count, not only to themselves as a consequence of being listened to, but because they have a unique insight into their own states of mind and understanding. To assume that they merely regurg...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• 1. The children
• 2. The evidence
• 3. Policies within and outside school
• 4. The pupils’ experience of school
• 5. What pupils think of teachers
• 6. Teachers as they see themselves … and as others see them
• 7. Teachers’ relationships with parents: a tragedy of errors
• 8. The ethos of schools
• 9. Intelligence: what teachers can do
• 10. Relationships: what teachers need to know
• 11. Sources of information: implications for teachers
• 12. How teachers survive
• References
• Index