Teacher Voice: Why is it important?

Probably the most important professional that we employ as a society, these days, is the teacher. Controversial? Perhaps, but we are facing, as a species, some significant challenges ahead. These include, but are not limited to, the climate crisis, global food shortages and mass unemployment. The key to solving all of these lies in our capacity as humans to think through the challenges and ‘outwit’ them by using our own creativity. This is not the first time we have done this, for example in 1928 we ‘outwitted’ infection by discovering penicillin, in 1969 we ‘outwitted’ gravity by landing on the moon, and in 2019 we ‘outwitted’ the Coronavirus by utilising technology to keep our economies going throughout the devastation of a pandemic. 

None of these challenges would have been overcome if it weren’t for the ingenuity employed by a few individuals that could take a creative look at a situation and figure it out to everyone’s benefit. 

Our challenges that lie up ahead are going to require the same creativity from people and many of these future problem solvers are still at school, learning and growing in line with our existing systems. And it is the teachers that they see day in and day out that will somehow be the gateway that allows this creativity to flourish and, in so doing, ultimately help solve these large problems. Hence their importance as professionals.

Teachers are responsible for making sure that young people feel comfortable bringing their creative thoughts to the table, and that they don’t feel intimidated by failure, but instead learn to embrace it as part of learning and growing, and creating. Ken Robinson, in his famous TED talk, talked about how we are systemically educating people OUT of creativity, rather than INTO it. It is my experience that this unfortunate outcome is systemic, rather than the fault of the teachers themselves. So why has the system been allowed to divert so far away from what students need, especially when so many teachers would be happy to point out where systems could be improved? 

The answer to this, simply put, is that teachers are seldom asked their opinion, and they are seldom involved in the conversations that determine the development direction of education. It only takes a visit to any number of conferences on education, or to watch any interview panel, to see just how few teachers are in fact involved in conversations about education. And if you think about it, this is entirely counterintuitive; if teachers occupy even half of the education workforce, they should at least be proportionately represented at conferences and panel discussions. So why are they not represented?

One possible reason is that teachers are typically very busy people. Getting hold of them during working hours is nigh on impossible and this is made worse by the fact that their schedules are uncompromisingly inflexible. It is often not possible for the average teacher to extricate themselves from their classroom in order to attend a roundtable discussion about curriculum development. 

A second possible reason could be that, as a society, we don’t value teachers’ opinions as much as we perhaps should. Unfortunately the misconception that ‘anyone can teach’ is out there in many communities and this undermines the professionalism of teachers to the point where we maybe don’t see the value in listening to what they have to say. After all, we have all been to school at some time or another, and so have our own preconceived ideas about what education should be. Therefore, we know what to do about it already. Right?

Unfortunately neither of these two reasons is good enough to stand in the way of including a teacher’s voice in conversation. Teachers are the ones who work with students every day. They are the ones who know what the immediate and long term needs of students will be, and they are the ones who listen to students and understand their ambitions and desires more clearly than anyone else, including, in lots of cases, their parents! 

The sad upshot of not listening to teachers manifests itself in a whole host of ways, much of which we see every day; Unacceptably high youth unemployment rates, global teacher shortages and unacceptable teacher retention rates, increasing mental health issues within the education system (students and staff); I could go on.

There are also more ‘invisible’ manifestations of not listening to teachers such as the vast array of redundant products designed and produced to ‘help’ teachers, curricula that are clearly no longer fit for purpose, exam and testing systems that don’t cater for the breadth of talent in our younger generations but still test according to industrial revolution criteria, and once again I could still go on.

But if we had to step back and just ask the teachers their opinion from time to time, we may find that things started to change and fall back into alignment. We may find that there is some wisdom on the front line that we are missing and which could be the key to unlocking the true potential of our young learners. 

Listening to ‘teacher voice’ is, to my mind, an obvious starting point to making sure that all these things would be less likely to happen. Instead of ‘flying blind’ and basing our decision-making, policy development, and service provision on what we think is best for education, why not just ask the teachers, we have nothing to lose, and I’m pretty sure that they will be more than happy to share their thoughts. After all, it is they who had the creative mindsets in the first place to realise that our future rests with our youngest generations. 

Author: David Marriott