Claes Nilholm´s blog about inclusive education

The heading is of course exaggerated. No soul is totally free, no human is a robot. Bu even if one cannot place a concrete teacher at either of these extremes I still believe that they lurk in the background when the work of teachers is discussed. What does it mean then that that the teacher is a free spirit?

The free spirit

There are those who believe that the teacher shall stand free from outer influences. This does of course not mean that the teacher should not listen to the opinion of others or read about research findings but at the end of the day it is the teacher him/herself that decides how to teach the pupils.

It is thus the teacher´s discretion and own experience that should be the basis of the education. John Dewey (1916) expressed the dangers that emerge when goals are forced upon the teacher from the outside. He believed that authorities force goals upon teachers who, in turn, force them upon children. This makes the teacher´s intelligence confined. Rules, inspections, books on teaching methods, curricula etc. block the teacher from getting into close contact with the teaching content and the mind of the child (p 150). Dewey´s line of reasoning feels remarkably up-to-date despite the fact than it was written about a century ago. It is modern both in its threat scenario but also in its trust in the capabilities of teachers to be free spirits.

There are quite widely held beliefs that teachers are, or could become/or be educated to be a sort of didactical virtuoso. Such a teacher is familiar with different conceptions of subjects and different work forms always adapting the teaching to the situation at hand and to the different interests and skills of each pupil. The educational situation cannot be understood beforehand, thus the skilful teacher is capable of mastering varying prerequisites in the situation at hand. The concept the “reflective practitioner” belongs to this tradition. By reflection upon experience the teacher develops him/herself and the teaching. Some go as far as to state that education is an art form with secrets that are mastered be the teachers but that cannot be revealed in its entirety.

I believe this view of the teacher, or at least the ideal teacher, is not uncommon among educational researchers. The idea is an expression of a strong faith in the teaching profession and an expectation that the profession should be left to its own good judgments and reasoning.

The robot

The word robot originates from the monotonous work that was performed by Czech peasants. A robot is pre-programmed to act in a specific way in given situations. The biggest difference between human beings and robots is that the human decides over and is responsible for his/her behaviour. The less a human can decide, the more he/she becomes robot-like and thus less responsible.

Taking a look at the teaching profession in Sweden today one has to conclude that it is extremely regulated. There are laws, inspections and all those things Dewey talked about having a massive influence on what goes on in schools and classrooms. This state of affairs is probably similar to that of several other countries. Moreover, the work by teachers in Sweden is supposed to be evidence-based. According to my opinion this quest for evidence is not so much about the extremely complex and important issue about how research and practice should be interconnected. It seems as a rather to more or less (hopefully less) arbitrarily way to decide that some methods/actions “have evidence” and/or to legitimize a particular way of teaching.

As an educational researcher I am of course not against the idea that teachers should be knowledgeable about scientific findings and a lot of things are going on in schools that are not backed up by empirical research. What bothers me is the trivialization of research and the research-practice relation that often accompany quests for evidence.

The expression “teacher proof teaching” sort of clearly formulates what the control of teachers´ work to a large part is all about. It seems as if the goal is to make education as independent from the teacher as possible. Along this line, Swedish publishing companies are creating study material that will make sure that the pupils will reach the knowledge goals prescribed (from the outside). We recognize traces from the educational technologies in the 1960ies.

The relation between teachers on the one hand and politicians and authorities on the other is built upon distrust in this scenario. Politicians and authorities do not trust teachers, hence the intense regulation of their work. The teachers do not trust the politicians.

Some reflections

These are complex issues. Instead of trying to provide answers I will make some reflections. I am much more oriented towards the first view at the same time as I can see that it is far from unproblematic for several reasons: a) All teachers are not skilful enough to work in this way b) All teachers do not want to work in this way c) Outer control is not always a bad thing, it can in certain circumstances raise the quality of teaching and it also provides a democratic insight and influence into schooling and d) There are teachers who make claims for the freedom of the free spirit but that misuses this freedom- b) and d) can be seen as examples of what Erich Fromm viewed as “a flight from freedom”, i.e. the responsibility that is an intrinsic part of freedom.

There are of course huge dangers involved in trying to make education “teacher-proof” even if politicians and others try make their claims in the name of goodness. I am not an admirer of the French social philosopher Michel Foucault, but here some of his concepts come in handy, such as “docile bodies” and “surveillance”. In addition to a de-professionalization of the work (anyone can follow manuals…) the value of the concrete encounter between the teachers and the pupils and the fact that the outcome of such encounters cannot be predicted beforehand is profoundly underestimated.

As usual one has to find some middle-ground. Given the teacher shortage in Sweden, and in many other countries, an important question concerns how to make the teaching profession more attractive:

• Which teaching role will attract the right students to teacher education?

• Which teaching role can make skilful teachers return to the profession?

• Which teaching role will keep skilful teachers in the profession?

There is an obvious risk for bad spirals here. E.g. an increasingly watered-down professional role might deter the ones that would like to be free spirits which will cause the surveillance to increase and so on. The role of being a free spirit is demanding but isn´t these the teachers that are admired and remembered?

Dewey, John. (1916/2000). Demokrati och utbildning. Göteborg: Daidalos.

/Democracy and Education/