The unpleasantness of teaching.

Reimagining educational conflict.

Students transgress, as it were, the boundaries of the teacher’s self, both configuring and rendering her professional becoming. The relational experience of being a teacher, therefore, is a unity of the ‘I-for-myself’, ‘I-for-the other’ and ‘the other-for-me’. This is not a mechanical connection but, rather, is a dialogical authoring of responsibility in and for education - Alex Kostogriz

Photo by Rick Rothenberg on Unsplash

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Listen to the podcast segment of Ideology in Education (at 4:51) based on this blog post for the Teacher’s Education Review below 👇.

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I have often heard (and even said myself), that teaching would be a lot easier if we didn’t have to deal with people.

True, yes?

Though a rather preposterous statement to make considering the work of teachers, it highlights an appreciation of the complexity that besets teachers in their day-to-day work. Education is a field that occurs in the context of relationships between human beings, fraught with tensions and challenges. But it is exactly within the challenges of relationships that education can truly exist.

In this post, I will briefly explore the unpleasantness of teaching. By that I mean, those experiences that challenge our perspectives in relation to what it means to teach and what education ought to be for. I argue that it is precisely these uncomfortable experiences that are necessary in the work of teaching, which provide the initial catalyst for deep reflection, growth and change. It is these moments that allow teachers the opportunity to critically engage with the ideologies that impact on their practice, in order to seek out possible alternatives.

At this point, I wish to make it clear that I am not talking here about those experiences where teachers feel unsafe, threatened, mistreated or abused. These are serious concerns for teachers which, although still require deep consideration and reflection, must be addressed in ways that specifically prioritise the safety of teachers and school staff.

With that being said, let’s get into it.

Push back.

Ever received push back in your practice as a teacher, or as a leader in a school?

I’m sure you have.

Students refusing to engage. Staff undermining school policy. Parents challenging school decisions.

These experiences can leave us feeling rather disheartened or frustrated as our initiatives are not taken on board in the way we may have hoped. This is the hard work of education, where individuals challenge our desires for their lives and work, creating a tension between relationships, ideologies and desires. However, although difficult, we do not necessarily need to see these experiences as entirely negative. I would argue that they have the potential to open up space for critical thinking in relation to our perspectives on education and what it means to teach.

Firstly, it reminds us that in education we’re in relationship with humans as subjects, who can make their own mind up. We’re not dealing with objects that are simply manipulated through reward and punishment mechanisms.

Secondly, these kinds of experiences can nudge us to develop a deeper justification and understanding of our way of doing things. Being challenged helps to move us beyond our taken-for-granted understandings of what we believe to be true and correct, bringing with it the potential to contribute to our growth as professionals. Often, it is not until we experience push back that we consider a more thorough investigation of our beliefs and practice.

Lastly, the cognitive dissonance of these experiences may move us to consider alternative perspectives to address the core issues at play.

It is in these moments, when we encounter tension in our profession that can be a real opportunity for growth as we reflect on the possible meanings for the conflict. Sadly, we may simply see these experiences as someone else’s failure and seek to find blame (such as in the recent attacks on Initial Teaching Education (ITE) providers), but these are simply a reality of engaging in a profession that is involved in complex and messy work of relationships. Now, I’m not saying that ITE providers are perfect, but they’re certainly not to blame for all the problems we experience in education today. I stand with the many others around the country who agree that ITE providers in Australia are doing excellent work.

Though uncomfortable, experiences of conflict within education provide rich opportunities for us to move beyond our previously held “common sense” perspectives of how things currently “are”. They provide a real opportunity for change, as we intentionally consider the justification for our current ways of thinking and engaging in our teaching practice. We have the opportunity, if given the time, to deeply consider what is at stake in relation to beliefs and ideologies and how we might be able to move forward.

A shock.

To give an example of how this might look in practice, I figured I might share one story that to this day has had a profound impact on the way I see education and the importance of considering its purpose.

My final teaching rounds during my undergraduate teaching degree led me to a school that had approximately 50% of its students coming from families within the bottom quarter of Socio-Educational Advantage (SEA).

It was not until I began this final teaching round that I was confronted with how my own experience of schooling greatly coloured my perspective of how education ought to look, especially in the senior years. See, it was my experience that students who stayed on in the final years of schooling (for Victoria we call it the Victorian Certificate of Education or VCE) were generally committed to their studies. Those who weren’t often seemed to disappear into trades and TAFE. The students I was surrounded by in my final years of schooling could be said to generally care about their education as it was given to them.

But I found myself in my final year of my teaching degree, confronted with students in their final years of schooling who were different.

They didn’t care.

Or at least, that was it seemed like to me at the time. I was shocked at the way students would simply disappear from their classes (on one occasion to attend a music festival), were disengaged and didn’t seem to value what I wanted to get out of them for their final years of schooling. This experience led me to question what it might mean to be a teacher in this circumstance. What was I doing here? If is not academics, then what is it? I felt like I was biding time for these young people before they entered into the “real world” (whatever that might mean). Nevertheless, as teachers do, I still gave it my all in spite of the challenges these students set before me.

I won’t pretend like I have found the answer to this issue, nor will I boast that I have successfully navigated this complicated terrain. However, as a teacher engaging in reflexivity, these experiences have had a profound impact on my desire to understand those ideologies that speak for students rather than listen to them.

Responding to unpleasantness.

In this post I have tried to argue through a simple anecdote that the at-times unpleasantness of teaching can become a catalyst for teacher growth.

Not in any way that seeks to move Australian students higher up in the Programme for Student International Assessment (PISA) charts, but that helps teachers to derive a deeper meaning in their work.

Does this resonate with you?

If so, please feel free to comment and share your stories.

Let’s reimagine educational conflict.

Till next time,