tag:theconversation.com,2011:/fr/topics/national-union-of-teachers-9902/articlesNational Union of Teachers – The Conversation2015-10-07T05:33:42Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/486372015-10-07T05:33:42Z2015-10-07T05:33:42ZAre teachers suffering from a crisis of motivation?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/97443/original/image-20151006-7378-bjwohi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Is it worth all this?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tired teacher via Ermolaev Alexander/www.shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The National Union of Teachers has published results of a survey in which <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-34426598">53% of teachers</a> in England and <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-34144933">46% in Wales</a> said they were: “thinking of leaving the profession in the next two years.” The <a href="http://www.teachers.org.uk/node/24849">NUT argues</a> that misguided government policy is increasingly the root cause of teachers’ misery and has led to this collapse in morale.</p>
<p>Some will argue, quite sensibly, that it’s important not to panic in response to such surveys – the NUT results were from an <a href="http://www.teachers.org.uk/node/24849">online YouGov poll</a> of 1,020 primary and secondary teachers in England. Those who agreed that they’re “thinking of leaving [the] profession in the next two years” won’t necessarily go on to quit. </p>
<p>The schools minister, Nick Gibb, certainly doesn’t see a need to be overly concerned. <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-34426598">He suggested that</a> teaching remains an extremely popular profession – record numbers of people are joining the profession and there has been a linear increase in the number of teachers over the last five years.</p>
<p>But that’s not the point. <a href="http://www.teachers.org.uk/node/24849">The NUT survey</a> also suggested that more than two-thirds of teachers felt that morale had declined in the past five years and 73% felt that current policy was narrow, restrictive, and uncreative. When more than half of those charged with educating and inspiring children and young people say they might want to leave their profession, then there’s certainly something to be concerned about.</p>
<h2>What motivates us</h2>
<p>I would argue that it reflects an emerging “motivational crisis” in teaching. Lots and lots of teachers are telling us, quite simply, that they don’t like doing their job enough to say that they want to keep doing it. This is not just the odd teacher – it hints at a systematic motivational problem. </p>
<p>The psychology of human motivation has taught us that when it feels like doing a job is a reward in itself, people approach their work with the greatest enthusiasm, passion and commitment – and they derive the greatest satisfaction from it. But this doesn’t just happen – as research into the <a href="http://www.selfdeterminationtheory.org/">psychology of motivation has demonstrated</a>, feeling as though work is intrinsically rewarding depends upon whether the environment nourishes our basic psychological needs. These are the need to feel:</p>
<ul>
<li>competence: does our work allow us to feel like we are good at what we do, or do we constantly feel as though we are failing?</li>
<li>autonomy: are we able to express ourselves through what we do, or do we simply feel like a pawn at the mercy of somebody else’s agenda.</li>
<li>relatedness: does what we’re doing make us feel valued and cared about in a larger sense?</li>
</ul>
<p><a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Handbook_of_Self_determination_Research.html?id=DcAe2b7L-RgC">Decades of research</a> shows that if these key psychological needs are not supported by working environments then people are less likely to experience work as intrinsically rewarding or to experience personal growth and meaning from the work that they do. They are also ultimately more likely to disengage from it. In education, I have found <a href="https://www.routledge.com/products/9781138022102">growing evidence</a> from my own research that when teachers’ basic psychological needs are suffocated, this translates into dampened interest and enthusiasm from pupils.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/97444/original/image-20151006-7352-1rt0d0l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/97444/original/image-20151006-7352-1rt0d0l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=281&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97444/original/image-20151006-7352-1rt0d0l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=281&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97444/original/image-20151006-7352-1rt0d0l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=281&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97444/original/image-20151006-7352-1rt0d0l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=354&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97444/original/image-20151006-7352-1rt0d0l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=354&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/97444/original/image-20151006-7352-1rt0d0l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=354&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Kids can pick up on low motivation.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Bored child via Luisa Leal Photography/www.shutterstock.com</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Supporting psychological needs</h2>
<p>So, when significant numbers of teachers tell us they are considering leaving the profession, we ought to consider it a motivational concern. And one of our reactions should be to carefully consider the extent to which we offer them a working environment that respects their needs as human beings. We simply aren’t doing this. In fact, there is every reason to believe that current educational policy is systematically stifling people’s psychological needs.</p>
<p>As an example, <a href="https://www.soe.vt.edu/tandl/pdf/Barksdale/Publication_Barksdale_ThomasHST.pdf">one study</a> clearly demonstrated how a system narrowly focused upon pupil achievement and standardised testing had invaded teachers working lives so much that they had been completely robbed of any sense of personal autonomy. As one teacher suggested:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I’m not the teacher I used to be. I couldn’t wait to get to school every day because I loved being great at what I do. All of the most powerful teaching tools I used to use every day are no good to me now because they don’t help children get ready for the test, and it makes me like a robot instead of a teacher. I didn’t need a degree to do what I do now. They don’t need real teachers to prepare children for tests and, in fact, I think they could just develop computer programs to do this.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>As a psychologist and educationalist, my greatest fear is that we have created a one-dimensional education system. It is so intensely focused upon standards, metrics, and a production line that it neglects to allow people to lead personally meaningful lives, to trust and value them for who they are, and celebrate what they bring to the classroom. For this, individuals pay a heavy motivational and emotional price.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/48637/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sam Carr does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>We should be worried that half of teachers are thinking of leaving the profession.Sam Carr, Lecturer in Education, University of BathLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/396542015-04-05T07:46:54Z2015-04-05T07:46:54ZSpecial needs children asked to stay home when inspectors call<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/76780/original/image-20150401-31302-7x0w2w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Mainstreamed, but left out. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Dubova/www.shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In a policy climate which <a href="https://www.gov.uk/school-attendance-absence/overview">threatens to fine parents</a> who keep their children out of school, it’s strange that some senior school leaders specifically ask some students to stay at home. And that others are asking neighbouring schools to take a small group of children for a short given period. The answers are to be found in a climate of inspection and testing in English schools which carries such high stakes that school leaders speak of “reputational risk” when children with special needs are included in their data and are present in their classrooms when the inspector calls.</p>
<p>Of all the findings from <a href="http://www.teachers.org.uk/node/23619">the fourth of our Cambridge reports</a> on the impact of government policies, all of which were commissioned by the National Union of Teachers, this is perhaps the most disturbing but also the most telling. It carries a powerful message as to what is valued and what has been systematically devalued in the pursuit of competitive education attainment targets.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.educ.cam.ac.uk/people/staff/galton/Costs_of_Inclusion_Final.pdf">move to reduce</a> the number of special schools, perhaps eventually to dispense with them altogether, predates this government. It was seen by many as a cost-cutting exercise, but was sometimes cloaked in rhetoric about including children within their peer group. </p>
<p>Our study, which revisited primary and secondary schools from <a href="https://www.educ.cam.ac.uk/people/staff/galton/Costs_of_Inclusion_Final.pdf">our previous reports</a> with the addition of recently established academies, was designed to explore the extent to which the lessons of the past decade had been learned. We wanted to find out to what extent schools are now more aware of the wide spectrum of abilities and disabilities and better prepared to educate all children. And whether children with special needs are now less liable to be excluded from school, consigned to the care of classroom assistants, or advised to find another school where they would be more “comfortable”. </p>
<h2>Children cast adrift</h2>
<p>The answers are not encouraging. Exclusion from school has become less of an option, due in large part to the increase in learning support staff to whom children with special needs may be “velcroed” (as one special need co-ordinator put it) on a virtually permanent basis. On the positive side, these support staff were much better informed and better trained than had been the case in our previous study. But this also proved to be a doubled-edge sword, allowing schools to replace qualified teachers with lesser qualified, or unqualified, staff. </p>
<p>We met and talked to children with complex learning needs who had previously been in special schools but were now, according to one teacher, “cast adrift” in a large secondary school – or in policyspeak, “mainstreamed”. While there are children for whom the mainstream is a better option than a special school, there are others for whom it is a form of benign abuse. Driven primarily by economic motives, the inclusion of children within a large secondary school proves, for some, to be a frightening and alienating experience.</p>
<h2>Uneven playing field</h2>
<p>We spent time in what we could call “good”, even exceptionally good schools that often teetered on the verge of an Ofsted rating of “special measures” or were even threatened with closure because they were caring and principled enough to take in the rejects from their neighbouring schools or academies. </p>
<p>One secondary school on the brink of closure for nearly a decade was told by a visiting inspector: “You have to work ten times harder” to compete on an uneven playing field. In this school with 70 languages spoken, a constant inflow of low-paid immigrant workers, many living in substandard housing and exploited by unscrupulous landlords, there were 30 different kinds of support and intervention programmes, and staff “burnout” as a consequence of long hours and high levels of stress.</p>
<p>In a London secondary school now surrounded by academies, policies of so-called “strategic rationing” had left this secondary school with young people whose parents, lone parent or carer, had neither the knowledge nor the cultural capital to opt for an academy. The once outstanding Ofsted assessment had been downgraded to a level three – “requires improvement”. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/76799/original/image-20150401-31305-4j5jj1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/76799/original/image-20150401-31305-4j5jj1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=904&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/76799/original/image-20150401-31305-4j5jj1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=904&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/76799/original/image-20150401-31305-4j5jj1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=904&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/76799/original/image-20150401-31305-4j5jj1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1136&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/76799/original/image-20150401-31305-4j5jj1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1136&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/76799/original/image-20150401-31305-4j5jj1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1136&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Cherry picked.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Kappri/www.shutterstock.com</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>We looked into “cherry picking” – anecdotal evidence that academies prefer to take on children with learning disabilities who had wealthier parents who were better able to support them. We asked how it was that local academies were able to discourage parents of children with special needs from applying. The response: “Because they can”. Academies, jealous of their reputation, would suggest “a more suitable option” for these children, a judgement difficult to dispute.</p>
<p>An acknowledgement we heard from one Ofsted inspector of the unevenness of the playing field was atypical. Our conclusion was that Ofsted’s reporting of the provision for special needs education has actually been inconsistent and often counter productive. We found that Ofsted inspections have failed to take sufficient account of the experiences of many children with special educational needs, and the ability of schools to collaborate and innovate in the interests of those children. </p>
<h2>Pressures of performance culture</h2>
<p>Our findings are echoed in <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-32075251">a recent report</a> by the Association of Teachers and Lecturers. It found close to nine out of ten staff saying that the need to provide support for children with mental health problems had increased significantly. At the same time, suitable provision was less and less easy to access, and cuts to services leaving pupils “dangerously at risk”. </p>
<p>Much is explained by what is described as the “performativity culture”, in which performance on tests trumps learning, effort or engagement, working systematically to the disadvantage of vulnerable and struggling children. Areas of school life in which they may succeed, and even enjoy learning, such as music, drama and visual art are progressively marginalised, viewed as detracting from the single-minded pursuit of those pervasive and generally ill-conceived targets.</p>
<p>In the midst of this political turmoil we found outstanding schools flying below the radar, led by conviction and principle, willing to go the extra mile, often to compensate for their less principled neighbours, guilty of that gravest of sins in the ideological repertoire – a focus on children’s needs.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/39654/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John MacBeath was commissioned to write the study on special needs education by the National Union of Teachers.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Maurice Galton was commissioned to write this study on special needs education by the National Union of Teachers.</span></em></p>A relentless focus on test results is alienating children with special needs.John MacBeath, Emeritus Professor, Faculty of Education, University of CambridgeMaurice Galton, Emeritus Professor, Faculty of Education, University of CambridgeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/254172014-04-14T04:59:43Z2014-04-14T04:59:43ZAre the tables turning in Michael Gove’s war on teacher unions?<p>The Easter holidays have arrived, heralding the start of teacher union conference season. These are always important events, not least because according to <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/219648/DFE-RR268.pdf">research commissioned</a> by the government, 97% of the teaching workforce in England and Wales is unionised. </p>
<p>The Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) kicks off its conference first, followed by the National Union of Teachers (NUT) and the National Association of Schoolmaster Union of Women Teachers (NASUWT). </p>
<p>This year the unions meet as many British teachers are engaged in an <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-26729786">industrial dispute</a> seeking to challenge key elements of the government’s education policies. These are highly contentious reforms that have been driven through by a government determined to accomplish a single-term revolution whereby change is introduced so fast, and on such a scale, that by the time any future government is elected, reversing the changes appears impossible. </p>
<p>Central to the strategy of single term revolution has been a “<a href="http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/news/uk_news/Education/article1173083.ece">war on teachers”</a> in which government has made an attack on the teacher unions part of its wider goal of defeating the so-called “<a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/conservative/4537403/David-Cameron-Tory-leader-talks-to-the-Daily-Telegraph-about-education.html">educational establishment</a>”. </p>
<p>For teachers, these changes have meant the further erosion of their professional autonomy, longer working hours and real-terms cuts in pay and pensions. There is also now the potential for a pay and conditions “race to the bottom” as teacher contracts are de-regulated and free schools – government-funded independent schools – are <a href="http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6064221">encouraged to appoint unqualified staff</a> into teaching positions. Recent figures show that <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/education/2014/apr/10/rise-number-unqualified-teachers-state-funded-schools-england">13% of full time teachers</a> at free schools are now unqualified. </p>
<p>Given such changes, it can hardly come as a surprise that teachers are pushing back. What is perhaps more surprising is that it has taken so long for such widespread action to emerge.</p>
<p>One of the best explanations of why high levels of individual dissatisfaction have been slow to develop into collective acts of resistance is provided by “<a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/From-Mobilization-Revolution-Charles-Tilly/dp/0201075717">mobilisation theory</a>”. This seeks to explain the conditions in which individual employee grievances coalesce into collective defiance. </p>
<p>Proponents of mobilisation theory <a href="http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Rethinking_Industrial_Relations.html?id=CD-cNRGSfWQC&redir_esc=y">assert that</a> workers are most likely to act collectively when employees experience a deep sense of injustice, when they believe that this injustice can be reversed and, crucially, when they believe that by acting collectively, sufficient pressure can be applied to the powers-that-be to bring about the change they seek. </p>
<p>As far as teachers are concerned there can be little doubt that wide sections of the profession harbour many of these grievances. However, until now the power imbalance between the state and organised teachers has appeared too skewed in favour of the government for a coherent teacher opposition to emerge. </p>
<p>There can be no doubt that Michael Gove, the secretary of state for education, has proven to be a particularly effective politician, whilst teachers’ unions have struggled to cope with having to fight his reforms on multiple fronts. This is a problem <a href="http://feweek.co.uk/2014/02/20/unions-divided-by-strikes-over-pay/">compounded by divisions between unions</a> that can undermine confidence and dissipate resistance.</p>
<h2>Tipping point</h2>
<p>But now teachers’ sense of grievance appears to be growing. The range of issues that frustrate teachers continues to increase and the accumulation of these may well have reached a tipping point.</p>
<p>Gove is also looking <a href="https://theconversation.com/ofsted-row-gets-to-heart-of-battle-over-tory-education-policy-22709">increasingly vulnerable</a>. By post-war standards for education secretaries he has been in post a long time – long enough for some of his more radical ideas to already start unravelling. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/failing-academy-chains-highlight-hole-at-heart-of-education-policy-23954">governance of free schools and academies</a>, a growing <a href="http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2013/09/goves-free-schools-are-failing-solve-school-places-crisis">crisis over school places</a>and looming problems in <a href="https://theconversation.com/counting-the-costs-of-moving-teacher-training-out-of-universities-23157">teacher training and supply</a>, all flow from the instabilities inherent in aggressive marketisation. And not unrelated to Gove’s problems, is the sense that teachers’ collective confidence is growing.</p>
<p>This emerged towards the end of 2013, when the two largest unions, NUT and NASUWT, undertook a campaign of regional strike action. ATL, the more moderate union, did not participate in these strikes, although it had participated in public sector-wide pensions strike action in 2011.</p>
<p>Not long after these strikes, the School Teachers’ Review Body (STRB) published its 2014 report and <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/goves-changes-to-teachers-contracts-rejected-by-review-body-9126591.html">rejected Gove’s proposals</a> to make sweeping changes to key elements of teachers’ national contract. This development was sufficient to split the NUT and NASUWT’s united front, with the NASUWT announcing it would suspend its participation in strike action, whilst the NUT called a one-day strike for 26 March.</p>
<p>As with many industrial disputes, the headline issues of pay and pensions act as a focus for a much wider set of grievances, many of which relate to professional concerns such as <a href="https://theconversation.com/arts-a-levels-need-to-be-tougher-for-universities-to-accept-them-25466">curriculum</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/reforms-based-on-pisa-tests-alone-wont-fix-gcse-standards-25251">assessment reforms</a> and the break-up of local school systems. </p>
<h2>Where next?</h2>
<p>The Easter conference season marks a key moment for both unions to assess their decisions and decide their next steps. It is high risk for both of them. There is no doubt that the NUT’s decision to continue with action risks isolation, and the decision of NASUWT to withdraw from the strikes was a setback for the strategy of united action. </p>
<p>However, the NUT has so far waged a highly effective campaign. Through a well-run organising strategy it has worked hard to connect with its members and there is no doubt that its <a href="http://www.teachers.org.uk/parents">“Stand Up for Education”</a> campaign, that links grievances over pay and workload to much wider issues of policy, has resonated not only with teachers but with many parents. It may be that in the government’s war on teachers, the tables are beginning to turn.</p>
<p>The risk for the NASUWT is that its approach looks too cautious at a time when teachers’ grievances run deep and the government appears weak. </p>
<p>Only time will tell which of the two unions made the better judgement and more accurately captured the mood of teachers. </p>
<p>In the meantime, the further fragmentation of the school system and the emergence of more <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-26067673">overtly anti-union employers</a> continues to point to the need for unions to work together more, not less. In the new educational landscape, teachers’ unions will maintain their influence if they engage with employers from a position of strength. It is hard to see how that strength is enhanced by being divided.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/25417/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Howard Stevenson has received funding from ESRC for a project researching industrial relations in schools.</span></em></p>The Easter holidays have arrived, heralding the start of teacher union conference season. These are always important events, not least because according to research commissioned by the government, 97…Howard Stevenson, Director of Research and Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies, School of Education, University of NottinghamLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.