What I present here is the second draft of an idea I have been working on
for a while. Please do give me even feedback. Super grateful to those who took
the time to talk about the idea further (Thanks, Laura!)

Having space to express our ideas and see them in action is a critical if we
are to take satisfaction and meaning from our roles. Knowing we have helped
play a critical role in the process feels good – the sensation of “I did
that, that was me” . would appear to be a critical part of workload
satisfaction for teachers, which repeatedly points to the need to experience
autonomy and some form of intellectual expression.

I would argue that the main route for teachers to achieve these goals has
been through lesson planning. Through the planning of the lesson, teachers can
express their ideas on learning a subject through their actions. They see the
output of these actions directly in the classes they teach. They get to express
their ideas – deciding what and how to teach and then seeing the outcome is
 intellectually stimulating, hugely satisfying and fits with the need for
autonomy within their role.

However, achieving autonomy and intellectual expression through lesson
planning has its flaws. For a start, its inefficient. It doesn’t make sense to
build 50000 lessons on diffusion across a system, just
as much as it doesn’t make sense for surgeons to create individual pools of
techniques which aren’t shared and standardised. In an era of substantive
workload challenges, only giving teachers this route to express themselves means that
individual teachers are asked to sacrifice their time so that they can experience the
intellectual curiosity and autonomy so critical to their enjoyment of the job.

How do we square this circle? How do we help teachers embrace the workload
benefits of shared resources whilst experience intellectual stimulation and
autonomy. Indeed. Is there a way that could make teachers even more impactful?

I suggest we relegate the skill of lesson planning as the act of
intellectual expression and, instead, we proactively promote adaptation as the
real art and science of teaching. That the real intellectual challenge is not in the
creation of PowerPoints or lesson activities, but in the evaluation of that
lesson according to the needs of a group, the license to adapt within a
framework, the responsibility and credit for the lessons enactment and the
capacity to collate the evidence and feedback. We haven’t articulated that this
to teachers, and the time has come to do so.

Two main gains:
A) We are fuelling intellectual curiosity, autonomy, and efficacy within a
secure framework so that teachers can be successful and feel successful.
Equally, we aren’t just leaving the room for random rebellion either.

B) Inclusion at the core. Supporting teachers to adapt to need is inclusion.
Therefore, by enabling teachers primary activity on adapting to meet
need and collating evidence on their success, we are giving time and space to
inclusion as the primary act of teaching, rather than expecting teachers to build
a lesson from the ground up and adapt as a bolt on.

What do we need to do?

We need to do three things.

1) Build buy in. At the moment, we are only communicating the benefit of
prepared lessons on the basis of workload alone. I don’t think that’s enough.
Lets actively show how the focusing on lesson plans and PowerPoints get in the way
of you thinking about the harder components of teaching. Let’s work hard to
show teachers this is the true art and science of teaching Build awareness of
how this approach models the decision making process of other graduate level,
frontline professions (e.g. how frontline doctors, lawyers and social workers
all are expected to work in a similar way). This final part is critical if we are
to give reassurance that we are upgrading the challenge, not downgrading or removing intellectual stimulation.

2) Enable teachers to make decisions. This doesn’t mean
asking teachers to follow the lesson as prescribed nor does it mean giving full free
license. Instead, seeking to provide a framework that enables teachers to
evaluate, adapt and monitor. Such capacity should be built up over time –
frameworks built, training provided and coaching. The focus becomes on
supporting the decision making capacity in how to adapt and a recognition of
the tools and guidelines to make such decisions within.

3) Build adaptation as the goal all the way through professional
development – we conceptualise the mental model of
teaching as the art and science of how we take a foundation and make it something responsive and
adaptive to the trainee needs. We introduce and scaffold at the start of their
career, we expose trainees to teachers who do this week and reward systems that
enable this to happen.

The point of this blog was as follows – to recognise that teachers deserve
to feel intellectual stimulation, responsible levels of autonomy and efficacy
as well as a managed workload. Central or shared lessons can afford the
opportunity for teachers if they are used to refocus their wonderful minds on
the hard, more complex task of adapting to meet need IF we enable them to do so
through the systems and structures within an institution and provide the
development for this to happen.

Thoughts, as always, are welcome as I continue to shape this narrative.