The Unteachables Podcast

#168: What schools get profoundly wrong — with Andy Hargreaves

• Claire English

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What does it actually mean to be a professional in teaching? Not just "treated like one" — but what does professional knowledge, professional growth, and professional community actually look like in practice?

I got to sit down with one of the most cited education scholars alive — the incredible Andy Hargreaves — and honestly, I could have talked to him for hours. Andy is an author or editor of 40 books, an education advisor to governments across multiple countries, and the co-creator of the concept of Professional Capital — a framework that has genuinely changed the way educators and systems think about what it means to invest in teachers.

This is one of those episodes that I think is going to hit differently depending on where you are in your career. Whether you're in your first few years wondering if it's all worth it, or you're a seasoned teacher who's lost a bit of your spark, or you're a school leader trying to figure out why your staff keep burning out — Andy has something for you.

Here's a taste of what we got into:

In this episode, you'll learn:

  • What professional capital actually is — and the three types every teacher already has (and needs to grow)
  • Why staying in teaching longer than three years isn't just "getting expensive" — it's where the real expertise is built
  • The chess metaphor that will completely reframe how you see your early career (and honestly, any career stage)
  • What Andy believes schools are profoundly getting wrong about teacher wellbeing right now
  • Why "wellbeing add-ons" like yoga and meditation won't fix what's actually causing teacher ill-being
  • The three biggest causes of ill-being in schools — including one that hits way too close to home for Australian teachers
  • What collective autonomy means and why individual autonomy alone isn't the answer
  • Why the most powerful thing you can do as a teacher might be to fight for your autonomy together, not alone
  • What Andy will be sharing at EduTech Sydney — including his fascinating "teaching as repair work" framework

Have a question, comment, or just want to say hello? Drop us a text!

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Welcome And Classroom Management Mission

SPEAKER_00

Hi there teachers, welcome to the Unteachables Podcast. I'm your host, Claire English, and I am just a fellow teacher, a toddler mama, and a big old behaviour nerd on a mission to demystify and simplify that little thing called classroom management. The way we've all been taught to manage behaviour and classroom manage has left us playing crowd control, which is not something I subscribe to because we're not done since we're teachers. So listen in as I walk you through the game-changing strategies, and I mean the things that we can actually do in action in a classroom that'll allow you to lean into your beautiful values as a compassionate educator and feel empowered to run your room with a little more calm and dare I say it, a lot less chaos. I will see you in the episode. Hello, wonderful teachers, and welcome back to another episode of the Unteachables Podcast. If you've been listening along, you will know that I have been working with EduTech this year as their podcast partner, which is incredibly cool because I get to connect with some of the most inspiring, accomplished, and innovative educators. One such educator is Andy Hargraves, who will be one of the keynote speakers at this year's conference here in Sydney. And I have the privilege of talking to him here on the podcast today. Just a little bit about Andy before we get started. He has dedicated his life to working with teachers and schools to make learning and teaching more engaging, fulfilling, and collaborative for everyone, which is a bit of a goal, isn't it? He is an author or editor of 40 books. Andy, I have written one. I'm on my second, and I don't know how, like this just blows my mind. Hargraves is one of the most cited education scholars alive and has received 10 outstanding book awards. He regards that writing like teaching is not just about passing on information, but engaging readers with ideas in a way that feels intriguing and enjoyable. Andy is an education advisor to the First Minister of Scotland and for the Minister of Education for New Brunswick. He has been honored in the UK, Canada, the US, and here in Australia for services to public education and educational research. And he was awarded Boston College's Excellence in Teaching with Technology Award in 2015 in 2023. And he was named as Canada's Post Secondary Educator of the Year. And his most recent books are The Making of an Educator, Living Through and Learning from the Great Education Shift, Leadership from the Middle, and the Age of Identity. Welcome to the Unteachables Podcast, Andy. It is an absolute honor to be talking with you here today. And for listeners who may be newer to your work or may not have stumbled across your work, which I'm not sure how is possible after reading that, to be honest with you. But how would you describe you and who you are and the work you do in education right now?

Growing Up And Becoming A Teacher

SPEAKER_01

Who am I? Well, that is the hardest question there possibly is. And depending on the day you ask me, you will probably get a different answer. But uh I'm Andy Hargraves. I grew up in a working class family, uh low income, and about three years on uh welfare in uh the north of England. Uh it had a very loving family, it was good, and I had a fantastic uh primary school teacher who really made me want to go into education. I stayed in touch with her until her 80s. We laid the foundation stone of uh the new school building together. They invited me to do that. I did that with her. Uh so she really kind of got me into the idea of teaching. And then I went to high school, and uh two things happened in a boys' grammar school. It was the evil twin of what I experienced in uh primary school, and uh it also coincided with my dad dying and uh my mum falling on hard times and me having a lot of family responsibilities. So the first uh two or three years of of high school were really quite difficult. I was a chronic absentee. This is why I understand absenteeism. I like miss 50 days in one semester. So when I went to university, I wanted to go into teaching to, in a way, emulate the best teacher that I had and be the opposite of the worst teachers that I had. And I particularly wanted to go into teacher training uh so that I could help prepare a generation of the kind of fabulous teachers like like the teacher who taught me. Um I moved into uh research uh in England and then in Canada, the US, and then back in Canada again where I am now. And I'd say all my life has been about working with teachers, not working on them or talking at them, uh learning a lot from them when I do that, trying to reflect things back to them in their very busy, overcrowded lives that can help them make sense of what it is they're doing. And I try to understand people I don't always agree with as well as people I do agree with. I think there's a lot of people out there, including people who look at impact factors and effect sizes, uh, who are all about trying to get teachers to do something different, without, first of all, trying to understand uh why teachers do what they do, because they have good reasons for doing uh what they do. And it comes down to uh three things really. It comes down to uh who they are, where they've been, and who they're with. And if you can understand where they've been, what they've done, who who they are and what they're about, uh and and who they work with, you know, we are we are who we work with, then you can understand a lot about teaching, and then you can start to think about the issues like how do we make teaching better, how do we um keep teachers in teaching, how do we motivate them, how do we uh excite them, how do we build a stronger profession? So I guess that's about it, really. I'm 75 now, I'm practically dead uh chronologically, but feel very much alive existentially.

SPEAKER_00

I think what you've just said is such a breath of fresh air to so many teachers who are listening. I really do think that so many are going to resonate with your story. Not just the fact that, like, you know, a lot of teachers who listen probably had the same types of experiences where they're either like going towards something or running away from something, like learning in the positive or the negative, or trying to emulate or trying to create something different for their students. But also like teachers are just desperate to be hurt and to be treated like the professionals in the room because they're on the ground, you know, and to hear you say that I think would drop a lot of teachers' shoulders.

SPEAKER_01

It's a profession. Uh, people in teaching have a lot of knowledge, a lot of experience. They have theoretical knowledge, they've done the courses, the preparation, the in-service training, uh, the master's degrees, uh, all that that they've also done in inquiry and reflection within their own schools. But but the experiences are knowledge as well, you know, the kind of kids you've had, the kind of classes you've had, the sort of schools you've taught in, the different kinds of principles, good and bad, uh, that you've experienced and what you've learned from them about your own teaching and about leadership. So uh but professional knowledge, that knowledge is is knowledge, just like it is in medicine, in engineering, uh in any other kind of profession.

Professional Capital In Three Parts

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, absolutely. And and that brings me on to the extensive work that you've done on professional capital. And some of the listeners might not know what professional capital means. Um, but you also talk about like the importance of yes, exactly. Uh and you know, and the importance of just trusting teachers as professionals. So, what is the idea of professional capital? And in a true school that really truly gets this right, how would that look like and feel day-to-day for teachers?

SPEAKER_01

So the idea of professional capital is an original idea. It was invented in 2012 by my good friend and colleague uh Michael Fullen, who some of your listeners will also quite possibly have heard of. And uh we didn't set out to write a book on professional capital. It's an idea that came to us in the middle of what we're writing to try and help us understand three things. Um, three things with one kind of anchor idea. So a professional capital is like all kinds of capital, which is if you want to get a return, you have to make an investment. Uh, if you want to get a return on your money, you've got to make an investment. If you want to get a return on your people, you've got to invest in your people. And so we uh in time, this took a long time, not just uh an hour or two. Uh we we came to the conclusion there are three kinds of capital. Two are well known and one is a bit new. So human capital is what you have as an individual. It's it's your qualifications, your certification, your knowledge of your subject, your skills, your talents, your emotional uh intelligence, um, all that. So that's the human capital of individuals. That's what most systems focus on. Uh so they want to get the right people, and then once they've got the right people, they tend to forget about them and leave them to it. So we said there's two other kinds of capital. One is um one is what uh we take it from the field of law, which is decisional capital, and it's a funny kind of term, but in law that means case law. So it's the knowledge you get from dealing with lots and lots of different cases and how that builds your judgment over time. Um, for us, in a more experiential way, teaching's also like that. So, so the uh you know, seeing this kind of kid, that kind of kid many times over, and then another kind of kid you've never seen before, uh, this sort of special need, that kind of special need. Uh, over time you you develop uh judgment. And when you meet an unfamiliar situation, you begin to be able to trust your judgment. And we'll come back to trust in in in just a minute. But but the second kind is this decision-making capital, and that that takes time. Uh, so you need to stay in the job, not leave it after three or four years, like some people think teachers should, and move on before they get expensive or uh uh jaded or cynical. Uh so you need time, and you don't just need practice and repetition, but you need people who will coach you a bit, mentor you a bit, challenge you, stretch you, uh try a different year, try a different subject, try different, try a different project, take take things on that put you out of your comfort zone a bit. And and then third, where there is a lot of literature is uh social capital. So social capital is the capital that we have together. And uh the evidence on this is overwhelming, which is that the people you're with uh can make you into a better teacher. And I think some of your listeners will know what that's like when they move from one school to another and uh that they find they've got a different set of colleagues, that they're not on their own, they're not competitive, they work together, they're supportive, they share their ideas, uh, they admit their mistakes, they they talk about when they don't know what to do. Um, and they'll become stronger as a teacher. And then sadly it's also true the opposite, that teachers who felt they were very good teachers will suddenly find they've moved. Um, perhaps they just made a bad decision or they had to move because partner was changing jobs or something like that. And and then they may find they become a worse teacher. And and that's simpler because then they have to keep their ideas to themselves. If if if they're struggling, nobody will help them. They might even gloat and say, Well, I never have difficulty with kids like this. And uh, and so you become a worse teacher. So who you're with is is really important. And what we're figuring out now is when I started thinking about writing about collaboration 40 years ago, um, that the issue was do teachers collaborate or don't they collaborate? And I think now most schools you'll see there is teamwork, there is uh collaboration of different kinds. Now now we're really looking a lot more at what are the key components of working together that make it more effective rather than um constraining and feeling like you're being forced into something, or loosey goosey, and uh you feel like you're talking a lot about things but not actually getting things done or improving things. So uh the three these three together uh make up what we call uh professional capital. And it's um uh people like it a lot. It's been translated into Mandarin, into Japanese, into Spanish, into Korean, into many different languages. So it's um there may not be any department or policy of professional capital in any government anywhere, uh, but a lot of people are using it to think about their schools and their systems.

SPEAKER_00

I think when it comes to like harnessing what is the magic of a teacher? Like, what is it that makes a good teacher a good teacher? And I think it's so hard to talk about all of the facets that make that so like what what do teachers bring into the classroom? And I think that's such a beautiful way to describe it, especially the idea of like the decision-making capital, because we don't talk enough about like that. Is a like I always think back to my early career and just making really bad decisions and just really you know, and then I look back and I cringe, and I it's so good that I cringe because it means that now I've got these experiences, you just can't teach that in teacher training, you know, and that value can't be lost. Um, so so it's so nice, and I work a lot with you know early career teachers, and when they find their people in their place and they find a good faculty, and I just see how that transforms their experience of teaching, and you know, I've experienced that myself, and I think it's just such a beautiful concept to understand as a teacher.

SPEAKER_01

Well, well, something that uh I talk about quite a bit is if something's worth doing, it's worth doing badly before it's worth doing well. And um what we all have to do things badly before we do them well, um, and then we need an environment that's a bit forgiving about that and and that can help us get over it the next time. Uh I have uh this evening, uh every evening I have three grandchildren who come and uh stay with us. My wife's with them now while we are doing this. Uh they do all their after-school here. Uh I see them like six days a week, so I have a lot of conversations with them. Uh my grandson Jackson is 13. When he was about nine, he was trying to learn a new skill, um, soccer, actually, and he was struggling with it. And so I said, Jackson, you know, here's the thing: you keep trying it and it's not working. But I said, There's there's a moment just before you can do something when you can't, and and you never know when that last moment will be. And and when you've had that last moment, you need to celebrate it. And and so right now, when you're trying to do this and it's not working, could be that last moment, and uh so I thought, is this going in or not going in? And then um a week or two later, I overheard him talking to one of his friends saying, you know, there's a moment just before you can't do something, you can do something when when you can't. So uh I I think at least that little point got home. But I think that's true of all of us, really. And you know, I've I've given very bad talks. Uh I still do sometimes. My first talk after COVID in person was hideous. I'd forgotten how to give a talk in person. Uh the room was dark, people had masks on, I was depressed. Um the they invited me because I thought I was they thought I was funny, and and I was the most depressive tragedian that you could possibly have dragged into the room. So, you know, we've all had bad days and and continuing, even the best teachers, it it's good when you've had a bad day and you will get them. Uh, share that with your with your colleagues, uh, you know, have a bit of gallows humor, uh, share share it with them, and and that will give them more confidence the next time that they find something a bit difficult.

Wellbeing Is Purpose Not Add-Ons

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, that's that's a wonderful story. Thank you for sharing that. I'm just thinking about my toddler who she's chunking, she's three now, but she's been trying to learn how to put her shoes on for like the last two years. And every time there's meltdowns, meltdowns, meltdowns, she won't let me touch them, she won't let me do anything with her shoes. And then there's come this point where she's putting them on by herself, and I'm like, oh my gosh, like I didn't know when the last time was when you know, so it's such a nice way to look at everything. Um it's deeply human, isn't it? Like teaching is deeply human, but the problem with teaching is we're being deeply human and trying to learn these things with 30 kids that are like reflecting back every single mistake that we're making. So um, when it comes to all of those things, I think about teacher well-being a lot when it comes to us kind of going in and flailing and failing and getting back up and you know, having the resilience and all of the things to develop all of those skills and develop the decision making capital. And but teacher well-being is really important in that whole process when we're trying to develop as educators, but sometimes, and I've had this experience in schools myself, and I talk to a lot of teachers who have who've had this experience where teacher well-being is treated as like a bit of a tack-on, a bit um, you know, a bit of a like, you know, let's just talk about well-being in a really like fluffy kind of way, and then the individual has kind of got the responsibility to take care of themselves rather than the system around the teacher fostering that well-being. What do schools need to know? And I know it's like a really big topic, but what if there's a school leader listening or people who are you know thinking about well-being on like a larger level, what do schools really need to understand about supporting well-being in teachers in a way that is sustainable?

Technology Outdoors And Meaningful Learning

SPEAKER_01

Well, I'm I'm ironically, I'm gonna make the question even bigger and say I think there's two things about teaching we're getting profoundly wrong at the moment about teachers' work and teachers' lives. In uh just about 18 months ago, uh I wrote one of six expert papers for the United Nations high-level panel on the future of the teaching profession, which was 17 uh ex-ministers of education from all over the world and teacher union leaders. And they wrote this enormous report. Uh, they have 59 recommendations. That's about 53 recommendations too many. Uh never never have 59 recommendations, nobody will read them. Um, and they have five other expert papers as well as mine. The other expert papers all said the things you might expect them to say. They're not wrong, they're right about what will improve the future of teaching and retain our teachers and attract them. So things like pay, private status, uh talking teaching up rather than talking teaching down, uh class sizes, uh uh working conditions, uh time, uh, opportunities to collaborate. So we we we pretty much know all these, we've been saying them for decades, they're still true. And I thought, what can I offer that is a bit different? And it came out of a project we've been doing, funded by the Lego Foundation, where we had uh 40 schools, we created a network of uh among 40 schools in uh Canada across uh seven provinces, so Canada's like Australia, we don't have really a federal system, and um it was how to support vulnerable kids after COVID-19 and improve their engagement and improve their well-being. And and our answer through the project was to create opportunities for innovation within within their learning. And what we found, which is not surprising, is that if you create opportunities for learning amongst your kids, it creates opportunities for interesting teaching amongst the teachers and it improves teacher well-being as well as improving student well-being. There's there's no kids' well-being without teacher well-being, and there's no kids' engagement without teacher engagement. And I think the most systems in most places, when they talk about teacher retention, what they're trying to do, if you'll go with the metaphor a second, is they're trying to clench the system to hold teachers in. Uh and they're trying to do that with you know, bit a bit more time or go on a four-day week rather than a five-day week, which Scotland is looking at. So they're playing with things around the edge of teaching. Whereas what really disillusions teachers is demoralization, literally demoralization, a loss of purpose. The feeling coming in that you want to do something exciting, you want to light fires under your kids, you want to turn the light bulbs on, you want to make a difference in your life, you want kids who've got difficult home lives to forget everything and the moments that that you can help create for them within within the classroom. And and I think during COVID, we uh and after. COVID, we made a mistake with well-being, which is not dissimilar. And we thought kids have had a very difficult time. So when they come in, we need to keep everything calm. We need to keep them safe. We need to kind of bring back Abraham Maslow. So we have safety, security, shelter, sleep, food, belonging, all that. And if we take care of all that, finally we can look at teaching and learning. So what teachers and schools wanted to do was make schools like they think they were before. And what they should have done, which is what teachers in our project did, was just have gone the other way and put more energy, not more safety and calmness, but put more, I mean not make them unsafe, but but but put more energy and excitement in into the learning. And I think then uh the the kids experience well-being. They're not just safe, they thrive. They have this sense of flow where they get completely lost in in what it is they're doing. And so for kids and for teachers alike, uh with well-being, we've tended to tag things on to the normal day of school. So, you know, yoga, um, growth mindsets, um uh meditation, uh, reflection, social and emotional, social and emotional learning. Uh, all these are like add-ons or things we do after school rather than things we're doing in school, in the classroom, in in the learning. Um we wrote a book at the end of COVID called Wellbeing in Schools. You might have seen a couple of things based on that. It's quite a short book, and it it's based on work we did with teachers in 10 school districts in um in Ontario, in Canada. And uh we said there are basically sort of three systemic things that might make a profound difference uh within the curriculum, not just once the curriculum's done with or as an add-on to it. And uh the the first of these, which has become very uh uh top of the list now, is but we said it pretty early, is have a much more reflective and critical relationship to technology. Um use technology. Uh, but we saw lots of uses of technology in our projects, but but they didn't dominate the projects or drive them. They were in them. Uh don't be on screens all the time, don't have everything on a Google Classroom or whatever your platform is. Um have conversation, have things with paper and pen, have things with you know glue and crayon and uh other things as well. So we said every school um should have a group that looks at this and should involve the kids and involve the parents. And as you know, now with the social media ban in Australia, that's like top of the line. But we were saying this in 2019, um, and we published an article on it in uh our leading education magazine in the US, and it was the most read article that month by all five sectors of their market teachers, leaders, uh, system leaders, university people, and and so on. Uh, the the second was um uh uh get the kids outside. So uh our indigenous communities really understand this, uh, that uh they learn better outside than they do indoors. And what we know, what is good for our Indigenous kids, is actually good for all kids. If you spend more time outdoors, uh there's um there's a physical benefit, there's an emotional uh uh benefit, there's a cognitive benefit. You can certainly when you get back, you you can focus more because you've kind of run off all your energy. Um there's a spiritual benefit, and I don't necessarily mean a religious benefit, but the whole sense of being connected to nature and uh this can take different forms. It it can be hiking, it can be swimming, it can be having building a little edible garden, like in a school I was in in England uh last month. Uh so there's many different ways of being outdoors, but but you can build that into the curriculum, not not have it done as something extra outside. And the third thing we talked about was especially at a time now when many teenagers um are not just losing motivation, but they're losing hope for the future. Um, many young people now are wondering whether they should even have their own children when they get married. Um is it really worth bringing them into the world? They're terrified about war. And you know, right now, in March of 2026, they have extremely good reason to be terrified about war with what's going on around us. They're really concerned about the environment, uh, which is uh, and you have it in spades in Australia, extreme heat, uh, extreme floods, uh the the the the barrier reef. And and so thirdly, we say, and and we it's important to help our kids not to feel victims of of this or powerless, but through their learning, uh, I don't know, studying the water quality in the local river, sharing the results with the with the community that that there's meaning and purpose in their learning, and that there's meaning and purpose in the teachers' teaching. But the problem is, Claire, um that in many countries they have, including here, the equivalent of Neplan. And and what Neplan does is so many people will say, yeah, we should do that. We'll have a well-being day, we'll we'll we can do this, we can do that. But but Neplan and competition between schools in a very unequal system, which Australia is, uh, means that that people end up spending too much of their time on um preparation for tests, because they know that that getting the families and the kids into their school rather than somebody else's school uh absolutely depend on that. So if I wanted to add a fourth thing about well-being, I'd say, like the first thing you can do, and I did this when I was an advisor for the premier here with some success, is your first priority is get rid of the things in the school that are actively creating ill-being, because you can control those. The stuff outside, you can have a goal with, you can, you know, change the curriculum, you can uh connect with the culture. But but but the absolute no-brainer for teachers, schools, school systems is whatever's making people feel sick, uh, the kids and the teachers, get rid of it and and do it in a very focused and deliberate way.

Testing Behaviour And Tech Pressures

SPEAKER_00

What are the kind of things that you think are causing ill-being in schools?

SPEAKER_01

Uh there's uh two mainly, I mean I mean two in a bit, uh, but I'd say uh first of all, uh bad uses and excessive uses of technology. Um and we all understand this now, I think. Uh that there's a danger that there may be too much like a reformed smoker thing going the other way. Um people just give it up entirely, and you know, we give up the silicon chip for the graphite pencil and uh go back uh, you know, in a digital age, go back to analog solutions. So it's like everything, it's like figure out here's a tool. Um, in what ways can it help us, and in what ways does it hold us back or crowd crowd other things out? Testing is is definitely an issue, and that's not just the existence of the testing, but but if you have any impact as a leader in your school, and all teachers are leaders, you know, teachers are just leaders of little people, not leaders of big people, and some teachers are leaders of big people too. So if you have any role as a teacher in in a school, um really start to think about how you manage uh those assessments. I believe, and I've been in schools that believe if you do the right things with your kids, you get them excited about learning, you get them switched on, to some degree the test results will look after themselves. So this is not just a case of expecting other people to take care of that and whine if they don't, but it needs a focused conversation about how can we keep our priorities focused on on what is uh really important to us, I think. And then I think the third thing, and there are others, but let's just stick with three, is um behavior. Uh, I think uh schools are having a lot of problems with uh with behavior now. Uh there are complicated reasons for that. Uh, some of it is some of it is the technology, uh, some of it is just everything's going too fast. Uh, everything's going too fast for the schools, it's going too fast for the families. It's hard to keep your head above water. Um there's uh a wider range of uh special educational needs in our schools now. Uh some of that is just recognizing stuff that we hadn't done before, but some of it is definitely some of it is definitely post-COVID, some of it may work its way through the system. Uh I I always felt after COVID we should add a year to high school uh and give people an extra year to to see it through rather than kind of rushing everybody to catch up to where the age norms were. But we've that trains probably left the station now, I think. Um and and I uh I think a big thing here, including with technology, is um schools need to get a boldness about having productive conversations with parents about their kids' behavior and and and about what the adults in the school are doing that are creating that behavior, and more difficult, what the adults in the home are doing that's creating that that behavior. Uh there's a colleague I know in the US called uh Fred Hess. He's uh he's right of center politically. He is um works for an organization called the American Enterprise Institute. Uh, but I often find myself agreeing with him. Um one of the things he says is in the 1980s, uh uh schools were very inflexible, and we expected parents to make all the adjustments in terms of you know getting the kids to do the homework and showing up on time and uh whatever their circumstances, uh, poverty, culture, indigenity, parents had to make all the adjustments. And he says the problem is now is we've gone too far the other way, which is it's now schools that have to make all the adjustments. We can't say anything against um uh uh uh that is critical of parents. I mean, we can't go around wagging the finger at uh uh that that's not going to work either, scolding people. Uh, but but we we do need to recognize the issue. And I think some parents will be relieved. Some parents will welcome uh support with uh how to interact with their kids at home, how to monitor their technology, how to change their own behavior with technology when the when the when the kids are around. So, you know, if I was to pick three things, those would be what like three of the priorities.

Collective Autonomy Over Individual Freedom

SPEAKER_00

That's fascinating. Like the idea of a productive like conversation with parents, but it's such a societal thing, isn't it? And you said it like the parents, like we're so on the technology and we're trying to navigate. I mean, like I'm 36, but I still remember a time without phones and technology, you know, it's actually such a new thing where we're trying to navigate all of these technologies and we're doing it wrong and we're failing. And um, having like there it requires so much self-reflection in order for us to move forward, then, doesn't it? Like from parents, teachers, everybody involved, just for the betterment for our students. What I loved in your discussion, by the way, about teacher well-being was that everything you said came back to one kind of like real core thing, which was teachers just want to have the autonomy to teach really well and to be trusted to teach really well. We don't necessarily like, I don't think I've ever met a teacher that's like, I need more holidays. Like, I need more, like I've I've met a lot of teachers that say they'd like the autonomy to teach in the way that they want, or to not have to teach to this standard I standardized test when they've got students in their classroom operating at 10 different grade levels. You know, I've heard a lot of teachers say that they would like to be able to teach in the way that they know will resonate with their students. So like that autonomy and just that trust and just being able to teach. It just seems so simple.

SPEAKER_01

Exactly. You know, teachers aren't just um teachers aren't just a bunch of Cindy Laupers who just want to have fun. Uh, I mean, you know, they're not against fun. Uh they there is a big place for fun in in the curriculum, but but what what they what they really want is fulfillment. Uh so they vast majority, it's a cliche, but but the vast majority of teachers really do want to make a difference in people's lives. They really do. Um, and that expresses itself in all kinds of ways. Some people want to change the world, some people, some people want to, you know, live a life of faith and service, some people want to connect with indigenous heritage, some some some some people just want to give the kids a bit more uh a bit more excitement and and joy and knowledge than than they'd otherwise have. So that that that is the core thing about teaching. And there's all kinds of things that nibble away at the edges of that and undermine that. Some are policies, some are uh some's just time, some is some is just energy. Um but but what can really help you to come back to the theme of uh collaboration is um if you have a good collaborative environment, you can focus on what to not do as well as what you should do. Uh it's hard to do that on your own. You always feel guilty. I've written about teaching and guilt. I have a paper on teaching and guilt. Uh and you measure a teacher's guilt by the size of the bag they carry. So, so however much stuff is in the bag that they carry home, you know, to take it and mark it, and they'll mark, they'll mark like a tiny bit of it and take the whole bag back next next day. Uh, you know, the bigger the bag, the bigger the guilt. And I I know teachers who put bags in their bags. Um, it you know, they got like mega bags basically. So if if you're on your own, eventually that will get you down. Um you know, martyrs do not make good teachers. Um, and when you do things collectively, uh you can't do everything, and you're ambitious and you set reasonable uh boundaries to what it is you're able to accomplish uh together as a community. And autonomy is a big part of that, but but uh I've always been for a long time I've been opposed to individual autonomy, which is everybody can do what they want. So, you know, you can teach dinosaurs in year three, and then the next one can teach you in year four, and then the next one can teach it in year five without any coordination or or collaboration be between them. Um, and if it's only individual autonomy, you have the license to be a brilliant teacher or a terrible teacher, and and and nobody's gonna come back at that at you for that. Um but but the way that Michael Fullen and I talk about autonomy is what we call collective autonomy. So collective autonomy means we we need systems that give teachers more autonomy from the bureaucracy, uh, more autonomy from the top down, more autonomy from accountability, test scores, um uh all that. Um, and but less autonomy from each other. So the trade is if you want to be trusted more by the system, uh you've got to trust each other more. Uh and and you've got to do that in an active way, not not just in a in a in a passive way. So that's the bargain. You find it in other professions at their best. Um medicine, law, uh all the others, you know, lawyers collaborate on the cases they work on together. So autonomy is really important, and many places I work in with uh teachers definitely are not given enough autonomy. Um, but it's your autonomy together that is a thing you should really be fighting for as a teacher.

Early Career Builds Your Queen

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I think that's such a good distinction to make because we do speak about autonomy, but then exactly right, there needs to also be the structures in place. There needs to be all of those things. The time actually, when I started to like when I started in my teaching career, there was this culture where everyone was really protective of their work, like no one would share anything because I did all of this work and I'm not sharing it. And it was just so destructive, like and moving into another space where we were then really collaborative and we were able to do you know, those like it just changed everything. There's one more thing I really want to talk to you about quickly before we finish up, and that is I recently heard you speak about the making of an educator, and I just loved the discussion so much, and I know that it'll resonate with so many of the teachers who are listening, but you mentioned that every single year in a teaching career matters, obviously, but those early years, those foundational years are especially shaping for any educators listening who are in their early careers and they're really trying to navigate these complex systems. What do you think they would need to hear right now?

SPEAKER_01

This is a really helpful question to ask. And um I wish I'd known the answer to it a lot earlier in my career rather than looking back. Uh the the things you do in early career sometimes they make no sense. So sometimes they seem to be not very important. Just a teacher, just a teacher with this class or that that class. Um, you know, and people will look at me and say, Well, you change entire countries. But you know, my wife spent uh 30 odd years as a teacher, then as a school administrator, and she's probably changed more people's lives than I have, to be absolutely frank, when you add them all up uh across all those years. So you know, I want to say a couple of things. Actually, three. One is one is uh I see being a teacher, I'm still a teacher. I s I teach adults now. Um this is teaching, writing is teaching, it's all teaching. Um I see it as um the the the when you're teaching or learning to teach, it's like chess. So you begin by moving these pathetic little pawns, one square or two squares at a time in only two possible directions. And and it feels so small and insignificant. And what's worse in teaching sometimes is people tell you there are all kinds of moves you can't make, as well as the moves that that you want to make. So it can feel really frustrating. But one day, after a few years, perhaps hopefully less, you realize you can bring out your bishop or your rook. After a few more, you can eventually bring out the most powerful piece on the board, which is you can bring out your queen. So uh uh don't don't go into teaching like people want to become uh part of a startup company or an internet influencer and have instant fame and instant success and instant money. You're definitely not gonna get instant money. Uh um understand that this is something you'll build bit by bit, and that one day things will open up for you in a way you never imagined. And all these bits and pieces you've put together will take a shape, a shape you didn't anticipate or even plan for. Um and that shape becomes fabulous, I think, when that moment falls to you. In the meantime, two other things matter. The pawns matter. The pawns are very important piece on the chessboard. Nothing else would ever move or or or be able to come out from the back if if it wasn't for all those careful moves you made with with your pawns. So the children in your class, the the the class of the teacher next door, um all all these things are really do not underestimate them. They're they're so important. And and the third thing is, and you don't know it. The experiences you have early in your career, if you get a chance to choose them, often you won't. They will follow you for the rest of your life. You are learning things, and the things you learn will follow you. So if I can give two examples, you know, one is personal, uh, and then the other is what I've seen a lot in innovative schools. Um so the personal one is uh in my late 20s, early 30s, um I I found myself by accident in England as a university lecturer in teacher training, um, in some of the first university school partnerships that had that had ever been uh made uh in the world, really. Those partnerships have become uh unseen my work as work with teachers in partnership with teachers as equals has become a huge part of who I am and and and what I can offer. Um a second little example of that is that um in the middle of Margaret Thatcher's uh politics, uh they had a problem motivating uh there was mass unemployment, and they found it very difficult to motivate non-academic kids. So they developed alternate forms of assessment in the 1980s. And I was in the ground, I was, you know, as a minion, really, but but I was in on the ground floor of of one of those. And uh two years ago, I got to influence the whole country of Ireland after COVID uh because I was one of four people who evaluated its um assessment strategy, and we discovered that parents and kids, most parents and almost all kids, hated the final exam in high school where a hundred percent of your future depended on the sit-down exam. And we managed to produce the evidence to talk the government into reducing that to 60 percent rather than a hundred, a whole country. But that began in uh in my late twenties, and my first university job was with um the open university, the first distance learning institution in the world, no students, and um so you'd write a course material, then you'd sit in a team of a dozen people, you'd do four drafts, and they'd all give you feedback on your draft, and and you got no right of reply until you'd heard from all 12. And it's quite stressful. But I also learned from that as an academic the importance of collaboration, working with other people. I've written or edited 40 books, about 34 of those have been done with other people. Uh and not all of them have been great, some have been a monster, but but the vast majority because that happens sometimes, but the vast majority have been great. And amongst teachers themselves, um I've well we did a study uh a few years ago of six high schools, three innovative and three traditional, and what their teachers' experiences were of educational change over 30 years. So their experiences of many changes, not just what happened to a particular change. And one thing we'd learned was that um when a school sets itself up as an innovative, break the mold, completely new school, it often hires new teachers or people who are very enthusiastic and so on. And in time, sadly, some of those schools lose a bit of their mojo. The teachers move on, the the principal leaves, the focus moves somewhere else. But when we follow those teachers, they go to other schools, and and that they can't quite be as full-on as they were in the last one, but they take a lot of what a lot of what they've learned elsewhere as a department head, and then as a principal, and then perhaps as a cabinet secretary of of education. So so that these things you learn very early on in career, you you cannot imagine, as well as being important now, just how important they're going to be to you in in the future. And if you can have what I didn't have, which is some reflective relationship to that, you'll be able to make even more of it than I've been able to make of it.

SPEAKER_00

Andy, I appreciate those insights so much. And I know that myself as well, and everybody listening is going to be thinking about those pawns, whether they're later on in their career and they're thinking back reflectively and going, what is it that shaped me into the educator I am today? Or someone that's like in the trenches and thinking about like what pawns am I moving right now, and just imagining the potential for their future and their leadership. And when I say leadership, I don't just mean like school leadership or like, I mean like the leadership in their classroom, because that's really important as well. You said your wife is an educator for 30 years, and I think like we need to value like teachers in the classroom being like such incredible leaders in this case. Um, Andy, I could honestly sit here and have a cup of tea and talk to you for hours because you are just such an incredible person. But before we wrap up, is there one thing, there one piece of work that disabled teachers just found you? What one thing do you think teachers should explore further about your work? Is there like a book or a talk or something you've created that you could point them to to learn more about you? And I'll be putting all of the links to your stuff in the show notes as well if people want to discover more.

Teaching As Repair Work

SPEAKER_01

So let's conclude by talking about what I'll be talking about at the EduTech uh conference in uh June when I'm in Australia. Sadly, I'll only be there for two or three days. I've got to get back for a but we've got family visitors coming to Canada from the UK. So it's based on the work we did with with the Lego Foundation, and uh, I don't want to give it all away, but but uh you can find a piece online with a magazine called Ed Cannet if you want to get a big bit of a heads up in advance. And um, it's a piece called Teaching to Repair the World. So so I see teaching and indeed writing as repair work. Um, so when I'm writing, I'm building, and when I'm editing, I'm repairing. And um this takes three forms, I think. The first is certainly saw through our Lego project work, and and what we're seeing with the change in economies. I mean, at the time we're talking, uh, our Prime Minister in Canada, uh uh Mark Carney, is with your Prime Minister in in Australia, and and talking about how they can help reshape the global economy. And part of that is is uh more uh countries are gonna get manufacturing again. Um and I I don't just mean countries where labor is very cheap, but I mean all countries. They're they're gonna be manufacturing nearer home, and um and so that means uh lots of kids, not just the non-academic kids, uh need to be engaged with making, doing, and fixing things. And um what you do when you do that is uh it's what John Dewey, the classic philosopher, understood, which is it connects the head, the heart, and the hand. And and and so learning is a whole body experience, and and teaching becomes becomes a whole body experience as well. And uh that I think we see that in primary school quite a lot, but but when we get to high school, secondary school, only some kids get to do that rather than rather than other kids, and that's a mistake. Uh teaching is also repair work in in terms of the people who uh get the repair and and who do the repair work. So uh we don't have kids coming into school who are broken, but we do have kids coming into school more and more who are damaged. Uh they're they're damaged by intergenerational trauma, they're damaged by war and conflict and violence and loss uh overseas as uh refugees. They're they're uh damaged by um challenges that that they may have in terms of sometimes uh uh challenges of being bullied, uh digital addiction and exploitation. So so a part of teaching is repairing people, it's about building people. Um the Germans have a word for it, they call education buildung, which means building, which is about building the person. Uh, so we're not just building knowledge, we're we're building all the way through school, we're building people as well. And as we talked about before, Claire, it's also about uh helping our kids in a world that is falling into despair and disrepair, helping our kids feel that they have a role and they have a stake, now and in the future, in repairing that world and and putting it back together and making it whole and making themselves whole, and not just as they were, but but even better than they were when they came to us in the first place. So I think for for me that's what that's that's what teaching comes down to in the end. Um it's not hard to say, but it's much harder to do, but necessary.

Final Thanks And Where To Find

SPEAKER_00

I really hope that I can break away from my booth and come and watch your keynote. I would be yeah, I'd be so excited to do so. And I really hope to be able to meet you there as well. So if you walk past my podcast booth and pop in and take a little coffee or something, um, it'd be wonderful to speak to you because you have been so inspiring. You brought so much value here on the podcast, and I am so grateful. Thank you so much for your time today, Andy.

SPEAKER_01

Thank you, Claire.

Head Shot

Claire English

Host