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Life-long learning curve
Training to be a professional, rounded teacher doesn’t end on graduation, as our Chartered Teachers explain
Following on from our discussion between newly qualified teachers in the last issue of Teaching Scotland, we invited some Chartered Teachers to discuss their perspectives.
We were particularly interested in hearing their thoughts about professional development and the role that teachers with their experience and expertise can and should have within their schools and the wider educational community.
Enhancing your teaching and learning is obviously very important to you all. What inspired you to do this?
Gayle Thomson (GT): I started teaching in the early seventies, and realised that some of the more senior posts were more about bureaucracy and although I felt I could do that, I didn’t want to go down that road – I wanted to stay in the classroom. So my approach to my professional development was a way to recognise the extra work that I was doing.
Moira Macdonald (MM): I’d echo that. I did a lot of work with professional development modules and it came to the point where I said: “where can I go with these?” I knew I didn’t want to go into management so I did a Masters at Glasgow University. Then the Chartered Teacher qualification emerged and I felt that was exactly what we needed for practitioners who want to remain in the classroom, but still develop their professionalism.
Duncan Mackay (DM): I feel the same about staying at the front line with the pupils – the most important position in the school is actually teaching the children. One of the reasons I have pursued my professional development has been to gain a broader outlook on education as a whole, so I thought the Chartered Teacher programme was ideal for that. It’s good to take a step back, take a breath and reflect on your teaching and see things on a much broader and wider context.
Rosa Murray (RM): How did you find yourself becoming learners again? I’ve heard from a lot of CTs that once they became learners again they became reinvigorated.
MM: I’ve always continued my academic studies. We as teachers are always telling our pupils to keep pushing themselves, but we as teachers need to do that too. You have to practise what you preach. It’s an ongoing, never ending process of learning.
GT: It can remind you of how difficult learning is as well. Which is always useful when you are teaching children!
Christine MacGregor (CM): It also made me try out new things, come up with new ideas, challenge things you were doing just because you’ve always done them that way.
The Chartered Teacher programme, then, is about stepping back from your day-to-day work and broadening your perspectives and challenging your practices – allowing you to switch between being a teacher and being a learner.
Yvonne McBlain (YM): It’s even bigger than that. It’s about the ability to see the whole picture. It’s the “why aspect” – “Why am I doing that?” Before I started proper professional development, everything was instinctive. So for me, it was looking at that big picture in terms of academic and international ideas and then seeing how they were relevant to me and my teaching and then building that into my practices.
What would you see is the role of the Chartered Teacher within a school environment, and also within the wider education community?
YM: You are the translator and the interpreter who can take the academic theory and apply it to the classroom – an intellectual practitioner.
RM: It is actually good to use that word intellectual. For so many years in Scotland, we have dumbed everything down. We don’t talk about being academic. Teachers are teachers and to say anything about the intellectual or knowledge capacity of a teacher is frowned upon – that’s the stuff for universities. I think what has happened is teachers who have seriously invested in professional development have reclaimed the territory of intelligence.
DM: The main thing is about finding a way to fuse theory and practice. The advent of things like the Chartered Teacher programme means we as a profession have more access to academic papers and research and we are also applying this research, which can only be a good thing.
Can you give us any practical examples of where you have used the skills and experience you have accumulated as part of the Chartered Teacher programme to help colleagues in schools?
MM: The peer support is very effective as you are still based in the classroom, but you have the ability to influence others and engage in educational debate with others within a cluster, which I feel is really beneficial.
GT: I think mentoring a probationer in school, given what we have been through to become a Chartered Teacher, knowing how much work there is involved for a probationer, is a great example. I know the two probationers I have been working with have said what a great help I have been, helping them with timetabling and managing their workload and how to tackle each thing and have it done on time.
RM: What about in the actual classroom with teaching and learning? Any examples of practice or enquiry that you can think of?
Susan Morton (SM): An enormous amount. I think we’ve been a crucial role in curriculum development at every stage, from access 3 right through to advanced higher, curriculum for excellence, intermediate 2, I would say at every stage we have been leading development by passing out knowledge to colleagues and publishing papers in national journals.
DM: I think the role of a Chartered Teacher is important because we are very open to change, to new ideas and these sort of skills make the Chartered Teacher very adaptable to various roles – not just mentoring, but leadership as well.
GT: We need to acknowledge that so much work has been done by Chartered Teachers now, in terms of research and enhanced practice, and much of this has been integrated into the curriculum. That must have had a huge effect as more than 1,200 Chartered Teachers in Scotland across many, many schools will have had a profound influence.