Teacherly Authority is the social dynamic – a person-to-person relationship – that is the main mechanism for cultural transmission from one generation to the next. This is not tacit learning nor simple imitation, teacherly authority is an explicit relationship, a social role dynamic, and it hinges upon the perceived legitimacy of the relationship. Teacherly Authority is the basis for the Constructive Mutualism paradigm that can replace the current, failing Behaviourist paradigm.

The basic mechanism is asymmetric, one person (‘the teacher’) has a greater capacity than the other (‘the student’) [1], a capacity which they want to teach for the benefit of the student [2]. This greater capacity is recognised and valued by the student [3] who thereby accepts to pay attention to the teacher and to wherever the teacher directs their attention [4].

For teacherly authority to come into force, all four conditions ([1] - [4]) must be met, but especially, students must willingly agree to play their part in the relationship.

When this occurs we have a student who is highly engaged, willingly doing their best work, and minimising any disruptions or distractions to maintain the relationship with their teacher.  It is the establishment of teacherly authority with their students – with all their students – that characterises those teachers who have a life-long impact on their students.

This then begs the question, if the presence and exercise of teacherly authority is intrinsic to being human, and when exercised, we get the orderly and effective transmission of culture that we are seeking, what has gone wrong? Why isn’t teacherly authority the norm in our schools – every student engaged in this dynamic with every teacher?

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Teacherly Authority breaks down most often (although not exclusively) in the third condition, the student does not value what the teacher is offering and thus does not willingly agree to engage in the teacherly authority social dynamic.

It is easy to say, “students don’t know what is good for them and so they don’t value what I want to teach them.”  But saying it blinds us to the possibility that students do know, intuitively at least, what is good for them, and they sense that what the teacher is offering should not be their primary concern.  In other words, there are other things that are more important for them to pay attention to.

Education systems recognise this too.  The adoption of twenty-first century skills explicitly lays out that there are Competencies and Character Qualities (which combined, we can call Core Growth Skills) in addition to the Foundational Literacies that have formed the basis, in one way or another, for school curriculum, and therefor for teacherly authority – where it has existed – since at least the 1950’s.  The figure below gives one expression of this new range of skills.

Young people need to prepare themselves to face up to an uncertain future and with well-developed Core Growth Skills they can acquire the Foundational Literacies but having only acquired the Foundational Literacies they may struggle to acquire the Core Growth Skills. The ideal is to acquire both Foundational Literacies and Core Growth Skills in parallel and it is here where shifting the basis for teacherly authority becomes key.

It is Core Growth Skills that are desired, and needed, by the young in our current era and thus can form a new basis for teacherly authority.  Students value these capacities, and - if their teachers have them and offer them - will willingly enter a teacherly authority dynamic to be able to acquire them.

Once the social dynamic of teacherly authority has been established then the student will pay attention as directed by the teacher and the teacher can direct their attention to the subject matter that they want to teach, students then willingly do their best work.  In this way both Foundational Literacies and Core Growth Skills can be efficiently acquired in parallel.

Teacherly authority must now be created by the teacher offering to teach something that is not within their subject area but IS within their capacity as a healthy, motivated and engaged adult. Such healthy adults have capacities that are attractive to students, they are just not being offered in a way that forms a teacherly authority dynamic.

It is easy to be overwhelmed by the thought of teaching the full range of twenty-first century skills, especially the Core Growth Skills.  How do we teach initiative or communication or leadership?  However, the Core Growth Skills are underpinned by four capacities, which are central to being human.  The figure below shows the relationships between these four key capacities and the life skills that young people need to develop to be able to face up to an uncertain future.

Three of these capacities emerge in young people sequentially: relevance realisation/insight from birth, getting things done from about 18 months and caring for others from about four to six years. Unconstrained, the typical child would be developing these capacities for a major part of their development into adult maturity.

Yet, the typical child has not been unconstrained, and their natural development has been impeded using pseudo teacherly authority to focus children’s attention exclusively on the Foundational Literacies and, by default, preventing attention being paid to these core capacities. Thus, rather than teachers having these life skills as a matter of course, and thus encouraging their development in their students, many adults lack them as well.

‘Relevance realisation’, according to the cognitive scientist, John Vervaeke, is the fundamental process that underpins all our cognitive functions. As such, this is a capacity that we see emerging in the very youngest of children.  What is being realised is that which, out of the ‘combinatorially explosive’ number of possibilities presented by our senses, is relevant to us in this moment.  This is a child realising that the square brick in her hand will fit into the square hole in her toy.

Relevance realisation is the basis for insight, which deals with converting ill-defined problems into well-defined ones and helps us correct how we limit our attempts to solve a problem by what we consider salient or relevant.

Insight is a foundational capability, and in terms of twenty-first century skills, underpins creativity, curiosity and adaptability, contributes to problem-solving and underpins our capacity for social and cultural awareness.

Cognitive coaching, when done well, is an example of teacherly authority which has become widespread in schools: the coach has a greater capacity which they want to teach in the coachee’s best interest, the coachee recognises and values this capacity and agrees to pay attention to the coach.  All four conditions for teacherly authority are in place.

The capacity that the coach has is the ability to help the coachee develop insight so that they can clarify what they need to do (‘goal setting’) or resolve whatever has caused them to get stuck (‘problem solving’).  Learning to be a coach and then practicing is a way to develop insight in others – in other words to teach it.

The coach achieves their effect by lifting and holding the coachee in the mind state in which the way forward becomes clear, the mind state in which they feel confident, collaborative and creative.  This is achieved by how the coach listens to the coachee and by the sorts of questions they ask.  Using these forms of listening and framing of questions are the keys to developing insights with students.

From the age of about 18 months intrepid toddlers begin the process of learning how to get what they want and to get things done.  Aside from an intuitive capacity for manipulation – physical (grabbing what they want), intellectual (being tricky), emotional (tantrums) and social (calling on others to intervene) – an increasing ability to act in the world follows the stages of empowerment. 

These five stages comprise the recognition that they have choice (autonomy), the capacity to take the first step to act on that choice (initiative), the capacity to sustain effort to make it through whatever gets in the way (follow-through), the ability to actually complete the project to finish and say “this is done” (completion) and, the ability to rejoice in the completion of the task (celebration).  Think toddler pushing a stool up to the kitchen bench, climbing up to the cookie jar, struggling to get the lid off, taking a cookie, climbing back down and then eating the cookie with great satisfaction.

The importance of this capacity is self-evident in its application in the modern world and is further emphasised by the fact we begin to learn this as soon as we are old enough to act in the world.  In terms of twenty-first century skills, this capacity develops initiative and persistence and delivering projects successfully is usually a sign of developing leadership.

Most schools organise professional development around some form of action inquiry which mirrors the five stages of empowerment, the primary aim being to improve some aspect of teacher practice.  Nevertheless, engaging in action inquiry on a regular basis strengthens the capacity of teachers to perform the five steps successfully. It is a relatively short step to offer this capacity to students.

From the age of somewhere between four and six, a young child, who until now has viewed the world from a purely first-person perspective, begins to realise that other people may see the world differently from how they see it.  This is the emergence of a second-person perspective and its concepts of reciprocity and fairness: “If I hurt you, you can hurt me back” and “one for you and one for me”. 

The child begins to prefer the friend to the toy and needs to learn the rules for having friends, and foundational to this, she needs to learn to care for another.  Some of the ways that we show how we care: by making people feel safe (both physically and psychologically), by being accepting of people as they are, by being interested in them and what they are interested in, by being a good listener (a quiet mind, open to the new and different), by empathising and recognising the other’s feelings, by being compassionate, by celebrating and showing gratitude, by being accessible and supportive, by being trustworthy, dependable, reliable.

Caring for others becomes the basis for collaboration which, in turn, is both a twenty-first century skill and one of the key drivers of organisational success in the modern world.  High performing teams are characterised by having high levels of psychological safety and mutual dependability amongst team members.  Caring for others is also the basis for effective communication, another twenty-first century skill.

Relationships are central to human health and wellbeing so that developing the capacity to care for others is at the heart of a long and happy life. When we ourselves feel cared for and valued, it stimulates us to respond in kind and it is easy to see how teacherly authority can be built around providing and teaching – especially through modelling – this essential capacity.

Active Open-Mindedness (AOM) is a cognitive stance that we need to take to avoid believing or behaving foolishly.  It is the main defence against ‘parasitic processing’ – a negative spiral of thoughts and conclusions that leads us away from the most rational interpretation of events.  It is probably redundant to say that this is a capacity that we are sorely in need of today.

AOM is a way to try and avoid the various in-built biases that we have – which are no more than short cuts to allow us to make decisions more quickly and with less cognitive effort – but which can easily trip us up.  In a classroom environment, for example, it may mean listening closely to what a student is saying and avoiding the assumption that we know what they want and jumping to premature action or decision.

To model AOM a teacher would need to develop it themselves which comes with practice, however, where pseudo teacherly authority prevails, it is hard for a teacher to model AOM as any inquiry testing the validity of what is being taught may easily go beyond what the teacher feels comfortable with.

Where teacherly authority is in place, students are deeply engaged in the subject at hand and inquiry is likely to be a means to deepen the learning for both students and teachers.  Thus, AOM can be practiced without risk, indeed with concrete benefits.

In short, if we want to encourage AOM which forms the basis for critical thinking and contributes to problem-solving then we need to be operating in an environment of teacherly authority.

Collecting and using feedback, coaching and action inquiry are all ways that can contribute to building AOM

The four capacities that underpin Core Growth Skills cannot easily be put into a curriculum and a teacher is unlikely to ever say “we are having a class on insight today”.  Rather, it is in the many one-to-one interactions, where students need insights into their work, how to do their work, how to position themselves vis-à-vis the world around them and, most profoundly, to uncover unsuspected capacities and opportunities that will shape their future lives.

Similarly, encouraging students to get things done by recognising the five stages of empowerment and encouraging students at each stage – individually, as small groups and as a whole class – especially the first stage, encouraging students to act autonomously and create something that is new to them.

Caring for others is, perhaps, the easiest of these capacities to model and teach for those who already recognise that relationships are paramount.  Again, via one-to-one interactions – some of which will be visible to other students – all the elements of how we care for others can be modelled and encouraged, from psychological safety to celebration.

To be able to navigate a complex world where we are beset on all sides by false narratives and rigid dogmas, Active Open-Mindedness is essential for every adult in their own lives.  Developing this capacity in one’s own life will allow for its demonstration and modelling in the classroom.

Every teacher will have a different way of offering these capacities to their students with different emphases on the four capacities making each teacher’s practice in this area unique to them.  What matters is that the capacities that students value, and need, are being offered in such a way that every student enters a relationship of teacherly authority with each teacher affording the orderly and efficient transmission of the whole range of twenty-first century skills..