Take the first step!

Always the starting point for a long journey

From the point of view the institution, of the school, creating a culture in which leaders practice unconditional care or acceptance towards all staff takes a long-time.  It is also dependent on leaders themselves managing and reducing their own red zone responses, also a long-term undertaking.

Collecting and using student feedback in a safe and gentle way then becomes the easiest of the three pathways to having educators behaving with unconditional care and acceptance towards students and students responding with growing autonomous motivation.

It is easiest because it can become an established practice that occurs on a regular basis and, once initial apprehensions are overcome, it will become to be recognised as a valuable input to an educator’s practice.

Whichever way we look at it, moving from using controlled motivation that has underpinned out education systems for two centuries to supporting autonomous motivation is going to take a long time.

Having structures in place that are not dependent on leaders or other staff having already changed their behaviour is an excellent way to support this change.

The systematic collection of student feedback can do this as well as providing, over time, so much more.

Having a handle on the quality of the relationships everywhere within a school provides assurance that things are working as they should.

To the benefit of both the educator and the child.