Letting go!

Supporting the autonomy of both students and teachers is increasingly important

Our education systems were significantly upgraded post-WW2 to support a more intensely industrialised society.  Initially, teachers were required to control their classes and deliver a curriculum to build the knowledge and skills deemed necessary for young people to fit usefully into society as it was then evolving.  This was hugely successful in supporting the raising of living standards across the board.

Young people had their need for competence sufficiently well met, but this is not the only internal drive that we humans have, we also have a drive for autonomy that the original design severely limited via the use of controlled motivation – reward and punishment.

Over many years now we have seen movement towards supporting students’ autonomy.  The harshest aspects of reward and punishment have been left well behind. It has become accepted that relationships with students are a key to helping them become empowered and more self-directing.

However, not all teachers have been able to move fully in this direction.  Some cannot, the thought of giving up control is too scary, and some are still hampered by being triggered too often by students, colleagues or the stresses of being in a modern school.

Yet, this shift to supporting autonomy is both necessary and inevitable – students need it and society needs them to have it.  Better outcomes occur when we can channel our strengths towards completing our work.

A case study that I unpack here, here, here and here indicates that about 40% of teachers have made the shift to substantially supporting the development of their students’ drive for autonomy.

Helping others to also make this shift – in effect helping them to reduce red brain triggering – is an important part of gradually upgrading our education systems to properly meet students’ and society’s needs for now and into the future.

Oh! And teacher well-being will be much enhanced as well as their own autonomy is nurtured and strengthened.

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John Corrigan is an expert in helping individuals to bring their whole of mind to their daily life and increase their effectiveness and the effectiveness of those around them. This expertise scales from the individual to the team to the organisation. At the core of this work is the practice of encounter.  Earlier blogs can be found here.

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