A useful framing!

How to explain extremes of performance

In Why We Teach (2020) I recount the following:

“Elizabeth was teaching at a Sydney high school when I spoke with her in 2001. Close to retirement, Elizabeth was always surrounded by a gaggle of students who clearly wanted to spend time with her, and she clearly enjoyed spending time with them. When the subject of discipline arose during our conversation, Elizabeth observed, “In my thirty years of teaching I have never had a discipline problem*, yet in this school there are two or three teachers whose sole objective on entering the classroom is to survive to the end of the lesson.”

The concept of Teacherly Authority can now explain how these extremes of performance can both take place.

Elizabeth is an example of a teacher with high levels of legitimate teacherly authority meaning that students willingly accept to pay attention to her and to wherever she directs their attention.  Elizabeth has capacities as a healthy adult which she is offering to students, they value what is on offer and willingly enter the social dynamic of teacherly authority.  She then directs them to the work she wants to teach them.

At the other end of the spectrum, we have two or three teachers who offer illegitimate teacherly authority (as many teachers do in our systems today) and do not display any of the adult capacities which their students need to learn – maybe because they are anxious and too self-focused to present their best selves to their students.  Students see no value in paying attention and so don’t.

Now we have a framework to explain this, we can do something about it.

 * The principal of the school subsequently confirmed that Elizabeth did indeed have no discipline problems and delivered above average student outcomes.

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 concept and practice of teacherly authority.  Earlier blogs can be found here.

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