Unfeigned love!
In my last blog before Christmas (here), I proposed that only safety need be unconditionally provided alongside direct feedback and holding high expectations. A paper* that I came across over the break provided a framework to explain this. In essence, McKee argues that unconditional love as practiced at the time he was writing was a revolt against conditional love and, as such, still linked love to behaviour – whatever you do I will still love you and by doing this I expect that your natural goodness will emerge i.e. you will behave in the way that I desire.
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Laissez-faire it isn’t!
It is clear from my recent research that making people feel safe (and safety here is unconditional) is the key to having teacherly authority-based relationships. Once these relationships are in place student self-regulate to avoid disruptions and willingly do their best work.
When what we offer is conditional, then all the student needs to do is what they are told (and many won’t even do that). When what we offer is unconditional, the student feels obliged to do their best.
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Safety ≡ Love!
I am finalising the analysis of an eight-school survey designed to explore what are the key elements or factors that can ensure that a teacher has teacherly authority-based relationships with their students.
It is looking as though making their students feel safe is enough (and that factor subsumes all the other elements in the core capacity that I have called ‘Caring’).
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Finally, a name!
After several months of looking to name the emerging (or perhaps, better, re-emerging) teacherly authority-based paradigm we have finally settled on ‘Constructive Mutualism’, first proposed by Mark Merry, principal of Yarra Valley Grammar (and my co-author) back in early October. I intuitively liked the name from the outset, but my logical mind needed to make all the relevant connections.
Thus, we have Constructive Mutualism (re-)emerging to replace Behaviourism.
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