Last week I talked about the need to resist institutionalising pressures by having a well-developed sense of autonomy. In addition, the need to shelter young people from these pressures as they develop their own autonomy. We know what gets in the way:

• Fixed beliefs about students, what it means to be a teacher and how things are supposed to work in the school community and wider world

• Being triggered by students, colleagues, parents or decisions handed down or other circumstances in the school environment

• Moodiness, especially taking bad moods - which may be the aftermath of being triggered - into class

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We are all subjected to institutionalising forces, pressures on us that seek to shape our behaviour to someone else’s agenda. Four main sources of pressure are:

• Bureaucracy – creates rules to systematise behaviour to minimise risks of non-compliance which has the effect of limiting choices and making creative actions harder to do

• Advertising – aims to make us feel inadequate, a feeling that, apparently, can be assuaged by buying what is being offered

• Managed media narratives – aim to make us fearful of selected people, organisations, ideas etc.Effectively, aims to choose our enemies for us and shape our behaviour towards them

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Last week I talked about the need for changing the nature of the teacher-student relationship for the 60% of educators who are disengaged from their work, and that the nature of the change is to step back and allow the development of student autonomy.

The effort to achieve this new level of self-management develops the capacity for perspectival knowing. I have described various aspects of this form of knowing here, here, here and here and why it is a necessary component of twenty-first-century skills.

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In Why We Teach I unpack a case study that shows about 60% of teachers are not engaged in their work, their work is not meaningful to them. I also cite research showing similar numbers in the US education sector and in a wide range of other sectors and countries.

What does this mean?

For someone who has a developed sense of autonomy, who is empowered, such a situation is temporary. They will change their attitude and approach to the work so that it becomes meaningful, or they will change their circumstances and find work that is meaningful to them.

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