In a true relationship, both sides learn and develop. Historically, education was built around the sorts of relationships where only the students were expected to learn (yes, teachers initially had to learn how to manage their classroom environment but that did not change the nature of the relationship, and once learned often remained static).

Perspectival knowing, by definition, involves self-reflective changes in response to what is happening in the world around us, a major component of that world being the actions and responses of other people.

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In Why We Teach, I explore a teacher taxonomy where ‘Competent’ teachers deliver propositional and procedural knowing through a focus on curriculum and pedagogy, and who operate themselves within the same domains. As noted last week this group accounts for about 60% of all teachers.

‘Motivated’ teachers value relationships, developing and modelling perspectival knowing as well as providing the environment and content for propositional and procedural knowing.

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I have described various aspects of perspectival knowing here, here, here and here and why it is a necessary component of twenty-first-century skills.

One of the values of having data about many aspects of day-to-day school and classroom operations is to be able to ask the question “have you noticed that …?”.A question that brings a new item into our salience landscape, that is, it stimulates our perspectival knowing.

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Early on in my interest in education I realised that the profound problems in education were systemic in nature. Systemic problems arise when the boundary between ‘education’ and ‘not education’ is put in the wrong place. A problem is inside the boundary and the solution is outside, for example, means that the problem has no solution and, if a problem has no solution, it becomes just the way things are. Alternatively, a problem crosses the boundary and is thus undefinable, no problem.

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