Constructive Mutualism
The key to rebuilding student engagement, reducing teacher stress and achieving the promise of twenty-first century skills
The key to rebuilding student engagement, reducing teacher stress and achieving the promise of twenty-first century skills
Teacherly Authority breaks down most often (although not exclusively) in the third condition, the student does not value what the teacher is offering and thus does not willingly agree to engage in the teacherly authority social dynamic.
It is easy to say, “students don’t know what is good for them and so they don’t value what I want to teach them.” But saying it blinds us to the possibility that students do know, intuitively at least, what is good for them, and they sense that what the teacher is offering should not be their primary concern. In other words, there are other things that are more important for them to pay attention to.
Education systems recognise this too. The adoption of twenty-first century skills explicitly lays out that there are Competencies and Character Qualities (which combined, we can call Core Growth Skills) in addition to the Foundational Literacies that have formed the basis, in one way or another, for school curriculum, and therefor for teacherly authority – where it has existed – since at least the 1950’s. The figure below gives one expression of this new range of skills.
Young people need to prepare themselves to face up to an uncertain future and with well-developed Core Growth Skills they can acquire the Foundational Literacies but having only acquired the Foundational Literacies they may struggle to acquire the Core Growth Skills. The ideal is to acquire both Foundational Literacies and Core Growth Skills in parallel and it is here where shifting the basis for teacherly authority becomes key.
It is Core Growth Skills that are desired, and needed, by the young in our current era and thus can form a new basis for teacherly authority. Students value these capacities, and - if their teachers have them and offer them - will willingly enter a teacherly authority dynamic to be able to acquire them.
Once the social dynamic of teacherly authority has been established then the student will pay attention as directed by the teacher and the teacher can direct their attention to the subject matter that they want to teach, students then willingly do their best work. In this way both Foundational Literacies and Core Growth Skills can be efficiently acquired in parallel.
It is the Core Growth Skills that form the basis for teacherly authority. Once the dynamic is in place then students will pay attention to the subject at hand as directed by the teacher.
Thus, the full complement of twenty-first century skills can be acquired by the student.
The four capacities that underpin Core Growth Skills cannot easily be put into a curriculum and a teacher is unlikely to ever say “we are having a class on insight today”. Rather, it is in the many one-to-one interactions, where students need insights into their work, how to do their work, how to position themselves vis-à-vis the world around them and, most profoundly, to uncover unsuspected capacities and opportunities that will shape their future lives.
Similarly, encouraging students to get things done by recognising the five stages of empowerment and encouraging students at each stage – individually, as small groups and as a whole class – especially the first stage, encouraging students to act autonomously and create something that is new to them.
Caring for others is, perhaps, the easiest of these capacities to model and teach for those who already recognise that relationships are paramount. Again, via one-to-one interactions – some of which will be visible to other students – all the elements of how we care for others can be modelled and encouraged, from psychological safety to celebration.
To be able to navigate a complex world where we are beset on all sides by false narratives and rigid dogmas, Active Open-Mindedness is essential for every adult in their own lives. Developing this capacity in one’s own life will allow for its demonstration and modelling in the classroom.
Every teacher will have a different way of offering these capacities to their students with different emphases on the four capacities making each teacher’s practice in this area unique to them. What matters is that the capacities that students value, and need, are being offered in such a way that every student enters a relationship of teacherly authority with each teacher affording the orderly and efficient transmission of the whole range of twenty-first century skills..