key: cord-0060186-lw6c164w
authors: Buchanan, John
title: Conclusion: Which Future? A Note of Hope?
date: 2020-08-19
journal: Challenging the Deprofessionalisation of Teaching and Teachers
DOI: 10.1007/978-981-15-8538-8_11
sha: 47fa98b2de67838d2ee3774bb7df0637160615ce
doc_id: 60186
cord_uid: lw6c164w

This chapter explores current and potential developments in education that have the potential to invigorate it, and teachers, and to revolutionise the world. It examines these current trends in terms of the futures they may create or contribute to.

A journey of a thousand li 1 begins with one step… Attributed to Laozi (4th Century BCE?) …in the right (or wrong) direction. (My impudent addition.) As I understand it, a better translation than "with one step" of the proverb above is "under one's feet". This begs the questions, then, in which direction are our feet pointing, or, in which direction are we stepping? McNiff and Whitehead (2011, p. 22) refer to "trying to live in the direction of [our] educational values".

In Chap. 10, I pointed out that the power gap between the individual and the state is widening. Do we risk sliding towards the fascist, communist or religious extremes we've spent much of our time and energy, and so many lives, combatting? One thing common to all three groups-fascism, communism and religious extremismis conformity-a very limited set of prescribed ways of being. Call it compliance if you will. Or obedience. I'm not suggesting we're close to aping such extremes. But if our feet aren't firmly and demonstrably heading and treading away from such extremes of power and subservience, we may need to reconsider and recalibrate. New technologies will facilitate the extremists' work.

Returning to the quote in Chap. 1 attributed to Degas, about painting only becoming difficult once you know how, it's easy to be an armchair critic (of teaching, or of accountability measures, curriculum design, etc.). I hope to avoid flopping into a comfortable beanbag of superior self-righteousness. Naturally enough, we all tend to seek certainty-particularly if we are new to something-but that certainty shouldn't be allowed to constrain or blinker us any longer than is necessary. That is the essence of teaching, and being open to learning; a gradual removal or at least questioning of some of the things we've been certain about, the crutches, scaffolds, training wheels and flotation devices that have "held us up", perhaps in several senses of the expression. Is it possible that our chosen supports may eventually slow our progress, and/or hold us against our will?

Chapter 2 outlined some attributes seen as desirable in twenty-first-century teachers. I'll now look a little more broadly at attributes of inspiring teachers. The Centre for British Teachers (Sammons, Kington, Lindorff-Vijayendran, & Ortega, 2014 ) asked a sample of practising teachers what makes for an inspiring teacher. Their responses are as follows:

• Having and transmitting enthusiasm • Cultivating positive relationships with students • Being flexible and adapting their practice • Making learning purposeful and relevant for students • Promoting a safe and stimulating classroom environment [not too safe, I would add?] • Establishing clear and positive classroom management • Being reflective about their own practice and developing collaboratively • Bringing innovation to the classroom.

Many teachers, I believe, juggle the above eight items routinely and apparently seamlessly-the banality of teacher excellence, perhaps?. Possibly bearing this out, Devine, Fahie, and McGillicuddy (2013, p. 83 ) deem the following characteristics to qualify a teacher merely as "good": "passion, reflection, planning, love for children and the social and moral dimension". Good teachers inspire unceasingly-they are great! I suspect that many parents have gazed at the kaleidoscope of teacherly qualities from within as they have set out to help their children learn at home during covid-19, and have come to appreciate that they were previously unconsciously unskilled in the complexities and demands, emotional and intellectual, of teaching and learning.

Legions of dedicated, competent teachers are, therefore, inspirational. Moreover, many of the above attributes require supportive habitat. Sammons et al.' s respondents noted that "several aspects, such as job satisfaction, external policy agendas, school ethos and support, substantially affect their ability to inspire their students and learning community" (p. 13). Some teachers, then, might be yet more inspiring, given inspirational support. Similarly, inspiration is difficult to quantify. As Ryan (2001) observes, not everything that counts is countable.

For McGuey and Moore (2016) it's (inter)personal; inspiration lies in listening, showing respect, and developing trustful relationships. Similarly, Ryan (2001) couches inspirational teachers in terms of what and who they create: powerful curriculum, powerful thinkers, enterprise, awe, wonder, spirituality, wisdom. Boyd, Hymer and Lockney (2015) set out inspirational teaching as a series of dichotomies including autonomy over compliance, and collaboration before competition. Each of these (e.g. collaboration, autonomy) has something to say to those who support the work of teachers; "inspiring teachers" has a delightful double meaning to itteachers who are inspirational, and the process of inspiring teachers. Van der Heijden, Geldus, Beijaard, and Popeijus (2015, p. 681 ) couch this interaction in terms of transformation, that is, teachers acting as change agents. In summary, they nominate the following characteristics: "lifelong learning (being eager to learn and reflective), [socalled] mastery (giving guidance, being accessible, positive, committed, trustful and self-assured), entrepreneurship (being innovative and feeling responsible) and collaboration (being collegial)". Bain (2004) gathered data from 63 exemplary tertiary educators, and outlined four important things that they know (pp. 26-32): knowledge is constructed, rather than received; learners' mental models change slowly; questioning is crucial; caring is central to effective teaching. Willingham (2009) referred to the fragility of student curiosity, with attendant implications for teaching. He also emphasises some of the interpersonal, pastoral-and managerial?-aspects of teaching, among them, praising effort over ability; helping students develop a certain tolerance of their own failures; and conveying confidence in students (pp. 183-186) . Buskist, Sikorski, Buckley and Saville (2013) ponder, "If only we knew exactly what makes a master [sic] teacher", and proceed to provide some answers: "the teachers of the new millen[n]ium would be dynamic classroom teachers who model scholarship, seek the company of their students, and teach life's most essential lessons". They continue, "Students of this new breed of teacher would experience the unadulterated joys of learning, and our culture would flourish. The cycle would be self-perpetuating as these students become the master teachers of tomorrow" (p. 27). They then acknowledge, "with regret, we report that there is no such protocol or chemistry available that magically turns ordinary teachers into master teachers". It may be, then, that all the aforementioned accountability measures achieve little. Perhaps as teachers and external support agents, we can do little more than providing the most favourable conditions-the plant has to do its own growing. I believe there is considerable evidence that the prevailing conditions, basic skills testing, standardisation and the like, are suboptimal for teachers and learners. What we perhaps need to ask, then, at least as much as what kinds of results we are producing, is what kinds of schools are we helping to produce? Teachers do their above remarkable-and everyday-work in a context of increasing uncertainty; "whether we like it or not, education is caught up in the turbulence of exponential change the outcomes of which are beyond prediction", (Davies & Edwards, 2001, p. 107) . They proceed to explain that school needs to provide its students with "dispositions, skills, understandings and values". Does it not stand to reason, then, that the profession, and all of us, might provision teachers with similarly, through professional development, through challenging prevailing cultures where necessary and the like? With the probable exception of understandings, Davies and Edwards' "essential provisions for students" are difficult to assess.

What might inspiring management look like? Personal musing Proceeding from the above, I will now pursue what kinds of schools we might want to propagate. The United Nations' (n.d.) Sustainability Development Goals (SDGs) provide an interesting projection for a future world. I've occasionally asked my preservice teacher students which SDG they would nominate if they had to choose but one. I'd encourage you to consult the list, and perhaps select one of your own, before looking at the one (actually, the half-one) that I chose.

I didn't select the education goal. I chose: Decent work (8a) Imagine if every aspect, of every person's work, were decent?

Wouldn't that rectify many of our problems? Sorry if you found the formatting above irritating. I was seeking emphasis. Imagine if all working conditions were decent, such as informed-and-responsible use of resources, our treatment of each other, the nature and intent of my work and its outputs, and decent pay-neither obscenely high nor indecently low. It's worth considering that much of what goes wrong in this world stems from workplace errors. Think 9/11 and security lapses, for instance. Even the effects of natural disasters stem in part from our limited ability to predict, and our limited capacity to protect against them, through, for example, building codes, deficient or greedy zoning practices and the like. Work decency might eliminate some of the distractions that lead to errors. The reason I didn't include education as my chosen SDG workplace is because the goal above subsumes teachers' (and learners') work. Imagine if everything that happened in schools was decent. Much if it is, of course, but if every interaction between students, teachers, executive, parents and the community, especially those of us charged with supporting education, were decent and supportive, our schools would be more productive and congenial. And we wouldn't need to arm our school students (or our student teachers) with the resilience for a hostile workplace, because, according to this goal, hostilities would cease. Crime, being indecent work, would also cease. You may say I'm a dreamer.

I confess that I chose a second SDG: 16 Peace, justice, strong institutions. For me, this addresses the non-work part of the above equation. What if we treated each other decently? Both at work and not-at-work? Many of our daily interactions are with people in their workplaces. If others' workplaces (including our dealings with their personnel) were decent, their workers' willingness and capacity to help us would almost certainly improve. The development of strong institutions also addresses issues such as crime and rule of law. I do add a caveat here, however. I don't want too-strong, or unaccountable, institutions. That might entice or entrap them into indecency.

Of course, we will never agree entirely on what's "decent". I think that is what prevents this from becoming anodyne and heaven-like-I need confrontation with the intellectual roughage of ideas and viewpoints different from mine-no irritation, no pearl. In a context of the sometimes-confronting world of intercultural learning, Otten (2003, p. 15 )speaks of "cognitive irritation, emotional imbalance and a disruption of one's own cultural world view". These apply to higher order learning more broadly.

What if there were a place in the world, where everyone, including the kids, took education more seriously than we do here in Australia; where students and others paid more respect to teachers than we do in Australia. What might that look like, in terms of everyone's attitudes and behaviour? (And what if we had to compete with them?) Under the ambit of "what is working", Thompson (2018, pp. 12-13 ) outlines a school characterised by self-efficacy, one with high expectations regarding students' learning: "all students are treated with kindness, compassion, and equity; the school climate is safe and positive, resulting in truly remarkable student success and outcomes". Thompson concedes that this may look like an "unreachable dream" (p. 13), and it may appear even more so if, in the first of Thompson's quotes above, "students" is replaced with "teachers" (or "everyone"). But what if we gave it a go and led the way? How might schools change in terms of being places where everyone wants to be? It is reasonable to assert that the teachers need to be the leaders in this. But there is little to be gained if others-students, parents, bureaucrats, the community and the media, do not follow teachers' lead and respond in kind.

Unquestionably, we seek quality teaching and learning processes and outcomes, and the circumstances under which these can best occur. Necessities for these will include quality in terms of governance, support, modelling, leadership and example-shipin short, quality polity. I'll make a bold claim here. I believe that part of our job as teachers is to improve the practice of bureaucrats and others employed to support education. To teach them, as it were. Sachs' words, cited in Chap. 5, are worth repeating here. "A new approach requires that teachers collectively and individually address those in power to make it clear that a top-down approach is simply not working, not, in principle, is it likely to work" (2016, p. 414) . Accountability needs to apply its own maxims to itself; to be held accountable, to be transparent, and demonstrably supportive of improvement to learning and opportunities for our school students and their teachers-in this it shares much with teaching.

Cochran-Smith et al. (2018, pp. 39 ff.) outline eight accountability dimensions, under three clusters, each proceeding from an assumption:

• Foundations of accountability: values; purpose; concepts. Underlying assumption or axiom: teacher education, and associated accountability, are neither value-free nor neutral. • The problem of teacher education: diagnosing the problem; addressing the problem. Related assumption: problems don't exist exclusively external to stakeholders' worldviews, ideas and ideals. • Power relationships in accountability: control; content; consequences. Associated assumption: accountability is not neutral, but political.

The above constitute a diagnostic assessment of teacher education and related accountability. Naturally enough, they apply more broadly to the teaching profession and calls for its accountability. The underlying assumptions in particular provide a useful rudder for navigating shoals of accountability. In short, teacher (education) accountability does not enter the field as an ingénu/e. proceed to explain that.

Every accountability policy or initiative is animated by certain conceptions and operating assumptions about the role and image of the teacher; the nature of teaching, learning and schooling; the meaning of teacher quality and teacher education quality; definitions of effectiveness and success in teaching and teacher education; what it means to learn to teach and teach someone to teach; the knowledge teachers need to teach well; and the assumed nature of relationships among teacher preparation, teacher performance, school outcomes, and larger goals.

All this, before Cochran-Smith et al. even proceed to the "problem" of teacher education, which they typify as relatively facile couplets of problem-solutions; a "culpritsaviour dilemma" (p. 50), wherein teachers are ascribed both roles. As Elmore and McLaughlin (1998) pointed out, policy reforms derive from distrust of professional judgement; the untrusted are then entrusted to implement and police the policies in schools and classrooms, as a form of "compliance, voice and power" (Mockler & Groundwater-Smith, 2018, p. 53) . Harvey (2007, p. 207) argues that current processes of accreditation "are not benign or apolitical but represent a power struggle". He alleges a.

taken-for-granted underlying myth of an abstract authorising power, which legitimates the accreditation activity. This myth of benign guidance is perpetuated by the powerful as a control on those who provide the education and represents a shift of power from educators to bureaucrats. 2 Giroux (1985, p . 21/22) expressed it thus: "teacher work is being increasingly situated within a technical and social division of labor that reduces teachers to the dictates of experts removed from the context of the classroom". This process.

serves to widen the political gap between those who control the schools and those who actually deal with curricula and students on a day-to-day basis…teachers are relegated to instrumental tasks that require little or no space for oppositional discourse and social prac-tices…theories of teaching are increasingly technicized and standardized in the interest of efficiency and the management and control of discrete forms of knowledge.

Compounding this, "policy as numbers has become the reductive norm of contemporary education policy at all levels of rescaled political authority" at all geographical scales, from local to global (Lingard, 2011, p. 357 ). Day (2017) calls on educational leaders to practise "high levels of individual and collective trust -trust that is not blind or unconditional but based both on a combination of understandings of the complexities of [teachers'] work and the positive and negative influences that mediate this" (p. 173).

A most effective way to subjugate learners is to subjugate ("proletarianize", as Giroux (1985) puts it) their teachers. I can't say confidently whether this is a wilful strategy on the part of governments and bureaucrats or if it has merely become habitforming because it feels good when they do it. But the effects are identical. If teachers rail against some current moves to standardise teaching and learning, they may be accused of side-stepping scrutiny. But this should not be allowed to derail the quest for quality teaching and learning, and commensurate support. It is the aims, motives and quality of the scrutiny and support that are at heart here.

The evaluation of teachers can contribute to, or detract from, the enhancement of teaching and learning. Nieto (2003) proposes that "teachers are not mere sponges, absorbing the dominant ideologies and expectations floating around in the atmosphere. They are also active agents, whose words and deeds change and mold futures, for better or worse" (p. 19). In outlining how that process of moulding might apply to teacher-learners, Cochran-Smith (2001, p. 180) explains "how prospective teachers learn to be educators as well as activists by working in the company of mentors who are also engaged in larger movements for social change", while Sachs (2003, p. 154) asserts that "an activist teaching profession is an educated and politically astute one". Similarly, Clinton and Dawson (2018, p. 312) argue that teacher evaluation can serve the purpose of "enfranchising the pression" (emphasis added). They describe teacher evaluation currently as "largely an exercise in compliance around performance management as opposed to a process that promotes evaluative thinking, continuous improvement and connection to student outcomes" (p. 312).

The first of the three key ingredients in the OECD report cited in Chap. 2 (2019, p. 9) is confidence to teach, the other two being innovation and enabling leadership.

This raises a problem and a prospect for the teacher workforce. Much of what occurs in the teacher profession at the moment, such as standardisation and accountability measures, is unlikely to nourish teacher confidence (Harvey, 2007) .

The third of the OECD's (2019) three key factors is strong leadership. Numerous researchers have discussed the characteristics of good educational leaders, such as principals, as part of improvement processes. Balyer (2012) enumerates, among other attributes, attention to individuals, intellectual stimulation and inspirational motivation. These characteristics bear remarkable similarity to inspiring teachership. Principals, in turn, need support. Barber and Mourshead (2007, p. 30) report "school systems in which principals spend most of their time on tasks not directly related to improving instruction…limiting their capacity to effect real improvement in student outcomes".

Good, supportive leadership is needed at every level that shares responsibility for the delivery of education. At school level, the executive needs to stand strong in their support of all teachers, particularly beginning teachers. Beginning teachers will likely need greater support-this is difficult in those hard-to-staff schools where executive members are also more likely to be new to their roles, and may also require considerable support. Beginning teachers are more prone to errors of judgement borne of inexperience. But without such inexperience, there is no new lifeblood to the profession, and ultimately, no experience, no profession. New blood in the profession is likely to assist with the OECD's second recommendation-innovation-particularly if all teachers are encouraged to take calculated risks, and supported in their efforts to experiment.

School leaders, in turn, need a supportive milieu. Strong and courageous leadership is also needed at system and jurisdiction level, which may require audacity, as this assumes a political mantle. Finally, strong, committed leadership is requisite at political level. This might be one stresspoint in representative democracies. While I am not calling for any alternative to representative democracy (!), I ask politicians to resist the allure of populism, of scapegoating teachers for any (perceived) shortcomings of student performance, in the hope that such pronouncements will find favour with the electorate. Firstly, a more educated electorate is less likely to "fall for" such claims; to the extent that you, as politicians, have funded and supported real (critically literate) education, and helped us to hone this defensive weapon against you, we are truly grateful. That previous sentence is not offered at all with cynicism-leaders who have helped sow the seeds of scepticism and criticality have demonstrated true courage, as well as insight in any support and commitment that they have lent to higher order thinking in the education system. It most certainly is a weapon that can be used to neutralise you and any claims you make. Secondly, almost all of us can recall teachers who inspired us, and others that we exasperated, wilfully, or just because we couldn't help ourselves, as students. For many of us voters, including-especially?-parents, our loyalty to teachers flows more richly through our veins than does our loyalty to politicians. In short, politicians' sincere commitment and loyalty (over lip service) to the teaching profession and its members is likely to produce positive results electorally. More importantly, it is likely to pay dividends educationally-in terms of real education, whether or not those kids in China outmath us or not. 3 The quality of leadership might well be measured by its effects. Allen, Gringsby and Peters (2015) identified no correlation between perceptions of school climate, and student achievement. The latter, however, was measured through standardised testing. Higher order, harder-to-measure fruition may be happening in transformational schools. If student "performance" isn't improving, the leadership is, by definition, un-transformative. Other researchers (e.g. Menon, 2014) have uncovered correlations between effective leadership and student achievement. A slippery definition of good leadership might assert that it is a set of examples worth following.

Numerous studies have sought teachers' views on effective leadership, at school level and beyond, and the conditions it might incubate. Hirsch (2006) surveyed 4200 teachers in Alabama. Their respondents' priorities in choosing a school to teach in can probably be taken as proxy for the things that are most likely to attract them to teaching and retain them. In descending order, the surveyed teachers prioritised the following 11 aspects: strong, supportive leadership; class size/teaching load; salary and other compensations; commitment to shared decision-making; support through specialist, assistants and the like; curriculum and instruction approach; time for planning; support for students; like-minded colleagues; experienced staff and opportunities for professional learning. All of the above scored more highly than did school performance on tests and accountability measures, proximity to home, and the type of students in the school. Fernet, Trépanier, Austin, and Levesque-Côté (2016) sought responses from 598 teachers in Canada, and outlined some of the working conditions that can assist teachers through the early years of teaching. These include autonomy, workload, support in classroom management and a sense of community. These can overcome (beginning) teachers' emotional exhaustion and foster their loyalty to the job and its people. Walker and Slear (2011) surveyed 366 US teachers, and discerned a positive correlation between certain principal behaviours, and teacher efficacy, which, in turn, improved student achievement. Taking this a step further, it seems reasonable that the behaviour/s of those who are employed in the service of improving teaching and learning outcomes should be those likely to assist and inspire teachers.

I return here to McGrath and Van Bergen's (2017) warning of teacher extinction. At the risk of overstretching the metaphor, habitat loss is a crucial contributor to species extinction. A resulting question is, how do we manage the environment, and the climate, to help teachers, and thereby their students, to thrive? What are the optimal surroundings in which teachers can learn? Those who have the best answers to these questions are the learning professionals themselves-the teachers.

I concede that I am projecting an ambit(ious) dream here. I don't pretend that where cultures need challenging and changing in schools, that that will be an easy task. And I am not simply adding this to teachers' to-do lists. This will require shared vision and determination to optimise schools as workplaces and learnplaces, from all stakeholders-students, teachers, executives, parents and the community, teacher employment jurisdictions and politicians. And it will need the way cleared to help it happen, by, for example, providing teachers with more higher order thinking time, through a reduction in other aspects of their workload. I ask, "in whose interests is it not to support teachers"? If we can achieve support for teachers, without relegating students to mere compliance and acquiescence, we are likely to be world-beaters-in a race that is worth running and winning. But one hopes that the aim is nobler than mere world-beating. More importantly, we are likely to leave a legacy and example for the world in education-one worth following.

If nothing else (and there is much else!) the teaching profession should excel at fostering growth and fostering learning, and creating the conditions in which this can best occur. Experienced teachers can help by welcoming and nurturing their new colleagues (Schuck, Aubusson, Buchanan, Varadharajan, & Burke, 2018) . And these experienced teachers can be supported in their efforts to do so, through recognition of such efforts through, for example, reductions in their own responsibilities. Educational jurisdictions are in a more powerful position still to create the conditions whereby learning flourishes, for the whole community of learners-teachers and students. To return to the title of this section, "stop dreaming and get on with your work", I actually see this as getting with our work while still dreaming and visioning.

In Chap. 6, I avowed that I wouldn't necessarily want to enrol my kids in the school which is best at doing basic skills tests. Similarly, I'm in no hurry to move to a country or jurisdiction that is better at doing basic skills tests. And not just because of the weather in most such places.

I recently watched a British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC, 2019) documentary which took three British school students to Korea, to see how they would cope with the rigours of the Korean school system. I concede that the documentary drew on a narrow, illustrative data base, but it was nonetheless instructive. In a sense, how the British students coped or not is somewhat peripheral to the story. You can read a summary at BBC News (2016) . Here are some snippets, paraphrased one of the Korean host students finished school at 4:20 pm. He then proceeded to the library, but had to wait to enter, as it was too crowded. The library closed at 10 pm, so he then returned to his school, where he studied until midnight. School started the next day at 7:50. The documentary suggested that such study patterns are widespread in Korea, but didn't offer statistics. It did offer one statistic, however: "South Korea has the highest suicide rate in the industrialised world and [suicide] is the number one cause of death for those aged 10 to 30 years old". The documentary implies, rather than stating, a causal link between pressure placed on young Koreans to achieve, and suicide and other related social problems. Wales, the visiting students' home country, is ranked 42 places behind PISA-topping Korea. I can't be sure, but it seems unlikely that Korea's high PISA scores are solely the result of more efficient, more effective, teaching and teachers, even though I'm sure they work very diligently. In the same way that I mightn't necessarily seek the best basic-skills-performing school locally, I'm fairly confident I wouldn't want to put my kids through the Korean system, whatever its "benefits". To the extent that a PISA-base contributes to such circumstances, it, too, needs to be questioned. High performance in basic skills is to be welcomed if it is a symptom of a more substantial foundation of good, higher order learning. It is difficult to be certain that this is the case in Korea, and perhaps other jurisdictions achieving good basic skills scores. But the Korean system does appear to illustrate a point. You can achieve "good" basic skills results through a high-pressured approach. Apart from the abovementioned apparent costs, creativity and spontaneity, critical thinking, and questioning the system may be further casualties.

If education is to improve our students' lives, I'm unconvinced that life improvement is achieved by spending all my waking hours (and some sleeping hours, according to the BBC documentary) at work or in study. There is little that would make me question the value of education. The prospect that it serves as preparation to spend all my waking hours at work might be enough to make me do so, however. But I retain hope.

Along with many conservatives, I look to the past, and it offers me some hope and solace. Despite the glum observations in Chap. 4, the news is not entirely bleak. The world, or at least much of it, is a better one than the one I was born intobetter for many women, children, people of colour (aren't we all?) including Indigenous peoples, and LGBTQI (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer/questioning and intersex) people. The lives of people with disabilities have been improved by more advanced technologies, and more advanced attitudes-both education-born/e. Australia and other nations are gradually coming to terms with our past in our treatment of such people, including our slow awakening to the plight of people with mental illnesses. And this century to date has progressed considerably better (again, for some more than others) in terms of global geo-politics, prosperity and opportunity, than the previous one. 100 years ago at the time of writing, few women worldwide could vote, and most had to leave their (more humbly) paid work upon marriage or pregnancy, Indigenous Australians were largely ignored except by the police, sex between men was illegal almost universally, and paedophilia went largely unnoticed, except by the victims. Out-of-wedlock (a quaint-sounding term nowadays) newborns were vilified-accessories after the fact, perhaps? And 100 years ago, more misery awaited: babies born at this time might succumb to the influenza pandemic, as might their entire families, with cadavers outnumbering mourners.

STOP PRESS: covid-19 and its associated economic impacts are now casting this century in a new (or old?) light. More of this later.

Returning to last century, some children who survived influenza, by age 11 or so, would be thrust into bootless penury and homelessness, with little if any social support, courtesy of the Great Depression; surviving baby boys would be ripe, 21 years after WWI, to kill one another (and others) in another global war to dwarf the First. Oh, and toilets have improved in the past century. 4 Mine might be only the second or third generation to see the death of our child before our own as somehow an offence against nature-but I haven't lost sight of youth suicide statistics. I recall Sarah Palin's provocation to Barack Obama's supporters, "how's that hopey-changey stuff workin' out for ya"? (courtesy Fox News, 2010) . I have to concede, "some days better than others", but I hasten to add, "better than anything else that is on offer". I'm grateful that, as I write, it's 2019, not 1920. 5 Some months on from the sentence above, it's too early to anticipate the full impact of covid-19. Surely we are better placed than a century ago to face it. Advanced attitudes, and reserves of humanity, may prove vital accompaniments to advanced medicine in so doing.

Naturally, the struggles for equality and freedoms remain unwon. But there are pricks of light in the darkness. Saudi women are now permitted to drive-even though that victory has cost its proponents dearly. India-and the West-(Bollywood and Hollywood?) are questioning attitudes to women in ways probably unhoped for (or unfeared, by some) a couple of decades ago-baby steps towards our civilisation, perhaps. Sadly, acid attacks on women appear to be on the increase (Heanue, 2019) , although this might be partly because of increased reporting. In the late 1800s in Australia, baby boys could expect to live for 47.2 years, while baby girls might anticipate attaining the grand age of 50.8 (ABS, 2011). Both genders can now expect 6 to live into their 80s (ABS, 2018), a figure which, if recent trends continue, may look tragically quaint in a century. At the beginning of this century, same-sex marriage was espoused nowhere. While its progress may seem agonised, it could also be described as remarkable in its scale in under two decades, even in some rather conservative societies. Indigenous peoples' rights are slowly being recognised.

Extending from this, there are numerous things for which I'm grateful. I've never had my courage tested by being compelled to, or refusing to, kill or die for my country, or for another's Empire. I'm too old to be of use to the armed services now (if ever I was), and a decision to forfeit my life would no longer be a courageous one, but a mere leave pass from the miseries of senescent decrepitude. I hope that no future young generation might be called upon to make such sacrifices.

I return here to a line from the Melbourne Declaration (MCEETYA, 2008): "how things have become the way they are" (p. 8). This leads me to ask what sort of a society, a people, has our education system contributed to producing.

As I asserted above, Australia has much good in and about it, and not solely because of the weather. We have real freedom-some might argue too much freedom-to air our minds (or our mindlessness). Political extremism does not appear so far to have taken root in Australia to the extent it has in some other places. This might be due in part to certain features of Australia's voting system (Reilly, 2016) such as compulsory voting, and the secret ballot, also championed in Australia. Australia is sometimes tarred as racist, but for the most part, we live as peaceably as any multicultural and multi-and no-faith country on earth. I'm not a fan of getting a parking ticket, but I'll pay the price (so to speak) for the privilege of living in a place where rule of law largely prevails. Figures for NSW show that in the two years to 2018 all crime rates were falling, or at worst, stable (NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, 2018). We have more open space than many countries to enjoy our generally fair weather (actually, more rain in some places wouldn't go astray-just saying). Australia enjoyed-or has enjoyed-it's too early to know which verb tense is more accurate-economic prosperity for almost 30 years. And I'm happy to live in a country that prioritises health and education if numbers budgets cited in the book's final chapter are a reasonable proxy. Unemployment has remained relatively low in Australia for some time, at around five per cent. That is still one-in-twenty, equating to two or three parents of a class of about 25 students. And I can see no way of avoiding a rapid and imminent increase.

The present and future probably lie somewhere in between the rosy image I portrayed above, and the bleak one portrayed in Chap. 1. I grew up in the shadow of World War Two. We stared into the black soul of what "humanity" was capable of, and told ourselves "never again". More recently, however, white supremacism and other forms of fundamentalism have crept back into our "thinking" (?)-for some of us, anyway. Possibly it was always there, silently pupating (or the opposite of pupatinga butterfly retrogressing to a caterpillar?). Is it possible that the half-century or so after the Second World War was just an aberration, precipitated by the horrors of the War? Could it be that we are now simply reverting to form? I tremble for future generations when I consider the consequences of that, particularly for those who become the random targets of hate. The thought that "we" might raise and educate our boys and girls, and "they" might raise and educate theirs-and then send them out to slay one another. (How) might education rescue and redeem us?

I return to the question of the kind of person I want (my) education to produce, or at least to nurture. Among other things, I want my education to produce and sustain people who can assume the perspective of others, and who are capable of examining the effects of their behaviour on others. I'm not certain that that can prevent further holocausts, but I can think of nothing that offers better prospects for so doing. In the school yard or global playground, how might we stand with people who need standing-with 7 ? In which direction do you want to take and move our world? As I see it, the best teachers are those who can change-I love he delicious double meaning of that verb's in/transitivity. Nussbaum (2019) ponders the following question:

What is it about human life that makes it so hard to sustain egalitarian democratic institutions, and so easy to lapse into hierarchies of various types -or worse, projects of violent group animosity? Whatever these forces are, it is ultimately against them that true education for human development must fight. Kemmis and Edwards-Groves (2017) claim education is to "form people so they can live well in a world worth living in" (p. 7, emphasis in original). So much of this world is worthy of living in, while much falls short of that ideal. As I've asserted in previous chapters, some of the key features of good teaching may be central to the solutions here. I will deal with a few of them in turn.

I hope this book has already established the complexity of teachers' work. In more poorly resourced communities, the input of the teacher assumes even greater significance. Schwartz, Cappella, and Aber (2019, p. 169 ) discuss the in/adequacy of teacher education and support in a developing world context. They observe that "families and communities in underresourced settings are less likely to be equipped to compensate for any lack in teacher ability (be it a lack of skills, knowledge or promotive attitudes)". In such cases, a teacher might be standing atop a more precipitous precipice. On the other hand, it may be that we need clearer eyes to recognise the resources that such communities bring to their learning. Such conditions might also apply to more disadvantaged communities in more developed countries. These are the schools wherein many beginning teachers may be deployed. A systems approach may be one way to negotiate the complexity of learners, schools and their communities. Darling-Hammond (2017) investigated several systems she deemed to be high performing, and found that, while several structural and contextual elements differed significantly, a feature common to all was the comprised "systems [Darling-Hammond's emphasis] for teacher and leader development [my emphases]…with multiple, coherent and complementary components" (p. 294).

My commitment to my employer, and to the subject/s I teach, proceeds from this prior commitment. My employers, too, should commit to supporting my students, both directly and through supporting me. The best way to support children is to support parents in the work they do. The same applies to supporting learnersthrough supporting their teachers.

I believe that we need to work to convince the broader public of the complexity of the work we do. Are there "pedagogical natives", those who can teach instinctively? Certainly there are those who are more, or less, positively predisposed to teaching than others. In such discussions, though, I believe that it's easy to conflate the medium and the message. Teachers are both. Of limited use (or potential danger?) is an inspiring speaker with little or no substance, or a substantial knowledge-holder with little or no ability to help learners clasp the message to their hearts and minds.

It is premised on, and thrives on, trust and faith. Having faith in learners, and having faith in teachers. As in Chap. 1, perhaps reflect on your favourite teacher.

This perhaps sounds a little dour-but we need no encouragement to cosy up to comfortable truths or to comfortable untruths. Indeed, we need encouragement encouragement to venture beyond them. We have all been confronted by new assertions conflicting with the old.

Teachers understand learning. It's what they do. They are, therefore, capable of planning and making sense of their own learning as well as almost anyone. That said, teachers' understanding of learning is imperfect, and emerging. It's an understanding that can grow and flourish given the right conditions; experts elsewhere may well make valuable contributions in this regard.

Perhaps even more fundamentally, teaching is a discerning profession. Even if discernment might appear at times to be at odds with caring, an honest and forthright discernment should be care-driven. It is worth supporting teachers in their decisionmaking (assessment-related and other), and give them opportunities to hone their related expertise. Teachers, as much as anyone, understand the importance of assessment for learning, not just of learning. Linked to this, teaching is complex ethical work, including, but not limited to, assessment.

To recap, teaching is complex; those who teach, can. 8 As Aristotle noted "mastercraftsmen [sic]…can teach and others (i.e., those who have not acquired an art by study but merely picked up some skill empirically) cannot" (cited in Wheelwright (1951, p. 69) . Teaching surpasses knowing, and telling. Teacher professional learning increasingly needs to be done with and for teachers, rather than to, or on them (Dinham, 2013 And how do teacher educators teach such things? And teach pre-service teachers to provisionally suspend belief in all such things. Moreover, much of the above arguably applies to factual knowledge; yet more complex are discussions of aesthetics, ethics and the like. In a context of increasing global complexity and volatility, education systems appear to be retreating to the security of increased control and simplicity-a spooked dog retreating from a thunderstorm under a bed. Hargreaves and Fullan (2012) discern two current approaches to capitalising on education. The first is a business model, similar, perhaps, to my security guard model. It is characterised by relatively short-term investments (such as fast-tracking teacher education), rapid returns and competition over collaboration. The second, professional capital, recognises the longer-term-lifelong-returns on investments in education. Hargreaves and Fullan posit that professional capital comprises three elements, working in concert. The first is human capital, investing in the individual. This, they claim is of limited value in the absence of social capital-investment in the power of groups, and in collaboration. The third form of capital is decisional capital, investing in teachers the power, authority and confidence of autonomous, professional decision-making (pp. 2-5). Drawing on the work of Hargreaves and Goodson (1966) , Day (2017, p. 10) ascribes to professional capital the following characteristics: exercise of professional judgement; engagement with moral and social purposes; collaborative cultures; teacher authority; active care; self-directed learning; and acknowledgement of complexity and commensurate status and reward. These make for interesting comparison with the medical profession definition in Chap. 1.

At the outset of this chapter I wrote about conformity, and people presuming a parental role over other adults. I offer here a tentative hypothesis: It is possible that parenting other grown-ups is among our basest instincts? Might it be that we see relinquishing our parenthood over other adults as a splintery beam down which we dare not slide barefoot? Possibly the educated left and right of politics have one thing in common; we know what's best for the rest of you. For the right, it tends to manifest in rules: you can't marry another man, or another woman, or die with dignity, because I disapprove, or believe that that it's un-good for you. And if you're not prospering, that's just the natural order of things-you should be more like me. For the left, it tends to display itself in helps: if you're not prospering, it's everyone else's fault. Let me rescue you from your poverty/ignorance … (to become more like me). Both groups, I believe, might following the all-too-human script of wanting others to conform to our (imagined?) image. And both might be antithetical to the change they purportedly seek. To the extent that this is true, it offends autonomyorientation, the capacity for adults to weigh consequences, make decisions and weigh consequences.

Primum non nocere: first, do no harm. The above is a common paraphrase deriving from the Hippocratic Oath. 9 It makes a claim on all of us claiming to support of education and educators. Not only do current reforms often fail to fix their assigned problems, but they are also potentially harming the cause of real education, according to Ravitch (2013) . A section above dealt with improving the improvers. Rancière, citing Jacotot, observes that "equality is not a given, nor is it claimed. It is practiced, it is verified" [Rancière's emphasis]; it can "never exist except in its verification and at the price of being verified always and everywhere" [my emphasis] (Citton, 2010, p. 33) . I believe that "equality", above, can be seen as a proxy or pre-condition for, or outcome of, autonomy, and/or freedom-within and beyond the schoolroom. As Rancière notes, autonomy and freedom come at the cost of equality's verification (its "making-true") everywhere and everywhen. The price might be intra-or interpersonal, such as the renunciation of power, ego or surety; as Biesta (2014, p. 79 ) explains, emancipation refers to a surrender of ownership. A related question might be how are those educrats who support education emancipating teachers, and leading them autonomy-wise?

What might a Pedagogic Oath look like, and what means might operate to revision it? Personal musings It is reasonable for government, parents, all of us, to expect much of teachers, given the outcomes we entrust them to meet, "but teachers also deserve more from the systems that employ them" (Evans & Yuan, 2018, p. 24) , and from the public more broadly. Evans and Yuan continue "without decent working conditions, teachers are unlikely to be motivated and deliver quality education". Schools should be places of humanity; a place for my being (in both senses of the word). This seems obvious, but it may get lost in the hurly-burly of the day-to-day. Are we becoming better, and more human/e? In short, what can those of us who are defenders of education do, in the cause of "improving our [and others'?] ability to improve" Engelbart (2003, p. 1) ? And how can teachers insist that we do this? The next chapter will explore some possibilities.

Life expectancy trends-Australia

Life tables, states, territories and Australia

Deaths in Australia

Does leadership matter? Examining the relationship among transformational leadership, school climate, and student achievement

What the best college teachers do

Prevalence of bullying, discrimination and sexual harassment among trainees and fellows of intensive care medicine of Australia and New Zealand

Transformational leadership behaviors of school principals: A qualitative research based on teachers' perceptions

How the world's best-performing school systems come out on top

School swap: Korea style

Welsh teenagers learn from South Korea school swap

The beautiful risk of education

Learning teaching: Becoming an inspirational teacher

The teaching of psychology: Essays in honor of

The ignorant schoolmaster: Knowledge and authority

Enfranchising the profession through evaluation: A story from

Higher standards for prospective teachers: What's missing from the discourse

Reclaiming accountability in teacher education

Teacher education around the world: What can we learn from international practice?

Taking education really seriously: Four years' hard labour

Teachers' worlds and work

What is 'good' teaching? Teacher beliefs and practices about their teaching

The quality teaching movement in Australia encounters difficult terrain: A personal perspective

Steady work: Policy, practice, and the reform of American education

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Intellectual labor and pedagogical work: Rethinking the role of the teacher as intellectual

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Teachers' professional lives: Aspirations and actualities

Professional capital: Transforming teaching in every school

The power of accreditation: Views of academics

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Recruiting and retaining teachers in Alabama: Educators on what it will take to staff all classrooms with quality teachers

#Metoo and the medical profession

Understanding education: History, politics and practice

Policy as numbers: Accounting for educational research

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Are male teachers headed for extinction? The 50-year decline of male teachers in Australia

The inspirational teacher

All you need to know about action research

The relationship between transformational leadership, perceived leader effectiveness, and teachers' job satisfaction

Questioning the language of improvement and reform in education: Reclaiming meaning

What keeps teachers going

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Nineteen eighty-four

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The activist teaching profession

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The experiences of early career teachers: new initiatives and old problems

Teachers' lives in context: A framework for understanding barriers to high-quality teaching within resource deprived settings

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Those who understand: Knowledge growth in teaching

Creating conditions for growth: Fostering teacher efficacy for student success

Controversy continues as HEA [Higher Education Academy] director leaves post

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The impact of principal leadership behaviors on the efficacy of new and experienced middle school teachers

Why don't students like school