TEACHING IS AN ART NOT A SCIENCE
My Hypothesis
My PHD aim is to address the widening attainment gap between boys and girls at GCSE; my intention is to use multi-level analysis to ascertain the attributes in lessons and departments that have the greatest ‘visible’ effect on boys’ progress. Rather than a backwards looking study that identifies the root causes of underachievement (which have been well documented), I intend my research project to be solution based where I focus my energies on tackling the problem and seeking out best practice that reduces the attainment gap between genders.
As far as I know there is no current Department of Education solution-based study addressing this “elephant”, When I pushed for change I was seen as being difficult and I made myself very unpopular with the Senior Leadership Team (SLT), who did everything in their power not to change. For my self-preservation and sanity, I stopped asking for their help and took control of what I could, and let go of everything else. To quote the educational writer and theorist Stephen Covey: “by focusing on your area of control, your area of influence will grow” and it did. I suppose in my career I have not stopped pushing for change and (often my popularity with Senior Leaders has not risen because of it), but I have made a positive contribution to my schools and my continuous interest in learning has helped to make this happen. Seventeen years after my GTP placement, I am embarking on my Educational PhD.
I am at the stage in my career where I have the experience and authority to comment legitimately on Secondary Education, and I want to continue to see positive changes that take Education out of the dark Victorian workhouses and bring it into the light of the 21st Century.
Is Teaching an Art or a Science?
I started my teaching career in a tough school in South London where I was placed on the Graduate Teaching Programme (GTP), otherwise known as a ‘baptism of fire’. It was “sink or swim” and I was lucky enough to make it to the end of the Michaelmas term alive. However, what really struck me when I first re-entered the teaching sphere was how little it had changed since I had left school, 15 years previously. There was still so much resistance to change and, in some corners, very little future thinking.
When I pushed for change I was seen as being difficult and I made myself very unpopular with the Senior Leadership Team (SLT), who did everything in their power not to change. For my self-preservation and sanity, I stopped asking for their help and took control of what I could, and let go of everything else. To quote the educational writer and theorist Stephen Covey: “by focusing on your area of control, your area of influence will grow” and it did. I suppose in my career I have not stopped pushing for change and (often my popularity with Senior Leaders has not risen because of it), but I have made a positive contribution to my schools and my continuous interest in learning has helped to make this happen. Seventeen years after my GTP placement, I am embarking on my Educational PhD.
The question is teaching an Art or a Science will be explored throughout my research and I imagine that I will not fully answer. If teaching is a Science then if you set up the same controlled situation your results are repeatable, every child would receive the same education and they would all come out with the same results. So therefore teaching must be an art, where results constantly vary based on the differing skill levels of the participants involved.