Rebuilding engagement!

We really do need to get back to 100% student engagement

If we go back far enough in time all schools used to have effective 100% student engagement.  For very good reasons we have renounced the overt violence and rote learning that underpinned those times and places.  Despite best efforts, we are still a long way from re-achieving effective 100% student engagement.

Yet, getting to 100% student engagement should be the goal (and maybe it is) but the methods being used seem unable to achieve it.  For the pendulum to swing fully from violent external control of student behaviour to non-violent internal control of student behaviour, teachers play a critical role.  It is clear the role they played in a violent past and, through the teacherly authority framework, it is becoming clearer what role they must play now.

In other words, regaining 100% student engagement rests squarely on the shoulders of teaching professionals.  It is they, and they alone, who can reach this goal (and their life will be much easier as a consequence).

Teacherly authority is the social mechanism that creates the conditions for students to freely choose to pay full attention to their teachers.  This free choice is made when teacher and student values are aligned.  Put another way, students freely choose to enter a relationship of teacherly authority when what teachers are offering to teach is highly valued by their students.

With the advent of twenty-first century skills there is a wider range of possibilities for the alignment of values, subject knowledge is no longer the only thing officially on offer.

Remember, when a student enters such a relationship with their teacher, they will do their best work wherever their teacher directs their attention.

There are still places on the one-day program (Re)Building Teacherly Authority on 18th August.  For more information and to register for this event, go here.  To get a fuller overview of Teacherly Authority, go here.

John Corrigan is an expert in helping individuals to bring their whole of mind to their daily life and increase their effectiveness and the effectiveness of those around them. This expertise scales from the individual to the team to the organisation.  At the core of this work is the concept and practice of teacherly authority.  Earlier blogs can be found here.

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