Teachers are not robots

We don’t need scripts to facilitate great learning

A couple of years ago, I wrote a middle grade fiction book about a group of year sixes who rebel against their android teacher because they don’t like the rigid rules and strict regime that come into effect when she starts as a substitute teacher. I was driven to write my book by a curiosity – what would my class of rambunctious year 4/5/6 students do if they had a robot for a teacher?  Now I find myself contemplating a related question – are we asking our teachers to behave like robots?

The evidence-based trend

If you’ve been inside the education system over the last few years you would be familiar with a term that has taken over the educational lexicon – evidence-based. Across many schools in Australia there have been rollouts of new evidence-based approaches to pedagogy and curriculum. These can include the use of explicit instruction, more consistent strategies for behaviour support and instructional coaching. In the media, the reporting has been largely favourable, focusing on schools that have dramatically improved literacy and numeracy results through adopting these new approaches. As welcome as these improved results may be, there are other aspects to the educational reforms that are worth noticing.

Explicit instruction can be an effective approach to delivering content if done well, however, the new approaches being rolled out also include the use of scripts and slideshows to deliver lessons. The logic behind the pre-prepared slide decks is that they save on lesson preparation time. In addition, using them across a school can help achieve the aim of a ‘low variance curriculum’, where you could walk into any class at the same year level and every student will be doing the same lessons and work. The slide decks most commonly being utilised are created by educational not-for-profit organisations such as Ochre Education and they come with additional resources such as worksheets.

Resource platforms can certainly help teachers save time and assist schools with curriculum mapping, but they can become overused and burdensome. Many fellow colleagues in the profession have lamented the slide decks, with the most common criticism being that there are too many slides. One friend, a highly experienced secondary maths teacher, told me how she was seeking to leave her job in a regional high school because she was so frustrated by having to teach her lessons using lengthy and tedious slide decks. She lamented that there was now no opportunity for students to explore topics that appealed at a slower pace, or for her to include more creative ways of engaging her learners. There was also pressure to keep up with the slides, because other teachers were using the same sequence of lessons and the students needed to complete a test at the end of the unit. 

In practice, examples of what ‘behaviour support’ can mean is a teacher using a set script to deliver instructions to their class such as for walking in, standing behind a chair, sitting down, taking a cap off a whiteboard marker, writing an answer, holding up a mini-whiteboard and/or putting their eyes on the teacher. Anecdotally, I have heard from teachers in schools using these approaches that although they generally work, they allow little room for more informal classroom circle check-ins or variations of the script according to a teacher’s own style. Some teachers, who had already been using other effective approaches for managing classroom routines and behaviour such as restorative practice, are feeling demoralised to the point of wanting to leave the profession. It is hardly surprising – the changes have been delivered via a top-down approach with little regard for existing expertise.

Instructional coaching and peer observation can also be valuable, particularly for less experienced teachers, but some colleagues in the profession have told me that they have been utilised as a way of ensuring that teachers stick to the new ‘evidenced-based’ protocols. For example, a teacher can be given negative feedback for going off script when talking to students in a more informal way as they enter the classroom or for not following the strict procedure for the use of mini whiteboards. The importance of building positive relationships with students is well known, yet if teachers are to use set scripts and language for classroom procedures, it can reduce opportunities for crucial micro-moments of connection. Additionally, the critical evidence that a teacher has gathered about what procedures work best for particular students and/or classes is ignored.

Binary thinking

There is merit in the use of some of these practices, however, to roll out a whole new model where the methodology must be adhered to is not only imprudent, but oppressive. Teacher agency has been dramatically reduced and the voices of students regarding the changes are non-existent. Furthermore, there is little nuance in the way the approaches have been implemented. Research from organisations such as the Australian Education Research Organisation (AERO) was used by school or school sector decision-makers to argue that practices such as student-directed or inquiry-based learning didn’t improve learning outcomes, so they were scrapped and a new model was created. The research had a narrow focus on improving literacy and numeracy outcomes; crucial evidence from highly skilled teachers in the classroom, for example regarding successful uses of student-directed learning or innovative engagement ideas were not included. A mix of some explicit instruction combined with inquiry-based learning was not considered. Similarly, with the behaviour support practices there seems to have been little contemplation of adding in strategies from other evidence-based approaches such as restorative practice or the Berry Street educational model.

Allowing space for adventurous thinking

One of the ‘capability’ areas in the new Victorian curriculum (F-10) is Critical and Creative Thinking, the aim of which is to help students to develop ‘skills and dispositions that support logical, strategic, flexible and adventurous thinking’. The Critical and Creative Thinking capability in the Australian Curriculum has a similar aim. These are worthy attributes; however they are the very skills and dispositions that we seem to be discouraging teachers to possess. A model that relies upon teachers delivering pre-prepared scripts and slideshows does not allow for any kind of flexible or adventurous thinking. And if we teachers are unable to be adventurous in our teaching, is it possible for us to ask this of our learners?

In my middle-grade fiction novel about the android teacher, Sam, the students come up with an elaborate scheme to pretend they are all working hard while a couple of genius year sixes get busy with hacking. They are able to install a new operating system so that Sam acts as a servant to them rather than the other way around. Fun and mayhem ensue as the students get to create a classroom of their dreams, including Sam baking sweet treats for them every day. The students have to face some disciplinary consequences, but there’s some adults around them that celebrate their ingenuity. Perhaps we also need to hack into models that are rolled out and imposed on schools, so that a bit more ingenuity, spontaneity and joy prevails for both teachers and students? Our students are going to have enough robots in their lives, they certainly don’t need any more of them.