The Red Queen – Evolving the profession

We need to be more honest about failure in education.

As we canter towards the College of Teaching are we danger of ignoring a fundamental principle of evolution?

It is not enough to maintain or even improve standards. As a profession, we need to develop an understanding that allows for the insistent pull of dynamic change. We need to understand the theory of the Red Queen, which is:

… an evolutionary hypothesis which proposes that organisms must constantly adapt, evolve, and proliferate not merely to gain reproductive advantage, but also simply to survive while pitted against ever-evolving opposing organisms in an ever-changing environment. (Wikipedia)

There are always going to be some teachers who obviously do not come up to scratch, and dealing with them is going to be part of performance management. But these teachers are not my concern.

It is the 60%, those in the middle of that normal distribution curve that worry me. Being held to professional standards and expectations, we are likely to see the best intentioned scheme in our recent professional history trapping the profession in a puddle of inertia.

We must have a profession who are constantly running to stand still. For example, It is not ok for a teacher to say that they cannot ‘do’ technology. Teachers who stay where they are, even if that is ‘Outstanding’ today, and just keep doing more of the same, need every incentive and the space to develop further.

A classroom/school where the force of fear (of inspection or poor management) is greater than the force of evolution, the learning cannot keep pace with the demands of the children

Of course, we must allow space for adaptation, and create less painful pathways for failure.

We need a profession full of experimentation, alive to the challenges that our environment, communities and families present us.

We need to allow for the wild cards, be prepared to cut away the dead wood, and embrace change.

As the College of Teaching takes shape, I hope the professional standards allow our profession to evolve and thrive. This is my contribution to this debate.