Sunday 1 November, 9.45am until 10.30am, Lecture Theatre 2 Breakfast Banter
On the face of it, when you walk around schools at break-time, or glance into classrooms during lessons, they look just as they always did. But things have changed. Schools are not the places they were. In many schools, teachers no longer socialise or discuss education informally in the staffroom, meeting instead in formal meetings where the agenda is set. They communicate with colleagues by email, or have brief interchanges in the cupboard they call the departmental office. In class, their lessons have become more formulaic and their relationships with pupils have due regard for the ‘boundaries’ prescribed by school policies. Even the way teachers dress is more formal, in keeping with the business ethos many schools promote. What has driven these changes, and what effect do they have on education? Is the idea of teaching as an inspiring vocation a thing of the past?
 | Dr Gerry Czerniawski senior lecturer, secondary education, Cass School of Education, University of East London; author, Successful Teaching 14-19: theory, practice and reflection |
 | Richard Swan writer and academic |
 | Dr Mark Taylor vice principal, East London Science School; London convenor, IoI Education Forum |
| Chair: | |
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Dr Shirley Lawes
researcher; consultant and university teacher, specialising in teacher education and modern foreign languages; Chevalier dans l’ordre des Palmes Académiques |
Recent debates on the teaching of history imply a subject under attack and on the defensive with claims that it is in danger of being merged into a kind of humanities
Mark Taylor, TES, 2 October 2009
Keep teachers’ personal lives private
Teachers should resist the General Teaching Council’s new code of conduct telling them how to behave outside of work.
David Perks, spiked, 9 September 2009Government introduces new licence to teach amid widespread changes to English school system
Polly Curtis, Guardian, 30 June 2009
Expel these managers from UK schools
Labour’s targets culture in schools means hefty salaries for managers and uninspiring education for kids.
David Perks, spiked, 3 June 2009'Returning to the game last year, I was struck by how assessment for learning has become a viral philosophy'
Phil Beadle, Guardian, 21 April 2009Traditional subject areas have been hi-jacked to promote the government's social goals, instead of imparting a body of academic knowledge to their students according to this new report
Frank Furedi, Shirley Lawes, Michele Ledda, Chris McGovern, Simon Patterson, David Perks and Alex Standish, Civitas, June 2007
The classroom and the school have become multi-disciplinary, dynamic and nurturing spaces for learning and education. Well, this may seem unproblematic, but on closer inspection this perception of education in UK classrooms becomes more troubled.
Nick Soucek, Futurelab, 1 February 2007"No word was untested, no argument taken for granted, no opinion dismissed without argument nor accepted without argument."
David Jones, professor of bioethics, St Mary's University College
