Articles & Ideas

Do you, or teachers you work with, ever feel that the changing and evolving nature of the work you do in schools is undervalued or underestimated in the energy, effort and attention that it requires? If you said “yes”, you might like to consider Leading with the Social Brain in Mind.

The overwhelming tsunami of information about and enthusiasm over AI and its potentiality for making our work life better, stronger, faster only serves to make me more nervous as the days go by. Don’t misunderstand me – I am curiously poking at the edges and playing with possibilities…but there are some aspects that I struggle to embrace when I think about its use in school contexts. Namely, the implications for cognition, complexity and collaboration.

Queensland Teachers’ Journal, Vol 128 No 2, 31 March 2023, page no. 24

Schools are complex organisations with multiple and competing demands vying for available resources – including time to collaborate.

Collaboration is important work in schools and can involve many collaborative interactions with different groups across a week.

Although the overarching goal might be the same – to support or improve learning outcomes for our students – the mental effort required for different components of this work is being underestimated. Collaboration in schools has been found to be more socially and cognitively complex than first thought (Casey, 2022).

I am very fortunate! I love the work I do…and yes you would be correct in assuming that there is a “but” coming. I am a teacher. I have been working in this field since 1985. Over the years I have taught in different education sectors (Catholic, State, and Independent) and in different year levels (Prep to Year 10). I have been able to work in full time and part time capacities in leadership roles, as a consultant and as a sessional staff member at the local university. All of this is to say, that over the years, I have experienced a range of contexts and a range of roles that focus on educating students. Now (letting out a sigh) as I undertake further study, I have time to contemplate some of those bizarre ways of working that can only be described as contradictory and the causes of great tension within schools.

There is an inherent tension that lies somewhere between what it means to be a professional in the education sector and being treated as a professional. Some teacher colleagues would say that they know they are “valuable to the organisation but do not feel valued”. In part, this can be attributed to time being a limited commodity. This brings a growing sense of urgency to address what is perceived as a declining academic performance that jeopardises the attainment of Australia’s aspiration for excellence and equity in school education (Department of Education and Training, 2018).

Silos are not new to education. In fact, educational institutions may have invented them!