Being the philosophical type, one of the questions I constantly ask myself is: what is it to be a teacher? A couple of years ago, I couldn’t escape this question nagging me and keeping me awake at night.

As I tossed and turned, I shuddered when thinking back to those days when hundreds of teachers were herded into the assembly hall for Inset days on Brain Gym, learning styles and visual, auditory and kinesthetic learners. I shuddered even more when thinking back to the prescribed lesson plans and the many Ofsted hoops we had to jump through, stripping us of our autonomy and professional judgement.

In every instance, I had raised objections to no avail, as my fellow teachers and I were forced to comply with these initiatives without any consultation or discussion. Thankfully, today many of these fads and gimmicks have been exposed for the quack pedagogy that they are.

However, another question loomed: why do so many ministers and even heads feel so confident in instructing teachers in the minutiae of our job? Shouldn’t pedagogy be for our profession to debate and decide? Or is it acceptable for teachers to be told how to teach, how to assess and what to think? Of course it’s not.

But in a context where teachers lack confidence and have had their professionalism undermined over many years, that is what has happened. Two years ago, after a few conversations with like-minded teachers, I decided that I had had enough of being passive in the face of being told how to teach.

It was time to seize the initiative and move out of compliance mode. In the spirit of exercising agency, I founded the Knowledge and Ideas Group at my school.

This is an educational discussion forum open to every teacher in my school. The aim of the discussion group is quite simple; we aspire for teachers to be a community of scholars. I wanted us to reclaim our profession and reconceptualise teaching in an intellectual and self-determining direction. That meant teachers defining and shaping what it is to be a teacher. In order to do that, we needed to proactively take back control and shape the agenda of teaching and learning in a meaningful way.

To that end, we have created an intellectual space within school to discuss subject knowledge, pedagogy and what I call the holy trinity: what is our ideal model of a teacher? What is our ideal model of a pupil? What is our ideal model of a school?

We have the knowledge

Over the past two years, these are the types of discussions we have been having. It’s been both empowering and enjoyable…two things I feared I would never recapture about teaching.

The Knowledge and Ideas Group meets two or three times a term. Discussions are voluntary to attend and happen after the school day is over. They tend to attract an average of about 50 teachers out of a total staff of around 100. At our most recent discussion - on whether our school should “chase the English Baccalaureate” - we had almost 70 teachers.

The format varies between inviting outside speakers and our own colleagues to speak, and meetings for last up to two hours. We invited Robert Peal in to discuss his book Progressively Worse, in which he critiques progressive education and argues for the centrality of subject knowledge. He was made welcome but given a tough grilling, nonetheless, by his audience.

We invited Angela McFarlane to address us on why we need a Chartered College of Teaching, a discussion that ended up being a great debate about what characterises a good teacher. Suffice to say, the very lively discussion threw up more than one definition. Word of this discussion spread around other schools in the area and, as a direct result, Angela was invited to address 300 teachers from a collection of other schools.

In response to some staff unease about pupil misbehaviour, we invited two of our own colleagues to share their conflicting views about proposed solutions. A young teacher argued for a zero-tolerance approach, while our deputy head argued for a restorative justice model. What was so refreshing about this discussion was that rather than staff complaining behind the scenes, teachers felt the need to engage and articulate their own views about the right response and respond to probing questions from colleagues. Some teachers even changed their minds, having been forced to be more rigorous in their thinking.

Another Knowledge and Ideas Group discussion explored the issue of “creativity” in education and what exactly is meant by the term. One of our own teachers delivered an extremely thoughtful and humorous introduction and in the course of the discussion a considerable number of the audience were introduced to the ideas of Sir Ken Robinson for the first time, with teachers split evenly for and against his thesis.

Space to experiment

Though I sometimes come up with the discussion topics, at other times teachers approach me with something they would like to have a discussion about or speak on. Kathy, a newly qualified English teacher, wanted to critique the literature canon as “outdated, stale, and full of too many dead white dudes”. Hugh, a departmental colleague, profoundly disagreed. What followed was a blistering debate as both colleagues argued as if their lives depended on it. Nobody in that room would have dared to have said, “Does it really matter?”

In a short period of time, discussing these intellectual and educational questions has become second nature to many of my fellow teachers. “That is as it should be,” I hear you say. Yes, but unfortunately too many teachers are ground down by the day job and weary of having politicians and pundits outside of education defining what education is and what makes a good teacher. We listen in despair as some new education minister defines what education and teaching are all about, and bunker down, hoping that this new vision will not turn into yet another list of policy changes.

Having carved open the space to experiment, discuss and explore free from the immediate pressure of looking through the measurement microscope on pupil impact and quality assurance, etc, the irony is that we are deepening our sense of vocation. In effect, we are taking back control and shaping the direction of education in our own small way. The discussion group is opening up minds to new ideas and deepening our intellectual curiosity across a wide range of areas, as we collectively begin to harness our scholarly interests and potential.

Having made the move from being reactive, passive and “done to”, towards being proactive and self-determining, and shaping the discussion, our morale is higher, our bonds are strengthened and our minds have been broadened. What’s not to like? Ours is real CPD, organised and driven from the bottom up. I used to aspire to be part of a community of scholars - the good news is: now I am.

Kevin Rooney is an author and head of social science at Queen’s School, Bushey