Teaching is a verb, and for me the “doing” element of teaching is its definitive feature.  You have to be doing it in order to be it.  I think that’s why I feel a little rusty at the end of each summer, a little nervous of starting with a new class.

I have a broad conception of the word “teacher”.  I see teachers, tutors, lecturers (both in universities and further education), trainers, assessors, coaches and instructors in some way falling under my umbrella of “teacher”. It is broadly those people who “do”.  This is in stark contrast to the group of people I would call “teaching pundits”. 

Teaching pundits to me are people who, like Gary Lineker, no longer “do it” but are in a position to judge, develop or guide others doing the job and often get paid a fair crack for doing it.

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The rise of teacher pundits

This year, I made it my new year’s resolution to dial down the volume of non-teaching pundits when it comes to my own practice.  While I admit this sounds like hubris, let me explain by using the theory of Michael Eraut (2004), whose work, initially used for university lecturers who stop working in their occupational field, I think works just as well for those who leave the classroom. Firstly, he argues that as memory of work experience diminishes, the individual begins to rely on written forms of knowledge, such as books, policies or frameworks. 

These explicit forms of knowledge begin to dominate their thinking; thus shifting away from having what Ryle (1946) calls the “know-how” to perform a task, underpinned by a theoretical “know that”, towards solely having the “know that” and losing the knowledge of performance - which is an impoverished form of knowing when practical action is required.  So over time, a pundit will “know that” good questioning techniques may deepen learning, but their “know-how” of performance dims. 

Secondly, and relatedly, Eraut (2004) argues that this produces idealised versions of performance that begin to replace memories of actual performance. The individual begins to consider how they would have liked to have practised, instead of how they did practice.  Thus, they begin to become further disconnected from the reality of the action.

Disconnected from reality

If this disconnection from the reality of action and diminishment of “know-how” is indeed as Eraut contends, this raises the question why and how people who no-longer “do” often have a louder voice and more influence on the development of teachers and teaching than those who continue to do the job and why we listen to them so readily and without question. 

I have to question why we don’t wrestle back ownership of our own professionalism and our own practice.  I think this is a really important issue for teachers, as our “know-how” has a value that sometimes goes unrecognised both by ourselves and others. And if we don’t respect what makes us professionals, don’t we give up part of our professionalism? 

I don’t want to be too hard on teaching pundits, or anyone involved in the education system, but teaching really is not a spectator sport and the evidence points to the spectators perhaps having less solid ground for their positions in terms of the types of knowledge that inform practice than they may claim.  Therefore, I feel justified in my dialling down the volume and leave you, as professionals, to make your own decisions.

Sam Jones is a lecturer at Bedford College, founder of FE Research Meet and was FE Teacher of the Year at the Tes FE Awards 2019