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What teaching does to people as people: What can ECF Providers learn from ITE?
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Elaine Long
Welcome to the ECF Staffroom. I'm Elaine Long.
Mark Quinn
And I am Mark Quinn.
Elaine Long
We are programme leaders for the UCL Early Career Teacher Development Programme. Why are we in the staff room? We are here because this is where the best professional learning conversations always take place. This is where problems can be aired bluntly and where solutions can be explored.
Mark Quinn
Over the course of this series, we will hear the voices of different colleagues as they come in the ECF Staffroom. We will hear from early career teachers themselves and from the mentors and induction tutors who support them. We will talk about all things ECF, the challenges and the joys. So, why don't you enjoy a coffee with us, perhaps even grab a biscuit and sit down to half an hour of ECF Staffroom chat.
Mark Quinn
Welcome to the ECF staffroom Jane Roew. Really, really nice to see you, Jan, to have you in our staffroom. We are one of those staff rooms where were are really happy to make a hot drink or a cold drink for a new guest in our staffroom, tea or coffee, whatever you might like.
What do you take when you walk into the staffroom.
Jan Rowe
Oh, I take very strong white coffee.
Mark Quinn
That's kind of contradiction in terms isn’t it.
Jan Rowe
I suppose so. You know, with just a dash of milk. But I'm kind of known here for the strength of my coffee. I probably shouldn't on so many cups of coffee a day.
Mark Quinn
And if we threw in a biscuit, what would it be?
Jan Rowe
Oh, if it was a biscuit. It would probably be a ginger nut I think. Yeah.
Mark Quinn
I haven't had a ginger nut in, I don't know how long.
Jan Rowe
Good for dunking.
Mark Quinn
I will definitely find one of those in the back of the cupboard.
Elaine Long
I was just going to say Janet excellent for dunking. Ginger nut is my top choice of biscuit as well. We're really grateful for you coming into the staffroom because we know you have such a huge wealth of expertise in teaching and also teacher development. I mean, our listeners will be really keen to find out about what you do and what an average day is like for you.
So, would you mind just introducing this up for our listeners?
Jan Rowe
Yes. So, I work at Liverpool, John Moores University in Liverpool and my current role is Strategic Partnership Development Lead and I was previously the head of initial teacher education here. But this year I chose to step down and work part time in a slightly more partnership focused role. So my main responsibility here now is to support our school direct provision, which is we're trying to maintain into the longer term because it's one of the one of the policy moves that's perhaps more contentious, is to stop school directors as a named route into teaching.
So, I work with our school direct partners, with our SKIT partners, but also my kind of main area of responsibility in terms of development is working alongside colleagues on that really crucial interface between our school based partners and the university based programs to try and integrate properly integrate across our big partnership of about 200 schools, 600 students, and, you know, a kind of deep knowledge and understanding of the curriculum that we're offering and how we can all contribute purposefully to the success of the students that we're working with.
Elaine Long
Really interesting, and it will be particularly interesting to talk to you about how you see both sides of that. But you've got a strong knowledge of schools and what they need and also then how universities can best support them with that.
I'm well aware that your career didn't start there and every educator has a story about how they entered the profession and how it develops.
Would you mind telling us a bit about yours?
Jan Rowe
Yeah. So, I began my kind of teaching career as a modern languages teacher, so I came to Liverpool to train, to teach personal reasons really. I was only intending to stay a year. I did my PGCE at the University of Liverpool and I've never left. So that's over 30 years. Three very Scouse children later. I'm still here and my entire teaching career and teacher education career has been, has been based in Liverpool.
So, yeah, I taught for about seven years, became a secondary head of languages in a comprehensive school in the city. Then I became the advisory teacher for languages, then the languages advisor, in days when such things existed. I remember as part of that role, having to introduce the national curriculum to teachers. So I'm that old, and then I moved into teacher education at another institution in the city, first of all, and then I've been at Liverpool, John Moores for about ten years, so I've worked in teacher education, initial teacher education for about 20 years now.
Elaine Long
Well, you don't need that definitely look old enough, Jan, to experience all of that. What do you enjoy most about working in teacher education?
Jan Rowe
I mean, I still really enjoy the commitment, the enthusiasm, the ethical values of the, you know, of the young and not so young people that come into teaching. It's an absolute joy to meet them at the beginning of every year, and one of the things I used to do when I was head of ITE was to go into every single introductory session with every group of students, and welcome them to teaching and thank them for being committed enough to become teachers.
So, you know, seeing that kind of squad arrive at the beginning of the year and then seeing them leave and go out into the profession, I've never lost that an absolute commitment to the importance of teaching and talk up the people that come into teaching as much as I can, because I think there's a tendency, I was just talking to a head teacher about this this morning for all to be seen as gloom and doom and some kind of last resort.
And it's by no means a last resort for the young. You know, they're the students that we work with. I suppose it's you know, it's in my kind of, you know, down my spine, really. My mum was a teacher, I was a teacher, my eldest child is a teacher and so yeah, I would never put people off it.
I mean, you know, I don't run away from the fact that it's hard, but I think it's still such a rewarding thing to do. I think the thing that I've always found really interesting about teaching that doesn't often get talked about is what it does to people as people. So, you know, I think people have this sense, that confidence people become teachers.
I've seen lots of people come into teaching that are not confident at all and through teaching, become confident. So, I think one of the under celebrated things about teaching is what it does to you as a person and not just as a professional.
Elaine Long
That's really interesting, Jan. I think that might have happened to me, I think. I really wouldn't have dreamt of standing up in front of groups of people, but I think teaching gave me that thing that gave me that sense of belonging and actual enjoyment. But yeah, I've never heard anyone really talk about it like that.
So that's already really made me think about development. That's really interesting.
Mark Quinn
Yeah, that's a great line actually. What teaching does to people as people. Yeah. Jan you know, with, 20 years, you say in initial teacher education and working as you do with a couple of hundred schools in the Liverpool area, I'm just thinking, well, curious as to what you think about how those young people and not so young people entering the profession today are different or similar to the people who entered the profession 20 years ago?
You know, have they changed? Are they the same? What would you say about that?
Jan Rowe
Yeah, it's an interesting question. I think I think broadly people are the same, you know, people that come into teaching, come into teaching for the same reasons that people always came into teaching, you know, that that genuine commitment to putting something back into society, to making a difference. And I always encourage people that come into teaching to say that, you know, it became a kind of thing that people felt they shouldn't say because it was naff.
But, you know, if you don't come into teaching for those reasons, then, you know, you shouldn't really be in teaching. So, I think I think the motivations to come into teaching are very similar. I suppose, you know, people that come in to teaching now have a different experience of education themselves and so that always has an impact on the kind of teachers that they envisage themselves coming or what they see teaching as.
And maybe there's more variability now perhaps in their prior experiences. But I think essentially, you know, there's many more similarities and differences.
Mark Quinn
Do you think their expectations are similar or different? I'm just wondering because certainly when I became a teacher, I looked at the 40 year teacher pension and thought, okay, so that’s it then right. So that's the expectation and I probably did imagine that I was going to be teaching that long. I managed half of it, not the whole lot, but still, we hear, don't we, that that's no longer the expectation of a young person going into or an older person going into teaching.
They don't expect to be in that long. Do you pick that up or not?
Jan Rowe
To be honest, I don't and I'm not quite sure where that room has come from. You know, the people see it as a kind of temporary stop on the way to somewhere else. You know, that isn't the impression that we get from the students we work with. I think their intention is to commit for the long term, you know, and whether they do or they don't, whether they find other things that they decide to do instead, I don't think they set out thinking it's a short-term thing at all.
Mark Quinn
Yeah, I think my suspicion is you're probably right there. Surely no one can think that teaching is an easy bag to carry, right? And if they ever did think that just spend, you know, the first week in a initial teacher education course would prove them wrong. Right. Because it's a hard thing to go through, no matter how nice you are.
You know. Yes. It's a hard it's a hard process. You'll certainly expose what weaknesses you have. So I think you're probably right. If people, those who get through to the end of that and go into their first teaching job, even if they do leave earlier than we'd like them to, that's not how they imagine, that's not what they imagine is going to happen when they start.
Yeah, that's interesting. And you think and you said something about how their own schooling is maybe different nowadays to what it might have been 15, 20 years ago. Did you ask anything more about that?
Jan Rowe
I mean, that's only a kind of hunch, really, but I think it may and it will vary from area to area. But I think, you know, there are some people coming into teaching now that are perhaps been through a schooling system that's a bit more rigid or some schools where, you know, teachers are expected to act in a very similar way to each other.
It seems like some of the kind of quirks and foibles of teaching have gone from some schools. But that's only a supposition. And I think one of the one of the things that I think is very rich about a lot of teacher education programs, not exclusively university teacher education programs, is the diversity of schools that they get to see, because, you know, when, for instance, we have quite a number of students that come to us from Northern Ireland, it's just the nature of being in Liverpool, where the closest, you know, place for them to come if they want to, train to teach in England and most of them have been through the grammar school system in Northern Ireland, you know.
So they're very not used to the diversity of a comprehensive and it's a fantastic learning experience for them, but they're quite apprehensive at first because it's very alien to the experience that they've had themselves. So yeah, that that's always interesting to watch. You know, they come because they want that experience, but they're nonetheless a bit scared about it initially.
Mark Quinn
I confess to the very same.
Elaine Long
Jan, I’m interested in your strategic work with schools and so obviously you're in the privileged position of being able to go into different school, and look at the culture that they're creating around teacher development and some of our own early research has suggested that we've grown any career program, the schools that really create a positive culture around teacher development are able to implement the program much more successfully.
Is that something that resonates with your experience as an ITE provider, and if so, what are those schools doing that create that really positive culture around teacher development?
Jan Rowe
Yeah, I mean, I think I think schools are very invested in teacher development and certainly the commitment that they make to initial teacher education I think is extraordinary given that, you know, it's largely unpaid and a voluntary role. Our mentors would say that they one of the reasons they like it is because they feel that it develops their own learning, you know, in helping somebody else to learn, they're also learning themselves.
I think the schools that really get it right are the schools that don't have a one size fits all approach, that really listen to what individual members of staff are interested in developing. You know, and tailor make opportunities for them. I mean, I know every school must have certain things that every teacher in the in the institution needs to be updated about and so on or have priorities that they think are there for everybody.
I think that ability to really consider and to give agency to teachers over their own next steps in learning is hugely important and something that not every school gets right and the happiest schools in terms of teachers feeling that they're lifelong learners and are being supported in that are the ones that really take into consideration what the teacher wants, not just what the school wants.
Elaine Long
One of our real challenges, obviously are our ECTs come from different ITE providers because the landscape for ideas is so different, and what they learn on different programs in different ways can be different. That is a real challenge for us in terms of making sure that they can all have that unique starting point so there are a number of things we've done to mitigate that.
And I think you're right, it's hugely important that every ECT start from their own starting points because they will be different depending on their levels of confidence, depending on the ITE route they've had, depending on their experiences of school placement, you know that there will be variability in there, and we do start the modules with audits for that reason.
So, then they can adjust the balance of time. And one of the things we found in the early days actually I was horrified to I spoke to some ECTs and they were saying, we're spending 2 hours on ourselves today and Mark and I and the rest of the team were horrified because we realized that these sort of hidden messages might have gone out there, that they have to do that, but actually, you know, I think you're absolutely right, Jan. What we want teachers to be doing, if their time's absolutely precious, then their professional development about it has to be relevant and it has to be useful because I think whenever you're working with anyone in education, you have to understand you're working with time, poor people and saving time for people. Everything they do has to be relevant.
So, we did. Yeah, we did spend a long time reflecting on that and thinking about how we could make that as good as we can within the limitations we have for ECTs. Sorry, Mark, I interrupted you. You were going to speak as well.
Mark Quinn
I was going to say something like that, but I think Jan, you've given us good advice as well, which is to always look for those opportunities are things we can cut out if it's if it's just burdensome that is just bureaucratic, it's completely meaningless. I think we've done some of that but there's always more, there's always room for more.
You mentioned centralization of the curriculum. Some commentators talk don't they about kind of an a bid to simplify teaching, you know, so we can see that or at least some people say that's what we've seen in some of the school reforms, or we see it in the loss of authority from local government when it comes to input into education or sometimes we see it, don't we, with new teachers being handed their whole curriculum and say, right, that's what you do, you deliver that, you don't teach it, you deliver that.
So, there's that, there is that side of things that, here are your what to do is do those things and you'll be fine. And their people sometimes said that's the right thing to do and other people say that's a terrible thing to do because you remove the ethical decision making that a teacher has to learn to make and the humane or human aspects of being a teacher.
Do you see those two things as binary, by the way, or do you see any merit in each side of that of that argument?
Jan Rowe
Yeah, I mean, like lots of things. It's been made much more binary than it needs to be. So you know, because you get that kind of argument from people that if you, if you don't believe in giving everybody scripted lessons and lesson plans, then you're basically saying that everybody has to design everything from scratch, you know, and nobody's saying that, you know.
I think, I come back to talking to teachers and talking to student teachers and asking them what is it that they like about teaching? And one of the things that people like about teaching is deciding how to teach what they've got to teach. That doesn't mean writing copious lesson plans, you know, that's different and people misinterpret that if they think that's what they're saying.
But we all remember, we still remember, you know, you in designing your curriculum, you'll be sitting there thinking, oh, that's a great way, should we approach it that way. And what if we tried this and what if we tried that? And what about that resource? And that was one of the great joys of teaching and if you take that away from people, I think you’ll have fewer people coming into teaching.
Mark Quinn
And staying...
Jan Rowe
And staying because you know, and as I say that, you know, nobody needs to document those thoughts on, on silly proformas and upload them to any platform, you know, but that's, there's a difference between planning a lesson and having a lesson plan. But that agency I mean, you know, said our eldest she's a she's a teacher in London and she she's an English teacher, and if you took that away from her, the ability to kind of decide how she was going to teach the young people that she's teaching and just told her to do it that way, I don't think she'd last long because you know, that's a nice part of the job. There are other bits of the job that the teachers would much more be much more keen to get rid of then that, I think.
Mark Quinn
Well, what could we get rid of that we make teachers do.
Jan Rowe
Well, I think there's, there's too much still bureaucratic data dropping and onerous report writing and you know those kinds of things are still the things that get in the way of teachers and teaching There's clearly an awful lot of pastoral care that young people need. And I don't think teachers would want not to be involved with that, but they need better support with, you know, particularly the kind of extreme, you know, difficulties that the children and young people that they're working alongside have.
So, you know, I often find I think it's fascinating the ways in which teachers aren't asked enough. You know, we've got we've got a great population that, you know, it's like whenever a teacher leaves teaching, there should be some kind of standard form that they have to fill in that says why have you left, you know, and then we'd know.
We're often speculating, aren't we, about why people have left. So, yeah, I mean, I think I mean, in asked a lot of things, let’s ask teachers, you know, and maybe some of the schools that have got it right, are the schools that do just that, they ask their teachers, you know, and then they listen to it properly and they do something about it.
So, you know, they ask them about wellbeing in a really purposeful way, rather than saying, you know, stay behind after school on Monday for a yoga session. You know, when people are just thinking, actually, I'd rather go home. So, yeah, it's about having that conversation, I think. And one of the things I really love about the job that I do is about that, about listening to schools, working with schools, trying to be respectful of what each one brings.
The thing that kept me in teacher education for as long as I've been in it has been partnership. And how do you really ethically, morally grow a partnership where everybody feels invested and listened to and respected? Because, you know, when I first came into ITE I was, I said I’ve been in it long enough to remember when partnership became a thing.
So circular 498 was partnership. We were suddenly in a partnership model, but it wasn't really a partnership. It was the universities telling the schools what they wanted them to do. And I think we've come a long way since then. I actually think one of the reasons why I feel very strongly about school directors, I think that's been a big vehicle for really bringing partnership into a space that really is properly partnership.
You know, it's enabled those schools to really understand what UTE’s all about and actually they've come to realize that it's much more complex than they thought it was. And universities to really think carefully about whether they're properly listening to schools. So again, it's, you know, the bit that excites me is that there is that kind of interface. It's like the Ven diagram, I want to be in the middle and improve the middle.
Mark Quinn
Yeah, I think it's because we've learned if we didn't know it before, I don't think we learned it with that circular you mentioned that what partnership does is it makes something at least of the collective wisdom of the profession rather than assuming that all the wisdom lies in one place. And you might be surprised to hear I'll say this because we are, you know, a leader of a big national program of ECF. You know, we rotate and therefore you do it. That's actually doesn't how it doesn't it doesn't feel like that to us because you mentioned our local partner up in Liverpool, a major player.
We wouldn't be anywhere in the country, and it's and yeah, we celebrate as much as we can. We listen a lot. They push us around, you know those people in Liverpool Jan. You can, you can just imagine. You could just imagine. We do it with joy because, because we realize it that, you know, if we weren't listening to those people we’d be mugs.
Elaine Long
Jan, one of the interesting things for us also is how we build on what's what ECTs have learned in their ITE year. So, if you were going to give us some advice on that, what would your advice be in terms of what you think ECTs really needed in the next two years of teaching?
Jan Rowe
I mean, I suppose coming back to what I said previously, then I think what they need is very personalized and in secondary anyway, very subject specific and in primary often curriculum specific too. So, you know, our primary students will leave here feeling very confident teaching certain subjects and not at all confident in teaching others, and what they would really value is an opportunity to gain more knowledge and understanding and practical experience of teaching the curriculum subjects that they feel less strong for them and secondary and want to keep developing a subject specialist.
Again, I think, you know, the early career framework makes that quite tricky because, you know, they might want to go on a course with the English and Media Centre, for instance, if they're an English and media specialist but the school will say, Well, you can't do that because we haven't got any money for that but here's your ECF training, which is not subject specific.
So, and I know it is made subject specific by mentors, but, you know, I suppose my, again, I would just come back to the fact that’s not the framework, that's quality mentoring and I mean, I've read a lot of the evaluations of the early career framework. Mentoring comes out really positively in all circumstances, and that's because the mentors are hugely brilliant, largely in what they do and undervalued in the education system and underpaid for what they do, and we're going to run out of them.
You know, there aren't there aren't enough of them. So, you know, that's the kind of issue. So, I think the other thing is, is around really taking into account the context so that they take on a new job in. So it may be that they take on a new job in a school that they've already worked in. But it may be that they take on a job in a school that's completely different to either of the placements that they've had previously, the primary students might be in a year group that they've never taught. So I think it's about, you know, bespoke as much as possible, bespoke training with, with a lot of networking because actually we all remember, I think the value of that kind of collegial experience of going through teacher training.
You know, it's an emotional rollercoaster and doing it alongside other people is really helpful and I suppose one of the things that NQTs or ECTs can suffer from is feeling isolated if they're the only person in the school that’s an ECT. So, it's massive bonus to be able to bring them all together and for them to be a mutual support group.
I would have built into early career development, a lot more opportunities for them to visit other schools and to visit each other and to co-teach and to observe each other, because that's again one of the real privileges I feel I've had working in ITE up into so many schools and you learn so much from that experience. It's very good for getting rid of any kind of assumptions or prejudices you might have about what different schools are going to be like. So, you know, more of that I think would be, would be ideal.
Mark Quinn
Great advice again Jan. This thing about school visits, it's funny you mention that because that is a part of our program. Again, it happens quite late in the program, but we do build an opportunity for them to make a couple of school visits, learning actually from what we know, that happens typically in ITE experience, you know, going for a contrasting placement, we think it's really important. We think it's important that they have a kind of community as well, which is why they do, they have clusters, they're in clusters and they work with people in the same phase. Sometimes if our partners are large enough, they can also make those more subject specific, that can be really helpful.
I know that there's a physics teacher somewhere in the south near the south coast of England, actually, who's the only ECT his school. He's also the only physics teacher in his school. And I think about that guy quite a lot when we put the program together, when we improve the program, when we think about the support that that he can get, and it never feels like enough actually. A bit like when you're teaching, you never felt you did quite enough for the class in front of you. I think that's what Elaine and I bring to this is that we're kind of constantly ambitious to make it that little bit better and that's why conversations like this really matter.
I've got I've got a question for you, Jan, which is, what keeps you going?
Jan Rowe
I mean, I think I'm going less because I'm not part time. But I think, you know, fundamentally for me, it's the importance of teaching, you know, and as the kind of as the root of all things and, you know, it's so important that we get the, you know, the, the fantastic teacher workforce out there and that we keep them happy and that they stay in teaching.
I think, you know, that's a number of factors. I mean, pay is certainly part of it. You know, as I say, as a parent of a teacher and living in London, you know, I'm only too aware of that. And actually I think it's pay progression that's now the problem. I don't think it's the starting salary that's a problem, it's pay progression and you know, because she's watching her peers that left university at the same time as she did jumping up the salary, you know, by moving from job to job. Whereas they all started at about the same place then not at all to the same place now. And London's expensive she spoke, but a lot of it is job satisfaction, you know and I prefer the term job satisfaction to work life balance because I think that automatically kind of skews teaching in ways that other professions aren't thought about, it’s about jobs satisfaction.
You know, part of that is how it impacts on your life outside of work. But so, you know, I think job satisfaction is massive and I think, the enjoyment of teaching and of working alongside colleagues, you know, that it's interesting, the students of ours that leave and stay in the schools that they're in. When you ask them why, it's often about the people they teach with, not the people they teach, you know, they like them too, but it's their colleagues and I think that, again, that's kind of overlooked a bit, but it informs.
Mark Quinn
It’s the staffroom room isn’t it.
Jan Rowe
Yeah, it is the staffroom.
Mark Quinn
That’s what the podcast is called.
Jan Rowe
And getting that right. I think if I was the head teacher, that's all, that's what I'd be focusing on. You know, because you retain people, if they would rather stay where they are than move somewhere else. And that's, you know, a lot of that is about the people that they're working with and how supported they feel, not just by the senior staff, actually, but by each other, you know, and by all of the kind of ancillary staff and everybody that how everybody is treated in the school, I think makes a big difference to how long people want to stay there.
Mark Quinn
Yeah.
Elaine Long
Yeah. I think you hit the nail on the head there and Jan and I really like what you said about the satisfaction rather than work life balance. I think that reframes your thinking slightly about it in a helpful way.
Mark Quinn
Just as you finished that sentence, I heard a bell ring because we are in a school staffroom, Jan, believe it or not. And that bell is telling us that we've come to the end of our time on this podcast. We're hugely grateful for you just spending the time with us in the staffroom. Elaine and I have been busy writing notes, will be rewatching this and really listening to this for the advice you gave us and gave it the rest of the profession and the DfE along the way.
Mark Quinn
Our thanks go to Jan Rowe, Strategic Partnership Development Lead at Liverpool, John Moores University for sharing a strong coffee and a ginger nut with us this week in the ECF staffroom.
Elaine Long
You can get in touch with us if you'd like to talk about your ECF experience. We especially want to hear from a range of voices. And lastly, we hope you'll join us next time for a biscuit and a chat with another colleague in the ECF staffroom.
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