The SENDcast Challenging the Pedagogy of Professional Decline with Rachel Lofthouse
When schemes and policies control every aspect of a teacher's week to improve efficiency, it can unintentionally strip away what makes teachers unique—their quirks, passion, and individual personalities. This focus on efficiency, conformity, and standardisation stands in stark contrast to the ideals of pedagogy and can have a detrimental effect on children, young people, and their dedicated teachers.
"Teachers are not challenged to think for themselves and teachers often really flourish when they do, and so do their learners".
Rachel Lofthouse
In our latest episode, Rachel Lofthouse, Professor of Teacher Education and Director of CollectivED joins Dale to introduce the new concept 'the pedagogy of professional decline'. Rachel describes the phrase as – both classroom practices and CPD (Continuing Professional Development) which reduce agency, neglect expertise, drive conformity, narrow opportunities, damage relationships. It is the opposite of helping learners flourish.
Rachel highlights that one of the symptoms of pedagogy of professional decline is that we aren't creating very sophisticated learners. We're creating learners who can be successful in a certain type of task as opposed to wide-ranging tasks. Listen to hear insights into its characteristics and how and why to challenge it.
About Rachel Lofthouse
Rachel Lofthouse is Professor of Teacher Education at Leeds Beckett University and founder of CollectivED The Centre for Coaching, Mentoring, Supervision and Professional Learning. She has worked in education for over 30 years and has maintained a keen interest in understanding and enabling professional learning at all career stages and across education sectors. She has a specific research expertise in mentoring and coaching and has regularly published in this area for 20 years. Her current extended interests include developing practices to support a more sustainable education profession and more inclusive schools, and she is participating in EU funded projects on these areas.
Contact Rachel
https://www.leedsbeckett.ac.uk/research/collectived/
r.m.lofthouse@leedsbeckett.ac.uk
Useful Links
Carnegie School of Education Blog
Taking a stand against the pedagogy of professional decline blog
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· Email Dale – dale@bsquared.co.uk
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