The Autonomy Swap

Hey

What a morning (today, last year, hopefully next year). Now, let’s wrap up this series on complexity…

Big idea 🍉

Building alignment in school, through things like teacher rehearsal and habit assemblies, can have serious benefits in terms of learning, wellbeing and workload. But whenever I talk to school leaders about this, the same question nearly always comes up: "What about teacher autonomy?"

The default assumption is often that alignment means less autonomy, and less autonomy means less staff satisfaction. This feels intuitive. But when I speak to schools who've actually done it, the reality is usually different.

They say: we don't especially care about having our own way of calling for silence, or our own system for how students come into a room. What we really care about is having the space to build strong relationships with students and have rich conversations about our subjects.

When we align on how classes enter a room, we spend less time negotiating boundaries. When we align on how we call for silence, we get more attention. When we align on how we check for understanding, we get better data.

The first enables the second. We give up a bit of autonomy over the routine stuff, and in return we get more autonomy over the professional stuff. It's a kind of autonomy swap.

We see this in other professions. Doctors follow shared, evidence-informed protocols so they can reserve their bandwidth for the judgement calls that really count.

Of course, this all only works if alignment is genuinely collective. Mandated routines without buy-in create resentment, and compliance approaches will ultimately backfire.

But if we get this right, it looks like most of us would (eventually) be happy to trade a bit of routine autonomy for the freedom to do our best professional work.

🎓 For more, check out this paper on teachers developing together.

Summary

• Many school leaders are concerned that alignment will mean less autonomy, leading to lower staff satisfaction.

• But when we give up autonomy over routines, we get more over our teaching: an autonomy swap.

• But this only works if we agree on such an approach, and support each other to achieve it.

Little updates 🥕

• Research on restricting phone use → highlights that bans alone are unlikely to boost outcomes with effectiveness depending on consistent enforcement.

• Study of learning-through-teaching → argues that the benefits are a result of learner’s increased agency & responsibility.

• Analysis of creative activities & thinking → finds that engaging in creative activities was negatively correlated with creative thinking in PISA 2022 data.

• Study of reading interventions → highlights a positive impact of teacher-led interventions on vocabulary.

Upgrade your evidence edge → Get Snacks PRO