My Professional Development Wish List

It's been a while since I wrote a blog post, but life goes a little bit crazy sometimes.  With all the usual teacher pressures in full sway coupled with the work involved in my EdD research alongside the usual ups and downs of life getting in the way, sometimes you just need to prioritise your time alongside you health and well-being.

But that doesn't mean I forgot about my readers out there - hello everybody!  

("Hello, Lionel" by Moriartys is licensed under CC BY 2.0.)

My blog is important to me because I've always thought of it as a tool that I can use to connect with people all over the world.  Connecting with people is so important because... well it just is, isn't it.  But it can be hard to explain why we have this basic human need for connection and relatedness.  And it's this idea of relatedness and connection that I wanted to write about today because it's becoming an increasingly important theme in my EdD research.

I came across a piece of research recently as part of my literature review that I though was brilliant because, instead of being a wooly definition based on perception, it gave quite a specific definition of why connectedness is an important aspect of teachers' professional development.  

Bridwell-Mitchell and Cooc (2016) define social capital as:

“…the potential and actual set of cognitive, social and material resources made available through direct and indirect relationships with others.”

So for teachers, connection with others provides social capital - access to a set of resources, help and support.  Thinking back over the years I can't count the number of times I've looked to my colleagues for help or support, or even just asking them to share teaching resources if I'm caught short of a lesson plan for a class.  When a group of teachers get together over coffee, I can guarantee if they're not sharing ideas for new classroom approaches, they're supporting each other in emotional or practical ways.  Our colleagues are one of our biggest sources of professional development.  

("TGS and HIS teachers collaborate on an inter-school interdisciplinary project to happen in the coming months. #tgshiro" by THINKGlobalSchool is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.)

Similarly however, as a researcher and as a teacher it's soul destroying when you're working in a sector where the level of financial investment in the growth of the sector is outstripped by the rising cost of living.  Don't get me wrong - I'm saying clearly that this is not about allocation of blame.  The economic impact of covid-19 coupled with rising energy prices and other economic pressures...  As a mathematician I understand the numbers.  But what I don't understand is the lack of appreciation for the impact that these numbers have on the professional and academic capital of individuals and institutions.  

Belay et al. (2022) highlight one model of professional capital that can be thought of crudely as:

Professional Capital = Human Capital + Social Capital + Decisional Capital.      

So when real terms budget cuts result in staff turnover, teachers social capital and in turn their professional capital is reduced.  Moreover, when social capital is restricted, human capital (the knowledge, experience and training) of the workforce become stunted too.  There is a very real knock on effect between the numbers and the impact on the profession.  I've been in this profession now for 23 years and I've seen a lot of changes, but rarely have I experienced a situation where my friends,  colleagues and ultimately students from all over Scotland are being impacted so profoundly by a lack of investment in a sector that is so crucial to economic growth.

("Self portrait trauma scars, Emotional abuse, Mental, sexual, Physical, verbal Domestic Violence Spousal marital rape Trauma PTSD, Self Portrait, Runjanefox, #janefox this is me. #domesticviolence #stopdv #spousalrape #dv #hearmystory" by Run Jane Fox is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0.)

Bloom (2016) writes about trauma organised systems describing them as behaving just like humans, when caught in a sustained period of chronic stress, the health of the organisation deteriorates as it is gradually robbed of its interpersonal safety and trust.  And how can social capital grow in an environment that is being robbed of interpersonal safety and trust?  It almost makes me think about a hospital patient who is perpetually anemic being robbed of their very life blood but somehow they keep going.  Yes, perhaps a blood transfusion every now and then might help the patient to survive in the short term.  But in the long term there will come a point where it becomes an issue of survival.    

Professional development of teachers is an issue I'm passionate about and teacher-peer relationships are a cornerstone of that professional development process.  And normally I'd have a wish-list I would like to attend (which of course I do - I've lots of interesting seminars and webinars coming up).  But, at the moment, right at the top of my wish list is that appropriate agencies would acknowledge the need to have critical conversations about the economic barriers that impact on teachers professional development.

References

Belay, S., Melese, S. and Seifu, A. (2022) “Elevating Teachers’ Professional Capital: Effects of Teachers’ Engagement in Professional Learning and Job Satisfaction, Awi District, Ethiopia”, Sage Open. DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1177/21582440221094592.

Bridwell-Mitchell, E. N. and Cooc, N. (2016) “The Ties That Bind: How Social Capital Is Forged and Forfeited in Teacher Communities”, Educational Researcher, Vol. 45, No. 1, pp. 7 – 17.  DOI 10.3102/0013189X16632191.

Bloom, S. (2010) “Trauma-organised systems and parallel process”, in Tehrani, N. (eds) Managing Trauma in the Workplace: Supporting Workers and Organisations, Taylor & Francis Group.  Available at: http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/open/detail.action?docID=574670 (Accessed 5^th January 2023).