I have been a teacher for 27 years, a Headteacher for 12 years and, at the age of 51, this much I know about the importance of reciprocal vulnerability. To teach you need to feel worthy. Too many of us can lose our sense of self-worth when it comes to doing that incredibly complex thing called teaching. And changing our practice is something we don’t do because we hang onto what we know because trying and failing in a school climate where risk-taking is discouraged would diminish our self-worth even further. We are held back by our own deep-rooted sense of vulnerability. I discovered Brené Brown last weekend and I think you should meet her too. Here she is on what her research tells her about people who have a secure sense of self-worth. [wpvideo lr0SYjEA] Reciprocal vulnerability matters. Metacognition is the Sutton Trust-EEF’s Teaching & Learning Toolkit’s best bet to increase student progress. I have written at length about it here, here and here. I have demonstrated how to teach aspects of metacognition to several colleagues across our school. One of the highlights of my week was co-teaching a jointly planned Year 11 mathematics lesson with a young teacher, where we used my visualiser/verbalising-my-thinking technique. Teachers learn from teachers. Teachers trust what other teachers have to say about what works in the classroom because the teacher-to-teacher relationship is founded upon reciprocal vulnerability and its close partner, authenticity. If we are going to begin to get anywhere near setting up the basic foundations of an evidence-based teaching profession, we need structures for disseminating the evidence, teacher-to-teacher so that it impacts on student outcomes. Philippa Cordingley's research found that reciprocal vulnerability is crucial for teacher professional learning: [a core characteristic of effective professional learning is] the enabling of sustained peer support and reciprocal vulnerability which increases ownership, commitment and a willingness to take risks and to unlearn established assumptions and habits and to develop new understandings and practices. Teacher-to-teacher is where this research/evidence thing needs to be heading…
