1. Innovations in teacher-student relationships
Sam Shields

2. Overview Recap and mini-task 7 lessons from schooling
Critical pedagogy
Freire
Giroux
Deschooling society
Twenty-first century learning
Summerhill – a case study of democratic schooling
Seminar preparation

3. Recap and mini-task
Discuss with the person next to you – what do you believe are the characteristics of innovative schools?
Pick one idea to share with the whole group and nominate your spokesperson…
Using this picture as a starting point - how would you describe the ‘typical’ relationship between a teacher and pupils in the classroom?
Jot down your ideas on a post-it note…

4. 7 lessons from schooling
Using a smartphone/tablet read the article below:
Summarise Gatto’s claim
Your example
Argument against
Confusion
Class position
Indifference
Emotional dependency
Intellectual dependency
Provisional self-esteem
One cannot hide

5. Critical pedagogy
‘Fundamentally concerned with the centrality of politics and power in our understanding of how schools work’ (McLaren, 1994:67)
‘Critical pedagogy – and critical educational studies in general – broadly seek to expose how relations of power and inequality (social, cultural, economic), in their myriad forms, combinations, and complexities, are manifest and are challenged in the formal and informal education of children and adults’ (Apple et al., 2009: 3)
Dialogue
Equality and justice
Democracy
Respect and dignity
Active involvement in issues

6. Freire Student-teacher and teacher-student ‘Banking education’
Liberatory or problem-posing
Critical co-investigators
Communication and dialogue
‘mutual humanisation’
Praxis
Critical consciousness

7. Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate integration of the younger generation into the logic of a present system or bring about conformity or it becomes the ‘practice of freedom’, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality
and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world (Freire and Macedo, 2000:34).

8. Culture circles Own ways of speaking Shared understanding
Future changes
[Critical] pedagogy signals how questions of audience, voice, power, and evaluation actively work to construct particular relations between teachers and students, institutions and society, and classrooms and communities Pedagogy in the critical sense illuminates the relationship among knowledge, authority, and power (Giroux, 1994: 30).

9. Giroux Curriculum as praxis Social transformation
Relationship between theory and practice
Direct relevance
Critical consciousness
Partial and overly critical?

10. Deschooling society Illich (1973)
Informal, voluntary, widespread networks
Reference Services to Educational Objects
Skill exchanges
Peer-matching
Reference Services to Educators-at-Large

11. Twenty-first century learning
Facer (2009)
Formal educational settings
Mobile, complex and fluid
Hubs of learning
Curriculum for networked learning
Flexible relationships across diverse educational institutions
Mentoring
Intelligent information

12. Summerhill – the facts Summerhill
1921
A.S. Neill
Co-educational
5-16
Timetable
`The function of the child is to live his own life – not the life that his anxious parents think he should live, nor a life according to the purpose of the educator who thinks he knows best.' (A.S. Neill)

13. Imagine a school… Where kids have freedom to be themselves;
Where success is not defined by academic achievement but by the child’s own definition of success;
Where the school deals democratically with issues, with each individual having an equal right to be heard;
Where you can play all day if you want to;
And there is time and space to sit and dream.
(Summerhill, 2004)

14. Self-governing democratic community
Attendance at lessons is not compulsory
School Meeting
o.uk/
What are the implications for teacher-student relationships?

15. Purpose of education? Much more than academic achievement
What ‘kind’ of people its students become
Character and qualities
‘Children will turn out to be good human beings if they are not crippled and thwarted in their natural development by interference’ (Darling, 1982: 68)
Anti-intellectual
Books – least important?

16. Survey of ex-Summerhill pupils
Appreciated – more independent, better able to deal with authority and be tolerant
Difficult stage in life
Introverts versus extroverts
Length of time stayed
Down-playing of academic aspects of education
Lack of inspiring teachers

17. Criticism and challenge
Royal Courts of Justice – 2000 – legal challenge
Settlement
Lacks a systematic, considered philosophy of education
Own experiences
Unsupported assertions, exaggerations and generalizing from individual cases
Freedom and licence

18. Points to reflect upon…
Not the answer to all educational problems
Would not benefit all types of children
Radical alternative to conventional educational system
What freedom really means in practice
Genuine understanding of children
Would you send a child to Summerhill?
Would you want to replicate any of these models of teacher-student relationships in your school? Which ideas? Why? How would it work in practice?

19. Friday’s seminar preparation
Read the paper on Student Voice by Michael Fielding (available on BB) and reflect upon:
What is ‘student voice’ and why is it important?
How does ‘student voice’ challenge ‘typical’ student-teacher relationships?
What factors need to be considered to enable ‘student voice’ to be effective?
What might a school which valued ‘student voice’ look like?
Would you incorporate ‘student voice’ and critical pedagogy into your school design? Why? Why not? How?

20. References
Apple, M., Au, W. & Gandin, L. (Eds) (2009) The Routledge International Handbook of Critical Education, Abingdon: Routledge
Darling, J. (1982) Education as horticulture: some growth theorist and their critics, Journal of Philosophy of Education, 16 (2), pp. 173 – 185
Facer, K. (2009) Educational, Social and Technological Futures: a Report from Beyond Current Horizons Programme, Bristol: Future Lab
Freire, P. & Macedo, D. (2000) Pedagogy of the Oppressed, London: Continuum International
Giroux, H. & Aronowitz, S. (1994) Education Still Under Siege, Bergin and Garvey
Illich, I. (1973) Deschooling Society, Harmondsworth, Penguin Books
Neill, A.S. (1960) Summerhill, New York: Hart
Summerhill (2016) [Accessed ]