By Melanie Ralph

Last year, an OECD report described the “disciplinary climate” in Australian schools as being among the “least favourable” in the 38 participating countries.  This has sparked many calls in the media and from ‘experts’ to “beef up discipline” and return to stricter approaches.  Missing in much of the discussion has been the voices of Australian teachers, especially female Australian teachers.  I’d like to change that. 

Advice has been offered to us by Scotland’s Tom Bennett (often called the ‘behaviour tsar’ by journalists), who’s a fan of dystopian silent hallways and who dismisses trauma informed practice as a “fad, driven by PR, good intentions, and weak evidence.” He’s been described as a “leading voice in the UK in the neo-traditionalist educational movement” who “uses overtly populist language, pitching the unjustly treated teacher against a progressive elite who have imposed woolly progressive ideas on the teacher.”

Bennett spends much of his time bravely debunking things like group work and feels he is a “heretic” for questioning the “astonishingly misguided” research he came across in his own teacher training.  The more wrong everyone else is about education, it seems, the more right he is.  He’s successfully tapped into what he believes is “an appetite among many teachers to no longer be beholden to the institutions responsible for their support, and instead to find out—through a process of profound reprofessionalization—what actually works.” 

So, what does ‘work’?  Lucky for us, Bennett appears to know.  In his recent paper for right-wing Aussie think tank the Centre for Independent Studies (CIS) about behaviour in schools, he suggests England has “made progress that could be readily adapted in Australia’s school systems” and highlights the UK’s Michaela Community School as an example of what works.   

For those who don’t know, this school is run by Katharine Birbalsingh, affectionately known as “Britain’s Strictest Headmistress.”  The school requires students to pay for pencils when they forget them, students get detentions for not following the teacher with their eyes (known as ‘tracking’), and students have timetabled toilet breaks.  Birbalsingh herself says that if you’re from a disadvantaged background “you can’t afford to be coming out of lessons to go to the loo.”  Pupils recite William Ernest Henley’s Invictus daily, and in their unique Year 7 ‘boot camps’ students are taught the “2000-year-old wisdom of Marcus Aurelias and Seneca” to help them develop self-control. They are told: “do not complain; think your way through difficulties.” 

Some, like me, may view this brand of naïve stoicism, characterised by passivity and taciturn emotional invulnerability, as potentially harmful to Year 7s who are experiencing significant developmental changes in behaviour.  While there’s no harm in encouraging students to develop habits that improve their self-control or emotional regulation, this kind of pop philosophy can actually be bad for a person’s mental health because it frames stoicism as simply suppressing emotions.

Additionally, stoicism is often framed as a stereotypically masculine trait and in a schooling context this “gendering of stoicism” appears to be underpinned by the idea that mistakes, emotions, or vulnerability are wrong and to be hidden, and that speaking up about a concern is to be discouraged. 

In 2023, Birbalsingh declared that “the whole of Australia is doing the wrong thing in their schools” and that they “need input from Britain” about how to turn things around.  I’m unconvinced. While the militarised, authoritarian approach may ‘work’ at her school, I believe that a similar approach, which relies on control and compliance, will not work in our increasingly complex Australian classrooms. 

In fact, I argue that we must challenge the belief that the ‘best’ way to manage discipline in schools is to ‘beef up’ coercion and control or to promote a kind of hypermasculine disciplinary approach that perpetuates what Judith Gill and Peter Arnold refer to as the “prevailing gender order in schools.” That is, the idea that “men are the leaders” who have the position of “being in charge … while women are the workers” who have “the job of being led … following orders and conforming to the rules of the more powerful men.” 

This belief further entrenches the already deeply rooted gender bias in education, and undermines teachers who do not identify with militarised, drill sergeant approaches, nor find inspiration in Roman emperors or professional sports coaches and businessmen. 

Over the last 15 years, I’ve worked in challenging school systems around the world and seen firsthand how they are “sites dominated by traditional thinking” (Gill and Arnold) that “are not neutral in the construction of gender, but instead are actively engaged in this process” (Rachel Ann O’Brien).  Gill and Arnold point out that while many women are “proving themselves to be effective and highly regarded school leaders…the idea of the male leader still persists.” 

So, what’s all this got to do with the “disciplinary climate” here in Australia?  The way we “do discipline” in schools, and how it is framed in the media, influences how we “do gender” in schools; that is, how we perform socially constructed gender roles and how they perpetuate gender-based inequalities.  R.W Connell describes the school as “a weighty institution” and “a key means of transmitting culture between generations. It has direct control over its own gender regimes, which have a considerable impact on the experience of children growing up.”

Because authoritarian techniques in classrooms can result in students repressing “their creative or critical voices under a ‘veil of compliance’,” Australian educators must ask themselves important questions about what cultural values they seek to transmit to the next generation by way of their daily approach to discipline. 

Teachers need not follow marching orders from so-called ‘experts’ to fight in some fictional battle in schools, nor should we seek to emulate dysfunctional systems.  There’s a lot of money to be made from the narrative that Australian teachers, the majority of whom are women, are unskilled and therefore unworthy of being valued and respected.  But thankfully, we don’t have to buy what’s being sold. 

Teaching Wars

Militaristic language is not new in educational discourse.  In 2016, former UK education secretary Michael Gove had an epiphany when he suddenly realised that ex-armed services personnel had the “relevant and transferrable skills” to excel in classrooms, such as “leadership, discipline, motivation and teamwork.”  In a bid to alleviate the teacher shortage, Troops to Teachers was launched, a program fuelled by Gove’s belief that “every child can benefit from the values of a military ethos” and that teachers needed to “get tough.” One teacher in the Guardian hilariously asked; “If we can drop soldiers into schools, why not enlist teachers into the army?” 

Colonel Edward Newman, one of a very small number of applicants who actually made it into the classroom, went from commanding troops to teaching Year 7’s.  Surprised by the workload, he commented, “I had no idea I was going to have to work this hard.  The requirements on a classroom teacher for marking and preparation involve a significant commitment. I’ve been working 60 hours a week. I wasn’t expecting that.” 

Colonel Newman’s surprise at the complexities of the role, and the subsequent failure of this program, reflect the continued media representation of teaching as work that is “simple and common-sense, as though all decisions made by teachers are between two options: a right one and a wrong one” (Nicole Mockler).    

Even now in 2023 in Australia, we continue to see the use of militaristic and aggressive language. For instance, I learned from an anonymously written Financial Review piece that we are in the midst of the “teaching wars.” But fear not, we’re told, because Federal Education Minister Jason Clare, dubbed “Courageous Clare,” has waded into the “highly ideological pedagogical battles.” His mission?  Well, as the article describes, it’s to “stop Australia’s great schooling rot.” 

In the trenches of this dichotomous battle, there’s no room for nuance.  There’s only heroes and villains; good teachers and bad.  Well, mostly just bad. Remember when Stuart Robert lobbed a grenade over battle lines in 2022, describing teachers as “duds” who were “dragging the chain”?  I even saw Secretary of the NSW Education Department, Murat Dizdar, described as a “boss” who wanted to “double down” on explicit teaching in schools.  Then, when the ‘tsar’ arrived here from Scotland, schools in general were warned to be “on their best behaviour.”

Nan Bahr points out that this rhetoric “has given rise to an environment where teachers are regarded as ‘naughty children’ (Hargreaves 1994, p. xiiv).”  Given that the teaching workforce is made up of over 70% women, it’s hard not to interpret such infantilizing language as gendered (not to mention patronizing).  We know that ‘women’s work’ “remains undervalued both in monetary terms and social status” and that the perception of being disrespected is stronger for female and gender-non-conforming teachers in public or state schools. 

Therefore, you’d think it glaringly obvious that an ongoing narrative about a faux war which frames teachers as the enemy would be extremely unhelpful, not only with regards to teacher retention but also in terms of promoting the job as a worthwhile and respected career path.  Additionally, I’m not convinced that referring to the education system as “rotting” will combat the teacher shortage, as it’s unlikely to entice prospective teachers to join the field.

School as a masculinity-making device

Rachel Ann O’Brien points out that there is “now a significant body of research which attests to the importance of the school in constructing masculinity … for example Connell (1996) referred to schools as a “masculinity-making device” (p. 215) while Mac an Ghaill (1994) referred to schools as a “masculinity agency” (p. 1).

Demonstrating this, Gill and Arnold refer to a New Zealand study which revealed that by Year 2, “children readily identify the man in the picture as the school leader and the women as the teacher.”  Why?  Because the children believed “men…are more able to generate an atmosphere of respect and compliance,” while women were considered “too emotional” or “too preoccupied with detail” – they were seen to be “micromanaging rather than big picture planners.”

In a different study from South Australia, it was revealed that by the end of primary school, “children have constructed a gender order wherein they associate physical and phycological sex differences with different positions in school.”  For instance, when asked about why the children saw more women in junior grades and men in senior positions, they explained that “women are more used to looking after little kids,” and “men have loud voices, grow beards, and are potentially scary.”  Gill and Arnold believe this is dangerous, because students “will learn [that] traditional masculine behaviour [is] positioned more powerfully than the more approachable female teachers.”

Last year, a particularly scary video went viral that was filmed at Maitland Grossmann High School.  The video showed casual teacher Michael Kable punching a Year 9 schoolboy “in the back of the head after a brawl broke out.”  Prior to the altercation, foam balls, pencil cases, pens and bulldog clips had been thrown at the teacher which led to him “losing it”.  Judge Peter McGrath said Mr. Kable acknowledged “he of course should have sent a student to get the principal and not reacted in the way he did.”

When I watched this video, I couldn’t help but think, “What would I do in that situation?”  Like many other female teachers, I’ve worked with huge young men in tough schools and therefore have had to develop countless strategies – that don’t include violence or aggression – to de-escalate potentially volatile situations.  Successful strategies I’ve used include assertive re-direction, humour, a calm voice and non-judgemental attitude, following up with parent contact, or, as the article suggests, sending for help from colleagues or school leaders. 

This development of strategies required much ‘self-education’ because, while Courageous Clare has backed yet another inquiry into initial teacher education, or ITE, it’s time to acknowledge that there really is no way a university course can ever fully prepare someone for the daily complexities of working in a school. 

Just as many doctors, nurses, therapists, and even lawyers report feeling underprepared or out of their depth in their first years on the job, first year teachers will no doubt also experience challenges that a degree or prac placement could simply not have prepared them for. But, Professor Debra Hayes rightfully calls this out for what it is:  the “politicisation of higher education.”  She asks, “why single out teacher education? Will there be a politically appointed panel sometime soon to tell us about what should be in medical or engineering degrees?”

While there’s always room for improvement in schools and unis, retrospective, angry fist waving at ITE will get us nowhere fast. And considering we’ve had over 101 inquiries since 1979, one must wonder what benefit they serve? In a profession which has been described as ignoring the support needs of its new recruits, to the point of being called “the profession that eats its young”, our focus must instead be on committing to ongoing supportive mentoring and skill development for all teachers, especially beginning teachers.  Instead of expecting to have a full toolkit of strategies for every possible challenge in a school day, it’s more logical to view the development of a professional teacher identity as a dynamic process in which “personal and contextual factors interact in a dynamic way over an individual’s lifetime.”  

I’m a different teacher now than I was in my first year of teaching in Alice Springs in the Northern Territory back in 2008.  Over the last 15 years, the process of cultivating my teacher identity has involved lots of collaboration with colleagues, working with school leaders to understand the cultural context of the school (for example, working at a private Jewish school in Vancouver was very different to Coffs Harbour High School in New South Wales), working with parents and locals to engage students, and just being my authentic self. It did not involve playing a militarised, controlling role that goes against my nature. 

Sweating the small stuff

Let’s be clear: no rational educator would condone the behaviour of the Year 9 student in the confronting video, but of particular concern to me as a female teacher is research showing that “from an early age, young people begin to believe there are reasons and situations that can make disrespectful behaviour acceptable” and “while Australians agree that violence against women is wrong, there is a tendency to minimise disrespectful behaviours, blame victims for violence, and empathise with males.”

Indeed, aggression from teachers can go unquestioned and even rewarded.  This attitude was evident in the community response to Mr Kable’s actions, which included a “Justice for Mr Kable” petition that was set up to help him avoid conviction. It was signed by more than ten thousand people. 

Conservative Australian radio presenter Jason Morrison appeared flabbergasted that Mr Kable was “taken through the system” and would “probably never work in the game again.”  All this, he lamented, for “doing probably what their parents should have done.”  His guest, Dr. Kevin Donnelly, who at one point was an adviser to former Education Minister Christopher Pyne, agreed with him, saying, “You’re dead right.”

What message does this send to young people?  That violence is ok sometimes if you’re usually a good guy and that there are certain situations where it is condoned or warranted?  Why on earth would any educator take advice from Donnelly, who as recently as 2014, argued that corporal punishment should still have a place in Australian schools “if it is done properly.” 

Particularly troubling is Donnelly’s apparent regret that a “Scottish phys ed teacher” from his own schooling days “would lose his job now” over his “effective” approach to discipline, which was to “take the boy behind the shed and say ‘we can either talk about this or you can throw the first punch.’”  Would we be comfortable telling the boys who were taken behind that shed to abide by stoicism and ‘not complain’?

So pervasive is this aggressive, gendered way of “doing discipline” that even Nationals senator, Bridget McKenzie, was called a “naughty little girl” last year by Labor senator Glenn Sterle, followed by the threat, “I’m gonna do me block in a minute!”

I’m reminded of a time early in my career when I sat opposite a seething PE teacher whose class I had covered in his absence.  The lesson instructions had been to take students to the local pool and allow them to do their swimming training with a coach.  Some girls had forgotten their swimmers, so I allowed them to sit by the pool and catch up with their schoolwork.  Upon returning to school and learning about this, he requested we meet alone in his classroom where he told me, “Look, I won’t sweat it this time, but next time I’ll have to sweat it.”

I’ll never know what he would have preferred me do (make the girls swim in their uniforms?), but being a young teacher at the time, I sat silently as I had no idea how to navigate such a threatening proposition from a male colleague. 

Sadly, this was only one of many such interactions I’ve experienced in schools of teachers “doing gender” in ways that are coercive or threatening.  Over time I have become more confident and adept at calling it out.  For instance, once when I was attending my weekly Year 7 afternoon sport duty.  One of my students, who is having a challenging time at home, said to me that he was extremely hungry as well as anxious about sitting at the front of the bus.  Seeing that he was genuinely uneasy, I said, “That’s ok, you don’t have to sit at the front of the bus, there will be plenty of seats to choose from.”

As we boarded, some kids had pushed back against the crowd, and my student, along with others, pushed forward.  Having done the Year 7 sport bus run many times, I could see no safety threat as kids excitedly jostled to find a seat as they did every week.  My male colleague, whom I’d met only once before, saw things differently. 

He suddenly yelled, “Stop pushing!” at students.  His voice was loud enough to silence the bus.  My student said, “I don’t want to sit at the front of the bus!”  The teacher yelled “You’ll sit here next to me!” with such force that all students, as well as myself, recoiled in shock.  Seeing students so fearful floored me.  “I don’t want to sit at the front of the bus!” my student protested.  “You sit here, or you get off!” was his choice.

My student got off the bus, and without consulting me, another male teacher marched the student to the office.  To my surprise, in the awkward silence of the bus, the man who had yelled quietly said, “Hmm…I probably shouldn’t have yelled.”  Astonished, I witnessed him realise that it was his own aggression and lack of control over his own behaviour which had escalated a nonthreatening situation.  

“Why not go and check on him, then?” I said, “to see if he still wants to come to sport?”  He bounded off the bus but came back minutes later with the other teacher and no student.  I was told that the student was now with a Year Level Coordinator and would be missing sport.  Despite the student being my legal responsibility, I was at no point consulted in this process.  While a behaviour incident would be written up about the student, I was left wondering, what will come of this teacher’s disproportionate response?  Will he get questioned for tainting the entire afternoon with his unchecked and intimidating behaviour? 

The next day, I decided I would question him.  I spoke to a school leader about the incident and informed her I’d be writing an email to both male teachers (CCing her) about how deeply uncomfortable I and many children had felt as a result of their actions, and how in future, decisions made about students in my care must be clarified with me.  Seemingly comfortable with the status quo, she told me “Melanie, that’s just how some teachers choose to deal with situations.  You can email them if you want, but they may not like it, and I don’t know how they’ll respond.” 

It occurred to me that she was more concerned about the possible backlash from these men than she was about the fact that a 12-year-old was provoked and excluded from sport because an adult teacher was unable to manage his aggression.  I assured her I didn’t share her concern about their response.  I thought, “Am I, like the kids, supposed to fear these men?  Should I not complain and think my way through this? Suck it up?” 

Both men replied to me and expressed what appeared to be genuine regret about the entire situation. They seemed appreciative about being prompted to reflect on their actions and apologised for making me and students feel unsafe.  In my experience, responses are not always this wholesome.  Tellingly, one of them told me he didn’t even see me on the bus at all and consulting me hadn’t crossed his mind.

Stephanie Wescott and Steven Roberts have written about the “widespread sexism, sexual harassment and misogyny in schools across the country.” It is in the everyday interactions in schools, such as the example above, that female teachers can feel unsafe, undervalued, or undermined. 

I can give ample examples to illustrate this point. For instance, one colleague recalls that when she reported sexual harassment to a school leader, he joked that she should feel flattered.  A second-year female teacher recalls her Year 7’s telling her they behave for another male teacher and not her because “he yells”.  Another female colleague told me, “I remember the first principal (male) I worked with said, on hiring me, ‘You’ll be right with the tough class because you’re tall. They will respect you’.”  By this logic, it’s astounding I’ve lasted this long in education given that I’m only 166 cm’s tall.  I must be doing something right, and I can assure you, it’s not yelling or intimidating, nor is it controlling children and silencing dissent. 

These examples illustrate that there’s a long way to go in dismantling problematic beliefs about gender and authority in schools.  

Acting a part, playing a role

Men, too, can experience pressure to ‘perform’ an “appropriate masculinity” in their roles as teachers or leaders. In Gill and Arnold’s investigation into the identity and experiences of primary male principals, they found that several participants described their “discomfort in terms of how they were supposed to behave as men – not be emotional, maintain [their] distance, keep everything in control.”  They note that participants “frequently referred to their gender as complicating the issue of appropriate behaviour.” 

For instance, comments from participants like “I can’t register my upset … that’s not how principals (and men) are supposed to behave,” reveal the “acute consciousness” of some principals who feel they are “acting a part” or “playing a role of performing.” 

Ultimately, a hyper-focus on concealment of one’s emotions can teach young people “that to be truly successful one must be able to ‘handle pressure’ and hide fear.” But where does that land us?  Troublingly, research shows that the tendency of Australian men to delay or refuse to seek help can be attributed to “a stoical attitude.”  On top of this, data shows the mental health of young people “is rapidly declining” – especially for women – and school refusal rates are “shocking.”  Surely this data should compel us to stop viewing schools as performative battlegrounds.

The male principals in Gill and Arnold’s study reported finding the “emotional dimension of their work one of the most challenging.” Some even speculated that it “would be easier” to be a woman principal, because they believed women would be less troubled by these concerns and more “able to engage with emotion … freely and succeed in modelling empathy with people in distress.”

Ironically, the belief that a more empathetic approach is actually beneficial to the role of an educator is at odds with calls to harden disciplinary approaches; such as from Donnelley, who oddly advocates for young people to experience more pain and failure to increase their “courage and bravery.” 

The experiences of these male educators demonstrate that we must reconsider the ways in which we “do gender” in schools.  Bruce Johnson says, “we have to ‘dare to disagree’ and ‘answer back’ in sophisticated and effective ways if we are to change public opinion about what are considered appropriate ways to respond to children’s behaviour at school.” 

Therefore, I dare to disagree with Donnelly’s daft suggestion that we emulate the “success of the American charter school system and England’s city academies,” which utilize many of the techniques from Doug Lemov’s Teach Like a Champion (TLAC) program.

From contenders to champions

TLAC has been embraced by many charter schools in the US, including Uncommon Schools, the charter schools that Lemov started, and is underpinned by a hyper-efficient, militarised approach to teaching that appears to draw on masculine sports analogies and coaching metaphors.  Given that the expensive TLAC training is creeping its way into some professional development programs and schools here in Australia, it warrants a moment of critical reflection from an Australian perspective. 

Before we unpack TLAC, it’s useful to investigate the influence of Frederick W. Taylor’s “scientific management” theory (or “Taylorism”) on not only modern schooling but on the various techniques in TLAC.  This managerial approach to the workplace “maximized efficiency and productivity through the standardization of labor,” and despite challenging behaviours in classrooms frequently being blamed on ‘progressive’ teachers, it’s more likely that the effects of Taylorism have had more of a negative impact. 

Dr. Wayne Ross of the University of British Columbia writes that “contemporary schools are still largely driven by conceptions of teaching and learning that have their roots in Taylorism or what is often described as the “factory model” of schooling.”

Consider the parallels:  “Students are the raw material; curriculum learning is the product; training is via standardised tasks; students are sorted by ability; conformity is established by a bell-driven schedule; complex concepts and interdisciplinary contexts are simplified into discrete subjects and topics; content-driven pedagogy is esteemed over open-ended inquiry; teachers are deskilled with over-reliance on textbooks; and individuals are rewarded for individual performance in the form of test marks” (Au, 2011; Ross, 2010).

The trouble with this model, Dr. Maduakolam Ireh writes, is that “with its emphasis on control and the “one best way” of doing work” scientific management “has culminated in teachers being at the receiving end of public criticism.” Many believe the systemic problems in an underfunded system are due to teacher inefficacy, and therefore that “multifaceted problems…will disappear overnight, if teachers become more efficient in performing the numerous tasks imposed on them by both the society and the school system.”

It is unsurprising, therefore, that “marketers from the global education industry have spent decades persuading us that public education is ‘failing’ and needs fixing” (Jane Caro).  For example, Doug Lemov’s international bestseller Teach Like a Champion (now in its third edition) is now “a multi-million-dollar global industry of educational resources including textbooks, a video archive, consultancy services and blogs.”

Many of the Sea World-style obedience techniques are based on Behaviourism and according to educator Chris McNutt, “to prevent deviation from techniques, educators must enforce control. A lot of control.  In many ways, these techniques mirror military boot camps.”  Calling it a kind of ‘empty pedagogy’, he asks, “if teachers are only trained with techniques…what happens when students don’t follow the techniques properly? What happens if they don’t desire to do the techniques?”  This, he asserts, represents a kind of “intentional lack of pedagogy.”

In Lemov’s guides, the scientific management of Taylorism is notable in the fixation on conformity and precision, and the many sports and coaching analogies call to mind a version of stoicism Massimo Pigliucci calls ‘Broicism’ that is popular among coaches of Super Bowl-winning football teams. Mark Derry says you can find Broicism in Silicon Valley or “wherever devotees of “peak performance” and the dude-ly gospel of success through self-mastery gather.”

It can also be found in the dude-ly gospel of TLAC, which promises to “maximize efficiency, promote accountability, and drive rigor.”

There’s the ‘100 percent’ technique which, according to Lemov, gets “100 percent of students” to do what teachers ask, “100 percent of the time!”  He stops short of adding “money back, guaranteed!” but it certainly comes across as a cheesy kind of edu-infomercial.  Watching the 100% rule in action is uncomfortable and odd.  In one video, instead of helping a student to figure out why her answer is wrong, a ‘champion’ teacher instead bends down and whispers, “…you didn’t have the answer, that tells me you need to work harder if you’re going to get the right answer.  Your eyes should be on the speaker at all times,” before walking off.  I find this example problematic, as the teacher simply walks away without offering to support the student.

Basic classroom strategies, such as correcting a word or pronunciation in a student answer, are rebranded as a champion technique known as “punch the error“.  Checking student progress in the classroom and giving feedback is rebranded as a technique called “aggressive monitoring.”  Ian Cushing points out “it is unclear why such a violent metaphor is required to talk about young people’s language, nor how a teacher can ‘punch’ an ‘error’ in a neutral and non-judgemental way, especially if such practices are guided by the aggressive TLAC language of business and sport.”

We’re told ‘champion’ teachers use techniques like ‘No Opt Out’, where students can’t pass on answering a question while their classmates are instructed to “track” (stare at) them.  One video takes this a step further in which the teacher adds the requirement of ‘shining’, which appears to be directing jazz hands towards a peer while they answer a question. 

In another video, we’re told “in any major competition, the details are what separate the champions from the contenders.” In the performative world of TLAC, every move of a child, sorry, a “scholar” (as they are referred to), is surveyed and controlled to maximize efficiency; from how they sit to how they raise their hands.

There’s the “warm/strict” technique, defined as “learning to be able to be both warm and strict at exactly the same time and finding the optimal balance of those things based on how it affects student learning.”  I have to believe there are better examples out there, but a popular clip demonstrating this approach shows a male teacher speaking one-on-one with a female student after class (note that this is not a TLAC video, but a TLAC technique).

He starts the exchange by asking, “What’d you think of our class today?”  Experienced teachers can imagine the range of unsavoury answers that might have been offered here, but perhaps luckily for him, the student remains silent (stoic?).  He then asserts, “You breathe heavy.  You breathe heavy to show attitude.”  The student remains silent. I suppose creating an ‘optimal balance’, the teacher then lavishes her with ‘warm’ praise, saying “I want to let you know you’re awesome, I believe in you, I already love you very much.”  

He then turns to stand directly in front of her with his hands on his hips, saying, “here’s the truth, look at me. You are awesome.  You’re a star.  You say you’ve got attitude, but it doesn’t fly in here…you’re awesome.  You’re sweet.” The clip ends with the student having said nothing and she awkwardly gives him a fist-bump. 

Are we to view this exchange as a win due to the student’s stoic passivity? 

When I was a high-needs disability support worker, I learned about the importance of non-verbal cues when I completed Non-Violent Crisis Intervention Training. If this clip is used for anything in education it should be as a demonstration of how posture, position, and stance can be used to establish either a welcoming space, or an unprofessional, threatening space, as in the video.  Additionally, I would also question the appropriateness of telling a student you love them.

In many charter schools influenced by Lemov’s techniques, “procedures as simple as handing back papers or entering the classroom [are] streamlined to save minutes and seconds for instruction,” and teachers constantly narrate expectations for behaviour and scan for compliance. 

In an example of the Broicism ethos, executive director of the Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP) charter schools network, Dave Levin, uses a baseball analogy to explain the 1/12^th difference between the batting average of two professional baseball players, and suggests “the difference between being a superstar and being an average player is 1/12^th (or 8.3%).” 

How does this relate to teaching?  He believes teachers must rethink the “efficiency and urgency” of routines like how papers get passed out and collected: “As teachers, we can apply the 1/12^th mindset to our classrooms by recognizing that even relatively small details can dramatically impact student mastery.”

It’s highbrow stuff.

In a clip of Doug McCurry from Achievement First, another network of charter schools, we see him “maximize learning and joy” by making handing in papers fun, and not just for fun’s sake (that would be inefficient), but because “the more fun we make these routines and systems the faster they become.”  In another clip showing this technique, the only person who looks to be having any fun is the teacher, who appears overjoyed that the class was able to hand in their papers in 12 seconds, instead of 17.   As with most of the TLAC techniques, the objective is speed, efficiency, and control.  In Levin’s words, an “appreciation of the urgency of each minute of the day.” 

(Side note:  I hereby issue an apology to all my past students for the accumulated lost time they experienced due to waiting 60 seconds for me to eat a banana if I lost time between class and playground duty).

What does the word ‘urgency’ mean in the TLAC universe?  According to assistant principal Joanne Kelleher, it is not about “a race (to the top or anywhere else)” but is instead “a manner of practice.”  Oddly, she contradicts this point by citing principal Ben Johnson’s definition, in which he describes urgency as being something that “emanates from the teacher’s attitude, demeanour, spark in their eyes and the bounce in their step. It is the unmistakable message, though unspoken, that what we are learning is important and we have to do it in a hurry!”  So, it is a race after all? 

Johnson says, “we have to be on fire before we will kindle any fire in our students.”  Talk about pressure to perform – I smell smoke!  And sadly, it’s from teacher burnout. 

In the ‘broic’ world of champions, basic classroom routines require forensic precision (think clip boards and stopwatches) and even a teacher sitting down is framed as negative.  For instance, Kelleher applauds a teacher who is “constantly moving around the room, standing on chairs and desks, and climbing on counters. He rarely sits, and he has removed his stool from the classroom in order to avoid temptation.”  

It seems far-fetched, but I’ve seen this mentality firsthand with the many prac students I’ve supervised.  I’ve watched them pace around the classroom because of the belief that a ‘good’ teacher never sits.  I’ve watched kids awkwardly notice the prac teacher’s apparent restlessness and hypervigilance.  Many times I’ve called them over and whispered: “Pull up a chair.  Take a minute.  Breathe. You still have 4 more periods today, plus playground duty, plus a staff meeting, plus marking, and you need to mark the roll and check attendance.  It’s ok to sit for a bit.”  I’m always delighted to witness them almost melt with relief. 

This is how one sustains themselves: by being human and modelling to students a realistic pace not only in their learning but in how they manage their wellbeing.  Noticeably, most of the experts in the school discipline business are no longer fulltime classroom teachers. 

But my advice contradicts Lemov’s ‘Every Minute Matters’ strategy, in which he warns of “letting minutes slip by,” especially the last 4 minutes of the lesson.  Declaring that “you can always be teaching,” Lemov’s advice is not to let students relax and pack up, but to “reward” them “with a high energy review.”  High energy review?!  I have to get to playground duty! 

He advises teachers to always be prepared with short learning activities so that even when two-minute opportunities arise, like “at the end of class, in the hallway, while waiting for a bus,” they’ll be ready to ‘pepper’ students with questions.  Chillingly, he even views a “walk to the bathroom” as a “perfect time for vocabulary review.”  Is this another example of that “optimal balance” of warm/strict?  Or is it just plain odd/invasive? 

Try telling Australian teachers, whose weekly working hours now rank as the sixth highest in the world, and who work in a public system that joins New Zealand and Slovakia as being the most underfunded, that “you can always be teaching.”  Now that would take some stoic courage.  

As with the media narrative on discipline in Australia, the message of TLAC reads loud and clear:  emotions are for wimps, flexibility is for sooks, speed makes you a winner, and silence is golden.  Fall in line, hurry up, suck it up, toughen up, and most concerningly: don’t speak up. 

A UK teacher spoke anonymously to Education Uncovered about her experience working in a school which values what she calls ‘blind compliance.’  She reflects: “If we are ‘preparing them for the world of work,’ which is used so much to justify what schools do, what we are preparing them for, then, is for their bosses to tell them to do whatever they want them to do and for them to have no skills in trying to manage that conflict. And that’s the most concerning thing for me: the absolute insistence on compliance.”

While some of these schools boast about high test scores, it’s imperative that Aussie educators, policy makers and parents ask: at what cost?  Writer Joanne W. Golann spent a year in a ‘no-excuses’ charter school in America.  She writes, “students felt as if they were always under surveillance. Even the best-behaved students felt pressure. One mother told me that she kept her daughter home for two weeks because her daughter could not handle the pressure of being set up as a positive example for her classmates.” 

Because charter schools are characterised by deregulated hiring practices they intentionally recruit novice teachers due to their ‘coachability’. In fact, in “several American states…teachers who work in charter schools do not even need to be licensed or receive training … Just as Uber and other ridesharing programs have displaced professional drivers, charter schools displace professional teachers.” 

Kayla Stewart Valenti, herself a former TLAC coach in schools, has written about the racialized deficit ideology of TLAC techniques, and some charter schools have even issued formal apologies to students for their use of “assimilationist, patriarchal, white supremacist and anti-black” discipline practices and for being “hyper-focused on students’ body positioning.”  In the UK, teaching staff have walked out to strike against a “draconian outlook on education” at their school.

Valenti points out that many TLAC techniques are underpinned by a “deficit perspective of students as untrustworthy and unruly” who “will misbehave or attempt to dismantle teacher authority if given autonomy.” We must resist this perspective in Australian schools, not only because it is clearly damaging to young people, but because these approaches perpetuate gendered notions of authority in the classroom by framing learning as an aggressive competition to separate champions from contenders. 

The TLAC ethos also suggests that teachers should be bright-eyed, Energiser Bunnies who’ll stop at nothing to feed the machine of efficiency.  It is suggested that ‘champion’ teachers model unrealistic urgency and even reward it; as seen here when the teacher says, “add a dollar to Jason for his urgency.” Why does Jason get a ‘scholar dollar‘ (a TLAC phrase for an extrinsic reward) for being fast?  Can’t Billy get a dollar for simply turning up for the first time in 5 weeks?  Why not give Sarah a dollar, who completed the same work but at a slower pace because of her learning disability? And no, I’m not promoting the idea that everything kids do needs to be rewarded. What I am doing is pointing out the unjust differential treatment of kids when we arbitrarily reward some students for their behavioural compliance, while ignoring other students who are genuinely trying their best.  

Lecturer David Armstrong reminds us that student behaviour in schools “fits the definition of a ‘wicked problem’ for educational policy and practice” because it is “complex; highly resistant to resolution; and ‘requires a reassessment of some of the traditional ways of working and solving problems’” (Briggs 2012).  As such, a ‘wicked’ problem cannot be solved by ready-made, pre-packaged educational products such as TLAC. Instead, I share the view of Andy Mison, President of the Australian Secondary Principals’ Association, who says he’s “sceptical” of these guides because they “undervalue our professionalism … most teachers develop and build their skills over time drawing from multiple sources and based on what works best for them.” 

Hold the line

There is no denying that Australian classrooms are challenging places.  A recent Sydney Morning Herald article outlined the myriad challenges ranging from lingering post-COVID 19 effects of lockdowns to skyrocketing diagnoses of autism, anxiety and ADHD.  There’s also been a rise in aggressive so-called “snowplough parents” (parents who try to remove obstacles facing their children) and parents who send angry “red-wine emails.”

Considering that violence and hostility from parents towards educators reached a record high last year, I can’t imagine how a no excuses philosophy would go down with Aussie parents.  For instance, I wonder how Australian parents would feel about a hypothetical scenario articulated by Katharine Birbalsingh.  

Birbalsingh explains that it’s hard for teachers to “hold the line” in moments when a “little kid” is “looking up at you” giving an excuse like (mimicking a sad child) “I didn’t have any time to do it at home because something terrible was happening in my house that night, and it’s not my fault.” She warns teachers not to be swayed by thoughts like “Oh gosh, he comes from a poor background. Oh gosh I feel bad. Who am I to judge him? No!” Back in role as herself, she cries, “Hold your standards high and make sure that child meets those standards!”  

The phrase ‘hold the line’ here positions teachers as if they are in battle against students and suggests that to listen to a student when they give a reason for work avoidance is weak or lacking in high standards.  Some students do indeed make up excuses about work avoidance, but I’d argue that approaching all children with such sceptical cynicism, as demonstrated in Birbalsingh’s crass dramatization, is downright nasty and at odds with community expectations of teachers in Australia.

At its extreme, a ‘no excuses’ policy in some English schools restricts toilet access and in one school it was reported that “girls on their period have to either get their parents to tell the school about this, or ask their form tutors to issue a toilet pass.”  I hope many red wine emails were sent to that school. 

Some, like Glenn Fahey of the CIS here in Australia, blame the challenging nature of classrooms on “educational ideologues” who apparently “oppose efforts to improve the disciplinary climate within schools; often based on romanticised ideas about why students behave as they do.” 

For a think-tank so obsessed with evidence, it’s ironic that no evidence is provided as to just how many educators ‘oppose efforts’ to improve discipline.  I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that it is zero.  Indeed, I’d hope all Australian educators believe that schools can always improve when it comes to student engagement and wellbeing, as well as teacher safety and support.  What is debatable is how we improve.  

Some, like Australian educator Greg Ashman, blame poor discipline on educators inspired by French Philosopher, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whose views on education, he writes, are that children are “innocent and blameless, rather than human and flawed.”  Ashman provides no evidence as to just how many teachers he believes arrive at Aussie schools each day with this mentality, but, from what I’ve observed in a decade and a half, I suspect it is none.

Dismissing teachers who value Romantic ideals, such as dignity and humanity of children, even when they make mistakes, is just another way of criticizing any approach which deviates from the hard-line, militarised model favoured by these ‘experts’.  Besides, while our modern schools are influenced by Rousseau’s valuing of the sanctity of childhood, they are nothing like what Rousseau dreamed of, such as encouraging kids to wander around alone in nature. Contrary to Rousseau’s imagined educational utopia, “modern mass education has meant learning indoors, sitting at desks, listening to teachers, passing exams, and privileging academic over manual and vocational subjects.” So, to blame him for the complex challenges in our classrooms today is akin to blaming the Wright brothers for flight delays and lost baggage. 

According to Ashman, Rousseau’s philosophy “permeates all levels of education and it is quite common to hear a struggling teacher, at their wit’s end trying to manage a challenging class, be uselessly advised that, ‘All behaviour is communication’.”  Who are these mysterious educators giving such empty advice?  We’ll never know, but again the pattern emerges of edu-experts framing themselves as the guardians of truth; the guys who know ‘what works’; who have the bravery to debunk dead philosophers and the courage to advise us that teachers “are not here to be liked.”

Surely regardless of our approach to discipline, we can all agree that behaviour is always communicating something to us?  I’m unwilling to take advice from Bennett, who facetiously describes teachers who view behaviour as a communication as playing the role of “amateur sleuths, telepaths and psychiatrists.” 

This attitude is hyperbolic and dangerous.  For instance, the same anonymous teacher who spoke about their experiences in a school in England, reported that some student wellbeing concerns were missed due to the policy of “silence is the default” and when tutor time was replaced with quizzing, guided reading, or checking for equipment.  I feel that if teachers were less focussed on enforcing silent compliance and more focussed on genuine engagement with students, then perhaps we’d have more kids feeling happy about attending in general.

The same teacher concurs with my sentiments, as they went on to say that instead of engaging with students in a meaningful way, “the time is packed with activities such as quizzes, and they are not allowed to say a word, unless spoken to.” The teacher highlights that this approach is “a major safeguarding issue. … We know that there has been stuff that has been missed, like bruises.”

Clinical psychologist Naomi Fisher attests to this danger, writing, “They look peaceful, but in those silent corridors there are children giving way under the pressure. The way we treat our young people matters. High control environments cause distress.”

Scholar Dollars

The reality is that without the “teaching wars,” many educational experts and gurus would find it hard to make a buck.  Their entire business model relies upon the masses (especially school leaders) believing that the problem can be fixed if only more teachers would harden up and register to their courses.     

Lemov, speaking on what inspires him, says, “I do what i [sic] do for intrinsic reasons but if there were no pay check i would have never started it and therefore never come to love it and built my sense of what i intrinsically value around it.”  Fortunately for Lemov, who “never considered himself a brilliant teacher,” many are buying what he’s selling. 

There’s the books (version 1 through to 3) and his ‘Multiyear Partnerships’, spruiked as allowing you to “Achieve your strategic priorities and build educator capacity through the deep study of video and artifacts.”  You can buy his “fully customizable PowerPoint presentations” about basic strategies you’d hope your champion teachers already have sorted (like ‘turn and talk’) which cost over $500 AUD, or if you’re a real competitor in this race, you might book an in-person workshop for $15,000 per day.

Clearly, Lemov and others, such as Bennett, whose pinned Tweet is a link to his training dates for 2024 which reads “CHRISTMAS PRESENT SORTED for the teacher in your life :),” stand to make many ‘scholar dollars‘ out of the apparent ‘behaviour crisis’ in Australia and from the belief that the current teachers are inept.

What works?

Here in Australia, other suggestions to improve the “disciplinary climate” in schools include an annual student and teacher survey which would seek to “better gauge the frequency and impact of classroom disruption,” and the introduction of a ‘Behaviour Curriculum’ which would explicitly teach children “how to conduct themselves in a classroom.”

A behaviour survey is about as useful and out of touch as the brain-fart from former Victorian Education Minister, James Merlino, a few years back to give Year 9 students a certificate to make them “care” about doing NAPLAN.  Newsflash: they still don’t.  Likewise, regarding the introduction of yet another topic to crowd the curriculum, Adam Voight notes, “Kids don’t become respectful via a mini-lesson on respect any more prevalently than they become serial killers when they read about Jack the Ripper.”

Whatever this behaviour curriculum is, it better also be rolled out to all Australian adults, too, because children learn their behaviours from adults.  On the train today I saw a poster that read: “Be kind, words don’t rewind.” It reminded me that we have seen increased aggression since COVID 19 not only in schools but in all areas of society, like retail workers, hospitality workers, and health care workers, (noticeably ‘women’s work’).

Research shows that “gendered dynamics are particularly stark in service labour” and a study about the extent of aggression in hospitality revealed that “women bar workers were regularly called upon to defuse violent or aggressive patrons” and that women were expected to be “calmer” and “kinder,” creating “significant risk of harm for them.” Certainly, the best prac teachers I’ve mentored had experience in fast-paced retail or hospitality jobs; they were assertive yet friendly and could think on their feet in tense situations. 

If women apparently have the superpower of defusing aggression in other jobs, why is it that their daily heroism in the classroom is so frequently characterised as being weak or ineffective?  Why is the word “courageous” reserved only for Jason Clare, who works from the comfort of his Canberra office, when clearly turning up at school each day takes a degree of courage for any teacher? 

Before we invest massive amounts of money into surveys or curriculum programs, let us consider what schools we want to create for our young people.  Teachers don’t need patronising lectures from outsourced edu-gurus or expensive techniques that promise “100% engagement,” both of which prioritize student compliance and test scores over wellbeing, and which perpetuate a traditional gender order.   

They need public schools to be fully funded, they need more teacher aides to allow for support in the classroom, they need more time for mentoring and quality support (especially for beginning teachers), and they need more respect within the wider community. 

All teachers can benefit from reflecting on their approach to discipline in the classroom – indeed, champion teachers already do this daily.  I like to believe much of the expertise required to navigate the challenges of classroom behaviour already exists within schools.

The challenge is, as Robertson and Allan write, that the “teaching profession can be a lonely one”  and that teachers “are often embedded in the “dailiness” of their schools and are seldom able to take the quality time needed for reflection.” This “intensification” of teachers’ work can cause teachers to “be reactive and non-reflective as there is seemingly no time in the day for critical reflection on their leadership and teaching practices or for their own professional development.”

While there is obviously a place for routines and consequences in schools, and for teacher competencies, it’s important to focus on the attributes that are critical for the survival of a teacher, too, as suggested by Buchanan et el., such as “resilience, reflection, responsiveness to students and the school environment, relationships and resourcefulness.”

Without allowing for time to reflect, traditional notions of masculinity, authority and control will persist in schools, to the detriment of children and teachers.  Just as the corporate world has clued in to the value of flexible, equitable and empathetic approaches to work post-Covid, schools too must challenge the status quo.  We are not in a war, but we are contending with a wicked problem that will require deep reflection about how we do both discipline and gender in schools.

Copyright © 2024 by Melanie Ralph.