What’s your why? This is mine…
This is the prologue to what I hope will be an interesting collection of articles, stories, insights and opinions on all things education. My particular interests currently are teacher education and followership, with new theses capturing my attention on almost a weekly basis. Therefore, this collection at first will offer an insight into the eclectic nature of my thoughts, whilst hopefully working towards a less turbulent discourse. Before that, I want to set out why am I here and communicate with you - what is my why.
During my psychology degree I found reading a burdensome task, I even despised it at times. Now more than 5 years have passed and I find myself fully enjoying academic literature, even though I still require a dictionary nearby to overcome some of the vocabulary, (by dictionary, of course I mean google). This year so far, I have engaged with more literature than I have in my previous 25 years together, and it feels great. It feels great to read the view point and ideas of others and be challenged to understand, reflect upon and drive my thinking forwards accordingly. Over the past 5 years, as well as completing by BSc Psychology, I have worked within the SEN department of a mainstream school, teaching along the way, as well as completing my MA Education with Leadership and Management. Now, I am running a childcare company whilst completing my PGCE and EdD, you can see I like to be busy.
Therefore, I find myself in an interesting position, engaging with appropriate education literature through my EdD, whilst completing academic assignments through my PGCE as part of the journey to becoming part of the ‘next generation of the teacher workforce’; consequently, I find myself infatuated with teacher education and enpowered to share insight from a viewpoint that few others can. Especially given the current climate and rhetoric surrounding teacher education and education as a whole.
My interesting in followership stemmed from an interest in leadership where I stumbled upon this under-researched field. Followership focuses on the 99% of people in organisations or are not the leader, many existing theses on followership provide classifications for types of followers and what this means for organisational and personal milieus. My MA gave me the opportuntiy to constuct the Followership Identity Theory, exploring how teachers positioned themselves within their school as well as identifying what inhibited and drove them. This insight has feulled my interest in understanding why reported teacher job satisfaction is seemingly low, attrition is unrelenting and teacher recruitment and retention can be an insurmountable challenge for many schools across the nation.
This is why I am here, to write and to read about current education rhetoric and to accentuate my interest in developing new, relevant, knowledge and rhetoric to stimulate a brighter future of education for all stakeholders. I suppose I better get started then…
