The Chairman of the National Association of Teachers of English (NATE) has been accused of having an “elitist attitude” and of “pulling up the drawbridge to high-quality professional development” following his comments in a magazine article.
Writing in the NATE magazine, Peter Thomas said some of the comments from teachers asking for help from the ‘TeamEnglish’ online community reflected “a lack of autonomous confidence in subject knowledge and pedagogy that might make some wince.”
He quoted a request from one teacher who stated: “Anyone got any resources for teaching Twelfth Night for KS4? - my teaching of it is currently terrible!”
He quoted another who asked: “Does anyone have Inspector Calls schemes of work? Going out of my mind as I’ve never taught it before!”
Mr Thomas, a former university lecturer, was writing in the most recent issue of the magazine when he said this “limited professional and academic confidence may reflect the nature of recruitment or, more likely, deficiencies in the less subject-specialist nature of the non-university PGCE training.”
But in an open letter to Mr Thomas, assistant headteacher Caroline Spalding states: “My first reaction was ‘thank God you weren’t my NQT mentor’. Or Head of English. Or, colleague, for that matter.
Representing TeamEnglish, Mrs Spalding today shared the letter with her 14,600 followers on Twitter. She stated, “How can we develop as a profession if any admittance of a lack of confidence or even anxiety are met with a physical shudder?”
She adds: “The idea that any teacher should have ‘autonomous confidence’ in every aspect of their subject knowledge and practice throughout their career is a damaging one, in my opinion, that stifles professional development and dialogue.
“Such elitist attitudes pull up the drawbridge to high-quality professional development at a time when our profession needs it the most.”
Mr Thomas also questioned the quality of some of the resources shared through TeamEnglish, stating that “an online chat room allows contributors freedom to post well-intended but not necessarily well-informed offerings…the number of followers confirms a satisfied need for connection and community, but is not necessarily a confirmation of quality.”
But Mrs Spalding accused him of having “a lack of understanding of the nature of the online world.”
She said: “Of course the resources are of variable quality: it’s a mark of the wonderful, diverse nature of the Team English demographic… but I passionately believe that judgement-free, peer-to-peer sharing is vital if we are going to stimulate dialogue about what constitutes that very quality we are seeking.”
Read Mrs Spalding’s letter here. A link to Mr Thomas’ article can be found here.
