We give a lot of time and consideration to the design of teaching spaces, but our failure to see the staffroom as a space of teachers’ learning results in some staffrooms being less than conducive in this respect.

Many in further education, the sector in which I teach, are offices rather than staffrooms. They pack in teachers, computers and phones to the extent that many take refuge in their classrooms and those who do work in the staffroom do so wearing ear defenders to block out the noise from their colleagues. If you’re lucky enough not to have seen one, one friend recently described them as looking like “call centres”.

This probably makes sense economically; smaller staffrooms improve room usage metrics and space allocation. However, I would argue that it doesn’t make sense pedagogically. This is because it prevents the circulation and exchange of knowledge, pedagogical or otherwise.

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Background: The death of the staffroom is a sign of bigger problems

Educational knowledge: reservoir and repertoire

Bernstein explains it through the idea of reservoir and repertoire. The reservoir is the knowledge and potential of the community as a whole, and the repertoire the knowledge and potential held by an individual within that community. Now, as we all have our strengths and weaknesses and teach in different contexts, we’ll all have slightly different repertoires but there will be also a commonality with the reservoir. What happens when we isolate teachers from each other is that we weaken the development of either the repertoire or reservoir, the development of pedagogy, and knowledge, in short, becomes less dynamic.

This importance of contact with other teachers, particularly teachers with whom you share a subject speciality, was highlighted in a recent report exploring the leadership of improving teaching and learning in further education by O’Leary, Smith, Cui and Dakka. They summarise that “improving teaching and learning is about creating an environment in which collegial interaction can flourish. It is a process that is locally defined and invariably rooted in subject specific/course contexts. It is socially situated and is shaped by sustained human interactions. To flourish, it requires adequate time for teachers to share thoughts and reflection on their practice.” Note here the shaping by human interactions, the context-specific nature of development, tied here to subjects or courses and the clear call for allowing collegial interactions to flourish.

Staffrooms can facilitate these exchanges; I know as I sit in one that does. We swap resources, information on students, and books. We argue about whether and how learning styles should be taught on our programmes and how to improve the support for the teachers that mentor our students. I am lucky to work with others who have specialist knowledge in learning technologies and LGBT+ and diversity, so I know that a quick conversation in the staffroom can help me better understand or change an approach. All this improves my thinking, my knowledge, my judgements and my pedagogy.

Giving trainee teachers a place

As a teacher educator, I know that one of the first groups who get marginalised in the staffroom can be trainee teachers. As space is at a premium, it tends to go to permanent and experienced teachers - the ones with an extensive repertoire who may have lots to offer the trainee in terms of resources, ideas, syllabus knowledge and pedagogic approach. On the flip side, these trainee teachers have a lot to offer their permanent or more experienced counterparts: new ideas, technologies or, in the case of vocational teachers, up-to-date industry knowledge and experience. Both are required to keep the reservoir dynamic and developing, and the staffroom seems an easy place to do so, especially where staffrooms are organised around subject specialisms.

These “staffroom” spaces don’t have to be physical. Twitter can be a great space to meet and share with others from your subject or sector; I am part of a fantastic Slack chatroom which focuses on developing, sharing and supporting further education research, and I have seen lots of techy Microsoft-team-type spaces, too. These spaces, often led by teachers for others, express the kind of collegiality O’Leary calls for and have the potential to develop reservoir and repertoire.

This may be especially useful for those teachers who teach in organisations that don’t encourage undertaking any development that has been devised and organised by themselves. Any attempt to specialise and privatise knowledge, either for ideological or profit-related motives, impoverishes the development of the profession, and arguably of the organisation.

At a time when all sectors of education are financially strained, not facilitating the kind of interactions between teachers that develop their practice is counterproductive. Teachers need space, in schools, colleges and universities to meet and share and lead the development of what I would argue they know best: teaching, learning and pedagogy.

Sam Jones is a lecturer at Bedford College, founder of FE Research Meet and was FE teacher of the year at the Tes FE Awards 2019