Te āta aro atu ki te pātai rangahau – nā John Loughran
This case alerts us to some of the more difficult aspects of professional interactions – challenging colleagues, asking the hard questions, minimising our defensiveness, attempting to justify our actions or behaviours. In such situations, leadership does not necessarily involve helping to decide between right and wrong; rather, it may be about finding ways in which diverse viewpoints might be introduced and considered so that new, common understandings might be developed.
Writing about his work with student teachers in a high school setting, Tom Russell describes two forms of knowing: imposed knowing associated with the “authority of position”, and personal knowing associated with the “authority of experience”. He explains how, for student teachers, his authority of position might provide guidance for their actions but not necessarily help them develop an understanding of the intricacies of a situation and why particular approaches or ideas mattered. On the other hand, trusting in their own authority of experience was important for student teachers. Through it, they were able to learn from appropriate risk taking, from making sense of situations, and from taking responsibility for their own actions. Such learning may well be intensely personal but it is also deeply insightful about the nature of teaching and learning. Finding the balance between the authority of position and the authority of experience is embedded in the ability to take risks in respectful, appropriate ways.
Tohutoro
Munby, H., and Russell, T. (1994). “The Authority of Experience in Learning to Teach: Messages from a Physics Method Class”. Journal of Teacher Education, vol. 4 no. 2, pp. 86–95.
