The Quality of Working Life in the Education Sector.pptVIP

The Quality of Working Life in the Education Sector Dr Linda Evans CERIC School of Education, University of Leeds Compass Yorkshire Humber Regional Conference, Nov. 3rd 2007 Compass/CERIC workshop: Improving the Quality of Working Life Teachers’ Working Lives Challenges Satisfaction Happiness Wellbeing What affects the quality of teachers’ working lives? Teachers talking What are headteachers doing wrong? Are all headteachers doing it wrong? So what does affect the quality of teachers’ working lives? Leadership and management? Six things that matter to teachers: equity and justice pedagogy organisational efficiency interpersonal relations collegiality self-conception and self-image Work contexts School leaders and work contexts ‘As headteacher, you have the power to change things. You have responsibility for the ethos of the whole school and every decision you take will impact on everything in school.’ National College for School Leadership (NCSL) website How may we improve the quality of teachers’ working lives? Get rid of headteachers? Reduce headteachers’ authority? democratise leadership management new models of leadership management headship collective ‘Teacher-centred’ leadership? Give a voice to ‘the led’ To consider: In the wider context, beyond education: How much do managers and leaders affect the quality of working lives? How effective are mechanisms for quality control of managers and leaders? Is it a question of swings and roundabouts? How many employees leave their managers and leaders, rather than their jobs? * * “We need more research into what brings wellbeing at work. Happiness research is a relatively new field and will continue to provide insights as it grows. There are already useful insights from the work on ‘flow’, which suggests that we gain satisfaction in our work to the extent that it is challenging but at a level at which we have the skills to meet that challenge.” Compass (2006) A New Political Econom