Advising students about their choices and plans is a theme in school at the moment, and conversations between students-teachers-parents are ongoing. When opinions differ, these conversations can sometimes foreground interesting different approaches to home-school relationships, and I came across an interesting way of thinking about this. Inspired by an interesting 1992 paper, I think it’s helpful to consider three models.
The Paternalistic model is the model whereby ‘school knows best’; it assumes that there are shared objective values to guide us in the best interests of the student and that all decisions will be made by school, and then communicated to parents. I hope it hardly needs saying that while this may have once been a possible model, it is no longer a viable approach. I remember my own GCSE French teacher changing my A level choice of Physics to French ‘on my behalf’ – that is, without asking me. We have come on a long way; not least because we recognize the value of student autonomy and aspiration.
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| Yes, partners, but in what sense? |
So a natural alternative model is the Informative model whereby the educational experts (school) lays out all the options to the students and parents, who then have full autonomy over any choices, in full knowledge of the likely outcomes. This ‘blue pill or red pill?’ approach is easy and appropriate when choices are clear, costs of mistakes are low, and when people have clear preferences. Sometimes, it’s obvious whether to do drama or tennis as an activity, but sometimes it’s a lot harder. How, for example, do we support decision making when there are conflicting levels of interest, career-relations, ability, and when the student is unsure? It’s not enough to lay out the facts, because facts only speak for themselves in light of values, and it is often the student’s values that are unclear.
So that leads us to a third model, the one we adopt – the Interpretative model. Our role is neither to decide, nor to abdicate from the decision-making process. Our role is to help students and families decide what they want. So, for example, if students wish to do courses for which they have so-far shown little enthusiasm we will neither forbid nor simply accept; we will start a conversation and ask why this is suddenly attractive. When students wish to take a course where we have concerns about their capacities to succeed, we ask ‘what’s your thinking in choosing this course? Why is it important to you?’. So what we are doing is trying to understand the students’ values perspectives, and then provide information in response to that. Often we find that where there are conflicting values (e.g. the desire to follow certain courses against certain career aspirations) the conversation centres around questions like ‘how much and what are you prepared to compromise for what you want?’ and ‘what strategies might help you succeed? How can we help?’
So these can be lengthy conversations, and our role here is not decision-maker, nor simply technical expert. It is more like an adviser, friend or, you will be relieved to hear, teacher.
