The Sweet Spot for Teacher Autonomy and the War Against Fidelity
Blog Post
Image by Tima Miroshnichenko from Pexels
May 22, 2024
The Learning Sciences Exchange (LSX) is a cross-sector fellowship program designed to bring together journalists, entertainment producers, policy influencers, social entrepreneurs, and researchers around the science of learning. As part of the program, our fellows contribute to various publications, including New America’s EdCentral blog; BOLD, the blog on learning development published by the Jacobs Foundation; and outside publications. The article below, authored by LSX Fellow Jon Hutchinson, is excerpted from a post published in tes magazine on May 22, 2024: The Sweet Spot for Teacher Autonomy and the War Against Fidelity.
Each September seems to bring some new vocabulary or other that inserts itself into Inset days, staffrooms and performance management meetings almost overnight. This year, that word is “fidelity” - a slightly less clumsy formulation of “faithfulness”.
Suddenly, a word that was mostly reserved for marriage gossip or geeking about stereo systems is now earnestly deployed to evaluate the implementation of phonics programmes and, increasingly, pretty much everything else that goes on in schools. Following the curriculum plan, the pedagogical script, the questioning approach, the behaviour policy - fidelity to all these and more is increasingly seen as the ethical approach to teaching if we are to ensure that every child can thrive, no matter their background.
Not everyone is happy about it. And it is worth looking at why. Because while we may think fidelity is the post-pandemic fix that education needs, we need to be more rigorous in asking, at what cost?
To continue reading, see the full article published May 22, 2024 in tes magazine.
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