I want to be like Ken Robinson. How?
October 23, 2017 12:49 AM   Subscribe

I'm inspired by the career path of Ken Robinson. I care about education and creativity, I feel there's a lot wrong with schools, I am interested in how people think and learn and how to help them succeed, I think I would enjoy doing research, and would love to advise schools/authorities/governments on education.

How can I aim for a career like his? Is it even reasonable to try, or is that sort of career something that just happens by chance and luck? (So many horror stories about how hard and insecure it is to work in academia, and I'm not sure how much of a career like his would involve being in academia.) My undergraduate background is not especially relevant, for the most part - I mean, I didn't primarily study education or psychology (well, one module in each).
I am based in England, if that affects anything.
(Before anyone suggests it, I don't see myself as a classroom teacher.)
posted by anonymous to Work & Money (5 answers total) 3 users marked this as a favorite
 
One way to approach this obliquely would be to join a school governing board to build up your knowledge of schools and education. From there you could try to become a trustee on an academy trust which would give you some influence over the direction of a school or group of schools. This is unpaid (except in rare cases) but you can do it alongside an existing career while you build up your knowledge and skills.

After that I think you'd have to look at trying to get onto the paid side of education - there are companies that advise schools on academization for instance, and there are a lot of companies that have educational products or services that they try to sell into schools based on various theories of how children learn or what they need. At this point you might need further qualifications but at least then you know what you're aiming at.

Realistically, there aren't many people like Ken Robinson, but it's not crazy to try to build a career in this area and you can dip your toe in the water to see if the reality of education policy and practice inspires you as much as idea of it.
posted by crocomancer at 1:28 AM on October 23, 2017


If you're not willing to teach, it'll be hard to convince teachers to listen to you. Few things make us roll our eyes quicker than someone who's never set foot in a classroom telling us how to do our jobs. *Everyone* thinks they know how to "fix" education. They tell me about it at every party I attend.

If you want to make education better, teach. It doesn't have to be at a school and you don't have to do it forever. Work at an after-school program or an urban debate league or an arts or enrichment program. Then you can transition into telling everyone how they're doing it wrong and what they should do instead, and you might actually have the experience to back it up :)

Alternatively there are lots of people who do psych research about how people learn, and that might be of interest. They're not well-known and they're not advising governments, but they are putting information out into the world, which is a valuable thing to do.
posted by goodbyewaffles at 5:04 AM on October 23, 2017 [17 favorites]


Consider teaching for a few years for the following reasons:

-- There are disparate skills involved in teaching such as (to name but a few): time management; working under pressure; breaking down concepts into simpler elements; behaviour management; working with other people; interpreting and applying policy, reflecting on performance in real time or not; handling stakeholders including parents; data management. Classroom experience will help you break down "teaching" in terms of the skills involved.

--There are a number of reasons learners succeed or not and in school you can see some of these factors at play. They include things such as additional needs and how they're met in the classroom (funding and training for teachers and teaching assistants will play a huge role). Socioeconomic status as well as home environments play a huge role too. Things that happen or don't happen at home will impact a child's learning capacity for the day, a week or even years. Teachers work hard at mitigating and accounting for these factors and schools can play a big role in supporting parents so they can support their children.

--Decisions on how to implement the curriculum and government policy can vary hugely from school to school and this will impact (among others) how creative lessons are, how much importance is placed in anything that's not English or Maths and how much freedom teachers have to consider factors such as creativity in their planning and teaching.

--There is a real disconnect between policy makers, policy advisers and teaching professionals. As goodbyewaffles said, everyone thinks they can fix education and teachers regularly get told how to do it. Whether or not you have The Most Amazing Plan To Save Education, you will struggle to get respect by teachers if you don't have teaching experience.

--It's hard to get a sense of what's actually happening in schools without direct experience. Teachers and senior leadership are under pressure to show they follow government/Ofsted/local authority policy. When it's not actually feasible to do so they will generate the paperwork/evidence that makes it seem *as if* they have. Box-ticking galore.

I transitioned into teaching in my 30s and worked as a teaching assistant for a year before doing a school-based PGCE. This was in England. Yes, there are many things that are wrong with schools but you need to get into them to understand what to do about it. I don't think it's always the case that you must do something in order to understand it but in terms of schools and teaching, you must do it in order to understand it.

Me-mail me if you want to know more about my experience with Teach First, which is how I became a teacher. I'm conflicted about it but it had some advantages that might suit your circumstances.
posted by mkdirusername at 9:27 AM on October 23, 2017 [2 favorites]


If you don't want to teach at a school and are interested in how people learn, what about the training/adult learner side of it? Training, whether for compliance or enrichment can be done in ways that genuinely improve performance or not, and it's generally smaller systems (eg company or industry initiative).
posted by typecloud at 9:49 AM on October 23, 2017


"Education," "what's wrong with schools," "how people think and learn" are all super broad topics and are a lot to get a handle on at all, let alone become an expert capable of advising others. Maybe you would find it easier to select a specific career path by narrowing it down? For instance, are you particularly interested in primary schools, high schools (sorry, American forgetting UK terminology here), universities, special education for kids with disabilities, arts education, foreign language, STEM, classroom management, psychology of education/learning, curriculum design, school/community relations...and so on and so forth. You might be able to begin by identifying a specific area of interest to you and then working to increase your expertise therein, through academic study, volunteering, getting teaching credentials and working in the classroom, etc. etc. depending on the specific content.

(Seconding those above who have said that classroom experience is a good thing. As an ex-teacher, I can say that one of the best things someone who wants to help fix education can do is to listen to teachers--and students!--and take their concerns seriously; they may be right or wrong, but you have to start with the impressions of the people on the ground to understand what's happening and therefore where to begin work.)
posted by huimangm at 1:36 PM on October 23, 2017 [1 favorite]


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