Geraldine Rowe is an educational psychologist and former teacher, and a specialist in Parent Partnership and Behaviour and Attendance. She has taught in Primary and Middle Schools and been a member of the Senior Leadership Team of an alternative provision secondary school. Her 30-year career has taken her into 100 schools, and Geraldine is a really good example of someone who is outside the teaching profession, but who has immense experience and insight to share.

Geraldine recently published an absolutely fascinating book called It’s Out School, It’s Our Time: A Companion Guide to Whole-School Collaborative Decision-Making. The book is a highly readable account of Geraldine’s doctoral study, which features three case studies of teachers in mainstream schools who make decisions with their pupils, rather than for them.

The importance of choice and agency and autonomy in human development has come up again and again in this podcast, and it is often a key feature of teaching and learning in alternative schools and in international schools. But this book looks at what collaborative decision-making (CDM) can look like within mainstream settings - and there is no shortage of ways in which we can include children in making the decisions that affect their lives.

This is a conversation that goes right to the heart of the what I see as the main problem with the mainstream model of education - coercion isn’t good for kids, even if it gets results in the short term - and Geraldine offers lots of practical advice for teachers who want to move in a more collaborative, consent-based direction.

LINKS

BOOK: It’s Our School, It’s Our Time, by Geraldine Rowe: https://www.routledge.com/Its-Our-School-Its-Our-Time-A-Companion-Guide-to-Whole-School-Collaborative/Rowe/p/book/9780367859381

WEBSITE: Geraldine’s list of further reading for teachers: https://pupilparticipation.co.uk/teachers/

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The Rethinking Education podcast is hosted and produced by Dr James Mannion. You can contact him at rethinking-ed.org/contact, or via @RethinkingJames on Twitter.