The Earned Autonomy Trap

In this post, I will make the argument for purging the phrase “earned autonomy” from our professional lexicon in education.

It is a phrase that, until recently, you would hear me use on occasion to mean that someone (or a group of people) should be left alone because they know what they are doing. For example, a department might consistently achieve good outcomes for students, so it is suggested that there need be minimal interference and oversight by management. Their performance means that they have ‘earned’ the right to be ‘left alone’.

This is a good sentiment to some extent. If we know what we are doing, we don’t need others to meddle in our professional affairs.

However, a recent conversation with a friend who thinks much more deeply about these things than me has led me to question whether the earned autonomy principle is advisable in an industry that likes to call itself a profession, or even whether it is logically coherent.

The problem with autonomy

I just want to be left alone to do my job.

Every teacher, ever

The first problem is in whether autonomy is desirable for the individual.

Collins dictionary defines autonomy as ‘the ability to make your own decisions about what to do rather than being influenced by someone else or told what to do’. At first glance, this seems like an attractive proposition. However, if we consider true autonomy for individual teachers, we can see how quickly things break down. If we were not told what room to teach in, how much time would be wasted negotiating a space for our class? If we were not given a curriculum to teach, each of us would have to start from scratch in deciding what knowledge was desirable, what order to teach it in, and so on. Clearly, collectivism is more desirable for organising some aspects of our working lives.

When we call for autonomy we must be specific over what we want autonomy over.

And whilst most of us don’t like being ‘told what to do’, few would seriously argue that they wish to be free from influence. We may be influenced by a colleague whose teaching inspires us, or influenced by an article we read that helps us re-evaluate our practice, or influenced by the assessment results of our class that give us pause to reflect on how well we taught a topic. We only get better through being influenced.

If we are not careful, autonomy can become isolation.

The second problem is in whether autonomy is in the interests of others.

The word autonomy is also used to mean ‘self government’. In this sense, the individual agent (person, group or nation) gains the right to act on their own self-interest and in accordance with their personal values. Self-interest clearly has no place in a public service profession, but it will inevitably creep in if the checks and balances of connectivism aren’t in place.

And where autonomy becomes isolation, the opportunity to continue to develop is removed, to the detriment of the children being educated.

Because I’m worth it

We have this strange notion that autonomy is the prize which we receive by being really effective (or looking like we are). I think we have created a desire to be ‘left alone’ because much of what we do when we pay attention to people is really unhelpful in education. When other people show up in our professional bubble, it is often to pick holes in what we do, check up on us, offer unhelpful suggestions, or to gather evidence to keep other people off our back. How often are we left feeling professionally enriched by these encounters?

When we ask for greater autonomy, we aren’t asking for less support or professional challenge, we are asking that people get out of our bloody way!

There are some misconceptions about educational expertise which also underpin our misguided calls for earned autonomy:

1. The mastery myth. Mastery is a goal, not a destination. We should continually strive for greater expertise but we will never ‘get there’. No-one can ever say they have mastered teaching, or school leadership, or school improvement. This is because the construct you are mastering is mutable – our collective knowledge evolves, society changes, we never teach the same class twice. Experts learn by exposure to contexts that challenge their expert mental models, not through isolation. This contrasts with novice learning, where these mental models are fragile and not yet up to robust challenge. As expertise grows, it is logical to aim to become more connected to others, not less.
2. Your responsibility is only to those in your charge. Teachers look downwards and feel responsible for their pupils, but they must also look outwards and upwards. A professional surgeon does not judge her success only according to her patients’ recovery, but in the lives saved by the techniques she has pioneered. A professional barrister takes pride in the case law that will steer judicial decisions of the future. Note in both cases, the autonomy over decisions is at the boundaries of professional practice, where new knowledge is being created. Up to this point, these professionals are compliant with the customs and established practices of the profession. The surgeon is not operating in the way she pleases. The barrister builds on established case law and is successful because they are standing on the shoulders of others, not by going it alone. Teachers who invoke their right to teach however they wish to teach are both reckless and ignorant.
3. Responsibility for others comes with promotion. A professional becomes responsible for the success of the wider system once they call themselves a professional, not once they attain the status of a manager. Equally, managers should remember that they do not have the right to greater autonomy just because they are higher up the chain of command, indeed we should scrutinise the practices of this group all the more as they wield greater influence.

What underpins all of the above is the mistaken belief that greater expertise brings a reward of greater freedom. It doesn’t. Expertise brings with it greater responsibility. In particular, responsibility to contribute to the body of professional knowledge that makes the whole system wiser.

When we are novices, we are dependent on others. But dependence is not replaced by independence, it is superseded by interdependence. Our expertise binds us tightly to the community of expert practitioners. We have a seat at the table where professional discourse occurs.

For an occupation to claim to be a profession, it requires the opposite of earned autonomy. A mature profession connects its experts together in a professional discourse which builds a codified body of knowledge, as Ruth Ashbee eloquently sets out here.

Struggling at the right level

Teachers who fight for the right to teach however they see fit are condemning themselves to exert a great deal of effort on getting the basics right. Our man stranded on the desert island in the image above will spend his time merely finding enough food to eat. His isolation means that his physical and intellectual effort is expended on meeting basic survival needs. Place this man in a functioning society, with the right support, and his efforts can be focused on achieving scientific breakthroughs, inventing new technology, or enriching other peoples’ lives.

Ollie Lovell describes this idea as ‘struggling at the right level’ in this podcast. He asks whether we would prefer teachers to be struggling at getting the basics right or to be struggling to create new approaches that push forward the collective understanding of what is possible?

To illustrate this idea, consider the task of curriculum development across a Trust. We can choose to let the History department in each secondary school expend energy and intellectual effort on designing a History curriculum for Key Stage 3. However, we may choose instead to harness the expertise of teachers across the Trust to design and resource a cross-school History curriculum. On the one hand, this reduces the autonomy of History departments in each school to decide what to teach. On the other hand, once the curriculum is in place and being delivered effectively, it enables us to locate and draw upon experts to innovate iterations of the curriculum which bring benefits to all of the schools.

In this instance, expertise does not bring greater independence, but greater interdependence, and in doing so has the potential to raise standards, reduce workload and increase impact. The experts are allowed to struggle at a higher level.

Note that autonomy is being sacrificed here but the paybacks are significant. Being co-dependent is an opportunity to keep getting better, beyond a level of expertise that can be achieved in isolation. But we won’t convince people to sacrifice their autonomy if all they receive in return is interference, control, and no seat at the table.

Multi-academy mistrusts

If the MAT system is to grow and thrive, it must find a viable alternative to the earned autonomy model.

Speaking to headteachers in ‘Good’ schools within MATs, I often hear the complaint that their budgets are heavily top-sliced but that all the resources are directed towards schools with RI or Inadequate judgements. Our crass accountability system makes this behaviour rational for MAT executives, but it is ultimately self-defeating and misguided. Why?

Firstly, being labelled Good or Outstanding hides a multitude of sins. To leave a headteacher to get on with it just because they have achieved this label during a two day inspection of dubious validity is foolhardy.

Secondly, how are you harnessing the expertise that exists within these schools to the benefit of the whole organisation? This isn’t about the ‘good school’ helping out the ‘weak school’, it is about looking across the Trust to identify the expertise which can help build the collective knowledge of the organisation.

Thirdly, how will you help these schools to keep getting better if you do not expose their assumptions and practices to robust scrutiny?

The challenge is to convince these schools that some of their autonomy should be surrendered. Appeals to altruism will only go so far. Headteachers of these schools must be convinced that their school will benefit from collectivism in concrete ways: better outcomes, plaudits, opportunities for professional growth. To achieve this, the Trust system must develop, articulate and evidence Trust models which reject the rhetoric of earned autonomy and embed the principles of collective endeavour, knowledge-building, and putting responsibility before rights.

If we want ours to be a mature profession, we must make those within it feel that they don’t just want to be left alone to get on with the job. From the classroom teacher to the headteacher, earned autonomy is a trap. It lures us with the promise of professional freedoms, but condemns us to isolation and mediocrity. We should aspire to something else.