Why 'Kidwatching' is critical for parenting and teaching.

One of the greatest challenges for Christian education institutions, is how to build and sustain the centrality of their Christian beliefs, with pedagogy that is consistent with this faith. While a specific faith would have underpinned all religious schools when first established, maintaining such a focus and foundation can be difficult. Far too many faith-based educational institutions end up measuring their success based on the maintenance of academic, cultural and sporting standards and whether parents are satisfied ‘customers’. This is not to say that these things are unimportant, although parents are partners not 'customers' or clients! Faith-based institutions were always meant to offer so much more. They were established to educate and shape students spiritually, not simply academically. To help students grow in body, mind and soul!

 

Any faith-based institution will find after successfully founding and growing a school or university, that over time the pursuit of excellence in academic, sporting and school rankings of all kinds will begin to dominate key decisions and practices.  If this drift occurs, we should ask, is it still possible to achieve the original founders’ goals? A key factor critical in achieving this aim, is whether teachers actually get to know their students well enough to have an impact on their character and lives, not just their success in public exams, sporting achievements and career outcomes.

 

 

A key starting point is that teachers need to get to know their students more deeply. They need to observe and be concerned for more than just school results and behaviour in class, but also their wellbeing and moral character. What is the key to doing this? I believe that teachers need to be ‘Kidwatchers’ (Owocki & Goodman, 2002). I’ve written about this in my book ‘Pedagogy and Education for Life’ in detail. But in essence, it requires teachers to be more attentive to student life in our classes and schools, and even in the playground.

 

As teachers, we need to use our eyes to observe the behaviour of students, and ears to listen to the things they say. Not just in class, but in the ‘cracks’ of school life. Perhaps as students gather on arrival at our classes, or simply by observing their behaviour in the playground. Why? So that we might understand our students’ priorities, passions and interests? Who are the people who seem to have greatest influence on them? Other students and friends! We need to understand what they are learning from other students that shape their values and beliefs? ‘Kidwatching’ is one of the twenty actions in my ‘Framework for Christian Pedagogy’. Teachers need to have or develop this key ability (Cairney, 2018, 138-155).

 

One of the most helpful discussions of the challenges in sustaining focus in Christian education is offered by Smith & Smith (2011, 9-10). When discussing the work of Alasdair MacIntyre, they remind us that Christian schools and educators fight on two key fronts. One concerns the objects and focus of our students’ attention, and the other is the ‘absorbing’ and ingraining of habits, skills and dispositions (‘Habitus’) as they live and learn together within varied communities of practice in and outside school. Each and every student we teach takes on an “embodied history, internalized as a second nature” (Bourdieu, 1990, p.56).

 

Etienne Wenger (1999) has contributed much to our understanding of how groups work together. Our students are part of many formal and informal physical and virtual communities of practice, and over time some of these ideas and practices become accepted as part of life together. Their life together in such groups can extend even to the incorporation of specific ‘secret’ codes that reify certain ideas and beliefs as part of the community. Of course, as I have said already, most of this ‘life’ is unseen by teachers and parents. Taylor suggests that below the surface of life, imagination is at work helping our students to consider stories, myths, dreams and hopes. They begin to imagine the world as they would want it to be (Taylor, 2004; Smith, 2009; Smith & Smith, 2011).

 

Every day our students share their lives, their hopes and dreams for the future, and the unseen struggles that occur along the way. We need to understand that most critical discussions of things that ‘matter’ to them, do not occur with parents and teachers, but rather with their friends. If they do have adult ‘influencers’, they usually have celebrity status in the wider world. They do this by consuming large amounts of social media each day, where ‘influencers’ promote ideas, values, challenges and hopes. Sadly, we can discover far too late, that our children and students can have double lives. 

 

In my own writing, I find James Gee’s (Gee, 1996) idea of being ‘apprenticed’ to social groups as a partial explanation of what occurs in our classrooms and schools. The behaviour of our children, their beliefs, the activities they value, and the personal image they seek to create, is shaped by others as part of group life. This is not to say that parents and teachers are powerless in such things, just that we cannot assume they will look to us first for guidance and even their values (Cairney, 2018).

 

 

What can we do about the issue that I highlight? As I have already said, first place a priority on becoming ‘kidwatchers’ (Owocki & Goodman, 2002). This is 'simply' being attentive to student life in and out of class. As I said above, use our eyes to observe behaviour, and ears to listen to what is said in different situations. Primarily in class, but also in the 'cracks' of school life. What are their passions and interests, the people who influence on them most, their hopes and dreams? Kidwatching is one of my twenty key actions I believe teachers should demonstrate in their classroom and school practices (Cairney, 2018, 138-155). If you want to know you will find additional detail in the book.