Listening to the voices of the school system

I recently completed a piece of qualitative research, exploring the emotional experiences of  students, parents and teachers during the first lockdown in early 2020 when everyone was shut out of school.

It was my first attempt at using the Listening Posts methodology, a form of bounded social enquiry developed by OPUS, an educational charity established in 1975 to promote the understanding of social and organisational life.

The Listening Post approach proposes that what emerges from discussions in small groups is expressive of the characteristics of the wider system to which those groups belong. Commissioned by Big Change, the Pandemic as Portal report aims to remind us of what really matters to the humans in the school system.

Through reviewing the transcripts of the discussion groups, I sought to ‘hear’ the unspoken assumptions, patterns and themes that arose; unconscious expressions of the participants’ relatedness to the school system, revealing something of its character. Through this approach we hoped to hear the system talking.

We heard of children’s desperate need to be back with their friends, to connect, to engage. We heard of parents’ sense of betrayal in relation to their children’s experience of abandonment. It was clear that the social and relational purpose of school is highly valued and was greatly missed. We were invited to understand children’s preoccupation with the experience of isolation, of being in ‘limbo’, uncontained and exposed, of missing the ‘buzz’ of school life. We also saw into their sense of loss of school as a space in which they can develop their own identities as individuals on their own terms and in relation to others.

At times, it was upsetting to hear children speak of their sense of isolation and loss, and to hear parents talk about how they were – in many cases – let down by their kids’ schools, despite the best of intentions. But I was heartened at the hopes expressed by teachers and school leaders for change; for a shift to more relational and human-scale ways of working.

Sadly, I don’t see much of that now that schools are busy again. After all this pain and trauma, have we really not learned the lessons?