I still remember the patterns and blemishes on the linoleum floor. Fit-Bit’s weren’t around back then but I reckon we would have racked up some Km’s as we silently paced up and down the corridor anxiously awaiting our turn to discover the fate of our best efforts. The creak of the door in desperate need of WD40 heralded another long face trudging slowly towards the rain-soaked playground.

I don’t think I’ll ever forget the sight of my colleagues exiting the Ofsted ‘hot desk’ temporarily set up in Principal’s office. Some events leave an indelible mark on our professional career and some pretty caustic memories.

My turn came quicker than anticipated. The inspector called my name and I followed him into the room. There was one seat the far side of the desk. He sat down, asked me to confirm my name and the class I taught which was observed for 20 minutes. He then passed down his judgement. The inspector identified one element of my lesson which he felt was effective and suggested I ‘bottle it, preserve it and put it on show for others to see.’ Put it ‘on show’? What did that even mean? That was the sum total of my feedback. I exited poker-faced and did my level best to avoid the glances of my colleagues.

I fully support sharing and dialoguing about practice, but the notion that others should have replicated what I did made me feel deeply uncomfortable and like I was being asked to perform pedagogic taxidermy. The assertion that my strategy or approach could be transplanted in anyone’s classroom without real thought or compensation for a myriad of variables and nuances just because it worked this once felt equally uncomfortable. One’s practice is one’s own, something we craft over many years of hard work, reflection, research, refinement and learning. I wasn’t even convinced that what we had learned about that lesson had necessarily been effective.

Soon after that Ofsted inspection, the inevitable exchange of feedback and ‘grading’s’ ensued. I remember vividly overhearing conversations littered with comments such as ‘he’s not like that for me’, ‘that works really well in my classroom’, ‘there’s no way I would do that’ and the like. I remember the acrid aftertaste of the inspection, the return to closed classrooms, the deafening silence on the research front and scramble for learning analytics to set KPI’s for students and staff alike.

For those who were undertaking further study, engaged in designing and delivering professional development and conducting action research, their exciting work and thinking was submerged by the hubris of colleagues who hit targets, executed interventions with absolute precision and were afforded the platforms to laud their achievements. The illustrations of practice they created that were given viral-like exposure went unchallenged. The benchmarks they created internally, which were presumed to be an extension of external metrics, left some disenchanted and devoid of confidence despite years of experience and wisdom.

What I learnt from this chapter in my career is that evolving ones practice takes time and patience. It can be supported by models of proven effectiveness but ultimately shouldnt require the homogenisation of the heterogeneous. I feel there is excitement and liberation in exploring and researching ones own practice, sharing what we are discovering and collaborating on finding out what might work for our children in our contexts.

When our practice is so regularly under the microscope, no inspection, test or accountability mechanism can fully understand the atomic levels of detail and care we invest in our craft.