Persistent high turnover and low morale in many educational settings have forced school leaders to look more carefully at their practices and ask whether their school is psychologically safe.
Renowned American scholar Amy Edmondson describes psychological safety as “A shared belief that the team is safe for interpersonal risk taking.” The central idea is that people learn more effectively when they can show uncertainty, ask questions, admit mistakes, and be vulnerable without fear of humiliation or punishment.
The reality at the chalkface
Schools often have the reputation of being sink-or-swim cultures. Either you are seen as a skilled teacher, or you are treated as incompetent.
Self-determination theory helps us understand why this matters. For adults to remain motivated, productive and resilient, they need to experience three core conditions: competence, autonomy and relatedness.
When these conditions are present, people are more likely to feel invested in their work. When they are attacked, the dominoes begin to fall. Teacher turnover remains high.
How can school leaders promote psychological safety?
The question for SLTs is not simply how we got here, but what conditions in schools are allowing this to continue?
The prescriptive nature of teaching – shaped by government policy, the national curriculum and rigid regulatory frameworks – has slowly chipped away at the autonomy of the teacher as a professional. This is the second of the three core factors in self-determination theory.
A tough balancing act
I recently had a teacher tell me that an Ofsted inspector had described them as a bad teacher. Apparently, this was because her Year 1 class was ‘focused too much on play-based learning’ rather than formal academic work. The teacher went on to explain to me that the school had originally employed her to develop a play-based curriculum for Key Stage 1, as they were attempting to innovate learning based on developmental research.
Judgements like this faced by teachers reduce trust. This erodes the third factor in self-determination theory: relatedness. When we work in environments where we struggle to relate to others, we feel isolated. Isolation can be used as a form of torture. Its impact on a person’s sense of wellbeing is profound.
Feeling connected allows ideas to emerge without fear of dismissal, and this becomes a two-way process. This type of professional dialogue is where innovation lives and where best practice is born. Teachers who feel part of their school community are more likely to become continuous improvers and to take risks, reflect honestly, ask for help and refine their practice.
Psychological and emotional safety in the school community
This is where psychological safety moves from being an adult wellbeing issue to a child development one. The psychological safety of teachers is not separate from the emotional safety of children, and it’s one of the conditions that makes emotional safety possible.
Children need to feel contained when they are in the presence of an adult. Containment is the ability to process feelings without becoming overwhelmed or acting impulsively.
Erroneously, modern society often thinks that children should be able to regulate themselves independently. In fact, they need to experience repeated co-regulation before this is possible. And yes, that includes teenagers too.
Stepping up, and being supported
To be in the position of co-regulator can be a privilege, but it is also demanding. It adds to a person’s cognitive and emotional load and can affect resilience severely if it is not well managed. Adults who do not have these internal resources are more likely to cause damage than take away emotional pain.
To support a child experiencing a problem requires attention, empathy, emotional problem-solving and attunement. It is not always about knowing what to say, but knowing when to say it, when to act and when to simply be present.
Sometimes children just need to be with a trusted adult. This is not always possible when that adult is worried about falling behind in the delivery of the curriculum, or afraid that a mock inspector will judge their practice as inadequate because the other children are not engaged in formal learning.
The key question
School leaders may scour the internet looking for the optimal way to teach, maximise cognitive resources, adjust lighting, reduce distractions and refine classroom environments. All of this can be helpful.
Yet it pales in comparison to the relational question: Do the children like the teacher?
Do they feel accepted by them?
Do they feel contained?
If the answer to these questions is yes, then I guarantee that class is learning more and in greater depth than any cognitive toolkit alone can predict.
Lasting impressions
When I consider my own personal journey, I’m compelled to think about my Year 3 teacher, Dr Cosgrove. He was a warm, benevolent character with the occasional burst of corrective temper.
Yet, as I write this, I struggle to accurately remember experiencing his anger. I know it existed, but I cannot describe it in detail. However, I can recall in vivid detail the long-winded joke about the ghost with two white eyes. Spoiler alert: he ends up with two black eyes.
I can also recall the patience he showed me when teaching me to spell ‘transparent’ and ‘opaque’, and when helping me learn the difference between ‘whether’ and ‘weather’.
Compare that with my Year 2 teacher, of whom I struggle to recall any fond memories. My prevailing thoughts take me to hearing the sound of her chain bracelet hitting the desk vigorously as she erased my work, followed by a startling instruction: “Do it again.”
These two examples may provoke thoughts or feelings from your own childhood. What is important is that one of these teachers made me feel safe because he was gentle and the other ruled by fear. Yet I can only recall my learning from one of them – and learning happens in happy places.
The importance of confidence
Upon reflection, I now realise that the power behind Dr Cosgrove was not simply that he was kind but that he was confident. And because he was confident, he was able to prioritise relationships.
From this foundation, he was able to fulfil the criteria of self-determination theory, and he had autonomy, competence and relatedness. His skill may have been innate, but he also appeared able to thrive in spite of the environment around him.
My Year 2 teacher may have been a product of that environment. And this matters, because headteachers need to assess their environments before they assess their individual staff. This is the crux of psychological safety.
To empower teachers to get the best out of children, headteachers need to find ways to allow them to exert agency, feel competent, feel contained and feel supported. These are the fundamentals of any school, and they come before any regulatory framework.
My belief is if you get these conditions right, within 12 months, your school will begin to change.
Dr Adam McCartney is an educational psychologist. You can find out more about his work with schools at dradammccartney.com.
