She will tell the National Union of Teachers at its annual conference in Bournemouth that it should negotiate in private rather than return to 1980s-style industrial disputes - the era when Ms Morris, then as now an NUT member, went on strike from her Coventry school over pay.
NUT members held a one-day strike in the capital this month in protest at a 3.5% increase in their London allowance and the union, along with the two other main classroom associations, is threatening industrial action in the autumn if the chancellor fails to find extra money to improve teachers' hours and conditions.
But the union's general secretary, Doug McAvoy, said last night that "the idea of the NUT being strike happy is a totally false image". He suspected that the education secretary was trying to pick a fight.
Ms Morris, a former teacher at Sydney Stringer secondary in Coventry, will tell delegates: "We work well on many issues quietly and away from the headlines. This is how I want to do business, getting down to serious issues. I believe that most teachers want this, too, and I welcome that. But partnership is a full-time job not a part-time one.
"Industrial action risks undermining the work that we have done and also damages the image of teachers in the public mind and most of all it harms the education of children. Going back to the 1980s would be deeply damaging for both pupils and teachers. We have a a clear choice to go back to those days or move forward."
Ms Morris has denied reports put around by officials that she is considering boycotting the "bear pit" of the teacher union conferences. The government insists that government efforts to improve teachers' conditions would carry on regardless. "It's not a question of boo and you don't get the cash," one official said.
Ms Morris is expected to say that disputes "muddy the waters" of negotiations and make it harder for her to sell to the public her plans to spend money to reduce workload. "It makes it more difficult to justify to the taxpayer why we are spending money in this way."
The unions have been working with her department on workload but the NUT was dismayed when the education secretary came out against a limit on teaching time.
Mr McAvoy said: "There's no history of action after action after action - that has gone from the NUT's agenda. We have demonstrated over the last 12 months and longer that we are willing to work in partnership with the government.
"That doesn't mean we are willing to be dictated to by government to what we can demand and how we go about seeking to achieve it."
Ms Morris is braced for booing and heckling from NUT delegates and Mr McAvoy indicated she would get as much if she delivers her expected remarks.
"If she wants to come with a heavy hand like that she won't find she has a very respectful audience. After that, we will move on. Such words won't change anything. She might feel better when she's said it, No 10 might feel better when she's said it but it won't change anything ... politicians are skilled and know their audience and can easily cause the reaction they want."
On Monday NUT delegates will debate a motion being put forward at all three classroom union conferences demanding significant extra money in the chancellor's spending review to improve the teacher contracts.
Mr McAvoy said if that was not forthcoming NUT members would vote on a proposal to limit their working hours to 35 a week. They would refuse to carry out some administrative clerical work and preparation of school reports but he insisted it would not hit teaching or lesson-planning time.
Today the conference will discuss the merger of the NUT, the Association of Teachers and Lecturers and the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers, described by Mr McAvoy as "the union's most treasured goal."
The prospect has been made more likely by the initiative of Eamonn O'Kane, the incoming general secretary of the NASUWT, but Mr McAvoy said some NUT activists would be worried about their own positions in the new union. "There'll be some nervousness within the NUT. People who may have been totally supportive of professional unity when it was only a dream may not be personally supportive now it's nearer to reality."
