Teacher Professional Learning in an Age of Compliance: Mind the Gap examines ways in which practice-based inquiry in educational settings, in a number of different countries and contexts, can transcend current ways of working and thinking such that authentic professional learning is the result. The authors contend that education policy, under pressure from a number of quarters, is retreating into a standardized, audited, and backward-looking arena, with the advances of more progressive educational philosophy being rolled back. In an age where practitioner inquiry and action research have often been ‘hijacked’ for the purposes of broad-based policy implementation, this book offers a rationale for reclaiming the critical edge so fundamental to inquiry-based professional learning. It examines the potential of inquiry-based forms of teacher professional learning to contribute to the growth of professional knowledge for and about teachers’ work. The authors intend that the book will assist in building new forms of professional knowledge that go beyond the current compliance model – engineered from less enduring materials – to inform a new model with its foundations in a strong ethical and moral framework. They also believe that this new model, if implemented, will help to reverse today’s conservative educational trends and make teacher professional development a force for genuine progress once again. They have consciously moved away from the celebratory tone of much of the academic reporting of teacher professional learning, adopting instead a genuinely critical edge. In covering a wide range of policies and practices from across the international spectrum, they have allowed themselves the freedom to engage in serious epistemological arguments about the nature of professional knowledge, as well as how it is constructed and employed.

Emerging from an education world that sees professional learning as a tool to positively shape teaching practice in order to improve student learning, Transformational Professional Learning elucidates professional learning that is transformational for teachers, school leaders, and schools. Written from the unique ‘pracademic’ perspective of an author who is herself a practising teacher, school leader, and researcher, this book articulates the why and the what of professional learning. It acts as a bridge between research and practice by weaving scholarly literature together with the lived experience of the author and with the voices of those working in schools. It covers topics from conferences, coaching, and collaboration, to teacher standards and leadership of professional learning. This book questions the ways in which professional learning is often wielded in educational settings and shows where teachers, school leaders, system leaders, and researchers can best invest their time and resources in order to support and develop the individuals, teams, and cultures in schools. It will be of great interest to teachers, leaders within schools, staff responsible for professional learning in school contexts, professional learning consultants, professional learning providers, and education researchers.

How might inquiry enhance the professional practice of student and practising teachers, teacher educators and other practitioners? What effect might this have on the learning of young people in and outside of the classroom? Based on the findings of an international colloquium and drawing upon a range of practices from the UK, USA, Canada, Europe and Australia, this book is designed to make explicit the connections between Practitioner Inquiry and Teacher Professional Learning in Initial Teacher Education and Ongoing Teacher Professional Development. Considering issues such as the relationship between practitioner inquiry and pedagogical content knowledge whether it is possible to scale up from small local and intensive innovations to more broadly-based inquiry inquiry’s role in professional identity, both individual and communal prevailing socio-political contexts and consequences for social policy formation. It brings together writers who work in designing teacher education courses, and those who are practice-based researchers and policy makers. Crucially, many of these writers inhabit both spheres, and their accounts of how they successfully combine their multiple roles will prove vital reading for all those involved in examining and improving practice leading to enhanced teacher professional learning.

Emerging from an education world that sees professional learning as a tool to positively shape teaching practice in order to improve student learning, Transformational Professional Learning elucidates professional learning that is transformational for teachers, school leaders, and schools. Written from the unique ‘pracademic’ perspective of an author who is herself a practising teacher, school leader, and researcher, this book articulates the why and the what of professional learning. It acts as a bridge between research and practice by weaving scholarly literature together with the lived experience of the author and with the voices of those working in schools. It covers topics from conferences, coaching, and collaboration, to teacher standards and leadership of professional learning. This book questions the ways in which professional learning is often wielded in educational settings and shows where teachers, school leaders, system leaders, and researchers can best invest their time and resources in order to support and develop the individuals, teams, and cultures in schools. It will be of great interest to teachers, leaders within schools, staff responsible for professional learning in school contexts, professional learning consultants, professional learning providers, and education researchers.

This book addresses the complex dilemmas and issues that arise from the contribution made to practitioner inquiry. Facilitating practitioner research is far more than providing advice upon methods which may be adopted, or even modelling research practices and drawing attention to appropriate resources and theories. It also requires the evolution of strong reciprocal partnerships that will contribute to professional knowledge formation in both the academy and the field. When such engagement is undertaken then matters associated with authentic ‘praxis development’ for field based and academic practitioners emerge. The authors explore how a transformative partnership requires particular professional attitudes of practitioners and academic researchers and show how it should result in three integrated areas of knowledge: the ideological, the empirical and the technical. The text draws upon extensive case studies from The Netherlands, Sweden and Australia which not only to illustrate and illuminate, but also highlight contradictions and tensions and serve to surface issues related to the quality of the partnerships between the academy and the field and the ways in which quality impacts upon practice. These varying social geographies also allow a discussion of different intellectual traditions, belief systems, problem settings, questions, and discourses

Understanding the Dynamics of Teacher Agency, Resilience, and Identity in the Neoliberal Age foregrounds how the neoliberal educational reforms contribute to the (trans)formation of teacher agency, resilience, and identity through various theoretical perspectives and methodological approaches.

When teachers are supported to work together in ways that allow them to deepen knowledge of their professional practice, the understandings that emerge from their conversations about quality learning and teaching demonstrate a high level of expertise. Yet such professional knowledge is often deeply embedded within each teacher’s everyday teaching; the tacit knowledge that determines how and why they attend to student learning in certain ways. This book captures the professional knowledge of teachers that developed as the result of an ongoing process of school based change, where teachers began to work differently because they began to think differently about the learning that mattered for their students in their school. The explication of their knowledge of practice became possible due to the ongoing support they received from their school leadership – in most part because leadership trusted them as professionals to responsibly lead student learning. Within this culture of trust and valued collaboration, working alongside external critical friends who supported their professional learning, the teachers engaged in regular, thought provoking and interactive professional dialogue. Together they exposed and challenged each other’s thinking and beliefs about learning and teaching, captured and examined each other’s practice and, ultimately articulated and extended their professional knowledge. The insights about this collaborative learning process and the emergent knowledge and understandings teachers develop about the interactive relationship between learning and teaching, has much to contribute to educational discourse beyond the school setting. Some of that knowledge and the way it looks in practice is shared in this book.

This Handbook explores the discourse within the field of educational leadership and management. It provides a clear analysis of the current field as well as older foundational ideas and newer concepts which are beginning to permeate the discussion. The field of educational leadership and management has long acknowledged that educational contexts include a variety of leaders beyond school principals and other school officials such as informal and middle level leaders. By looking at the knowledge dynamic rather than a static knowledge base , this Handbook allows research to be presented in its multidimensional, evolving reality.

This book discusses the educational systems into which students with refugee backgrounds are placed when relocated into many of their new homelands. It discusses the current climate of neo liberalism which pervades schooling in many western countries and the subsequent impact on curriculum focus and teaching strategies. It proposes ways in which these students, who are currently the most vulnerable students in school, can be educated with policies and perspectives which respect the diversity and uniqueness that characterises the world today as the result of the global unrest and subsequent diaspora. The impact of power, politics, people and pedagogies on the prospects of these is investigated and a model for holistic education, which includes the wisdom and care of pedagogical love is discussed as way in which a more human and compassionate approach to education for these and all students of difference can be integrated into school communities despite neo liberal imperatives in education. Research indicates that schools which are spaces of safety and belonging, through leadership of care and empathy, can provide successful educational opportunities for students who have asylum seeker and refugee backgrounds and experiences.

Questioning the Language of Improvement and Reform in Education challenges the language used in education by linking the language of both the public and professional domains with the changing intentions of the governance of education. Exploring various issues, which embody the many manifestations of the manner in which strident, conservative language has captured the public view of education, the book covers topics such as the importance of language in the context of educational practice, the media's portrayal of teachers globally, the role of students in the face of curriculum reform and the language used in educational policy worldwide. The book addresses the ways in which the words ‘improvement’ and ‘reform’ have been appropriated and hollowed-out by policymakers in order to justify globalised education policies. Using international case studies and reports, the authors argue that the employment of specific words masks the reality that new educational policies are regressive and require re-examination, while perpetuating the illusion that progressive educational practice is being brought to the fore. Questioning the Language of Improvement and Reform in Education is a fascinating and original take on this topic, which will be of great interest to educational practitioners, policymakers and linguists.