Ciaran Sugrue is Lecturer in Education at St Patrick's College, Dublin, where he teaches courses to undergraduate and postgraduate students in teaching and the curriculum, schools as organizations, educational leadership and qualitative research methods. He is a former primary teacher and has worked in the primary schools inspectorate

'Anyone wishing to grasp what progressivism or child-centredness actually means in situ should turn to Sugrue's case studies, for they meticulously chronicle the daily life of teachers he observed and talked to, isolating what the child-centred vision means for each one ... there are more than glimmers of hope for the future shining from the pages of this book.' - Peter Silcock, New Era in Education, Vol 80:1 April 1999

• Acknowledgments, Introduction, 1. Complexities of Teaching: Child-centred Perspectives, 2. Substance, Setting and Method, 3. Practitioners’ Teaching Intentions, 4. Practitioners’ Teaching Constructions, 5. A Major Case Study: Participant, Context and Substance, 6. Theme One: Language, The Leitmotiv of Helen’s Practice, 7. Theme Two: Helen’s Conversational Style, 8. Theme Three: Scaffolding and Shepherding, 9. Reconstructing Teaching Traditions: Child-centred Perspectives, Appendix, Bibliography, Index