Mary Jane Drummond started her career in education in 1966 and taught in a variety of inner-city schools, including four years as the headteacher of an infant school in Sheffield. She worked on the influential Schools Council Project Communication Skills in Early Childhood and in 1985 she became a lecturer at what later became the Faculty of Education at the University of Cambridge, from which she has recently retired. She has a distinguished record in research and evaluation and is the author of a number of studies based on observations of children’s learning in nursery and primary classrooms.

• Acknowledgements1. Learning from Jason2. Looking at Learning: Introductory3. Looking at Learning: What is there to see?4. Looking at learning: learning to see5. Ways of Seeing: Trying to Understand6. Understanding ourselves7. Trying to Understand: making it work8. Practices and principles9. Rights responsibilities and powerConclusion