Lori Beckett is the Winifred Mercier Professor of Teacher Education at Leeds Beckett University, UK.

"Showing how critical thinking and local democracy can be a spur to very real educational development within schools that are facing severe challenges, this book provides us with one very valuable contemporary resource of hope." Ian Menter, Professor of Teacher Education, University of Oxford, UK" In 'Teachers and Academic Partners in Urban Schools', Lori Beckett does what many insiders feel unable to do and, in raising her ‘head above the parapet’, acts as a powerful antidote to the current anti-intellectual and unhealthy obsessions with crude accountability measures and short term fixes pervading schooling in England in the twenty-first century [...] Although firmly grounded in a particular English context, this book does have considerable resonance around the world, as countries, especially Anglophone ones, are tempted to policy borrow from England." - Jane McNicholl, Journal of Education for Teaching"The book is a clarion call for a radically different understanding of educational reform. Beckett delivers a forensic anaylsis of the local ramifications of performativity regimes in high poverty schools across 10 years, in the particular context of school-university partnerships in one northern English city." - Susanne Gannon, Discourses: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 2016

• Series Editor’s Introduction Christopher Day and Ann Lieberman ForewordIan Menter Acknowledgements A ‘choreography of policy conflict’ in urban schools ‘Local’ solutions to ‘failing’ schools Critical democratic work Academic partners & the ‘university project’ Making common cause Teachers’ voice Professional control over schooling Bibliography

Lori Beckett is the Winifred Mercier Professor of Teacher Education at Leeds Beckett University, UK.

"Showing how critical thinking and local democracy can be a spur to very real educational development within schools that are facing severe challenges, this book provides us with one very valuable contemporary resource of hope." Ian Menter, Professor of Teacher Education, University of Oxford, UK" In 'Teachers and Academic Partners in Urban Schools', Lori Beckett does what many insiders feel unable to do and, in raising her ‘head above the parapet’, acts as a powerful antidote to the current anti-intellectual and unhealthy obsessions with crude accountability measures and short term fixes pervading schooling in England in the twenty-first century [...] Although firmly grounded in a particular English context, this book does have considerable resonance around the world, as countries, especially Anglophone ones, are tempted to policy borrow from England." - Jane McNicholl, Journal of Education for Teaching"The book is a clarion call for a radically different understanding of educational reform. Beckett delivers a forensic anaylsis of the local ramifications of performativity regimes in high poverty schools across 10 years, in the particular context of school-university partnerships in one northern English city." - Susanne Gannon, Discourses: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 2016

• Series Editor’s Introduction Christopher Day and Ann Lieberman ForewordIan Menter Acknowledgements A ‘choreography of policy conflict’ in urban schools ‘Local’ solutions to ‘failing’ schools Critical democratic work Academic partners & the ‘university project’ Making common cause Teachers’ voice Professional control over schooling Bibliography