Sue L. T. McGregor - Böcker

This book concerns any progressive discipline and human profession looking to transform its practice via the cultivation of thinking professionals, which are preferable to unthinking professionals who may be inattentive, unphilosophical, not inclined or not know how to think deeply and profoundly. Thus, they fail to give due consideration to an issue or the consequences before acting. Thinking professionals have a complete and accurate image (mastery) of their professional identity and reality, and they can reflect on, reason through, and justify any decision to act. They would have thinking acumen (i.e., able to make good judgements and shrewd decisions), which requires a rich repertoire of contemporary perspectives and lenses, ideally with a critical bend (exposing and challenging power).Both The Thinking Professional and transformative practice are used as hooks and threads through the entire book and as anchors for each chapter. The 17-chapter collection is organized into (a) what thinking professionals could think about in the abstract as well as more concrete ideas including (b) how they could think about or view their practice differently and (c) how they could transform their practice and do things differently. Topics include paradigm shifts, the human condition, transdisciplinarity, the holomovement principle, philosophical well-being, perspective transformation, and transformative social change agency.Readers will also engage with intellectual curiosity and skeptical thinking, tacit knowledge management, the critical science approach, and critical discourse analysis. Other topics include transformative leadership, postmodernism, after postmodernism, reflective human action leadership, and communities of practice. In some cases, the century-old home economics profession is used as a working case to bring ideas alive. This book showcases The Thinking Professional who has transformative practice as their end goal.

This book concerns any progressive discipline and human profession looking to transform its practice via the cultivation of thinking professionals, which are preferable to unthinking professionals who may be inattentive, unphilosophical, not inclined or not know how to think deeply and profoundly. Thus, they fail to give due consideration to an issue or the consequences before acting. Thinking professionals have a complete and accurate image (mastery) of their professional identity and reality, and they can reflect on, reason through, and justify any decision to act. They would have thinking acumen (i.e., able to make good judgements and shrewd decisions), which requires a rich repertoire of contemporary perspectives and lenses, ideally with a critical bend (exposing and challenging power).Both The Thinking Professional and transformative practice are used as hooks and threads through the entire book and as anchors for each chapter. The 17-chapter collection is organized into (a) what thinking professionals could think about in the abstract as well as more concrete ideas including (b) how they could think about or view their practice differently and (c) how they could transform their practice and do things differently. Topics include paradigm shifts, the human condition, transdisciplinarity, the holomovement principle, philosophical well-being, perspective transformation, and transformative social change agency.Readers will also engage with intellectual curiosity and skeptical thinking, tacit knowledge management, the critical science approach, and critical discourse analysis. Other topics include transformative leadership, postmodernism, after postmodernism, reflective human action leadership, and communities of practice. In some cases, the century-old home economics profession is used as a working case to bring ideas alive. This book showcases The Thinking Professional who has transformative practice as their end goal.

This primer is about learning how to teach. As its name suggests, it provides a basic introduction to what is involved in becoming an effective, efficient, and efficacious educator. The targeted audiences are (a) preservice teachers (PST) (i.e., nonprofessional student teachers enrolled in a university Bachelor of Education degree), (b) early-career (novice) inservice teachers (c) or any educator for that matter who wants to build or bolster their essential foundation for teaching. The primer is unabashedly oriented to a synthesis of the technical (how-to) aspects of teaching because without prowess in these skills, even the most dedicated and committed teacher may not be effective and efficient let alone efficacious. Although teaching is both a science and an art, this primer is about the science of teaching. Other books focus on teaching as inquiry, thinking educators, reflective educators, and the sociocultural/political aspects of teaching.The book adopts a before-during-after class approach. It addresses how to (a) prepare lessons before a class (learning styles, learning objectives, lesson planning, and learning environments); (b) deliver lessons during a class (instructional strategies, questioning strategies, and classroom management); and (c) evaluate learning after the class (student assessment and evaluation strategies, and teacher self-reflection). This basic tool kit is further underscored with details about the larger constructs of (d) developing courses, modules, and units from which daily lessons emerge. Higher level notions of (e) educational philosophies, (f) curriculum theories and (g) curriculum development approaches are also included to illustrate how they, as the educational context, shape teachers’ pedagogies.