Professional Learning and Development in Schools and Higher Education – serie

This, the first book in the series, ‘Professional Learning and Development in Schools and Higher Education’, is edited by two experienced, committed and skilled educationists from different parts of the world but with converging values and viewpoints. The result is a rich mélange of authors from the USA, Australia, South Africa, Canada and New Zealand all of whom focus on the use of evidence informed decision-making in schools and classrooms. This focus makes for an unusual collection which acts as an antidote to change agendas which are entirely results driven. The book provides evidence from a variety of countries of how s- tem leaders, teachers in schools and higher education must now manage as part of their endeavours to provide the best possible learning and achievement opportu- ties for all students. What makes this book unique is its engagement with the rea- ties of the challenge of evidence informed conversations which all too quickly become ‘activity traps’ as teachers are steered away from evidence towards ado- ing short term pragmatic or ideological solutions which suit the policy agendas of reformists from outside schools and, more often than not, fail to result in real changes in teaching and learning.

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.

Lily Orland-Barak offers us a breathtaking work of science ?ction. Or perhaps I should say ‘science and ?ction. ’ The science side of the equation employs sophisticated technique for observing and describing interpersonal and intrapersonal dynamics among professionals in education. Both dramatic and seemingly ordinary episodes in the lives of teachers in relational tension with one another are analyzed with scienti?c care, precision, and insight. The scienti?c study of mentoring is like the scienti?c study of soap bubbles – their formation, growth, and sudden exit from the visible world with a nearly soundless ‘pop!’ Scienti?c and intellectual tools can be used to describe and predict the behavior of soap bubbles, to study their colors, shapes, surface tension, and tiny mass. The same is true of the study of mentoring. But in both cases, the greatest care must be taken to avoid popping the almost m- ically elegant form – to avoid destroying the delicate relationship by rushing in, by heavy attempts at control, or by premature dissection, or even by paying attention too intensely to a private, personal relationship. Mentoring is best studied by being still, by listening with authentic interest, and by using our peripheral vision. The science and the scientist have done their best work here. The ?ction side of this ?ne book gives life to telling examples of mentoring in action.

Lily Orland-Barak offers us a breathtaking work of science ?ction. Or perhaps I should say ‘science and ?ction. ’ The science side of the equation employs sophisticated technique for observing and describing interpersonal and intrapersonal dynamics among professionals in education. Both dramatic and seemingly ordinary episodes in the lives of teachers in relational tension with one another are analyzed with scienti?c care, precision, and insight. The scienti?c study of mentoring is like the scienti?c study of soap bubbles – their formation, growth, and sudden exit from the visible world with a nearly soundless ‘pop!’ Scienti?c and intellectual tools can be used to describe and predict the behavior of soap bubbles, to study their colors, shapes, surface tension, and tiny mass. The same is true of the study of mentoring. But in both cases, the greatest care must be taken to avoid popping the almost m- ically elegant form – to avoid destroying the delicate relationship by rushing in, by heavy attempts at control, or by premature dissection, or even by paying attention too intensely to a private, personal relationship. Mentoring is best studied by being still, by listening with authentic interest, and by using our peripheral vision. The science and the scientist have done their best work here. The ?ction side of this ?ne book gives life to telling examples of mentoring in action.

This book examines current trends in higher education and the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. It introduces readers to pedagogical strategies that instructors worldwide are using to overcome some of the challenges they face in higher education. To maximize their students’ learning, this work argues that institutions are compelled to innovate their policies and instructors must be collaborative and creative in their practices in response to students’ growing demands, needs, challenges to their learning, and the shifting terrain of a rapidly globalizing world. The text explores the idiosyncrasies and challenges that drive innovation across particular cultures, disciplines and institutions. It suggests that the responses to these drivers offer some universal and compatible lessons that not only optimize teaching and learning, but also transgress institutional, cultural, and disciplinary boundaries in higher education. The contributors to this collection work in the United States, the United Kingdom, Africa, Asia, Australia, Scandinavia and the Middle East. They represent a broad range of disciplines, fields and institutional types. They teach in varied contexts, durations, delivery modes, and formats, including online, study abroad, blended, accelerated, condensed, intensive and mortar-and-brick settings. Their higher education students are equally as diverse, in age, cultural backgrounds and needs, but willingly lend their voices and experiences to their instructors’ study of teaching and learning in their particular contexts. This book harnesses the rich diversities and range our contributors represent and shares the results of their expertise, research, and assessments of some of the most creative and effective ways to improve student learning in the face of stagnant practices, limited resources, and other deficiencies that instructors and students face inhigher education.

This book explores teaching and learning in lower secondary classrooms in the three PISA domains science, mathematics and reading. Based on extensive video documentation from science, math and reading classrooms in Norwegian secondary schooling, it analyzes how offered and experienced teaching and learning opportunities in these three subject areas support students’ learning. The in-depth investigations of video documentation are combined with analysis of the Norwegian PISA results in order to understand how teaching and learning in science, mathematics and reading can be improved.   Recent reviews indicate that instructional practice does make a difference to students learning - and is more important than other factors including students’ socioeconomic background, class size, classroom climate, and teachers’ experience and formal training. This book opens the discussion on a European basis about contemporary challenges in teaching and learning in secondary schooling. Norway as a test bed is particularly interesting due to its long tradition with national curricula, and its unitary and non- streamed structure. Furthermore, ideas of educational progressivism and students’ active ways of working (such as individualized teaching, adapted teaching, inquiry based teaching etc.) have for a long time been actively promoted within Norwegian educational policies.   The book draws on analyses that combine expertise in psychometrics and video-based micro genetic classroom studies with expertise in domain-specific instruction (math, science and reading). It feeds the conversation how issues of communication patterns are dealt with and made productive within different instructional formats, and presents possibilities to compare and analyze instructional formats and discursive practices for students’ learning.​

How teachers may be better educated for a changing global world is a challenge that faces many systems of education worldwide. This book addresses key issues of quality and change in teacher education in the context of the new public management achievement agendas which are permeating teacher education structures, cultures and programmes and the work of teacher educators internationally. Graduate schools of education in the United States and the UK, for example, are making fundamental changes in the structures, courses, programs and faculties that prepare beginning teachers each year. Drawing upon examples from the United States, United Kingdom, China, Hong Kong, Australia and elsewhere, its authors provide a unique critical overview of emerging themes and challenges of  raising the quality of teaching and the quality of student learning outcomes. They suggest possible ways forward for teachers, teacher educators, researchers and policy-makers as they seek to raise the quality of teaching and student outcomes whilst sustaining their moral purposes and values of equity, inclusion and social justice. Taken together, the chapters contain informed, critical discussions of “normal education” and “teacher education”  of “professional standards”, “4+2/+1” post-degree training, “PGDE versus BEd”, integration of subject specializations and professional education. Each one provides new visions of the teacher as a professional and to cultivate high quality teachers in the West and the Greater China region. For all those interested in issues of quality, change and forward movement in teacher education in contexts of policy led reform, this is a must read.

This book explores teaching and learning in lower secondary classrooms in the three PISA domains science, mathematics and reading. Based on extensive video documentation from science, math and reading classrooms in Norwegian secondary schooling, it analyzes how offered and experienced teaching and learning opportunities in these three subject areas support students' learning. The in-depth investigations of video documentation are combined with analysis of the Norwegian PISA results in order to understand how teaching and learning in science, mathematics and reading can be improved. Recent reviews indicate that instructional practice does make a difference to students learning - and is more important than other factors including students' socioeconomic background, class size, classroom climate, and teachers' experience and formal training. This book opens the discussion on a European basis about contemporary challenges in teaching and learning in secondary schooling. Norway as a test bed is particularly interesting due to its long tradition with national curricula, and its unitary and non- streamed structure. Furthermore, ideas of educational progressivism and students' active ways of working (such as individualized teaching, adapted teaching, inquiry based teaching etc.) have for a long time been actively promoted within Norwegian educational policies. The book draws on analyses that combine expertise in psychometrics and video-based micro genetic classroom studies with expertise in domain-specific instruction (math, science and reading). It feeds the conversation how issues of communication patterns are dealt with and made productive within different instructional formats, and presents possibilities to compare and analyze instructional formats and discursive practices for students' learning.​

This book examines current trends in higher education and the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. It introduces readers to pedagogical strategies that instructors worldwide are using to overcome some of the challenges they face in higher education. To maximize their students’ learning, this work argues that institutions are compelled to innovate their policies and instructors must be collaborative and creative in their practices in response to students’ growing demands, needs, challenges to their learning, and the shifting terrain of a rapidly globalizing world. The text explores the idiosyncrasies and challenges that drive innovation across particular cultures, disciplines and institutions. It suggests that the responses to these drivers offer some universal and compatible lessons that not only optimize teaching and learning, but also transgress institutional, cultural, and disciplinary boundaries in higher education. The contributors to this collection work in the United States, the United Kingdom, Africa, Asia, Australia, Scandinavia and the Middle East. They represent a broad range of disciplines, fields and institutional types. They teach in varied contexts, durations, delivery modes, and formats, including online, study abroad, blended, accelerated, condensed, intensive and mortar-and-brick settings. Their higher education students are equally as diverse, in age, cultural backgrounds and needs, but willingly lend their voices and experiences to their instructors’ study of teaching and learning in their particular contexts. This book harnesses the rich diversities and range our contributors represent and shares the results of their expertise, research, and assessments of some of the most creative and effective ways to improve student learning in the face of stagnant practices, limited resources, and other deficiencies that instructors and students face inhigher education.

This book critically explores the use of nine recognized methodologies  for the mediation of professional learning in the context of teacher education: The story, the visual text, the case, the video, the simulation, the portfolio, lesson study, action research, and Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). Drawing on  theories of mediation and professional learning, the book establishes connections between theoretical, empirical and practical-based aspects of each  of these methodologies. It consolidates a body of knowledge that offers a holistic portrayal of these methodologies in terms of their purposes (what for), processes (how), and outcomes (what), both distinctively and inclusively.Each chapter offers four perspectives on each methodology (1) theoretical groundings of the genre (2) research-based evidence on methodologies-as-pedagogies for mediating teacher learning (3) mediation tasks for teacher education as reported in studies and (4) a synthesis of recurrent themes identified from selected books and articles, including a comprehensive list of publications organized by decades.  The last chapter presents  an integrative framework that conceptualizes connections and weak links across the different methodologies of mediation.

This book describes lessons learned from the implementation of research based learning at Maastricht University. Well-known for its problem based learning (PBL) educational model, Maastricht University implemented research-based learning (RBL) as a new educational concept in addition to PBL, around 2009. The model has taken the shape of an excellence programme offering third-year bachelor students an opportunity to conduct academic research together with academic staff. The introduction of the research-based learning concept into the programmes of all Maastricht University’s faculties has resulted in a range of RBL models that vary to fit the various disciplines and programmes offered by the faculties. The book first presents theoretical models and a description of the concepts of research-based learning and undergraduate research (UGR). Next, by means of case studies, it describes the formulas developed to suit the various programmes, the challenges encountered, the initial reservations on the part of the staff, the limitations caused by regulations and demands of the curricula, as well as the successes and results of the excellence programme. The disciplines described in the case studies include psychology and neuroscience, knowledge engineering, social and cultural sciences, law, and business and economics.

How teachers may be better educated for a changing global world is a challenge that faces many systems of education worldwide. This book addresses key issues of quality and change in teacher education in the context of the new public management achievement agendas which are permeating teacher education structures, cultures and programmes and the work of teacher educators internationally. Graduate schools of education in the United States and the UK, for example, are making fundamental changes in the structures, courses, programs and faculties that prepare beginning teachers each year. Drawing upon examples from the United States, United Kingdom, China, Hong Kong, Australia and elsewhere, its authors provide a unique critical overview of emerging themes and challenges of  raising the quality of teaching and the quality of student learning outcomes. They suggest possible ways forward for teachers, teacher educators, researchers and policy-makers as they seek to raise the quality of teaching and student outcomes whilst sustaining their moral purposes and values of equity, inclusion and social justice. Taken together, the chapters contain informed, critical discussions of “normal education” and “teacher education”  of “professional standards”, “4+2/+1” post-degree training, “PGDE versus BEd”, integration of subject specializations and professional education. Each one provides new visions of the teacher as a professional and to cultivate high quality teachers in the West and the Greater China region. For all those interested in issues of quality, change and forward movement in teacher education in contexts of policy led reform, this is a must read.

This book critically explores the use of nine recognized methodologies  for the mediation of professional learning in the context of teacher education: The story, the visual text, the case, the video, the simulation, the portfolio, lesson study, action research, and Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). Drawing on  theories of mediation and professional learning, the book establishes connections between theoretical, empirical and practical-based aspects of each  of these methodologies. It consolidates a body of knowledge that offers a holistic portrayal of these methodologies in terms of their purposes (what for), processes (how), and outcomes (what), both distinctively and inclusively.Each chapter offers four perspectives on each methodology (1) theoretical groundings of the genre (2) research-based evidence on methodologies-as-pedagogies for mediating teacher learning (3) mediation tasks for teacher education as reported in studies and (4) a synthesis of recurrent themes identified from selected books and articles, including a comprehensive list of publications organized by decades.  The last chapter presents  an integrative framework that conceptualizes connections and weak links across the different methodologies of mediation.

This book describes lessons learned from the implementation of research based learning at Maastricht University. Well-known for its problem based learning (PBL) educational model, Maastricht University implemented research-based learning (RBL) as a new educational concept in addition to PBL, around 2009. The model has taken the shape of an excellence programme offering third-year bachelor students an opportunity to conduct academic research together with academic staff. The introduction of the research-based learning concept into the programmes of all Maastricht University’s faculties has resulted in a range of RBL models that vary to fit the various disciplines and programmes offered by the faculties. The book first presents theoretical models and a description of the concepts of research-based learning and undergraduate research (UGR). Next, by means of case studies, it describes the formulas developed to suit the various programmes, the challenges encountered, the initial reservations on the part of the staff, the limitations caused by regulations and demands of the curricula, as well as the successes and results of the excellence programme. The disciplines described in the case studies include psychology and neuroscience, knowledge engineering, social and cultural sciences, law, and business and economics.

This, the first book in the series, ‘Professional Learning and Development in Schools and Higher Education’, is edited by two experienced, committed and skilled educationists from different parts of the world but with converging values and viewpoints. The result is a rich mélange of authors from the USA, Australia, South Africa, Canada and New Zealand all of whom focus on the use of evidence informed decision-making in schools and classrooms. This focus makes for an unusual collection which acts as an antidote to change agendas which are entirely results driven. The book provides evidence from a variety of countries of how s- tem leaders, teachers in schools and higher education must now manage as part of their endeavours to provide the best possible learning and achievement opportu- ties for all students. What makes this book unique is its engagement with the rea- ties of the challenge of evidence informed conversations which all too quickly become ‘activity traps’ as teachers are steered away from evidence towards ado- ing short term pragmatic or ideological solutions which suit the policy agendas of reformists from outside schools and, more often than not, fail to result in real changes in teaching and learning.

The working and career lives of teachers have changed radically over the last two decades. Reforms have turned education into a commodity and pupils into ‘consumers’. Yet not since 1992 has there been a comprehensive overview of research findings on teachers’ working lives. This anthology plugs the gap by collecting various scholarly contributions and perspectives on teachers’ career trajectories and work lives.The material includes an introduction to previous research within the field, presents a range of contemporary research and offers suggestions as to what lies ahead. Among the contributors are leading educational academics who describe a variety of national contexts, illustrating how problems and challenges relating to the teaching profession manifest themselves and are tackled in different countries.The anthology also shows just how many aspects of teachers’ career trajectories and work lives transcend national boundaries. Common international themes include stronger ties between education and the economy, and a growing importance placed on how students’ skills relate to the perceived needs of the labour market. There is also a greater degree of political interference in curriculum goals and processes, and an expanding obsession with evaluation.In many countries, a whole generation of teachers are reaching retirement age, ‘changing the guard’ with a crop of new young recruits who are ever harder to attract. At a time when there is an increasing focus on issues such as teacher recruitment, retention and professional development, this anthology offers insight and inspiration to teacher educators and educational policy makers as well as to current and prospective teachers. It also aims at encouraging research into the field of teachers’ working lives.

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.

Students entering higher education expect their studies to lead them towards some specific form of professional career. But in this age, complex internationalized professions are the main source of work for graduates, so students need to prepare themselves for a future that can be volatile, changeable and challenging. This book shows how students navigate their way through learning and become effective students; it details how to shift the focus of their learning away from the formalism associated with the university situation towards the exigencies of working life. It is in this sense that the book explores how people move from being expert students to novice professionals. This book presents a model of professional learning fashioned out of a decade of research undertaken in countries half a world away from each other—Sweden and Australia. It uses empirical research gathered from students and teachers to show how students negotiate the forms of professional knowledge they encounter as part of their studies and how they integrate their understandings of a future professional world with professional knowledge and learning. It reveals that as students move from seeing themselves as learners, they take on more of a novice professional identity which in turn provides a stronger motivation for their formal studies.

Within educational research that seeks to understand the quality and effectiveness of teachers and school, the role emotions play in educational change and school improvement has become a subject of increasing importance. In this book, scholars from around the world explore the connections between teaching, teacher education, teacher emotions, educational change and school leadership. (For this text, “teacher” encompasses pre-service teachers, in-service teachers and headteachers, or principals).  New Understandings of Teacher’s Work: Emotions and Educational Change is divided into four themes: educational change; teachers and teaching; teacher education; and emotions in leadership. The chapters address the key basic and substantive issues relative to the central emotional themes of the following: teachers’ lives and careers in teaching; the role emotions play in teachers’ work; lives and leadership roles in the context of educational reform; the working conditions; the context-specific dynamics of reform work; school/teacher cultures; individual biographies that affect teachers’ emotional well-being; and the implications for the management and leadership of educationalchange, and for development, of teacher education.

Susan Groundwater-Smith is one of the most influential voices in the world of educational practitioner inquiry. The convener in Australia of the Coalition of Knowledge Building Schools, she is a staunch advocate of innovative methods of practitioner inquiry with a particular emphasis upon student voice and the use of images in capturing young people’s perspectives on their learning experience. So it is more than fitting that this unique text on practitioner inquiry and teacher professional learning is dedicated to her. Rethinking Education Practice Through Reflexive Inquiry is a compilation of essays that explore contemporary issues in practitioner inquiry and action research from the perspective of both university-based and school-based authors. The essays discuss the practical, political and theoretical dimensions of practitioner inquiry, advancing the argument that the adoption of an inquiring approach to practice is both an integral dimension of teachers’ work in the modern school as well as critical to effective and authentic professional learning. And the essays draw on the work of Groundwater-Smith to demonstrate the benefits brought to bear on schools, teachers and learners when the complex nature of the relationship between inquiry and practice is understood and acted upon in pursuit of democratic knowledge interests.

Students entering higher education expect their studies to lead them towards some specific form of professional career. But in this age, complex internationalized professions are the main source of work for graduates, so students need to prepare themselves for a future that can be volatile, changeable and challenging. This book shows how students navigate their way through learning and become effective students; it details how to shift the focus of their learning away from the formalism associated with the university situation towards the exigencies of working life. It is in this sense that the book explores how people move from being expert students to novice professionals. This book presents a model of professional learning fashioned out of a decade of research undertaken in countries half a world away from each other—Sweden and Australia. It uses empirical research gathered from students and teachers to show how students negotiate the forms of professional knowledge they encounter as part of their studies and how they integrate their understandings of a future professional world with professional knowledge and learning. It reveals that as students move from seeing themselves as learners, they take on more of a novice professional identity which in turn provides a stronger motivation for their formal studies.

Within educational research that seeks to understand the quality and effectiveness of teachers and school, the role emotions play in educational change and school improvement has become a subject of increasing importance. In this book, scholars from around the world explore the connections between teaching, teacher education, teacher emotions, educational change and school leadership. (For this text, “teacher” encompasses pre-service teachers, in-service teachers and headteachers, or principals).  New Understandings of Teacher’s Work: Emotions and Educational Change is divided into four themes: educational change; teachers and teaching; teacher education; and emotions in leadership. The chapters address the key basic and substantive issues relative to the central emotional themes of the following: teachers’ lives and careers in teaching; the role emotions play in teachers’ work; lives and leadership roles in the context of educational reform; the working conditions; the context-specific dynamics of reform work; school/teacher cultures; individual biographies that affect teachers’ emotional well-being; and the implications for the management and leadership of educationalchange, and for development, of teacher education.

Susan Groundwater-Smith is one of the most influential voices in the world of educational practitioner inquiry. The convener in Australia of the Coalition of Knowledge Building Schools, she is a staunch advocate of innovative methods of practitioner inquiry with a particular emphasis upon student voice and the use of images in capturing young people’s perspectives on their learning experience. So it is more than fitting that this unique text on practitioner inquiry and teacher professional learning is dedicated to her. Rethinking Education Practice Through Reflexive Inquiry is a compilation of essays that explore contemporary issues in practitioner inquiry and action research from the perspective of both university-based and school-based authors. The essays discuss the practical, political and theoretical dimensions of practitioner inquiry, advancing the argument that the adoption of an inquiring approach to practice is both an integral dimension of teachers’ work in the modern school as well as critical to effective and authentic professional learning. And the essays draw on the work of Groundwater-Smith to demonstrate the benefits brought to bear on schools, teachers and learners when the complex nature of the relationship between inquiry and practice is understood and acted upon in pursuit of democratic knowledge interests.

The working and career lives of teachers have changed radically over the last two decades. Reforms have turned education into a commodity and pupils into ‘consumers’. Yet not since 1992 has there been a comprehensive overview of research findings on teachers’ working lives. This anthology plugs the gap by collecting various scholarly contributions and perspectives on teachers’ career trajectories and work lives.The material includes an introduction to previous research within the field, presents a range of contemporary research and offers suggestions as to what lies ahead. Among the contributors are leading educational academics who describe a variety of national contexts, illustrating how problems and challenges relating to the teaching profession manifest themselves and are tackled in different countries.The anthology also shows just how many aspects of teachers’ career trajectories and work lives transcend national boundaries. Common international themes include stronger ties between education and the economy, and a growing importance placed on how students’ skills relate to the perceived needs of the labour market. There is also a greater degree of political interference in curriculum goals and processes, and an expanding obsession with evaluation.In many countries, a whole generation of teachers are reaching retirement age, ‘changing the guard’ with a crop of new young recruits who are ever harder to attract. At a time when there is an increasing focus on issues such as teacher recruitment, retention and professional development, this anthology offers insight and inspiration to teacher educators and educational policy makers as well as to current and prospective teachers. It also aims at encouraging research into the field of teachers’ working lives.

This book offers a challenge to traditional approaches to classroom teaching and pedagogy. The SPRinG (Social Pedagogic Research into Groupwork) project, part of a larger research programme on teaching and learning funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), was developed to enhance the learning potential of pupils working in classroom groups by actively involving teachers in a programme designed to raise levels of group work during typical classroom learning activities. Internationally, the SPRinG project is the largest evaluation of effective group working methods in comparison to traditional teaching, with findings that show raised levels of pupil achievement and a doubling of sustained, active engagement in learning. The opening chapters present arguments regarding the relationship of social interaction and children’s cognitive development and examine theories that explain why social interactional processes should be integrated into primary school pedagogic practices.  Next, the book describes the conceptual and methodological basis for the SPRinG studies, especially its focus on the relational approach, the type of involvement of teachers and classroom planning. Further chapters present key results and describe the background and methods used to establish SPRinG-based effects on pupil progress in mathematics, literacy and science, including both macro and micro assessments; how the SPRinG approach affected pupil-pupil interactions and teacher-pupil interactions, as measured by systematic on-the-spot observations and analyses of videotapes of groups working on specially designed tasks work; and effects on pupil self-completed measures of motivation and attitudes to group work.The book also analyses reflections of teachers who have worked with SPRinG: moving from theory to practice as well as adding insights associated with implementing SPRinG principles in schools. Drawing upon developmental psychological, socialpsychological and classroom research, it develops a new and ambitious social pedagogic approach to classroom learning, with a stress on group work, which will be of interest to researchers, teachers and policy-makers.This book includes contributions from Andrew Tolmie and Ed Baines, who were also involved in the ScotSPRinG and SPRinG projects.

Incorporating both theoretical and practical perspectives, this volume of papers explores varied aspects of peer review of teaching in higher education. The section on theory features contributions from academics based in Europe, North America and Australia. It provides a number of models demonstrating ways in which collegial peer commentary can enhance the quality of learning and teaching. The chapters examine in detail the importance of communication and leadership, and deploy evidence from one-on-one interviews that evince the value of considering collegiality, emotions, attitudes, and spaces in peer review. The analysis shows how these factors are central to the ways in which lecturers and teachers communicate with each other to create constructive opportunities for learning.The chapters on practical considerations detail the peer review process and include case studies from institutions in Africa, Europe, North America and Australia, which focus on different areas of the topic, including peer review as a quality assurance mechanism, peer review in distance education, peer review in foundation courses, and peer review embedded within a department and across a university. The book ends with an international perspective on the role of peer review in ensuring a holistic approach to quality enhancement in learning and teaching.

This book explores teacher workplace learning from four different perspectives: social policy, international comparators, multi-professional stances/perspectives and socio-cultural theory. First, it considers the policy and practice context of professional learning in teacher education in England, and the rest of the UK, with particular reference to professional masters level provision. The importance of teachers’ and schools’ perceptions of improvement, development and learning, and the inherent tensions between individual, school and government priorities is explored. Second, the book considers models of teacher workplace learning to be found in international research and practice to explore what perspective they can bring to understanding policy and practice relating to workplace learning in the UK. Third, it draws on cross-professional analysis to get an intellectual and theoretical purchase on workplace learning by examining how insights from across the professions can provide us with useful perspectives on policy and practice. The analysis draws particularly on insights from medicine and educational psychology. Fourth, the book cross-fertilises research and practice across the field of education by drawing on insights from perspectives such as socio-cultural and activity theory and situated learning/cognition to discover what they can offer in analysing the theoretical and pedagogic underpinnings of teacher workplace learning. In short, the book offers a number of contexts for exploring how best to conceptualise and theorise learning in the workplace in order to generate evidence to inform policy and practice and facilitates the development of a more theoretically informed and robust model of workplace learning and teaching.

This book offers a challenge to traditional approaches to classroom teaching and pedagogy. The SPRinG (Social Pedagogic Research into Groupwork) project, part of a larger research programme on teaching and learning funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), was developed to enhance the learning potential of pupils working in classroom groups by actively involving teachers in a programme designed to raise levels of group work during typical classroom learning activities. Internationally, the SPRinG project is the largest evaluation of effective group working methods in comparison to traditional teaching, with findings that show raised levels of pupil achievement and a doubling of sustained, active engagement in learning. The opening chapters present arguments regarding the relationship of social interaction and children’s cognitive development and examine theories that explain why social interactional processes should be integrated into primary school pedagogic practices.  Next, the book describes the conceptual and methodological basis for the SPRinG studies, especially its focus on the relational approach, the type of involvement of teachers and classroom planning. Further chapters present key results and describe the background and methods used to establish SPRinG-based effects on pupil progress in mathematics, literacy and science, including both macro and micro assessments; how the SPRinG approach affected pupil-pupil interactions and teacher-pupil interactions, as measured by systematic on-the-spot observations and analyses of videotapes of groups working on specially designed tasks work; and effects on pupil self-completed measures of motivation and attitudes to group work.The book also analyses reflections of teachers who have worked with SPRinG: moving from theory to practice as well as adding insights associated with implementing SPRinG principles in schools. Drawing upon developmental psychological, socialpsychological and classroom research, it develops a new and ambitious social pedagogic approach to classroom learning, with a stress on group work, which will be of interest to researchers, teachers and policy-makers.This book includes contributions from Andrew Tolmie and Ed Baines, who were also involved in the ScotSPRinG and SPRinG projects.

This book explores teacher workplace learning from four different perspectives: social policy, international comparators, multi-professional stances/perspectives and socio-cultural theory. First, it considers the policy and practice context of professional learning in teacher education in England, and the rest of the UK, with particular reference to professional masters level provision. The importance of teachers’ and schools’ perceptions of improvement, development and learning, and the inherent tensions between individual, school and government priorities is explored. Second, the book considers models of teacher workplace learning to be found in international research and practice to explore what perspective they can bring to understanding policy and practice relating to workplace learning in the UK. Third, it draws on cross-professional analysis to get an intellectual and theoretical purchase on workplace learning by examining how insights from across the professions can provide us with useful perspectives on policy and practice. The analysis draws particularly on insights from medicine and educational psychology. Fourth, the book cross-fertilises research and practice across the field of education by drawing on insights from perspectives such as socio-cultural and activity theory and situated learning/cognition to discover what they can offer in analysing the theoretical and pedagogic underpinnings of teacher workplace learning. In short, the book offers a number of contexts for exploring how best to conceptualise and theorise learning in the workplace in order to generate evidence to inform policy and practice and facilitates the development of a more theoretically informed and robust model of workplace learning and teaching.