There is an ongoing tendency in contemporary research, policy and practice to see the teacher as a technician who, with guidance from scientific evidence about 'what works,' can become increasingly more effective in bringing about measurable learning outcomes. This book not only shows why a technical understanding of teaching is problematic, but also explores in detail what can be gained from understanding teaching as a situated art that requires the purposeful combination...

This second edition of Teacher Agency brings new perspectives on teachers as agents of change and development within their professional ecosystems. Centred around an ecological theory of agency, it critically surveys the work that has emerged in this field in the decade since its first edition and how international trends in curriculum policy and teacher development have shaped that landscape.As well as updating the research that formed the core of its original stu...

This book makes an intervention in a long-standing discussion by arguing that education should be world-centred rather than child-centred or curriculum-centred. This is not just because education should provide students with the knowledge and skills to act effectively in the world, but is first and foremost because the world is the place where our existence as human beings takes place.In the seven chapters in this book Gert Biesta explores in detail what an existential orientation ...

This book explores democratic possibilities for education after the critique of the impact of neo-liberalism on educational policy and practice. Together, the authors investigate the contours of a ‘new publicness’ of education.This edited volume refers to well-established critiques that expose how neoliberal governance has normalised the privatisation of public life and undermined the public nature of education. Through historical reconstruction, theoretical exploration, and analys...

The Rediscovery of Teaching presents the innovative claim that teaching does not necessarily have to be perceived as an act of control but can be understood and configured as a way of activating possibilities for students to exist as subjects. By framing teaching as an act of dissensus, that is, as an interruption of egological ways of being, this book positions teaching at the progressive end of the educational spectrum, where it can be reconnected with the emancipatory ambitions...

With so much technical information about research methods it is easy to lose sight of the bigger picture of why we carry out educational research and where and how research might contribute to the improvement of education. Educational Research: An Unorthodox Introduction steps you through the wider social and political contexts of educational research, focusing on fundamental questions such as what education actually 'is' and what it is for. In doing so, the book raises questions ...

Phenomenology and Educational Theory in Conversation challenges the abstract-technical understanding of education to orient the reader to the importance of relationality, intersubjectivity, and otherness to renew and reclaim the educational project.This book treats education as a matter of existence, relationality, and common human concerns. It offers readers an alternative language to reveal and challenge the humanistic encounters that often disappear in the shadows of ne...

***Reflective Teaching in Further, Adult and Vocational Education***is the definitive textbook for reflective professionals in further, adult and vocational education, drawing on the experience of the author team and the latest research, including that of the Teaching and Learning Research Programme (TLRP) findings. It offers extensive support for trainee and practising teachers in further, adult and vocational settings, for both practice-based training and career-long professionalism....

This volume gives educational theorists the chance to let rip and say what they really want to say. In doing so it sends a blast of fresh air through the dusty halls of academe. The vast majority of the literature in education theory and philosophy follows the conventions of academic writing, and rightly so. Yet its formal, abstract and objective style, which focuses on the careful presentation of theoretical and philosophical arguments, doesn’t always give us insights into what motivates ...

*Winner - AERA 2011 Outstanding Book AwardJacques Rancière: Education, Truth, Emancipation* demonstrates the importance of Rancière's work for educational theory, and in turn, it shows just how central Rancière's educational thought is to his work in political theory and aesthetics. Charles Bingham and Gert Biesta illustrate brilliantly how philosophy can benefit from Rancière's particular way of thinking about education, and go on to offer their own provocative account of the rela...

Never before published, this book features George Herbert Mead's illuminating lectures on the Philosophy of Education at the University of Chicago during the early 20th century. These lectures provide unique insight into Mead's educational thought and reveal how his early psychological writings on the social character of meaning and the social origin of reflective consciousness was central in the development of what Mead referred to as his social conception of education. The introduction t...

Scotland's Curriculum for Excellence offers an example of a different approach to national curriculum development. It combines what are claimed to be the best features of top-down and bottom-up approaches to curriculum development, and provides an indication of the broad qualities that school education should promote rather than a detailed description of curriculum content. Advocates of the approach argue that it provides central guidance for schools and maintains national standards whilst...