This book focuses on the elusive out-of-field teaching phenomenon and its direct effects on quality education globally. Based on the experiences and concerns of teachers and school leaders, it investigates the phenomenon’s impact on everyday teaching and school practices, and offers insights into the challenges that out-of-field teachers face in maintaining their role as the “knowledgeable counterpart” in their teaching and learning environments. In this frame, it also highlights the often-overlooked importance of initial teacher education and its preparation of prospective teachers for employment in complex school contexts, subjects or year levels. The book emphasises the need to develop specific policy strategies to effectively address the global implications of out-of-field teaching, and explores the potential of micro-education policies as targeted support resources for teachers in these challenging positions. Through this new policy lens, which renegotiates the discourse of education policy as a quality education improvement framework, the book offers readers a comprehensive understanding of the urgent need for policy to uphold all stakeholders involved in these unique and complex environments. Accordingly, the book is a valuable resource for academic advisors, decision-makers, policy-makers, and educational and school leaders in developing new approaches to improving school outcomes that promote the retention of teachers for a strong and stable teaching workforce.

This edited book is a compilation of research by the members of the Out-of-Field Teaching Across Specialisations (OOF-TAS) Collective, and is the second book by the Collective. It extends from the work begun in the 2019 book, Examining the Phenomenon of “Teaching Out-of-Field” by showcasing the broad range of research agendas and findings relating to this phenomenon internationally. This book provides research and commentary relating to the out-of-field teaching phenomenon in primary, secondary and tertiary education, and across different subjects. It provides snapshots of the effects, causes, measurement, and other characteristics of out-of-field teaching in and across contexts, including states and countries, school types and school levels, subjects and specializations. The different chapters provide commentary at different units of analysis, and focus on: the effects of out-of-field teaching for teachers and their students; the school contexts/cultures that do or do not support them; the leadership practices that assign the teachers to out-of-field subjects; and the systems that create/perpetuate the need for out-of-field teaching assignments. Chapter 15 is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

Society perceives the role of school leaders as ‘fixers’. Yet the author poses some confronting questions: can they fix or manage the out-of-field phenomenon without having in-depth knowledge and understanding? Can educators teach the next generation of teachers and school leaders without appreciating the realities of the workplace? Can policymakers develop effective policies without a deeper understanding of the workforce issues that influence quality education beyond the obvious issues? Many dilemmas face today’s teaching workforce and workplaces. The book takes the reader on a journey as experienced in real life by teachers and school leaders. It aims an extreme global focus on the quality of education and on governments’ achievements in providing opportunities to prepare the next generation of students for their future. The author’s assessment exposes more concerns than assurances. Anna du Plessis’ academic career includes more than 25 years of classroom experience across three countries. Her journey in leadership positions started during her fourth year of teaching. Her compassion for teachers, school leaders and students stimulated a search for a deeper understanding of the lifeworld and challenges facing educational practitioners. The objective in this book is to share information that will improve education systems, strategies, decisions, policies and actions. Readers of this book might be parents, student teachers, prospective school leaders, educational directors, policymakers or teacher educators. Only knowing and understanding can inform well-directed decisions.

This book identifies and surveys the major themes around ‘out-of-field teaching’, that is, teaching subjects or year levels without a specialization. This has been an issue in many countries for some time, yet until recently there has been little formal research and poor policy responses to related problems. This book arises out of collaborations between members of an international group of researchers and practitioners from Australia, Germany, Ireland, England, South Africa, Indonesia and the United States. Cross-national comparisons of ideas through case studies, descriptions of practice and research data interrogates the experiences, practices, and contexts relating to out-of-field teaching. In particular, the book considers the phenomenon of out-of-field teaching in relation to national policy contexts, local school leadership practices, professional development. The book represents an essential contribution on a highly topical issue that has implications for quality and equitable education around the globe.

The methodological explorations offered in this book (and indeed the book series) enable considerations of how research practices have profound implications for the purpose and nature of education. Methodological complexity and context specificity, along with a need to ensure research participant consideration, are revealed through thirteen chapters. These considerations continue to change the landscape of educational research, particularly in the areas of mathematics, health and environmental education research. The authors featured in this volume think critically about education research design and practice as part of a considered and robust discussion of education research theory and practice that will inform and shape education systems in the future. Chapters explore co-design with teachers, researching for system change, the ethics of ‘netnography’, principles and practices of literature review, and post-qualitative inquiry, with overviews and practices, arts-based and interdisciplinary methodologies, self-study and auto-ethnography.

When Research Matters considers the complex and crucially important relationship between education research and policy. In examining how and under what conditions research affects education policy, the book focuses on a number of critical issues: the history of the federal role in education policy; the evolving nature of educational policy research; the role of research in debates about reading, NCLB, and “out-of-field” teaching; how research affects policy by shaping public opinion, judicial rulings, and the decisions of district and school leaders; and the incentives that help explain the behavior of researchers and policymakers.

Exploring Education Policy Through Newspapers and Social Media offers an original, theorised, and empirically based account of contemporary (re)presentations, (re)articulations, and (re)imaginings of education policy through news and new media. In its thorough exploration of the uses and effects of newspapers and Twitter in education policy, the book provides a detailed, research-based account of media influences, and opens up multiple future research agendas in media sociology and policy sociology in education. The authors place an important, analytical focus on mediatisation and social mediatisation or deep mediatisation, and how both have effects and affects in education policy and politics. Their analyses situate these, sociologically, within changing societies, changing media, and changing education policy. The book also explores the effects of datafication and digitalisation of the social in all forms of media and their manifestations in morphing imbrications between the global, the national, and the local in education policies. This book will be of great interest to researchers, scholars, and higher degree research students in the domains of media sociology and policy sociology of education. It also will be of interest to policymakers and politicians in education, teacher unions, and education activists, journalists, and those concerned about the impacts of the decline in legacy media and the surveillance and commercialisation possibilities of new media.

The COVID-19 pandemic has likely changed the mathematics, health and environmental education research landscape in profound and long-lasting ways. As such, more than ever, there is a need to creatively and critically think about how we design research and for what purposes. This necessitates a considered and robust discussion about educational research theory, method, and methodology to ensure that our research continues to impact practice in valuable ways. This book maps out some of these key challenges and opportunities as we collectively enter a post-COVID-19 world in which method and methodology need to be appreciated as much as research findings. Topics explored here range from big-picture issues in STEM Education research, through perspectives on design-based research, to questions of analysis, complexity, the Delphi method, and ethical dilemmas.