In this book we demonstrate a mode of teacher education that is practical in a non-technical sense and relies on Dewey's notion of curriculum as the reconstruction of experience. We present a curriculum that emerged through collaborative self-reflection and seeks to reconstruct personal histories of schooling. As four former preservice teachers and their instructor, we engaged in jointly constructed autobiographical inquiry in order to generate data on our own past and on our current histories of teaching and learning. We wanted to illuminate parts of our lives in schools that until now belonged to our 'normal' and taken-for-granted past. We did this in order to enjoy certain degrees of awareness and choice as to which of our living stories to reinforce and which to "let run out" in our classrooms today.

To develop a mode of educational research which speaks both of and to the teacher we require more study of the lives of teachers. This book provides a vital insight into the ways in which teachers' bakgrounds and career histories affect their teaching methods and approaches. Many issues are covered ranging from the question of teacher drop-out to the importance of teacher socialisation. The studies employ a range of different methodologies allowing the reader to assess their varying strengths and weaknesses, but throughout they reaffirm the centrality of the teacher in educational research.

Explores the lives and careers of physical education teachers from two perspectives. Firstly, teachers' life-stories illustrate how eight teachers became involved with sport, how they entered the physical education profession, why they developed particular teaching philosophies, and how they have tried to progress in their teaching careers. Secondly, a broader thematic analysis identifies issues which arise throughout the teachers' stories and locates them within the wider international research literature. Low status is identified as an enduring concern, and it is argued that this stems from a lack of empirical research into the educational outcomes which are claimed for physical education.

Recent years have generated a huge increase in the number of research and scholarly works concerned with teachers and teaching, and this effort has generated new and important insights that are crucial for understanding education today. This handbook provides a host of chapters, written by leading authorities, that review both the major traditions of work and the newest perspectives, concepts, insights, and research-based knowledge concerned with teachers and teaching. Many of the chapters discuss developments that are international in scope, but coverage is also provided for education in a number of specific countries. Many chapters also review contemporary problems faced by educators and the dangers posed by recent, politically-inspired attempts to `reform' schools and school systems. The Handbook provides an invaluable resource for scholars, teacher-educators, graduate students, and all thoughtful persons concerned with the best thinking about teachers and teaching, current problems, and the future of education.

Bringing together the work of researchers from across the world, this unique collection links policy, school leadership and teacher's lives.

Investigates teachers' classroom personal reading histories and how they influence the development of one becoming a resisting reader/teacher. "The premise of this book is important: that teachers' literacy experiences not only make a difference in their literacy instruction but also in their professional judgment and actions related to curriculum decisions, and their resistance to prescribed methods and materials which do not allow children's literacy to flourish. The teachers' own words in the autobiographical chapters offer powerful testimony supporting approaches to literacy that encourage and support the job of reading and writing, rather than pedantic and meaningless curriculum methods that emphasize isolated skills and drills. "There is currently a backlash against the whole language approach, which through the years has had other titles but has always emphasized the creative, responsive teaching described in meaningful, individual, integrated and joyful approaches to the teaching of reading and writing. This book could have a positive influence on the current discussions about the teaching of literacy.

Language Teachers’ Professional Knowledge Landscapes is a collection of fourteen narratives from teachers of different languages, at different school levels, in different contexts across Australia. This volume brings together not simply language teacher stories, but also more political stories of the problems associated with school programs and contexts. Highlighted through these stories are some of the major political issues in schools that impact language teachers’ work, and their students’ success in sustained language study. The book is conceptually framed by the work of Clandinin and Connelly (1996) and their notion of ‘levels’ of stories told by teachers about their classrooms: the secret, the sacred and the cover stories. The term ‘professional knowledge landscape’ is used to indicate how teachers can critically situate their work, and thereby understand it better. The collection includes the stories of two outstanding primary language educators, and a story of mixed success in a rural program in teaching the local Aboriginal language (Ngarrabul). There are stories of frustration with policy failures, particularly in supporting the learning of Asian languages. Many of the teacher narrators ask the confronting question: ‘What blocks language learning in Australia?’ They offer the strategies which they have developed, that they see making a difference. Other narratives offer autoethnographic tracking of careers, for example, as a teacher of Latin and Classics, Japanese, French, Spanish, Russian, and of teachers’ ongoing vigour and creativity in advocacy. A number of teachers examine their own identity story for the intercultural learning, which they then offer and extend in student learning. Consistently expressed, there is the need for teachers to take up individual responsibility, while still being strongly supported by their professional community: ‘It is us’ who make the difference, one teacher concludes. Supported by a strong Foreword by Canadian scholar F. Michael Connelly, this ground-breaking collection of narratives represents a form of social research in providing critical illustrations of the issues needing attention for national language education enhancement. It is the only extended inquiry into language teaching in the context of an active policy initiative environment, and the first volume to address the language education landscape through the voices of active language teachers.

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 gives a voice to English language teachers faced with the challenges posed by English language curriculum change. As a core component of national state system curricula in virtually every country in the world, there has nevertheless been little research exploring how the millions of English teachers worldwide navigate the challenges posed by such curriculum changes. This volume includes eleven stories from teachers based across every continent, providing a global glimpse of how national English curriculum change projects have been experienced by classroom teachers who are commonly (if erroneously) viewed as mostly responsible for its implementation success or failure. The final chapter synthesises these experiences and suggests wider implications for the development of curriculum change planning processes, and how they might better support teachers’ attempts to achieve curriculum goals. Edited and authored by leading experts in the field, this ground-breaking collection will be of interest to students and scholars of English language teaching, teacher education, curriculum change and education policy.”

This book discusses issues related to teachers’ identities and life choices when globalisation and localisation are enmeshed. It examines how competing cultural traditions and contexts acted as resources or/and constraints in framing teachers’ identities and their negotiations in the family and the work domains according to their gender positioning, their roles in the family such as husband, wife, father, mother, brother, sister, son and daughter and roles in the school such as principal, senior teacher or regular teacher. Contrary to an essentialist approach to identity and culture, teachers’ stories show that their identities and life choices were hardly free choices; but were often part and parcel of the culture and contexts in which they were embedded. Teachers’ identities are found to be fluid, complex, hybrid and multifaceted. Using Hong Kong as a case study, this book provides not only traces of the continuity and changes of Confucian self and cardinal relationships but also a glimpse of how educational reform as neo-capitalist discourses in the workplace interacts with Confucian cultural traditions creating new hybrid practices (problems or possibilities or both) in the school and in the daily lives of teachers.