This edited book brings together teachers and education academics who are committed to education about, for and through democracy. It presents a diverse range of viewpoints about the challenges facing educators working across different sectors and discusses ways to challenge issues like neoliberalism, excessive managerialism and accountability and privatisation. It also engages with the times that education has, and continues, to fail students. This book outlines both logistical and ideological challenges which educators committed to democracy face and describes innovative approaches they have adopted, including networking, the use of social media and digital tools and extending their reach beyond their local communities to international audiences. It encourages conversations about how educators and academics might re-commit to education for democracy and generate further avenues for discussion and action by educators and academics.

This book calls for moving teachers to the center of decision-making in public schools. It honors teaching and teachers by redefining the role in a democratically organized professional setting. While modern reform employs the language of school restructuring, genuine change that will enhance the status of teachers is not at the top of the agenda. This book recognizes that for authentic empowerment to materialize, the nature of the teaching role must significantly change. At the same time, teacher preparation will also have to be overhauled in order to equip teachers with all that a new status demands. It also proposes that the role of the principal must be dramatically transformed and recommends returning principals to the teaching function as part of their task and places them in greater accountability to the professional teaching staff itself. The book presents a hopeful message that is grounded in a progressive perspective our conservative epoch demands.

This open access book presents a comparative study on how large-scale professional development programs for teachers are designed and implemented. Around the world, governments and educators are recognizing the need to educate students in a broad range of higher order cognitive skills and socio-emotional competencies, and providing effective opportunities for teachers to develop the expertise needed to teach these skills is a crucial aspect of effective implementation of curricula which include those goals. This study examines how large-scale efforts to empower teachers for deeper instruction have been designed, how they have been implemented, and their outcomes. To do so, it investigates six programs from England, Colombia, Mexico, India, and the United States. Though all six are intended to broaden and deepen students’ curricular aspirations, each takes this expansion of curricular goals in a different direction. The ambitious education reforms studied here explicitly focus on building teachers’ capacity to teach on a broader set of goals. Through a discerning analysis of program documents, evaluations, and interviews with senior leaders and participants in the programs, the book identifies the various theories of action used in these programs, examines how they were implemented, and discusses what they achieved. As such, it offers an indispensable resource for education leaders interested in designing and implementing professional development programs for teachers that are aligned with ambitious instructional goals.

This open access book presents a comparative study on how large-scale professional development programs for teachers are designed and implemented. Around the world, governments and educators are recognizing the need to educate students in a broad range of higher order cognitive skills and socio-emotional competencies, and providing effective opportunities for teachers to develop the expertise needed to teach these skills is a crucial aspect of effective implementation of curricula which include those goals. This study examines how large-scale efforts to empower teachers for deeper instruction have been designed, how they have been implemented, and their outcomes. To do so, it investigates six programs from England, Colombia, Mexico, India, and the United States. Though all six are intended to broaden and deepen students’ curricular aspirations, each takes this expansion of curricular goals in a different direction. The ambitious education reforms studied here explicitly focus on building teachers’ capacity to teach on a broader set of goals. Through a discerning analysis of program documents, evaluations, and interviews with senior leaders and participants in the programs, the book identifies the various theories of action used in these programs, examines how they were implemented, and discusses what they achieved. As such, it offers an indispensable resource for education leaders interested in designing and implementing professional development programs for teachers that are aligned with ambitious instructional goals.

This open access book presents a comparative study on how large-scale professional development programs for teachers are designed and implemented. Around the world, governments and educators are recognizing the need to educate students in a broad range of higher order cognitive skills and socio-emotional competencies, and providing effective opportunities for teachers to develop the expertise needed to teach these skills is a crucial aspect of effective implementation of curricula which include those goals. This study examines how large-scale efforts to empower teachers for deeper instruction have been designed, how they have been implemented, and their outcomes. To do so, it investigates six programs from England, Colombia, Mexico, India, and the United States. Though all six are intended to broaden and deepen students' curricular aspirations, each takes this expansion of curricular goals in a different direction. The ambitious education reforms studied here explicitly focus on building teachers' capacity to teach on a broader set of goals. Through a discerning analysis of program documents, evaluations, and interviews with senior leaders and participants in the programs, the book identifies the various theories of action used in these programs, examines how they were implemented, and discusses what they achieved. As such, it offers an indispensable resource for education leaders interested in designing and implementing professional development programs for teachers that are aligned with ambitious instructional goals.

Updated Edition of Best Seller! Based on interviews with over 800 teachers, the authors show the transformative effects principals can have on teachers' work both in the classroom and in the wider school setting. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

This book follows the shared journey of five classroom teachers and a university professor as they together examine the possibilities and dilemmas of collaborative inquiry and teacher empowerment. Teachers' voices, in spite of their similarities and differences, still are not heard in the clamor for educational reform, nor are they recognized on the national agendas for research on teacher education. Miller and her colleagues articulate and question the contexts and assumptions that influence and frame teaching practice as they explore the contraints and the possibilities of defining and thus empowering teachers as teacher-researchers. Here the multiple and changing voices of teachers are clearly heard, and Miller shares their experiences, their frustrations, their hopes, and their issues. By grounding these concerns within the particularities of their teaching, Miller and her colleagues explore concrete situations in which they challenge and support one another. Through these stories of collaborative efforts, others are invited to join together in the continuous process of creating those spaces in which all teachers' voices may be acknowledged and valued.