Ciaran Sugrue

This timely book provides a systematic overview and critique of contemporary approaches to educational change from some of the best-known writers and scholars in the field, including Andy Hargreaves, Larry Cuban, Ivor Goodson, Jeannie Oakes, Milbrey McLaughlin, Judyth Sachs and Ann Liebermann. Divided into four sections, the book addresses the key themes: What has been the impact of educational change? How has the impact differed in different circumstances? What are the new directions for research on policy and practice? How can we link research, policy and practice? By highlighting critical lessons from the past, the book aims to set an agenda for policy-related research and the future trajectories of educational reforms, while also taking into account the dominant rhetorics of international ‘social movements’ and the ‘refracted’ nature of policy agenda at national and local levels. This book addresses issues which with many educators around the world are currently grappling. It will appeal to academics and researchers in the field, as well as providing an introduction to key issues and themes in Educational Change for graduates and practitioners.

International Perspectives

The Future of Educational Change

This book is a longitudinal life history of the lives and work of primary school principals in Ireland. It provides a unique opportunity to peer inside the realities of leading schools in changing times. In a system that until recently did not prepare principals for the onerous roles and responsibilities, a small system with limited mobility, inter-personal relationships emerge as critical, frequently privileged over professional relationships. Consequently, principals struggle to bring about change, to build trust in order to cultivate a transformative leadership agenda, while several aspects of systemic structures and processes emerge as constraints on leadership capacity building. In the absence of comprehensive leadership portfolio development, classroom teachers, catapulted into the principal’s office, tend to be cautious and careful in ways that tend to perpetuate the status quo while putting a premium on the exercise of soft power and an over-reliance on the good will of colleagues. Several of the ‘leadership lessons’ that emerge from this in-depth analysis concur with an increasing international consensus that due to complexity and increasingly performative policy demands, learning about leadership for all is an absolute necessity. However, care must be taken to avoid overly scripted programmes. Critical to the cultivation of a professionally responsible leadership disposition, rather than capitulation to ‘technologies of control,’ is professional renewal cultivated through adequate attention to the Zone of Proximal Distance.

A Longitudinal Life History of School Leaders

Unmasking School Leadership

Christopher Day

Pressure is increasing on all those involved in education, from teachers to policy-makers, to transform schools as organisations, while continuing to implement effective new approaches to teaching and learning. The demand is not only to reach attained targets, but also to be accountable for teaching methods. Developing Teachers and Teaching Practice brings together a selection of papers given at the ninth conference of the International Study Association of Teachers and Teaching (ISATT). The collection takes as a central theme the issue of education as a key concern within the international rhetoric of globalisation. The book offers insights in to the nature of teaching and learning, including the key new research area of emotions. It then goes on to explore the nature of teacher learning before looking at the impact of major policy initiatives on the work of teachers internationally. Developing Teachers and Teaching Practice contains contributions from some of the best-known academics in the field, and will be of great interest to teacher educators and educational researchers around the world.

International Research Perspectives

Developing Teachers and Teaching Practice

Tone Solbrekke

What does professional responsibility entail in an increasingly insecure, unpredictable and de-regulated world? This is the core question addressed in this text. The point of departure for the various contributions is that professional responsibility is a way of being in the world that includes a particular mandate – to behave in a manner consistent with moral and societal obligations as a professional. Increasingly, however, there is a lack of consensus as to what such mandates imply, and even more dissensus as to what appropriate exercise of responsibility entails. One of the distinctive features of this book is the manner in which it combines normative and empirical dimensions. It moves beyond dualistic perspectives to create a more inclusive conversation on professional responsibility. In the face of increasing complexity of professional work, professional responsibility remains open to further development. The book signals direction for the development of professional responsibility, and while seeking to give direction to ongoing deliberations avoids the pitfalls of performativity. The chapters are grounded in a variety of disciplinary perspectives and traverse various professional boundaries in a self-reflexive manner to create more inclusive, transformative and generative narratives on professional responsibility. This is achieved by: Focusing on normative dimensions of professional work and combining these with a focus on empirical aspects of professional practice in a variety of setting, and Recognising the inevitable tensions between personal trust and responsibility, and largely depersonalised policies and strategies of quality control when normative and empirical aspects of professional responsibility are situated within their policy environments. The concluding narrative moves beyond deconstruction, complexity and critique of these considerations to a construction of new imagined horizons of professional responsibility from theoretical, conceptual and practical perspectives. This text sets out to transform professional responsibility through a re-configuration of its constituent elements in imaginative and creative ways and by indicating the ‘real world’ import of re-charting the field.

New Horizons of Praxis

Professional Responsibility

Illustrates how, contrary to popular belief, child centred teaching can be positive, supportive and guiding. The author shows how child-centred teachers can successfully combine the best elements from traditional and modern practices.

Child-centred Perspectives

Complexities of Teaching

Tone Drydal Solbrekke

Leading Higher Education As and For Public Good asserts that the purpose of higher education is twofold: for public good and as public good. Acknowledging that the notion of public good increasingly cannot be taken for granted, the book argues that leading, teaching and learning must be directly connected to its pursuit. It avers and demonstrates how this may be accomplished, articulating specific approaches and dispositions that require cultivation within university communities. This volume argues that leading higher education occurs within competing and sometimes conflicting webs of commitments, necessitating a capacity to negotiate legitimate compromises. Its empirical chapters expand on this, providing examples of academic developers who use deliberate communication as a method in cultivating leading and teaching praxis. What emerges is the potential of deliberative leadership to be transformative in building sustainable leadership in higher education, while simultaneously renewing commitments to education and contributing to public good. Leading Higher Education As and For Public Good is essential reading for policy-makers, university leaders and administrators, academics, students and all those interested in building a sustainable future for higher education that also contributes to public good.

Ciaran Sugrue

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