Olwen McNamara

Zhe Zhang

This book focuses on undergraduate student engagement in China and the UK. It offers an innovative perspective on this aspect, which, although pervasive, is not always acknowledged by its users to be complex and multidimensional in nature, firmly rooted in cultural, social and disciplinary norms, and difficult to measure. Competition within the global higher education market has become increasingly intense amongst universities; and the higher education sector in China, currently the largest source of international students, is beginning to compete strongly for its home market. Against this consumerist background, student engagement, with its close relation to positive learning outcomes, is increasingly receiving attention from higher education managers and researchers who seek to improve the quality of their ‘products’. The research study on which the book is based draws on three courses, two in China and one in the UK. It offers a binary perspective across two very different cultures (Western and Confucian) and two very different subject areas (Chinese language and mathematics). The study employs a mixed-methods design and develops a conceptual framework derived from statistical and thematic analysis. An original theoretical lens, combining a bioecological perspective (Bronfenbrenner) and a sociocultural one (Holland et al.’s Figured Worlds), adds further interpretive power to help understand the construct of student engagement.

Theory and Practice in China and the UK

Undergraduate Student Engagement

Marion Jones

Jean Murray

This book explores teacher workplace learning from four different perspectives: social policy, international comparators, multi-professional stances/perspectives and socio-cultural theory. First, it considers the policy and practice context of professional learning in teacher education in England, and the rest of the UK, with particular reference to professional masters level provision. The importance of teachers’ and schools’ perceptions of improvement, development and learning, and the inherent tensions between individual, school and government priorities is explored. Second, the book considers models of teacher workplace learning to be found in international research and practice to explore what perspective they can bring to understanding policy and practice relating to workplace learning in the UK. Third, it draws on cross-professional analysis to get an intellectual and theoretical purchase on workplace learning by examining how insights from across the professions can provide us with useful perspectives on policy and practice. The analysis draws particularly on insights from medicine and educational psychology. Fourth, the book cross-fertilises research and practice across the field of education by drawing on insights from perspectives such as socio-cultural and activity theory and situated learning/cognition to discover what they can offer in analysing the theoretical and pedagogic underpinnings of teacher workplace learning. In short, the book offers a number of contexts for exploring how best to conceptualise and theorise learning in the workplace in order to generate evidence to inform policy and practice and facilitates the development of a more theoretically informed and robust model of workplace learning and teaching.

International Practice and Policy

Workplace Learning in Teacher Education

Tony Brown

The book is centered on how major curriculum reform shapes mathematics and the professional practices of teachers. This book documents in real time the implementation of a major government numeracy programme and its receipt by trainee and new teachers. It documents the complete life span of that initiative. The account is targeted at an international readership in terms of how curriculum reform more generally shapes mathematics in schools and the practices of teachers. A key dimension of the book is an alternative view of mathematics education research in which the task of teacher development is understood at policy level where large numbers of teachers were interviewed to assess how policies were being processed through individuals. The book provides an easy and accessible commentary utilising contemporary theory to describe how such teachers reconcile their personal aspirations with the external demands they encounter in negotiating their identities as professional teachers.

Olwen McNamara

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