Reframing Education: Radically rethinking perspectives on education in the light of research


Book Description

Mike Murray's excellent new book attacks the narrow high stakes accountability and marketized vision which has distorted our education system, the fragmentation of education thinking into warring camps and silos and offers a radical optimistic vision of how we can emerge from the current impasse.Perfect for teachers or school leaders who want to engage with research and move the education system in a radical future direction.




Improving Maths and English in Further Education: A Practical Guide


Book Description

Improving Maths and English in Further Education provides a strategic, practical and easily applied toolkit for teachers and leaders as they work with students to gain core skills. The book highlights the unique challenges that are faced within the sector and the value of embedding college-wide literacy and numeracy for success, providing a range of strategies to resolve challenges. Structured to make sure that there is always an alternative approach, method or suggestion, the book allows the reader to choose the steps that suit their context best. Each chapter looks at the key priorities: •Identifies a range of potential solutions to a challenge faced in FE •Acknowledges potential implementation pitfalls and remedies •Suggests practical takeaways, key considerations and next steps Teachers and staff within further and Post-16 education will find this an essential resource for supporting students studying maths and English. "Teachers and leaders from curriculum areas across the sector will find scenarios and anecdotes that resonate in this book; timetabling, accountability, motivation… a must read." Catherine Sezen, Senior Policy Manager – FE "This is an interesting and engaging read from Jonny, who has produced a book that brings together contemporary educational literature, with a personal and honest take on leading and teaching English and Maths in FE." Steven Wallis, Executive Director Quality, NCG "This book caters for the many different voices, people and characters in FE - it does exactly what it says on the tin... It will give you all the tools for a great job with an evidence base to boot." Julia Smith, @tessmaths Jonathan Kay has managed and led English and maths departments in Further Education since 2017, as well as working as consultant for the Association of Colleges and Lead English Expert and examiner for a leading exam board. Jonathan has also previously worked as an English teacher, 2nd in Department and Head of English in a range of Secondary schools.




Rethinking Education in Light of Global Challenges


Book Description

Rethinking Education in Light of Global Challenges discusses challenges to education in Scandinavian welfare states due to global trends like migration, neoliberal strategies, and the exploitation of nature. This anthology comprises case studies, theoretical articles, and reflective studies, grouped under the headings of Culture, Society, and the Anthropocene. This book directly addresses three interrelated global events and their implications for education as seen from Scandinavian perspectives: migration flows, increased cultural diversity, and (post)nationalism; the erosion of the welfare state and the global rise of neoliberalism; and the Anthropocene and environmental challenges arising in the wake of the global exploitation of natural ecosystems. In case studies, theoretical articles, and reflective studies, researchers from Nordic countries explore how education, education policy, and educational thinking in these countries are affected by these global trends, bringing to the fore the different roles education can play in addressing the various issues and different ways of reimagining education. This authoritative volume will be of great interest to researchers, academics, and students in the fields of sociology of education, migration and education, environmental education, and educational politics.




Reframing Educational Research


Book Description

Possibilities for the use of research in educational practice are often written off due to the history, politics and interests of the ostensibly separate worlds that researchers and practitioners occupy. However, a more optimistic account highlights the ways these communities share a common need for practice-based theories, which enable them to make sense of a wide range of issues in education, including pedagogy, learning, and educational equity. In applying theory to situated accounts of various educational practices and learning contexts, this book explores mistaken assumptions about the ways that research can ‘inform’ or otherwise impact practice. It problematises a ‘what works’ agenda but also points to potentially more productive research-practice relationships in education. Experienced contributors describe how they have used a variety of context-sensitive theoretical approaches in the socio-cultural and discursive traditions to both understand practice and address a wide range of practical issues in education. At its core Reframing Educational Research challenges two commonly held assumptions: that "best practice" is readily identifiable in a way that is then transferrable to new contexts for use by practitioners more widely, and that theory will not help with what to do on Monday morning in the classroom or in developing policies with direct and visible impact. Drawing on the experience of a number of highly respected expert contributors, including Mel Ainscow, Harry Daniels, Anna Sfard and Etienne Wenger-Trayner, the book discusses a range of issues that must be explicitly addressed if we are to make headway in developing a sustainable and productive relationship between research, policy and practice. The authors make it clear that the politics, policies, institutional practices, market systems and social dynamics currently at play in education have a tendency to derail the idealised pathway from research to reform. This book aims to move the discussion towards alternative, and potentially more fruitful, ways of linking research with practice. Reframing Educational Research is an invitation to all researchers to identify new opportunities for advancing theory and practice in education. It is a must-read for all practitioners and researchers in education.




Rethinking Sociological Critique in Contemporary Education


Book Description

This book explores a new repertoire for critique in the sociology of contemporary education, focusing on emerging social theories that respond to contemporary challenges in education, education policy and governance. Presenting a variety of approaches in the sociology of education including pragmatist critical sociology, neo-Marxism, post-digital sociology, new materialisms, affirmative critique of education, and post-colonial studies, the chapters in this book engage in a novel, collective dialogue and reflection on the affordances, limitations and challenges of emerging social theories in contemporary education. The book further justifies this novel approach through inclusion of a series of interviews with leading scholars and thinkers from within and outside the field of education on the subject of critique in contemporary society and education. The book offers relevant global and decolonial perspectives to study current transformations, drawing on innovations in theorizing and empirical illustrations from different countries. Highlighting alternative visions of these transformations in an era of globalization, fragmentation, and growing nationalism, this cutting-edge book will be of great interest to researchers, academics and postgraduate students in the fields of the sociology of education, the philosophy of education, social theory, political science and comparative policy and politics more broadly.




Thirteen Questions


Book Description

This book provides alternative answers to those questions about the American educational system that have been answered until now by an outmoded, conservative educational agenda. Following the introduction that describes the rationale for a postmodern deconstruction of educational narratives, 13 chapters present essays on the following questions: (1) What are the basics and are we teaching them? (2) Who decides the form schools have taken and who should decide? (3) Is it true that teachers are not as good as they used to be? (4) Do students misbehave more than they used to? (5) What good is teaching and how do we teach people to be good teachers? (6) Should the fact that we live in a democratic society make a difference in what our schools are like? (7) In what ways does gender affect the educational process? (8) In what ways does race affect the educational process? (9) In what ways does class affect the educational process? (10) What role should religion play in the public schools? (11) What have been the effects of the attempts to improve education over the last decade? (12) What's missing in the public conversation about education? And (13) What are schools for and what should we be doing in the name of education? References accompany each chapter. (Lmi).




Reframing Educational Policy


Book Description




Rethinking School Reform


Book Description

Rethinking School Reform puts classrooms and teaching at the center of the debate over how to improve public schools. Drawing on some of the best writing from the quarterly journal Rethinking Schools, this new collection offers a primer on a broad range of pressing issues, including school vouchers and funding, multiculturalism, standards and testing, teacher unions, bilingual educatin, and federal education policy. Informed by the experience and passion of teachers who walk daily into real classrooms, Rethinking School Reform examines how various reform efforts promote--or prevent--the kind of teaching that can bring equity and excellence to all our children, and it provides compelling, practical descriptions of what such teaching looks like.




A Critique of Pure Education


Book Description

This book analyses educational theory in order to offer an alternative view of the history of education in modernity. It provides a new understanding of education as a phenomenon that draws on powerful lines of thinking, but also makes a significant departure from the conventional wisdom of both education policy and education studies. These perspectives offer an original and challenging account of what education is and of what politics has become, providing resources to rethink education as a fundamental dimension of the unprecedented political order of our time. It does this through a focus on what it takes to be the key, complex and expanding political apparatus of education. Taking the school to be the paradigm institution of modernity and beyond, the book proposes that we see the school as central to contemporary political ontology.




Authentic Professional Learning


Book Description

There is considerable and growing interest in professionals learning across their working lives. The growth in this interest is likely premised upon the increasing percentage of those who are being employed under the designation as professi- als or para-professional workers in advanced industrial economies. Part of being designated in this way is a requirement to be able to work autonomously and in a relatively self-regulated manner. Of course, many other kinds of employment also demand such behaviours. However, there is particular attention being given to the ongoing development of workers who are seen to make crucial decisions and take actions about health, legal and ?nancial matters. Part of this attention derives from expectations within the community that those who are granted relative autonomy and are often paid handsomely should be current and informed in their decisi- making. Then, like all other workers, professionals are required to maintain their competence in the face of changing requirements for work. Consequently, a volume that seeks to inform how best this ongoing learning can be understood, supported and assisted is most timely and welcomed. This volume seeks to elaborate professional learning through a consideration of the concept of authentic professional learning. What is proposed here is that, in contrast to programmatic approaches towards professional development, the process of continuing professional learning is a personal, complex and diverse process that does not lend itself to easy prescription or the realisation of others’ intents.