This book explores sociocultural theories as they relate to language and literacy teaching and learning, and to professional preparation and development for language teachers. Language teachers and language teacher educators weave research, theory and practice together as they articulate and explore theoretical perspectives through detailed descriptions and analyses of practices.

Current Perspectives in Feminist Media Studies features contributions written by a diverse group of stellar feminist scholars from around the world. Each contributor has authored a brief, thought-provoking commentary on the current status and future directions of feminist media studies. Although contributors write about numerous, discrete subjects within the field of feminist media studies, their various ideas and concerns can be merged into six broad, overlapping subject areas that allow us to gain a strong sense of the expansive contours of current feminist communication scholarship and activism which the authors have identified as generally illustrative of the field. Specifically, authors encourage feminist media scholars to engage with issues of political economy, new ICTs and cybercultures as well as digital media policy, media and identity, sexuality and sexualisation, and postfeminism. They stress that feminist media scholars must broaden and deepen our theoretical frameworks and methodologies so as to provide a better sense of the conceptual complexities of feminist media studies and empirical realities of contemporary media forms, practices and audiences. This book was originally published as a special issue of Feminist Media Studies.

As the rates of chronic diseases, like diabetes, asthma and obesity skyrocket, research is showing that the built environment the way our cities and towns are developed contributes to the epidemic rates of these diseases. It is unlikely that those who planned and developed these places envisioned these situations. Public health, community development planning, and other fields influencing the built environment have operated in isolation for much of recent history, with the result being places that public health advocates have labelled, designed for disease . The sad irony of this is that planning and public health arose together, in response to the need to create health standards, zoning and building codes to combat the infectious diseases that were prevalent in the industrializing cities of late nineteenth and early twentieth century America. In recent years, the dramatic rise in chronic disease rates in cities and towns has begun to bring public health and planning back together to promote development pattern and policies facilitating physical activity and neighbourly interactions as antidotes. In this book, a number of such community development efforts are highlighted, bringing attention to the need to coordinate planning, community development and health policy.

This book was originally published as a special issue of Community Development.

This book makes a significant contribution to a hitherto much neglected area. The book brings together a wide range of papers on a scale rarely seen with a geographic spread that enhances our understanding of the complex journey undertaken by those who aspire to become teachers of teachers. The authors, from more than ten countries, use a variety of approaches including narrative/life history, self-study and empirical research to demonstrate the complexity of the transformative search by individuals to establish their professional identity as teacher educators. The book offers fundamental and thoughtful critiques of current policy, practice and examples of established structures specifically supporting the professional development of teacher educators that may well have a wider applicability. Many of the authors are active and leading persons in the international fields of teacher education and of professional development. The book considers: novice teacher educators, issues of transition; identity development including research identity; the facilitation and mentoring of teacher educators; self-study research including collaborative writing, use of stories; professional development within the context of curriculum and structural reform. Becoming a teacher is recognised as a transformative search by individuals for their teaching identities. Becoming a teacher educator often involves a more complex and longer journey but, according to the many travel stories told here, one that can be a deeply satisfying experience. This book was published as a special issue of Professional Development in Education.

This book reviews the current state of theoretical accounts of the what and how of science learning in schools. The book starts out by presenting big-picture perspectives on key issues. In these first chapters, it focuses on the range of resources students need to acquire and refine to become successful learners. It examines meaningful learner purposes and processes for doing science, and structural supports to optimize cognitive engagement and success. Subsequent chapters address how particular purposes, resources and experiences can be conceptualized as the basis to understand current practices. They also show how future learning opportunities should be designed, lived and reviewed to promote student engagement/learning. Specific topics include insights from neuro-imaging, actor-network theory, the role of reasoning in claim-making for learning in science, and development of disciplinary literacies, including writing and multi-modal meaning-making. All together the book offers leads to science educators on theoretical perspectives that have yielded valuable insights into science learning. In addition, it proposes new agendas to guide future practices and research in this subject.

Not that long ago there were fairly clear divisions between researchers at different stages throughout their career, starting with doctoral students then progressing to postdoctoral workers and finishing with academic staff. However, more recently the term Early Career Researcher (ECR) has been introduced partly as a response to their growing importance which has been reflected by their increased respect and status shown by national, international and funding bodies. There are several common features of an ECR s job including the need to establish a professional identity and develop into an independent researcher, competing for grants and increasing one s output of research publications; this book offers proven practical advice to help ECRs kick-start a successful academic career.

• With advice on:
• Choosing research topics
• Making best use of a Research Supervisor/Mentor
• Developing your research writing
• Getting published: journals and books
• Writing a research grant/fellowship
• Becoming a supervisor
• Becoming a teacher, and
• Developing your career

This guide will help academics at the start of their career no matter what discipline they are engaged in Arts, Humanities, Sciences or Social Sciences. For example, in sciences and engineering, ECRs are commonly part of a large research team and often have to work in collaborative groups; requiring strong interpersonal skills but can lead to tension in the interaction with one s supervisor or mentor. In contrast, in the arts and humanities and perhaps the social sciences, an ECR is more likely to be an independent scholar with a requirement to work alone, leading to a different type of relationship (but not necessarily any less stressful) with one s supervisor or mentor.

Using case studies from across the subject areas to illustrate key points and give suitable examples this vital guide will help all early career academics.

Are teachers ready for inclusion? What is appropriate teacher education?

Traditional approaches to inclusive education focused on learners with disabilities. Modern approaches, however, conceptualise inclusion in terms of providing educational equity and equality of access for all students within the same regular school system.

Future Directions for Inclusive Teacher Education provides a wealth of ideas about how to support teachers to become inclusive through the application of positive training approaches. Written by some of the most influential internationally acknowledged experts in teacher education for inclusion and highly experienced researchers, together the authors provide a plethora of ideas for teacher educators to ensure that their training is pertinent, accessible, and futures-orientated.

This up to date and accessible book combines three key areas related to teacher education for inclusion, which provide:

• A review of what is happening across the globe by offering examples from different regions;
• Preparation for teachers to support learners with a range of diverse needs including disability, poverty, ethnicity, gender, cultural diversity, learning disabilities, Autism Spectrum Disorder, sensory impairments and those who are considered gifted and talented;
• A consideration of systemic approaches, policy, and partnerships, and how these can be better employed in the future.

This highly topical text will support all teaching professionals, educational systems, and schools in their transformation of inclusive teacher education.

In an effort to make sense of war beyond the battlefield in studying the wars that were captured under the rubric of the "War on Terror", this special issue book seeks to explore the complex spatial relationships between war and the spaces that one is not used to thinking of as the battlefield. It focuses on the conflicts that still animate the spaces and places where violence has been launched and that the war has not left untouched. In focusing on war beyond the battlefield, it is not that the battlefield as the place where war is waged has gone in smoke or has borne out of importance, it is rather the case that the battlefield has been dis-placed, re-designed, re-shaped and rethought through new spatializing practices of warfare. These new spaces of war - new in the sense that they are not traditionally thought of as spaces where war takes place or is brought to - are television screens, cellular phones and bandwidth, George W. Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas, videogames, popular culture sites, news media, blogs, and so on. These spaces of war beyond the battlefield are crucial to understanding what goes on the battlefield, in Iraq, Afghanistan, or in other fronts of the War on Terror (such as the homeland) - to understand how terror has globally been waged beyond the battlefield. This book was originally published as a special issue of Geopolitics.

Using a cross-curricular focus, this book brings together ongoing debates about personalised learning, creativity and ICT in education, and establishes a principled framework for cross-curricular teaching and learning in Science. It identifies a range of key issues and aims to strengthen in-school science practices by introducing ways of teaching rigorous science through, and alongside, other subjects. This highly practical book draws on examples and case studies taken from innovative practices in different schools and subject areas, as well as summarising lessons from key pieces of research evidence. Cross-Curricular Teaching and Learning in the Secondary School.... Science also includes the following: Clear theoretical frameworks for cross-curricular processes of teaching and learning in science, including chapters on Maths, ICT and Technology, English, the Humanities and the Arts An analysis of the use of language, ICT and assessment as key components of a skilful pedagogical practice that affect how teaching is delivered and how pupils learn science in cross-curricular contexts A lively account of theoretical issues blended with engaging stories of current practice Practical tasks and questions for reflective practice This timely textbook is essential reading for all students on Initial Teacher Training courses and PGCE courses as well as practising teachers looking to holistically introduce cross-curricular themes and practices in Science.

Special educators are facing new challenges at the beginning of the 21st century as public education is being reformed by a vision focusing on measurable student outcomes. The future course of the field will be shaped by the policy and programmatic responses to several issues, including demographic changes in student populations, a lack of certified special education teachers, criticism in the public media for the rising costs of services, and debates about the preferred philosophy of service delivery for students with disabilities. Additional chapters discuss university-school collaboration, charter schools, disability studies, school violence, disproportionality in placement, male African-American teachers, and ethics. This book has been written out of a context of research and program development activities with public schools over the past decade in one of the largest Colleges of Education in a diverse metropolitan area in the country. The issues selected for analysis and the perspective guiding those analyses grew out of this work and out of a national Delphi study of the views of parents and constituent organizations and leading researchers, teacher educators, and policy makers in Special Education.

The focus on results in development agencies has led to increased focus on impact evaluation to demonstrate the effectiveness of development programmes. This book illustrates the broad range of methods available for counterfactual analysis of infrastructure programmes such as establishment, rehabilitation and maintenance of roads, water supply and electrical power plants and grids. Understanding the impact of interventions requires understanding of the context in which the intervention takes place and the channels through which it is expected to occur. For infrastructure interventions it is particularly important to identify the links between the input and the outcomes and impacts because the well-being of people, the ultimate impact, does not change directly as a consequence of the intervention. Therefore impact evaluation of infrastructure programmes typically requires mixing both quantitative and qualitative approaches as illustrated in many of the contribution to this edited volume. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Development Effectiveness.

This text examines four key areas of teacher education. These are: theories, models and ideologies of teacher education; the control of teacher education by the state, and the role of schools and HE; cultural perspectives and the education of teachers; and continuities in teacher education.

Do the arts improve academic achievement? What does it mean to teach art? What should the balance of classic and pop be in the music curriculum? Should we encourage young children on the stage? How do we judge whether what a child produces is good? How do we justify the arts in the curriculum? What should be the balance between form and content when teaching art?

The arts in education inspire considerable commitment and passion. However, this is not always matched by clarity of understanding. In this book Mike Fleming introduces the reader to key theoretical questions associated with arts education and clearly explains how these are related to practice. It offers an authoritative account of how ideas relevant to education are addressed by key authors in aesthetics, art theory and cultural studies. Covering all aspects of arts education, the book considers:

• definitions and theories of art
• influences on teaching the arts
• researching the arts
• teaching and learning
• creativity
• assessment.

Throughout the book there are examples of practice to illustrate key ideas and a discussion of useful background texts with a summary of content and arguments for further exploration. Written by a leading authority in the field, it is essential reading for students on Arts PGCE and M Level courses, teachers of the arts and policy developers that require more understanding and insight into their practice.

The International Handbook of Teacher and School Development brings together a collection of research and evidence-based authoritative writings which focus on international teacher and school development. Drawing on research from eighteen countries across seven continents, the forty chapters are grouped into ten themes which represent key aspects of teacher and school development: Issues of Professionalism and Performativity What Being an Effective Teacher Really Means Reason and Emotion in Teaching Schools in Different Circumstances Student Voices in a Global Context Professional Learning and Development Innovative Pedagogies School Effectiveness and Improvement Successful Schools, Successful Leader Professional Communities: their practices, problems & possibilities Each theme expertly adds to the existing knowledge base about teacher and school development internationally. They are individually important in shaping and understanding an appreciation of the underlying conditions which influence teachers and schools, both positively and negatively, and the possibilities for their further development. This essential handbook will be of interest to teacher educators, researchers in the field of teacher education and policy makers.

This volume considers how various sociological approaches to the exploration of the conditions of teachers' might be co-ordinated so as to produce a more penetrating and reliable understanding of the main dimensions of teachers' work. Three dimensions are selected for special attention: historical, institutional and interactional contexts in which teachers operate. In different way the papers in this collection explore the contribution such an investigation of these contexts can make to our understanding of wider educational concerns.

Gerald Grace here explores the concept of role conflict and the current theorizing about the problems of the teacher's role. He investigates four potential problem areas - role diffuseness, role vulnerability, role commitment versus career orientation, and value conflict - in a sample of one hundred and fifty secondary school teachers in a Midland town. The analysis shows how a teacher's commitment to a particular set of values exposes him or her to conflict in an achievement-oriented and pluralistic society. These conflicts, present in all schools, are seen in their clearest form among secondary modern school teachers. The author suggests that colleges of education, in emphasizing commitment and in assuming value consensus, predispose their students to conflict experiences. He indicates that internal career possibilities in schools and the influence of graduate or certified status are also important factors in conflict exposure. While accepting that certain role conflicts are important in the genesis of change, the author proposes that levels of dysfunctional conflict can be reduced by the action of head teachers, by structural change in the schools and innovations in teaching education.

In the field of teacher expectations and pupil learning one important psychological truth is that the pupils' achievement in learning is strongly influenced by the teachers' expectations of their level of performance, high or low. Roy Nash discusses critically and fully important research in this area. In the belief that research must be interpreted within an overall theory of social action, the author relates the empirical studies which he examines to an interactionist theory. He emphasizes the importance of making teachers aware of the implications of what they are doing and of the possibility of establishing wider and more educative patterns of interaction. He shows that research into 'attitudes', 'perceptions', or 'expectations' is all essentially concerned with the same problem: how teachers relate to pupils on the basis of a model of what pupils may be. Much of the work he discusses has direct relevance to teachers in their day-to-day work. The research findings will help them to become more aware of their attitudes and how these influence their actions, and should make them more likely to give all their pupils equal opportunities within their classes. Among the topics covered are observational and experimental studies of teacher expectations, the analysis of classroom climate, self-conceptions, pupils' perceptions and expectations, and the significance of classroom-based research into teacher/pupil interaction.

This book maps out a new paradigm of teacher education and, by implication, professional education generally. The book opens with two alternative theories of teacher education and training and explains the concepts and assumptions on which they rest including beliefs about the nature and role of education in society. It then proposes a 'natural science' paradigm and its implications for establishing a coherent view of teacher education. Subsequent chapters indicate the professional implications of such a model.

This book examines the experience and politics of teachers' work, questions of teacher appraisal, and the struggles of the teachers' action of 1984-86. A major section of the book charts the changing power relations between organized teachers and the State in Britain from 1900 to the late 1980s. The contributors to this volume write from a variety of perspectives, including conflict theory, socio-historical analysis, feminist analysis, diary-based ethnography, and interview-based research. With its sensitivity to this range of perspectives and its bringing together of the experimental aspects of teaching, as well as its class, gender and political relations, this book is an authoritative source for courses in education, sociology, history and social policy.

This is a companion volume to the editors' Insights into Teachers' Thinking and Practice (Falmer Press, 1999) and seeks to carry the discussion on further illustrating that there is a continuing intensity of thought, activity and debate on how to conceptualise research on teacher thinking, and thus generate knowledge for further understanding and action. The ethical questions on undertaking research on the inner lives of teachers remain unresolved. The international team present chapters which investigate the relationship between the researcher and the researched, and the relevance and role of research in teacher development. The papers are not presented as 'best practice' for such definitions would be inevitably value laden. Rather, they are indications and anticipations of key areas for the development of understanding of teachers' thinking and actions in the 1990s.

Teachers of the urban working class, especially in inner city areas, have always been regarded as strategic agents in processes of social and cultural formation. In the Victorian era, seen as 'The Teachers of the People', 'Pioneers of Civilization' and 'Preachers of Culture', their role in gentling and controlling the urban masses was crucial. They have always been at the centre of confrontation and struggle - in a classroom sense, in a cultural sense and in a socio-political sense. In contemporary inner city schools such confrontation and struggle remain a reality. Teachers, Ideology and Control is one of the first attempts to examine this important social and occupational group by locating contemporary sociological research in an historical framework. As such it will be of interest not only to students of sociology and education (especially urban education) but also to social historians. Its relevance to those who either administer or teach in urban schools will be clear. The author shows the ways in which contemporary inner city schools are caught up in an ideological struggle in education. He explore the nature of constraint and control in urban education with reference to existing constructs of the 'good teacher'; the demands of the teacher's work situation and the reality of autonomy. He suggests that, viewed historically, the relative autonomy of teachers has increased as a result largely of socio-political and institutional crises. At the same time however there have been important changes in the modality of social control, changes from more explicit to more implicit features. What it is to be a 'good teacher', the effects of day-to-day 'immersion' in school life and the ideology of professionalism- -these are all seen to be important constituents of a network of implicit control in contemporary education.

In recent years there has been a new mood in teacher education. The emphasis is on professional studies, on encouraging trainee teachers to think intelligently about how to tackle problems of the classroom.This book surveys the developments which are taking it further in both Britain and North America. It goes on to argue the case for consolidating the new approach in a thoughtful, structured and comprehensive way. It argues that teacher education should be regarded as a discipline in its own right; that teacher education should be increasingly school focused and problem-centered; that it needs to blend theory more effectively with practice. It argues that teacher training programmes should prepare teachers for an uncertain future in a changing world. This calls for an emphasis on process rather than content in programmes and the preparing of teachers who are self-directed.

The change from a student role to a teacher role can be one of the most abrupt and stressful transitions in working life but the process of socialization does not end when the student becomes a fully qualified teacher, as many writers, laymen and sociologists, would have us believe. Colin Lacey argues that socialization is a partial and rarely homogenous process. He illustrates this from a wide variety of interesting case material to show how student teachers adapt their responses to the classroom situation.