This book offers an important and timely critique of expertise, showing how it is a 'keyword' shaped by social, historical, and political debates about what counts as knowledge and truth, and who counts as experts. Using teacher expertise as an illustrative case, Jessica Gerrard and Jessica Holloway reflect on recent events, including COVID-19 and the climate crisis, to examine how expertise is never neutral, objective, or fixed. They argue that 'getting political' is not just an inevitable part of teacher expertise, but a necessary basis of any claim to it. Across the chapters, Expertise explores how expertise is socially constructed in relation to governance, uses of data and evidence, understandings of ignorance and the unknown, and - ultimately - power. Using contemporary and historical examples from international contexts, the authors address the political positioning of expertise and how this creates boundaries between who is an expert and who is not, and what is (and is not) expertise. Gerrard and Holloway argue that ongoing policy debates about teacher expertise cannot be resolved by neutral definitions of 'good teaching'. Rather, expertise is unavoidably political in its expression.

This book looks at the narrowing effects of contemporary modes of teacher and teaching policy and governance. It draws on political theory to provide new ways of conceptualising the effects of teacher and teaching policies and practices. It adds a new dimension to the robust body of literature related to teacher policy by looking at three interrelated domains: (1) teacher preparation and development, (2) teacher evaluation and (3) teacher leadership. Drawing from case studies from the USA, UK and Australia, it illustrates how a coalescence around metrics, standards and compliance is producing increasingly restricted notions of teachers and teaching. It shows how the rationalities and techniques associated with accountability and standardisation are limiting the possibilities for multiple conceptualisations of teaching and teachers to exist or emerge. Using pluralism as the main framework, it challenges the dangers associated with rigid compliance and alignment and argues that pluralism can help secure schools as socially and culturally responsive to the needs of the community.

This book looks at the narrowing effects of contemporary modes of teacher and teaching policy and governance. It draws on political theory to provide new ways of conceptualising the effects of teacher and teaching policies and practices. It adds a new dimension to the robust body of literature related to teacher policy by looking at three interrelated domains: (1) teacher preparation and development, (2) teacher evaluation and (3) teacher leadership. Drawing from case studies from the USA, UK and Australia, it illustrates how a coalescence around metrics, standards and compliance is producing increasingly restricted notions of teachers and teaching. It shows how the rationalities and techniques associated with accountability and standardisation are limiting the possibilities for multiple conceptualisations of teaching and teachers to exist or emerge. Using pluralism as the main framework, it challenges the dangers associated with rigid compliance and alignment and argues that pluralism can help secure schools as socially and culturally responsive to the needs of the community.

This book offers an important and timely critique of expertise, showing how it is a 'keyword' shaped by social, historical, and political debates about what counts as knowledge and truth, and who counts as experts. Using teacher expertise as an illustrative case, Jessica Gerrard and Jessica Holloway reflect on recent events, including COVID-19 and the climate crisis, to examine how expertise is never neutral, objective, or fixed. They argue that 'getting political' is not just an inevitable part of teacher expertise, but a necessary basis of any claim to it. Across the chapters, Expertise explores how expertise is socially constructed in relation to governance, uses of data and evidence, understandings of ignorance and the unknown, and - ultimately - power. Using contemporary and historical examples from international contexts, the authors address the political positioning of expertise and how this creates boundaries between who is an expert and who is not, and what is (and is not) expertise. Gerrard and Holloway argue that ongoing policy debates about teacher expertise cannot be resolved by neutral definitions of 'good teaching'. Rather, expertise is unavoidably political in its expression.