'Why study the arts at school?' This book offers a fresh perspective on this question. Informed by rigorous research, the book argues that the arts help young people to develop key skills, knowledge and practices that support them to become both critical appreciative audiences and socially engaged cultural producers. Drawing on a three-year study in partnership with the Royal Shakespeare Company and Tate art museum, Schools and Cultural Citizenship sets out an ecological model for cultural citizenship that goes beyond the classroom to include families, the media and popular culture. The authors introduce new, interrelated concepts to change how we consider arts education. Chapters provide fresh insights, guidance and practical recommendations for educators, including: An introduction to the Tracking Arts Learning and Engagement research Detailed case studies featuring arts-rich schools and arts-broker teachers Analysis of the importance of immersive professional development for teachers and the benefits of partnerships with arts organisations An ecological model for cultural citizenship Focusing on the ways in which cultural citizenship can be taught and learnt, this is an essential read for arts educators, education staff in arts organisations, researchers, postgraduate students, arts education activists and policy makers.

The concept of creative learning extends far beyond Arts-based learning or the development of individual creativity. It covers a range of processes and initiatives throughout the world that share common values, systems and practices aimed at making learning more creative. This applies at individual, classroom, or whole school level, always with the aim of fully realising young people's potential. Until now there has been no single text bringing together the significant literature that explores the dimensions of creative learning, despite the work of artists in schools and the development of a cadre of creative teaching and learning specialists. Containing a mixture of newly commissioned chapters, reprints and updated versions of previous publications, this book brings together major theorists and current research. Comprising of key readings in creative education, it will stand as a uniquely authoritative text that will appeal to those involved in initial and continuing teacher education, as well as research academics and policy specialists. Sections include: a general introduction to the field of creative learning arts learning traditions, with sub sections on discrete art forms such as drama and visual art accounts of practice from artist-teacher partnerships whole school change and reforms curriculum change assessment evaluative case studies of impact and effect global studies of policy change around creative learning.

The concept of creative learning extends far beyond Arts-based learning or the development of individual creativity. It covers a range of processes and initiatives throughout the world that share common values, systems and practices aimed at making learning more creative. This applies at individual, classroom, or whole school level, always with the aim of fully realising young people's potential. Until now there has been no single text bringing together the significant literature that explores the dimensions of creative learning, despite the work of artists in schools and the development of a cadre of creative teaching and learning specialists. Containing a mixture of newly commissioned chapters, reprints and updated versions of previous publications, this book brings together major theorists and current research. Comprising of key readings in creative education, it will stand as a uniquely authoritative text that will appeal to those involved in initial and continuing teacher education, as well as research academics and policy specialists. Sections include: a general introduction to the field of creative learning arts learning traditions, with sub sections on discrete art forms such as drama and visual art accounts of practice from artist-teacher partnerships whole school change and reforms curriculum change assessment evaluative case studies of impact and effect global studies of policy change around creative learning.

It is a common ambition in society and government to make young people more creative. These aspirations are motivated by two key concerns: to make experience at school more exciting, relevant, challenging and dynamic; and to ensure that young people are able and fit to leave education and contribute to the creative economy that will underpin growth in the twenty-first century.

Transforming these common aspirations into informed practice is not easy. It can mean making many changes:

• turning classrooms into more exciting experiences;
• introducing more thoughtful challenges into the curriculum;
• making teachers into different kinds of instructors;
• finding more authentic assessment processes;
• putting young people's voices at the heart of learning.

There are programmes, projects and initiatives that have consistently attempted to offer such change and transformation. The UK programme Creative Partnerships is the largest of these, but there are significant initiatives in many other parts of the world today, including France, Norway, Canada and the United States. This book not only draws on this body of expertise but also consolidates it, making it the first methodological text exploring creativity.

Creative teaching and learning is often used as a site for research and action research, and this volume is intended to act as a textbook for this range of courses and initiatives. The book will be a key text for research in creative teaching and learning and is specifically directed at ITE, CPD, Masters and doctoral students.

In the contemporary world it is clear that the need to study beyond Masters Level is increasing in importance for a wide range of practitioners in diverse professional settings. Students across the world are choosing doctorates not only to become career academics, but to go beyond the academic arena, in order to make a personal and educational, as well as an economic investment, in their workplace careers and their lives. However for many doctoral students, both full-time and part-time, navigating the literature and key issues surrounding doctoral research can often be a challenge.

Bringing together contributions from key names in the international education arena, The Routledge Doctoral Student's Companion is a comprehensive guide to the literature surrounding doctorates, bringing together questions, challenges and solutions normally scattered over a wide range of texts. Accessible and wide-ranging, it covers all doctoral students need to know about:

• what doctoral education means in contemporary practice
• forming an identity and knowledge as a doctoral student
• the big questions which run throughout doctoral practice
• becoming a researcher
• the skills needed to conduct research
• integrating oneself into a scholarly community.

Offering an extensive and rounded guide to undertaking doctoral research in a single volume, this book is essential reading for all full-time and part-time doctoral students in education and related disciplines.

Accompanying The Routledge Doctoral Student 's Companion this book examines what it means to be a doctoral student in education and the social sciences, providing a guide for those supervising students. Exploring the key role and pedagogical challenges that face supervisors in students personal development, the contributors outline the research capabilities which are essential for confidence, quality and success in doctorate level research. Providing guidance about helpful resources and methodological support, the chapters:

• frame important questions within the history of debates
• act as a road map through international literatures
• make suggestions for good practice
• raise important questions and provide answers to key pedagogical issues
• provide advice on enabling students scholarly careers and identities.

While there is no one solution to ideal supervision, this wide-ranging text offers resources that will help supervisors develop their own personal approach to supervision. Ideal for all supervisors whether assisting part-time of full-time students, it is also highly suitable for helping academics to support international students who confront Western doctoral traditions and academic cultures, helping both supervisor and student to understand why things are as they are.

This book delves into the complex history of the gardening movement in schools and examines the question why gardens should be built in schools. It offers practical guidance for teachers to begin thinking about how to approach educational gardening. A resurgence of interest in school gardens is linked to concerns about children’s health, food knowledge, lack of outdoor play and contact with the natural world. This book warns against simplistic one-best approaches and makes a case about the complexity of gardening in schools. It is the first critical attempt to address the complex and conflicting notions about school gardens and to tackle the question ‘what is the problem to which school gardens are the answer?’ Examining the educational theory in which gardening has been explained and advocated, the book explores the way contemporary gardens research has been conducted with specific questions such as ‘what works well in school gardens?’ Based on case studies of a school establishing a garden and another one maintaining a garden, chapters look at the way in which schools come to frame their gardens. The authors suggest that there are four issues to consider when setting up a school garden or evaluating a pre-existing one – wider social context, public policy, the whole school, and the formal and informal curriculum. The book ends with a call for consideration of the ways in which school gardens can be built, the myriad practices that constitute an educational garden space and the challenges of maintaining a school garden over the long term. It will be of interest to teachers in primary schools, as well as a key point of reference for scholars, academics and students researching school gardens.

'Why study the arts at school?' This book offers a fresh perspective on this question. Informed by rigorous research, the book argues that the arts help young people to develop key skills, knowledge and practices that support them to become both critical appreciative audiences and socially engaged cultural producers. Drawing on a three-year study in partnership with the Royal Shakespeare Company and Tate art museum, Schools and Cultural Citizenship sets out an ecological model for cultural citizenship that goes beyond the classroom to include families, the media and popular culture. The authors introduce new, interrelated concepts to change how we consider arts education. Chapters provide fresh insights, guidance and practical recommendations for educators, including: An introduction to the Tracking Arts Learning and Engagement research Detailed case studies featuring arts-rich schools and arts-broker teachers Analysis of the importance of immersive professional development for teachers and the benefits of partnerships with arts organisations An ecological model for cultural citizenship Focusing on the ways in which cultural citizenship can be taught and learnt, this is an essential read for arts educators, education staff in arts organisations, researchers, postgraduate students, arts education activists and policy makers.

This book delves into the complex history of the gardening movement in schools and examines the question why gardens should be built in schools. It offers practical guidance for teachers to begin thinking about how to approach educational gardening. A resurgence of interest in school gardens is linked to concerns about children's health, food knowledge, lack of outdoor play and contact with the natural world. This book warns against simplistic one-best approaches and makes a case about the complexity of gardening in schools. It is the first critical attempt to address the complex and conflicting notions about school gardens and to tackle the question 'what is the problem to which school gardens are the answer?' Examining the educational theory in which gardening has been explained and advocated, the book explores the way contemporary gardens research has been conducted with specific questions such as 'what works well in school gardens?' Based on case studies of a school establishing a garden and another one maintaining a garden, chapters look at the way in which schools come to frame their gardens. The authors suggest that there are four issues to consider when setting up a school garden or evaluating a pre-existing one - wider social context, public policy, the whole school, and the formal and informal curriculum. The book ends with a call for consideration of the ways in which school gardens can be built, the myriad practices that constitute an educational garden space and the challenges of maintaining a school garden over the long term. It will be of interest to teachers in primary schools, as well as a key point of reference for scholars, academics and students researching school gardens.

Alternative education caters and cares for students whose regular schools have failed and excluded them. Fifty years of international research reports that alternative settings are characterised by close and powerful staff-student relationships, a curriculum which is relevant, engaging and meaningful, and the strong sense of agency afforded young people by the opportunity to make decisions. Together, these three practices produce increased life chances for alternative education participants. However, despite these apparent successes, alternative education seems to have had little impact on mainstream schools. This collection of papers addresses the important question - what might regular schools and teachers learn about socially just pedagogies from alternative education practices? In providing answers to this question, authors interrogate the taken-for-granted wisdom about alternative education while also taking account of ongoing policy shifts, differing locations and populations, and persistent and intersecting patterns of raced, classed and gendered inequalities. They draw on a range of theoretical and methodological approaches to interrogate the ways in which alternative schools and alternative education both challenge and legitimate the kinds of schooling most of us expect for our own and other people's children. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Critical Studies in Education.

- This book provides doctoral and early career researchers with the detail needed to understand the importance of refining text, provides them with a language to take charge of refining practices, and a bank of strategies that can be adapted and built on. - Refining text is something that all doctoral and early career researchers need to learn and practice from the very beginning of the doctorate, not something to be done as the end of the last stage of 'writing up'. This is a message rarely given in academic writing books and advice materials. - The book offers an innovative framework covering foundation, generation and response. It covers these three stages as they relate to all academic writing at doctoral and early career researcher level.

Recognising performance and accountability pressures on schools, Inspiring School Change shows how a commitment to the arts in education can meet core school agendas of pupil and parent engagement, attainment, improved teaching and inclusion. Schools are under pressure to develop their students' creativity and to improve their cultural education. This book fills a gap by marshalling the arguments and evidence for a form of education in, through and with the arts that moves beyond individual projects to become central to teaching, learning and school reform. When the arts are taken seriously, schools become different - and better - places. Using research evidence to promote greater awareness of the capacity of the arts to promote educational change, this text captures four key themes that run through all of the chapters: * Inspiration - sharing experiences and the way they happened, documenting inspiring pedagogy by understanding the reason it was done, the factors and the people involved in making it work. * School change - the need for schools to better prepare young people for the lives they will live in the twenty-first century; to engage young people more effectively and so educate them better, and the recognition that in an unequal society schools can contribute to making things fairer. * Creative arts - demonstrates, through international research, how the arts can facilitate whole school learning, meet core agendas, such as attainment, inclusion and promote lifelong learning. * Transforming education - marshals the arguments and evidence for a form of education in, through and with the arts that moves beyond individual projects to become central to teaching, learning and school reform. Tackling the hot topics of parent and pupil engagement, standards and accountability in a fresh way, Inspiring School Change offers those engaged in the research and practice of improving teaching and learning with insight into the educational value and possibilities of arts-based teaching and an arts-rich curriculum

Recognising performance and accountability pressures on schools, Inspiring School Change shows how a commitment to the arts in education can meet core school agendas of pupil and parent engagement, attainment, improved teaching and inclusion. Schools are under pressure to develop their students' creativity and to improve their cultural education. This book fills a gap by marshalling the arguments and evidence for a form of education in, through and with the arts that moves beyond individual projects to become central to teaching, learning and school reform. When the arts are taken seriously, schools become different - and better - places. Using research evidence to promote greater awareness of the capacity of the arts to promote educational change, this text captures four key themes that run through all of the chapters: * Inspiration - sharing experiences and the way they happened, documenting inspiring pedagogy by understanding the reason it was done, the factors and the people involved in making it work. * School change - the need for schools to better prepare young people for the lives they will live in the twenty-first century; to engage young people more effectively and so educate them better, and the recognition that in an unequal society schools can contribute to making things fairer. * Creative arts - demonstrates, through international research, how the arts can facilitate whole school learning, meet core agendas, such as attainment, inclusion and promote lifelong learning. * Transforming education - marshals the arguments and evidence for a form of education in, through and with the arts that moves beyond individual projects to become central to teaching, learning and school reform. Tackling the hot topics of parent and pupil engagement, standards and accountability in a fresh way, Inspiring School Change offers those engaged in the research and practice of improving teaching and learning with insight into the educational value and possibilities of arts-based teaching and an arts-rich curriculum

It's not easy getting published, but everyone has to do it. Writing for Peer Reviewed Journals presents an insider's perspective on the secret business of academic publishing, making explicit many of the dilemmas and struggles faced by all writers, but rarely discussed. Its unique approach is theorised and practical. It offers a set of moves for writing a journal article that is structured and doable but also attends to the identity issues that manifest on the page and in the politics of academic life. The book comprehensively assists anyone concerned about getting published; whether they are early in their career or moving from a practice base into higher education, or more experienced but still feeling in need of further information. Avoiding a 'tips and tricks' approach, which tends to oversimplify what is at stake in getting published, the authors emphasise the production, nurture and sustainability of scholarship through writing - a focus on both the scholar and the text or what they call text work/identity work. The chapters are ordered to develop a systematic approach to the process, including such topics as: The writer The reader What's the contribution? Beginning work Refining the argument Engaging with reviewers and editors Writing for Peer Reviewed Journals uses a wide range of multi-disciplinary examples from the writing workshops the authors have run in universities around the world: including the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, South Africa, Norway, Sweden, Denmark and the United States. This international approach coupled with theoretically grounded strategies to guide the authoring process ensure that people at all stages of their career are addressed. This lively book uses a combination of personal stories, student texts, published journal abstracts and excerpts from interviews with journal editors and publishers. Written in an accessible style, one which does not use the patronising 'you' of advice books, it offers a collegial approach to a task which is difficult for most scholars, regardless of their years of experience.

'A truly exceptional book.' - Michael W. Apple, University of Wisconsin, Madison 'A gripping insight into the local struggles facing disadvantaged schools and a compelling account of the injustice of their place in the bigger picture.' - Professor Geoff Whitty, Director, Institute of Education, University of London Schools in disadvantaged areas are struggling in the current economic and political environment. Like schools everywhere they are being asked to do more with less, but they face more obstacles. In recent years education policy has shifted from a holistic approach to learning to a focus on narrow educational outcomes: spelling, reading and writing. Thomson shows that this approach penalises disadvantaged schools and argues that educational and social disadvantage are inextricably linked in children's everyday lives. Examining primary and secondary schools in disadvantaged areas in a post-industrial ('rustbelt') city, Schooling the Rustbelt Kids reopens the debate about inequality in schooling. It provides concrete evidence that typical government policies in the Western world are not working, and that they are helping to create a permanent underclass. Thomson outlines an alternative whole of government approach to policy, which builds on those school programs that do make a real difference to educational outcomes. Thomson also emphasises the influence of local geography. Schools are coloured by particular neighbourhoods, permeated by national and global events, and tangled in complex networks of social relations. Interventions which work in one school may not work in others.

Most teachers become heads for idealistic reasons, wanting to make a difference to the lives of children and young people. Yet serving heads suggest the job is getting harder, talking openly about stress and leaving the job. Many teachers now see headship as a risky business, and succession planning, while necessary, will not on its own be sufficient to attract the diverse range of applicants required to satisfactorily fill leadership positions. School Leadership: Heads on the Block addresses this shortage. It suggests there is no crisis in supply per se, but that schools in some locations find it difficult to attract the right people with the right stuff . The book examines the expectations of heads, the hours they are expected to work and the nature of everyday demands. It proposes that sudden death accountabilities act as a major disincentive to potential applicants, and outlines a series of policy measures to tackle the kinds of daily pressures heads now experience.

Key features of the book:

• draws on a wide range of material, ranging from published research, interviews and media clippings to popular films and children s novels
• makes extensive use of headteachers words and stories
• based in the author s own experiences of headship, tackling issues that leadership books often ignore.

The book will be of interest to headteachers, headteachers professional associations, teachers and those who study teaching. It will be useful to policy makers, those responsible for the education of potential heads and for headteacher professional development.

Visual media offer powerful communication opportunities. Doing Visual Research with Children and Young People explores the methodological, ethical, representational and theoretical issues surrounding image-based research with children and young people. It provides well-argued and illustrated resources to guide novice and experienced researchers through the challenges and benefits of visual research. Because new digital technologies have made it easier and cheaper to work with visual media, Pat Thomson brings together an international body of leading researchers who use a range of media to produce research data and communicate findings. Situating their discussions of visual research approaches within the context of actual research projects in communities and schools, and discussing a range of media from drawings, painting, collage and montages to film, video, photographs and new media, the book offers practical pointers for conducting research. These include why visual research is used how to involve children and young people as co-researchers complexities in analysis of images and the ethics of working visually institutional difficulties that can arise when working with a 'visual voice' how to manage resources in research projects Doing Visual Research with Children and Young People will be an ideal guide for researchers both at undergraduate and postgraduate level across disciplines, including education, youth and social work, health and nursing, criminology and community studies. It will also act as an up-to-date resource on this rapidly changing approach for practitioners working in the field. Pat Thomson is Professor of Education and Director of Research in the School of Education, University of Nottingham, UK. She is a former school principal of disadvantaged schools in Australia.

Visual media offer powerful communication opportunities. Doing Visual Research with Children and Young People explores the methodological, ethical, representational and theoretical issues surrounding image-based research with children and young people. It provides well-argued and illustrated resources to guide novice and experienced researchers through the challenges and benefits of visual research. Because new digital technologies have made it easier and cheaper to work with visual media, Pat Thomson brings together an international body of leading researchers who use a range of media to produce research data and communicate findings. Situating their discussions of visual research approaches within the context of actual research projects in communities and schools, and discussing a range of media from drawings, painting, collage and montages to film, video, photographs and new media, the book offers practical pointers for conducting research. These include why visual research is used how to involve children and young people as co-researchers complexities in analysis of images and the ethics of working visually institutional difficulties that can arise when working with a 'visual voice' how to manage resources in research projects Doing Visual Research with Children and Young People will be an ideal guide for researchers both at undergraduate and postgraduate level across disciplines, including education, youth and social work, health and nursing, criminology and community studies. It will also act as an up-to-date resource on this rapidly changing approach for practitioners working in the field. Pat Thomson is Professor of Education and Director of Research in the School of Education, University of Nottingham, UK. She is a former school principal of disadvantaged schools in Australia.

In this book Pat Thomson argues that current outcomes-based and standardised policies for disadvantaged schools are not effective. Rather schools need the flexibility to develop strategies that suit their specific situation. Australian author (University of South Australia).

- This book provides doctoral and early career researchers with the detail needed to understand the importance of refining text, provides them with a language to take charge of refining practices, and a bank of strategies that can be adapted and built on. - Refining text is something that all doctoral and early career researchers need to learn and practice from the very beginning of the doctorate, not something to be done as the end of the last stage of 'writing up'. This is a message rarely given in academic writing books and advice materials. - The book offers an innovative framework covering foundation, generation and response. It covers these three stages as they relate to all academic writing at doctoral and early career researcher level.

How might educational leaders and teachers improve literacy achievement in schools serving communities experiencing high levels of poverty? This question is the focus of this book. Drawing on long-term case studies of four primary schools located in these communities, this book describes the difference between what is commonly practiced and those practices that have a greater chance of supporting young people's literacy learning. In this multi-layered analysis of the effects of policy on practice, the authors: discuss global concerns with literacy policy and testing in view of the growing gaps between rich and poor; examine the effects of the intensification of inequality and entrenched poverty, and the implications for schools; illustrate how deficit discourses pertaining to communities living in poverty are contested in schools; and describe the complexities of sustaining pedagogical and curriculum change to address the problem of unequal educational outcomes in literacy. This book grapples with some of the most debated questions regarding educational disadvantage, school change, leadership and literacy pedagogy that face educational researchers, policy-makers and practitioners internationally. As well as providing a critique of the risks of current policy rationales, it conveys some hopeful accounts of practice that provide leads for further development.

In this traditional South American tale, Monkey triumphs over the Monster, who thinks he is the best at everything. Clever Monkey tricks the Monster into releasing her friends, and he goes back to his cave empty-handed. This imaginative story, written by Pat Thomson and charmingly illustrated by Alessandra Cimatoribus, will capture your child's imagination! It has been sensitively rewritten to enable your child to read it with confidence whilst capturing the magic of the original tale. There are useful tips for parents and an engaging story map inside the book to help you and your child retell the story together. The Oxford Reading Tree Traditional Tales series includes 40 of the best known stories from all over the world, which have been passed down for generations. They are a perfect introduction to different cultures, traditions and morals. All the stories are carefully levelled to Oxford Reading Tree levels and matched to the phonic progression in Letters and Sounds enabling your children to read the stories independently. Books contain inside cover notes to support children in their reading. Help with childrens reading development is also available at www.oxfordowl.co.uk.

Alex has got some explaining to do. Everything he takes to school disappears, but Mrs Etheridge, Alex's teacher, isn't at all prepared for some of his explanations.

Jo always keeps his marker-pen handy for sending messages, but when he and his friends try to rescue the boy down the road they may have sent one message too many. Jets is a series of simple stories with lots of pictures, for children who are just beginning to enjoy reading.

Russell Fussell can't stop speaking in rhyme. His problem gets him into lots of trouble - and it's driving everyone mad! Somehow, he has to be cured.