Full Description
This book explores how best to invest in and nurture teachers. It examines deprofessionalisation and reprofessionalisation in the recent developments in the understanding of teaching and learning, including the effects of standardizing teaching, education shaped by student satisfaction data and basic skills tests.
The book focuses on Australian context and takes on an international perspective. It investigates fundamental issues affecting teacher quality, morale, attrition and retention, learner and teacher autonomy, and assessment and evaluation. It encourages teachers and teacher educators to assert centrality to teachers and question and challenge outside forces that suppress teacher autonomy and associated agency and creativity. It challenges administrators and educational jurisdictions to rethink their assumptions on their own capacities and limitations and teachers' capabilities to shape education in optimal ways and the impact of outcomes of the decisions they make.
Contents
Part 1: The State of Play.- Chapter 1. Introduction and Context.- Chapter 2. The Purpose of Education.- Chapter 3. Why Are We Falling Behind?.- Part 2: The Players.- Chapter 4. 'If I Could Just Teach'.- Chapter 5. The Pressures on, and of, Curriculum.- Chapter 6. Basic, Basal Skills and their Effects on Higher Order Thinking.- Chapter 7. The Standardisation of Teaching.- Chapter 8. Teacher Professional Assessment and Teacher Professional Development.- Chapter 9. Student Evaluation as a Driver of Education Delivery.- Chapter 10. Digital Devices, Online Learning and All That: How They Are Shaping Education.- Part 3: Playing Our Part.- Chapter 11. Which Future? A Note of Hope.- Chapter 12. Recommendations: What We Know and What We Can Do.
