Product Description: Good teachers are so much more than instructors in the three Rs--they're coaches, therapists, career counselors, and surrogate parents all rolled into one. In this moving collection of more than fifty true stories, teachers and students alike reveal the life-changing moments taking place in classrooms all over the world, transforming--and sometimes saving--young lives...read more

Designed for use by teachers and teacher educators, this text should help both novice and experienced teachers reinterpret their working lives. The reader is led on a path of personal exploration that goes beyond standard approaches and leads from the personal to the critical. Illustrative material is drawn from all levels, from kindergarten to high school, to illuminate issues and questions fundamental to teachers' lives. Film and literary narratives supply further case studies and contribute to the fusion of critical reflection and everyday realities that typically inform teachers' experiences of work.

Dramatic, profound and far-reaching changes are being visited on schools worldwide that have their genesis a long way from the classroom but which impact heavily on teachers and their work. Most of this reform has been achieved with little or no involvement of teachers themselves. This book sets out to survey the contemporary context of what is happening to the work of teaching, and focuses on Advanced Skills Teachers. It shows how teachers are 'speaking' the changes that are occuring to their work in protracted economically rationalist times.Arguing against the discourses of economy as the major shaping force, the authors present a persuasive case for focusing on the discourses of teaching itself as the only feasible and adequate basis on which to make sense of teaching. And by presenting a range of voices of practising teachers - allowing them to speak for themselves about the difficulty of trying to translate policy-makers' intentions into words and actions - the book graphically illustrates the devastating long-term consequences for the future of schools of poorly-conceptualised reform policies.

This book is designed to help teachers understand and develop the `reflective practice' skills that will help them to both survive and develop professionally in today's schools. The authors believe that the extra demands that teachers face today demand more than intuition, instinctive reaction or a prepackaged set of techniques. Teachers must reflect on what is taking place, correctly perceive what the options are in a critical and analytical way and make choices grounded in rational, conscious decision making to improve practice. Using real-life case studies, the book illustrates the three levels of reflective practice: reflection in practice, reflection on practice and reflection for practice. (view table of contents)

Product Description: Challenges pre-service and practicing teachers to develop a critical and progressive view of needed school reform -- to view curriculum holistically and to question how they invite young people to learn in ways that will give meaning to their lives...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: The intention of this book is to develop an increased awareness of the place of professional practice in the realms of research in teaching. The chapters investigate, from an international perspective, the emerging reflective methods of collaboration between practitioners and researchers, appreciation of teachers and teaching, and greater understanding of what they aim to promote...read more