Exploring Relational Professionalism In Schools

How is it that some teachers have just “got it”? They walk into a room and the atmosphere changes. They get through to students in a way that no-one else can. The author has sought answers to this question by observing and interviewing teachers from preschool to upper secondary school levels. Having intensively studied the highly influential but underestimated relational dimension of teaching, her contention is that these teachers successfully use relational practices to build educational relationships with their students and educational communities among them. Moreover, she finds that what may come across as a teacher’s personal traits is actually a sensible professional approach. These teachers haven’t “got it” - they “get it”. This book explains how teachers carry out their relational practices, and contains an abundance of everyday examples from all stages of education. The deep theoretical reasoning departs from these examples to create a compelling argument for a teacher’s relational professionality that is possible to learn and teach. New relational perspectives and concepts are introduced for the purpose of facilitating professional conversations about the profound dimension of relationships in education.

Given the emphasis on transforming professional work through the adoption of enquiry-based and trans-disciplinary approaches to service development, there is an urgent need for those involved in professional education to develop a robust understanding of how changes in practice occur. A more inclusive approach to the analysis of the processes involved across the varied and interrelated contexts in which they occur is thus very timely. In this book, Jenny Reeves sets out to explore the gap between the experience of professional learning as an interactive, dynamic and socially contextualised process, and descriptions that are often individualistic, overly linear and largely context-free. She makes the claim that this disjuncture is the outcome of modes of enquiry that concentrate on limited selections of the available data. Adopting a relational approach to describing practice-based professional development, including graphical means for exploring the spaces produced by the activity, provides a very different picture. It creates a basis for representing the complex movements, relationships and interactions between people and things that occur during professional learning. It also provides a productive approach to describing the exchange and creation of professional knowledge across different contexts over time. By building a picture of the ephemeral spaces and connections that educating activities produce, mapping relational space allows those engaged in professional education to think rather differently about how professional learning and changes in knowledge and practice may be understood, supported and developed.

Highlighting leadership from a social and relational perspective, this book has a particular emphasis on the innovative role that social networks play in systems change. The social systems engaged in this volume cut across a wide array of stakeholder groups, ranging from student learners, pre-service/in-service teachers, administrators, community leaders, and out to organizations and communities that reflect well beyond the education sector, showcasing diverse perspectives from multiple areas and international settings. Bringing together 32 distinguished scholars from Australia, Canada, Germany, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Norway, Spain, Taiwan, the UK and the USA, this book explores the use of social networks in education across different contexts and settings, connecting it with leadership practice that works at these settings for change. The contributors also examine online and virtual social behaviors and their connections to face to face networks. Ultimately, the volume showcases that leadership is social influence through examining a variety of social systems through social relationships. In addition to the breadth of studies connecting innovative leadership research to practice in this volume, the contributors also explore a new area of social networks and leadership by examining online and virtual social behaviors and their connections to face to face networks. Ultimately, the selected chapters in this volume make the point that “leadership is social influence” through examining a variety of social systems through social relationships.

Every successful sports coach knows that good teaching and social practices are just as important as expertise in sports skills and tactics. Now in a fully revised and updated fourth edition, and introducing a new author team, Understanding Sports Coaching introduces theories and practices while exploring pedagogical, social and cultural concepts underpinning good sports coaching practice. Broken into four sections, Understanding Sports Coaching examines the complex interplay between coach, athlete, coaching programme and social context, and encourages coaches to develop an open and reflective approach to their own coaching practice. It covers key aspects of coaching theories and practice, including important and emerging topics, such as: • leadership • athlete learning • emotion in coaching • culture as meaning making • quality in coaching • talent identification and development • philosophy and sports coaching Understanding Sports Coaching also includes a full range of practical exercises and extended case studies designed to encourage coaches to critically reflect upon their own coaching strategies, their interpersonal skills and important issues in contemporary sports coaching. This is an essential textbook for any degree-level course in sports coaching, and for any professional coach looking to develop their coaching expertise.

How should a teacher be taught? This book suggests that it is necessary to move away from the highly technicist and one-size-fits-all approaches to teaching in order to instil confidence throughout a teacher's training. Instead a pedagogy of induction should engage the student in their profession from the outset of their studies.

Character Education for 21st Century Global Citizens contains the papers presented at the 2nd International Conference on Teacher Education and Professional Development (InCoTEPD 2017), Yogyakarta, Indonesia, 20—21 October 2017. The book covers 7 topics: 1) Values for 21st century global citizens 2) Preparing teachers for integrative values education 3) Teacher professional development for enhanced character education 4) Curriculum/syllabus/lesson plan/learning materials development for integrated values education 5) Developing learning activities/tasks/strategies for character education 6) Assessing student’s character development (values acquisition assessment) 7) Creating/managing conducive school culture to character education.

Scholarly dispositions represent the practices and habits of mind that support consistent success in teaching, learning, and knowledge creation. To be successful in their undergraduate and graduate education, students must develop academic skills that transcend content knowledge, such as receiving and responding to critical feedback and learning how to collaborate, master academic writing, and be mindful of ethical research practices. Much is still unknown about how to teach dispositions, such as how to design a curriculum to best cultivate habits of mind, and this book attempts to address this gap while providing practical methods and strategies that can help higher education practitioners to cultivate and assess the scholarly dispositions of their students effectively. The Handbook of Research on Developing Students’ Scholarly Dispositions in Higher Education provides insight on dispositions that students must learn in higher education and how higher education faculty can help students to develop these dispositions, as well as evidence-based methods that help develop scholarly dispositions for undergraduate and graduate education. This book provides a plethora of information on scholarly dispositions and related elements, including teaching time management, collaboration, and research ethics. It is an ideal reference source for teachers, academicians, administrators, researchers, and students aspiring to become researchers and scholars themselves.

Contemporary strength and conditioning coaching is, for the most part, informed by the exercise sciences, with little engagement being made with sociocultural and pedagogical perspectives which have emerged in sports coaching research over the last two decades. In Understanding Strength and Conditioning as Sport Coaching: Bridging the Biophysical, Pedagogical and Sociocultural Foundations of Practice, the authors – whose expertise span strength and conditioning, sports coaching and pedagogy – help students and coaches to integrate perspectives from these disciplines to enhance their strength and conditioning coaching practice. The book encourages readers to add moral, ethical and political considerations to the technical aspects of their coaching practice. It discusses and applies concepts to a full range of strength and conditioning settings, including elite performance, young athletes, ageing athletes and returning to play following injury. Featuring an eResource, and structured around rich, narrative pedagogical cases reflecting the issues faced by practising strength and conditioning coaches, the book offers a thoroughly engaging introduction to pedagogical and sociocultural concepts and literature in a strength and conditioning context. This is a vital book for students of strength and conditioning, and an important resource for practising strength and conditioning coaches and sport science staff.