Reinventing Ourselves As Teachers

Written for teaching professionals, this text helps novice and experienced teachers to reinterpret their working lives. Taking the reader on a personal exploration the text exceeds standard approaches, leading from the personal to the critical.

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.

Build your success as a teacher leader with the practical advice in this book. Award-winning educator Melissa Collins shows how you can grow in your role by fostering relationships with colleagues, organizations, and mentors. She also spotlights rock star educators. She offers thorough advice on a wide variety of topics such as finding the right support, building your reputation, reinventing yourself, knowing your purpose, and developing leadership mindsets. She also explains how to manage your time wisely, build a network, enact purposeful practice, and, most of all, dare to dream. Appropriate for teachers at any level of their career who want to take on a larger role in their school or beyond, the book’s honest anecdotes and step-by-step suggestions will put you on the right path, so teacher leaders can develop in their careers and help their students thrive.

Listening Up will change the way you view radical literacy education, offering a personal look at the Freirean ideas that guided Rachel Martin's early years of teaching, and the theories and classroom experiences that urged her to take a second look. Through her own compelling example, Martin demonstrates the power of a sustained dialogue between critical theory and classroom and community practice. The ideas Martin draws on help us think in new ways about how power works. They provide the possibility of seeing how teachers' own needs, fears, and desires might find a place in classroom inquiry as we come to see how our relationship to domination is a matter neither of complete acquiescence nor absolute resistance. While the goals of meaning-making and becoming colearners have become guideposts in radical teaching, Martin aims in a different direction. She advocates for a pedagogy that places teachers in a more genuine position of colearner as together with students, they question the meanings they make. Later chapters highlight the practical implications that notions of multiple voices and identities have for the teaching of writing and the questions they raise about the teaching of reading. Martin also describes community publishing projects. Poor and working-class people are too seldom able to have their written visions and strategies distributed, to become part of the way the world is described and possibilities for change are widely considered. Martin argues that community publishing does that, as it also links self-definition to self-determination.

The International Handbook on Self-study of Teaching and Teacher Education Practices is of interest to teacher educators, teacher researchers and practitioner researchers. This volume: -offers an encyclopaedic review of the field of self-study; -examines in detail self-study in a range of teaching and teacher education contexts; -outlines a full understanding of the nature and development of self-study; -explores the development of a professional knowledge base for teaching through self-study; -purposefully represents self-study through research and practice; -illustrates examples of self-study in teaching and teacher education.

Self-Study of Teaching Practices is an excellent introduction to the field of self-study research and practice. This student- and teacher-friendly primer provides a comprehensive review and synthesis of the self-study literature, complete with guidelines and examples of cutting-edge self-study methods. It addresses four central areas of self-study of teaching practices: purposes, foundations, nature, and guidelines for practice. School-based and university-based teachers interested in rethinking and reframing their instructional methods will benefit from reading this book and assigning it in the classroom. This primer, which includes glossaries and references, is an invaluable resource for undergraduate and graduate education students searching for guidelines to develop and improve their teaching practice.

The first textbook to offer novice and experienced teachers guidelines for the "how" and "why" of self-study teacher research Designed to help pre- and in-service teachers plan, implement, and assess a manageable self-study research project, this unique textbook covers the foundation, history, theoretical underpinnings, and methods of self-study research. Author Anastasia Samaras encourages readers to think deeply about both the "how" and the "why" of this essential professional development tool as they pose questions and formulate personal theories to improve professional practice. Written in a reader-friendly style and filled with interactive activities and examples, the book helps teachers every step of the way as they learn and refine research skills; conduct a literature review; design a research study; work in validation groups; collect and analyze data; interpret findings; develop skills in peer critique and review; and write, present, and publish their studies. Key Features A Self-Study Project Planner assists teachers in understanding both the details and process of conducting self-study research. A Critical Friends Portfolio includes innovative critical collaborative inquiries to support the completion of a high quality final research project. Advice from the most senior self-study academics working in the U.S. and internationally is included, along with descriptions of the self-study methodology that has been refined over time. Examples demonstrate the connections between self-study research, teachers' professional growth, and their students' learning. Tables, charts, and visuals help readers see the big picture and stay organized.