Teacher Thinking Beliefs And Knowledge In Higher Education

This volume addresses the important problem of understanding good university teaching, and focuses on the thinking, beliefs, and knowledge, which accompany teachers' actions. It is the first book to address this area and it promises to become a landmark volume in the field - helping us to understand a complex area of human activity and improve both teaching and learning. It is for education researchers, staff/faculty developers and educational developers.

Although teachers are recognized as one of the most important factors in the effective education of children, much of the power they possess remains unexamined. Teaching in Mind offers teachers a variety of ways to explore their own beliefs, values, meanings, metaphors, and presuppositions that often result in conflict in an educational setting. It helps teachers reflect on and evaluate their thinking, envision their ideal classroom, and select teaching methods to support their vision. Teaching in Mind encourages teachers to value their own expertise and to take their place as leaders in educational improvement.

This is a companion volume to the editors' Insights into Teachers' Thinking and Practice (Falmer Press, 1999) and seeks to carry the discussion on further illustrating that there is a continuing intensity of thought, activity and debate on how to conceptualise research on teacher thinking, and thus generate knowledge for further understanding and action. The ethical questions on undertaking research on the inner lives of teachers remain unresolved. The international team present chapters which investigate the relationship between the researcher and the researched, and the relevance and role of research in teacher development. The papers are not presented as 'best practice' for such definitions would be inevitably value laden. Rather, they are indications and anticipations of key areas for the development of understanding of teachers' thinking and actions in the 1990s.

Being A Teacher in Higher Education draws extensively on research literatures to give detailed advice about the core business of teaching: instruction, learning activities, assessment, planning and getting good evaluations. It offers hundreds of practical suggestions in a collegial rather than didactic style. This is not, however, another book of tips or heroic success stories. For one thing Peter Knight appreciates the different circumstances that new, part-time and established teachers are in. For another, he insists that teaching well (and enjoying it) is as much about how teachers feel about themselves as it is about how many slick teaching techniques they can string together. He argues that it is important to develop a sense of oneself as a good teacher (particularly in increasingly difficult working conditions); and it is for this reason that the final part of this work is about career management and handling change. This is a book about doing teaching and being a teacher: about reducing the likelihood of burn-out and improving the chances of getting the psychic rewards that make teaching fulfilling. It is an optimistic book for teachers in universities, many of whom feel that opportunities for professional fulfilment are becoming frozen.

This volume covers advances that have occurred in the thirty year existence of the International Study Association on Teachers and Teaching (ISATT), the organization that helped transition the study of teacher thinking to the study of teachers and teaching in all of its complexities.

Broad in theme, international in scope and thorough in detail, this book is based on a selection of papers presented at the third bi-annual ISATTs conference and updated by each contributor to include their current thoughts and opinions.

First published in 2008. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The papers from the first two International Study Association on Teachers and Teaching conferences are presented in this title as book chapters. Each paper has historical value, marking as they do, both a change in topic focus and a revolution in research practice. They also have a practical value in that they provide a large reference source for, and a wide range of examples of, both topics and methods of research. Value for the future can be found in the texts that note lacunae in research and unresolved issues. Further, since the chapters derive from research conducted in a variety of national contexts, revealing some evidence of common constraints and opportunities impinging on education at the time, questions are stimulated about what has changed and what has stayed the same in the interim.