Accountability and responsibility: 'Rogue' school leaders and the induction of new teachers in England

This paper considers the professional responsibility of schools in England to provide effective induction practices in the context of a central government mandated policy. It looks at individual schools as ‘habitats’ for induction and the role of school leaders and LEAs as facilitators or inhibitors. Notions of professional responsibility and public accountability are used to analyse the small number of ‘rogue’ school leaders who, within the new legislative framework, treat new teachers unprofessionally and waste public resources. A typology of ‘rogue’ schools that are in some way deviant in transgressing induction requirements is developed and the various sanctions that can be deployed against such schools are examined. How LEAs handle their monitoring and accountability role and manage deviant schools is considered. Finally, suggestions are made for improvements, such as the need to clarify professional responsibility and refine systems of professional accountability

Conceptual learning : the priority for higher education

The common sense notion of learning as the all-pervasive acquisition of new behaviour and knowledge, made vivid by experience, is an incomplete characterisation, because it assumes that the learning of behaviour and the learning of knowledge are indistinguishable, and that acquisition constitutes learning without reference to transfer. A psychological level of analysis is used to argue that conceptual learning should have priority in higher education

From Ideal to Practice and Back Again: Beginning Teachers Teaching for Social Justice

The five authors of this article designed a multicase study to follow recent graduates of an elementary preservice teacher education program into their beginning teaching placements and explore the ways in which they enacted social justice curricula. The authors highlight the stories of three beginning teachers, honoring the plurality of their conceptions of social justice teaching and the resiliency they exhibited in translating social justice ideals into viable pedagogy. They also discuss the struggles the teachers faced when enacting social justice curricula and the tenuous connection they perceived between their conceptions and their practices. The authors emphasize that such struggles are inevitable and end the article with recommendations for ways in which teacher educators can prepare beginning teachers for the uncertain journey of teaching for social justice

Peer development as an alternative to peer observation: a tool to enhance professional development

Many Higher Education institutions worldwide require that all academic staff undergo a peer observation of teaching each academic year. Within one department in a university in the South of England, questions have arisen about the value and purpose of the traditional 'peer observation' process, and as a result a new voluntary system of 'peer development' has been introduced. This paper explains the rationale underpinning the new peer development process, and explores its worth and value to those who have participated in it as a mechanism for professional development. Reflections on the process are considered, along with what can be done to improve the new system

Fostering professional learning through evidence-informed mentoring dialogues in school settings

This chapter examines how the use of a descriptive observation tool mediates post-lesson conversations that teacher educators and mentor teachers have with preservice teachers. Our principal focus was to investigate the effects of the use of evidence-informed lesson observations in combination with a dialogic approach, as the basis for feedback on teaching practice and student learning. An interpretive case study approach was designed to investigate how mentor teachers and teacher educators used the observation tool. The findings provided data about the effects the tool had on the dispositions of the participants towards collecting and interrogating classroom evidence and how these impacted on their post-lesson conversations with preservice teachers. Preliminary findings suggested that some mentor teachers found it difficult to use description rather than judgement when discussing teaching and learning. This diminished opportunities for the construction and interrogation of professional reasoning in post-lesson discussions. Later findings, however, indicated that the use of the descriptive observation tool for the recording of evidence-informed observations fostered an inquiring and collaborative stance in post-lesson reviews. Collaborations of this nature, between mentor teachers and preservice teachers, provided the preservice teachers with greater agency during the professional dialogue and enhanced their capacity to reflect on their teaching