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Engaging Teachers: Towards a radical democratic agenda for schooling
Author(s): Trevor Gale (Author)
- Publisher: Open University Press
- Publication Date: 1 April 2003
- Language: English
- Print length: 144 pages
- ISBN-10: 9780335210268
- ISBN-13: 9780335210268
Book Description
“This is a useful, interesting and valuable work. The authors ask the difficult questions and attempt answers which, although complex, are written in an accessible and open manner. It deserves to be widely read.” Educational Review Engaging Teachers makes a deliberate attempt to reclaim the education discourse captured by new right politics and connect it with a radical democratic agenda for schooling. On its agenda are education markets, policy, leadership, professionalism, and communities. Engaging with these is conceived on at least two levels. First, as an invitation to teachers to become involved in reconstructing schooling for socially just purposes and in democratic ways. From this perspective, the politics of engagement is not simply a matter of acquiescence or resistance but is informed by a commitment to generate alternatives: teachers, parents and students making things happen rather than having things done to them. Also signalled is an intent to work collectively, exploring and acting on common interests and across uncommon ground. Second, the book also celebrates teachers engaging in these reconstructive efforts in attractive and meaningful ways. The attraction is decisions about schooling made by those they affect as well as decisions that are meaningful because they engage the interests of all.
Editorial Reviews
About the Author
Trevor Gale is Associate Professor of Education at Monash University, Australia. He is currently an Executive Member of the Australian Association for Research in Education and co-editor of Melbourne Studies in Education. He is well known for his contributions in the field of policy sociology and for his work in addressing social justice issues in schooling and higher education. With Kathleen Densmore, he is co-author of Just Schooling.
Kathleen Densmore is Associate Professor of Education at San Jose State University, California, USA. She has published on multicultural education, school-community relations and teacher professionalism. Among her diverse commitments, she currently works with a consortium of labour unions, employers and state offices in the area of workforce and economic development.
