Understanding Schools and Schooling

by Clyde Chitty

Overview

Understanding Schools and Schooling provides students with the knowledge about school policy and process that they need in order to address and respond to current trends and discourses in critical, well-informed ways that will enhance their teaching and job satisfaction.
The book presents issues, questions and dilemmas and invites the reader to find their own answers through guided activities, discussion with colleagues and further reading. The book provides a philosophical context for teachers' developing classroom practice and empowers them to participate fully in local and national debate about the nature, purposes and future of compulsory education in the UK and elsewhere.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780415238793
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	11/22/2001
Series:	Key Issues in Teaching and Learning Series
Pages:	192
Product dimensions:	6.88(w) x 9.69(h) x (d)

Table of Contents

1. Introduction: Perspectives on Schooling 2. A National System, Locally Administered, 1944-79 3. Years of Reconstruction and Conflict, 1979-97 4. The National Curriculum (1): Origins and Implementation 5. The National Curriculum (2): Reversals and Amendments 6. School Reform Under New Labour 7. Teachers' Conditions of Service and Professional Responsibilities: Recent Developments 8. Issues of Equality and Social Justice: The Role of the Secondary School 9. Conclusion: Issues for the Future: Contradictions and New Aspirations

Editorial Reviews

Book of the week Times Educational Supplement
'Chitty is remindng us of a fundamental question. Do we want schools to reflect society, or to improve it? Teachers, unlike governments, need to be clear about the answer. Structures matter, as well as standards. Read his book!' - Michael Duffy, TES

'Recognising the pressures of time on teachers in training, key issues, events and documents are presented in an accessible way, with suggested activities, and very select suggestions for further reading.' - Peter Cunningham, Cambridge Journal of Education

Book of the week Times Educational Supplement
'Chitty is remindng us of a fundamental question. Do we want schools to reflect society, or to improve it? Teachers, unlike governments, need to be clear about the answer. Structures matter, as well as standards. Read his book!' - Michael Duffy, TES,

Reviewed alongside Teaching and Learning: pedagogy, curriculum and culture, by Alex Moore
'Avoid being constructed as unreflective and uncritical imbibers of the latest pedagogical quackery. Put the supply-budget to proper use by picking up a copy of these two books and doing your own INSET. You will recover what it means to be seen as a thoughtful, highly-skilled professional with a continuing interest in and concern for the intellectual complexities and demands of the job. You will be given knowledge, a reading-list and useful things to think about and do. You will not be patronised. Both these books take teachers and teaching seriously. They serve to remind us genuinely, without flattery, glibness or show, of the complexity, importance, difficulty and value of what we do, and they will help us do it in a more fully informed, knowledgeable way. In short they will help us do it better read these books and talk the rest of the staff into reading them.' - Patrick Yarker, Forum

'Recognising the pressures of time on teachers in training, key issues, events and documents are presented in an accessible way, with suggested activities, and very select suggestions for further reading.' - Peter Cunningham, Cambridge Journal of Education

From the Publisher