Becoming a Teacher: Issues In Secondary Education

by Justin Dillon (Editor), Meg Maguire (Editor)

"This is a valuable book for the beginning teacher. It provides a sensible blend of practical and pragmatic chapters, alongside more philosophical and theoretical contributions" Education Review

• What are the key issues that affect classroom teachers?

• What can research tell us about schooling?

• What are the arguments for and against specific educational issues?

The second edition of this highly successful text addresses these important educational questions. Written for the benefit of student teachers and teachers at the beginning of their careers, the book is designed to represent a coherent, challenging and thoughtful set of articles that will help readers to firm up their own ideas and give a factual basis for discussion and debate. New teachers need accessible, readable and accurate information about educational issues. They need pithy accounts of the research findings relating to particular issues and they need to be able to see how their ideas and feelings compare with those of other people. Some of them will want answers to their questions - others will be more interested in understanding why some questions are more important than others. The book is written in a user-friendly style - providing ideas, arguments and enough references to help those interested in following-up the issues.

This second edition contains new chapters on school and teacher quality, inspection, literacy, citizenship, parents and schooling, and social justice whilst all other chapters have been thoroughly revised and updated.

Genres: Nonfiction, Education, Reference

257 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 1997

Reviews

[James]

The road to becoming a teacher is fraught with challenges: parents, students, other teachers, government policies, cultural differences to name just a few. Perhaps there is no other profession where everyone else has such strong opinions on how it is to be carried out.

With this collection of essays, the teacher, especially a secondary teacher, is given an expansive overview of many of the key issues facing their work in the UK. There is much to benefit both new and experienced teachers looking to gain a more academic approach to their work. The four parts cover theory, schooling, learning, and curriculum issues, leading to plenty of material covering nearly every aspect of teaching.

However, there are perhaps two main issues with this collection: the first is that it is squarely planted in the British (that is English) tradition of teaching. Its examples and case studies and data are all referring to the English system. Now, this is a question of time and scope: there is not a book large enough to cover global perspectives, and there is plenty applicable to teachers working internationally too. However, its other issue is that is only covers material up to 2010 and the election of the coalition government in the UK, neglecting many changes in education policy in the last eight years. This too in time could be improved with an update issue.

This volume is still a valuable tool for teachers, regardless of their progression along this career path, and offers much valuable insight.