Learning to lead for transformation: an African perspective on educational leadership

Abstract

This innovative book introduces historical key theories, themes, and concepts of infancy and their care. In understanding infant care from the past, readers are invited to explore how events, approaches, traditions, studies and stories have shaped modern day practice. It contributes to early childhood education and care discourses, with an emphasis on care making it timely for both educators and practitioners. Accessible and informative, including extended reflective thinking and reflective questions for practitioners to contextualize topics with contemporary practice, this book is your essential guide to understanding the historical influences that have shaped infant care today. This book shows how effective pedagogical leadership can create the right conditions for quality ECE provision, to increase motivation and engagement among staff and impact positively on staff recruitment and retention. Written by a team of international experts based in Australia, Azerbaijan, Estonia, Greece, Finland, Norway, Sweden, the UK and the USA this is the first book to study pedagogical leadership in-depth and through an international lens. The chapter address questions including 'what is pedagogic leadership?', 'what does it look like?' and 'what impact can pedagogic leadership have on the everyday work of nurseries and other ECE providers?'. A must-have guide for both primary and secondary teachers looking to transform student outcomes through an evidence-informed approach. Jade Pearce summarises 20 key research papers that every teacher needs to know, shares teaching and learning strategies that have a demonstrable impact in the classroom, and explains how to disseminate this information across departments and schools. Complete with practical guidance, key takeaways, case studies and examples across a variety of phases and subjects, this book is essential reading for teachers, research leads, heads of department, and teaching and learning leads. takes an international and inclusive approach, exploring learning and educational leadership from different cultural and theoretical perspectives, from Habermas’ theory of cognitive interests to Freire’s approach to education and Ngara's decolonized epistemology and Ubuntu-based developmental approach. Ngara uses the African tradition of storytelling as well as engaging exercises. Each topic is introduced with a “tuning in exercise” and the reader is guided to reflect on their experiences and understanding throughout the book with discussion points and activities. The book is supported by a companion additional resources, including lecturer presentations. This book traces the notion of care and civic values in education that are largely devalued today by neoliberal economic concerns. Through a discussion of educators and philosophers including Arendt, Foucault, Guattari, Patocka, Simondon, Stengers and Whitehead Atkinson explores the ‘gift of otherness’ in relation to an ethico-politics of pedagogic practice and learning, including art education. He argues for pedagogical practices that facilitate and support each learner's pathways through what is called a pedagogy of taking care. This involves paying due attention, with empathy, to each learner’s pathway of learning and to the difference and divergence of such pathways. Written by three leading scholars of higher education, and the philosophy of higher education, the book opens the debate about the cultural purpose of universities and higher education. The authors argue that the university should be and can be an institution of culture, of great cultural significance in the digital age, and exercise cultural leadership in society. This wide ranging and polemic text addresses a range of subjects including environmentalism, citizenship, post-truth, the ethical implications of technology and feminist philosophy. Helen Lees takes you into the heart of the mechanisms of university life, revealing the key moves of scholarship you need to make to survive and thrive in the game. She shows you what actions and attitudes matter to win, why winning matters, how you can win without joining a dog-eat-dog competition. She shows you why a university education is about you and your flourishing, not the graduation prize. Helen empowers you to avoid stress, to enjoy yourself and get true value for money from the educational product you have chosen. A Framework for Teaching Music Online defines the current online learning landscape of music in higher education and then presents a cyclical teaching framework that describes how to practically develop an online music course. Each part of the framework takes the reader through the three main components of developing an online music course: communication, design, and assessment. Practical ideas and tools for faculty and students to implement into their current or future online teaching practice are explored, drawing on research-informed practices and case study evidence. Johnson also considers future innovations, exploring knowledge sharing and professional learning networks. This edited volume provides a contextual overview of the social, ideological, economic and governmental influences and policies that shape the field of English for Academic Purposes (EAP) with the aims of promoting awareness and debate among EAP practitioners as an academic community, and of enabling reasoned, collective community responses to the particular influences and issues that currently face EAP in higher education. by social in educational/linguistic fields as well as expert practitioners, systematically exposes the sociological commitments of mainstream ideas and theories in English for Academic Purposes (EAP). The contributions make the case for the centrality of social theory for EAP practitioners and praxis and the need to develop a sociological imagination to enhance knowledge and agency of practitioners. Topics covered include: social realism, legitimation code theory, critical realism, ethnography, feminism and Bourdieusian concepts for EAP. This book focuses on empirical research studies conducted on English Medium Instruction (EMI) in the Middle East and North Africa. The contributors are researchers with first-hand experience in countries in the region. Each chapter follows a consistent structure, allowing comparisons to be drawn between policies and practices in different countries. Topics covered include investigating perceptions and attitudes of both students and lecturers, opportunities and challenges afforded by EMI, as well as the evolution of EMI practices. By exploring these issues, through the lens of a decolonial critical approach, this volume informs theory underlying research into the phenomenon of EMI. and the implementation of the at the institutional and classroom level, using a variety of research tools, including policy analysis, stakeholders’ conceptualisations of EMI, observations of EMI in practice, analysis. The critical perspectives in this volume consider gender and sexuality as dimensions of human life and promote sexual, gender, emotional and relational wellbeing together with the construction of cultural horizons and citizenship. The chapters are organised around three interdependent areas of inquiry: 1) how educators design pedagogies and curriculums around gender diversity, 2) how students and teachers navigate issues of gender diversity in practice, and 3) how issues of gender diversity are (not) addressed in the materials for teaching and learning English. This book offers a useful framework for evaluating ELT textbooks from a critical discourse perspective: one that is based on sound current research but also offers practical guidance to teachers. Building from a foundational understanding of ELT textbooks, the author presents a systematic procedure to critically analyze their multimodal discourse, examine how those discourses are negotiated between teachers and students in class, and measure how those consumers privately value the lessons. The book provides teachers with the tools they need to select and adapt materials based on critical multimodal discourse analysis. This book invites educators to practice a range of poetry exercises to inform instructional approaches to reading and writing. Guided by pedagogical principles prompted by their readings of Wallace Stevens’ “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,” the authors provide critical discussion of prominent literacy practices in secondary classrooms and offer alternative approaches to encountering a text. They do this through experimental readings of Stevens’ poem toward 13 pedagogical principles anchoring a pedagogy of poetic practices. The book also offers invitational exercises, student examples, visual modes of theorizing, and a gathering of relevant resources compiled by two classroom teachers. This book redefines how teacher educators and teachers in secondary and post-secondary education can teach languages with intercultural education in mind. It empowers them to design curriculum from transferable concepts that have value within the culture(s) and to the learner; develop assessments that ask the learner to solve problems or address needs of various audiences; direct learners through a program that meets academic and career goals. Pedagogical features include a glossary, research-to-practice boxes, and template samples with exemplars for a range of languages, including Indigenous languages. Accompanying online resources offer blank templates and guides for designing curricula and assessments. This book offers practical suggestions for educators looking to incorporate ludic media, ranging from novels to video games and from poems to board games, into their curricula. The contributors outline pedagogical strategies for integrating the study of video games with the study of literature. They also address the benefits (and liabilities) of making the process of learning itself a game, an approach that is quickly gaining