Teachers' Voices for School Change - Andrew

The debate over theory and practice which has raged in education over the past few years has increasingly placed the interests of education academics and those of teachers in schools in opposition. While the fostering of better relations between institutions of higher education and schools may smooth the surface, deeper questions of who is an expert and what constitutes educational knowledge remain untouched. This book describes an alternative approach in which experiential knowledge and knowledge based on academic inquiry are equally valued. In a detailed methodological section it shows how the goals and the agenda of research can be set by teachers and academics working in equal partnership from personal and school histories through horizontal evaluation, in which teachers collaborate on the analysis of the relation of their own teaching intentions and classroom practices, to pressure for institutional change. The second half of the book, written by teachers shows the educative research process in practice as the teachers work together to give themselves an effective voice.