Learning Teaching from Experience

What do teachers learn 'on the job'? And how if at all do they learn from 'experience'?<br/><br/>Leading researchers from the UK Europe the USA and Canada offer international research-based perspectives on a central problem in policy-making and professional practice - the role that experience plays in learning to teach in schools. Experience is often weakly conceptualized in both policy and research sometimes simply used as a proxy for 'time' in weeks and years spent in a school classroom. The conceptualization of experience in a range of educational research traditions lies at the heart of this book exemplified in a variety of empirical and theoretical studies. Distinctive perspectives to inform these studies include sociocultural psychology the philosophy of education school effectiveness the sociology of education critical pedagogy activism and action research. However no one theoretical perspective can claim privileged insight into what and how teachers learn from experience; rather this is a matter for a truly educational investigation one that is both close to practice and seeks to develop theory.<br/><br/>At a time when policy-makers in many countries seek to make teacher education an entirely school-based activity <i>Learning Teaching from Experience</i> offers an essential examination of the evidence-base the traditions of inquiry - and the limits of those inquiries.