Big Fish, Little Fish: Teaching and Learning in the Middle Years

Front Cover
Cambridge University Press, May 27, 2015 - Education - 296 pages
Big Fish, Little Fish: Teaching and learning in the middle years provides pre-service and early career teachers with a pathway to understanding the needs of students as they make the important transition from primary to secondary schooling. The book explores contemporary challenges for teaching and learning in the middle years, with a focus on student experience, identity, engagement and resilience. Key issues, such as teaching academically at-risk students, the impact of education policy on middle years students, and teacher preparation and identity, are given comprehensive coverage. Unique to this text is its focus on and analysis of the history of middle-years education, as well as its in-depth discussion of the experiences of young Indigenous and Māori students. Drawing on the wide-ranging expertise of its contributors, Big Fish, Little Fish prepares pre-service teachers to best meet the needs of students as they enter the challenging middle years of their education.
 

Contents

Thinking historically about the schooling of young people
15
The needs of learners in the middle years
27
Success after discontinuous transfer? Reimaginative
44
Pedagogies of imaginative praxis
50
So what?
57
A fair go and student agency in the middle years classroom
63
Ethical considerations in participative inquiry by young people
73
High possibility classrooms in the middle years
95
The challenges of testing accountability Understanding
139
Engaging Indigenous students The important relationship
155
Languages other than standard Australian English
162
The experiences of Maori students in the middle years
175
Changing scenarios for teaching and learning
189
Preparing teachers for the middle years
205
A generic teacher education program that
223
Leading teacher professional learning in the middle years
236

Curriculum pedagogy and assessment in the middle years
111
Visceral pedagogies Learning to teach middle years
126
A thought experiment
132
Conclusion
251
Index
269
Copyright

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About the author (2015)

Susan Groundwater-Smith is an Honorary Professor in the Faculty of Education and Social Work at the University of Sydney. Dr Nicole Mockler is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Education at the University of Newcastle, New South Wales.

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