Teachers’ Worlds and Work : Understanding Complexity, Building Quality

Understanding teachers’ work and influences is key to ensuring an on-going commitment and quality to their career. Teachers’ Work and Lives is the first text to offer a holistic consideration of the complexities of the personal, workplace and policy contexts, in order to understand, build and sustain the quality of teachers’ work. This book brings together bodies of research to offer a new definition of teachers'' learning and professional development.

Understanding what influences the quality of teachers’ work across a career is key to building and sustaining their on-going commitment and effectiveness. Teachers’ Worlds and Work provides a new, research-informed consideration of key elements which independently and together influence teachers'' work and lives: policy and workplace conditions, teacher professionalism, identity, emotions, commitment and resilience, types of professional learning and development, and the importance of the contribution to these made by high-quality leadership. In bringing these elements together, the book provides new, detailed and holistic understandings of their influence and suggests ways of building and sustaining teachers'' abilities and willingness to teach to their best and well over their careers. This groundbreaking text will be essential reading for teacher educators, teachers, head teachers and academics.