Quality Teaching and the Capability Approach

This edited collection presents several research projects which examine issues concerning professional development, professional learning, and the ‘Education for All’ (EfA) ethos. The overall aim of the book is threefold: firstly, to explore the consequences for the education profession of EfA, and how professional development and professional learning may be made manifest as part of an EfA practice. Secondly, to examine how EfA practices intersect with theoretical notions of EfA. Finally, to explore how this intersection of theory and practice is rooted in different (Anglo-American, Continental and Northern European) traditions and contexts, and their implications for professional development and learning in education.

Underpinning these three foci is a key principle of education as a human right in terms of participation, information and capacity building, regardless of people’s ethnic, cultural and religious backgrounds and/or physical and intellectual capacities. This book illustrates the complex conditions created in the nexus of social justice, EfA and professional development. The contributions highlight the educative nature of multi-relationships. In so doing, tensions, opportunities for learning, and the power relationships associated with professional development emerge, providing a resource for learning about good educational practice, authentic social justice practice, and genuine professional learning. This book was originally published as a special issue of Professional Development in Education.

Introduction – Professional development: Education for All as praxis 1. Education for All as praxis: consequences for the profession 2. Practice architectures of university inclusive education teaching in Australia 3. Multiplicity in the making: towards a praxis-oriented approach to professional development 4. ‘Muddying the space’: social justice, action research and professional learning 5. Professional development facilitators: reflecting on our practice 6. Young people as co-researchers: enabling student participation in educational practice 7. Ways in which teachers express what they consider to be in their pupils’ best interest 8. Teachers’ professional development as enabling and constraining dialogue and meaning-making in Education for All