Karen Flanagan

The Developing Professional Practice series provides a thoroughly comprehensive and cutting edge guide to developing the necessary knowledge, skills and understanding for teaching within the 0-7, 7-14 or 14-19 age ranges. Each of the three titles offers a genuinely accessible and engaging introduction to a wide range of professional practice supporting the education of babies to young adults. Discussion of current developments in theory, policy and research is combined with guidance on the practicalities of working with each age group. Numerous examples of real practice are included throughout, along with a range of additional features to help promote understanding. Education in the 14-19 sector is going through a period of unprecedented change. This textbook provides a clear, accessible and supportive guide to recent developments in policy, theory and practice, providing you with a complete resource to support you in your initial teacher training. Each chapter includes a range of interactive pedagogical features, designed to aid understanding:• Case studies provide extended examples that illustrate core concepts and theories in action• Research focus features outline important research studies, revealing their key findings and demonstrating how these apply in everyday practice• What do you think? boxes encourage you to reflect on, and interrogate, what you have learnt.

Dealing with challenging behaviour is normally the number one concern of trainee teachers and even more so for those who are training to work with pupils age 14+ whether within a secondary school context or post-compulsory college context. The aim of this book is to help the reader approach behavioural problems through meaningful self evaluation and reflection. This will equip the practitioner with the skills required to implement change within problematic relationships and environments and to explore a range of possible reasons as to 'why students behave in the way they do'. It challenges existing paradigms in order to break down barriers; substituting and encouraging professional responsibility for promoting positive relationships rather than the passive acceptance of unwanted behaviours, or a reliance on a culture of 'blame'. The idea is to move away from thinking about difficult or 'bad' students towards thinking about difficult relationships or environments. This process of change already allows the practitioner to reflect in a far more constructive and objective manner. This process of reflection and evaluation also allows the practitioner to acknowledge their own feelings in this process. Whilst there are strategies that can help in a reactive sense to situations and behaviours as they occurs such as body language and proxemics there are no 'quick fixes' to deal with what are extremely complicated and complex relationships and situations. This is where a solution-focused approach can be helpful as it is brief and effective. It can be brief because it is future-focused and because it works with the strengths of those who come by making the best use of their resources, and it can bring about lasting change because it aims to build solutions rather than solve problems i.e. identifying small baby steps towards a bigger end goal. Thus this approach, whilst initially daunting, allows the practitioner to be freed of the shackles of 'labels' that are neither helpful nor constructive and instead becomes a powerful tool for transforming negative learning environments.