Meghan Stacey

Internationally, teachers and schools are facing a ‘polycrisis': an intersection of global teacher shortages, heightened workload and work intensity, threats to public education, enduring shifts wrought by COVID-19 and an ever-evolving technological landscape. This book charts a pathway towards ‘decent work’ for teachers. Schools are not only places of learning but also places of work. Teachers are the heart of students’ learning, and good conditions of work improve the learning conditions of students. The authors provide a profoundly interdisciplinary new analysis of teachers’ work in schools which is generally absent in education policy and effects. Drawing on empirical research, the book’s overarching frame of ‘decent work’ provides a way of thinking about the shifts that have occurred to and around teaching. The authors show erosion of, and paths towards, decent work for teachers. This vital resource for researchers, students, policymakers, principals and unions takes an innovative approach to examining policies, problems and possibilities concerning teachers’ work, job conditions and employment relations.

Internationally, teachers and schools are facing a ‘polycrisis': an intersection of global teacher shortages, heightened workload and work intensity, threats to public education, enduring shifts wrought by COVID-19 and an ever-evolving technological landscape. This book charts a pathway towards ‘decent work’ for teachers. Schools are not only places of learning but also places of work. Teachers are the heart of students’ learning, and good conditions of work improve the learning conditions of students. The authors provide a profoundly interdisciplinary new analysis of teachers’ work in schools which is generally absent in education policy and effects. Drawing on empirical research, the book’s overarching frame of ‘decent work’ provides a way of thinking about the shifts that have occurred to and around teaching. The authors show erosion of, and paths towards, decent work for teachers. This vital resource for researchers, students, policymakers, principals and unions takes an innovative approach to examining policies, problems and possibilities concerning teachers’ work, job conditions and employment relations.

This text gives students a depth of understanding about how education influences and shapes society and conversely how society shapes education policy. It has never been more important for students of education to be able to understand the connections between the local and the global in explaining contemporary educational change. This text explains the connection between how the Australian education system has been shaped over time, and how this has influenced the current institutions and policies that comprise the state of education. This comprehensive and theoretical text on the sociology of education helps students engage with the theory of educational sociology and learn how to critically reflect on it.

This book explores the experiences of early career teachers in a profession that has become highly stratified by market processes. The author presents New South Wales, Australia as a case study: a state with a long history of academically selective and private sector schooling, which has become increasingly segregated under a series of neoliberalised policy reforms since the 1980s. The experiences of teachers in this book are rich and varied, from a variety of different contexts – ranging from public schools enrolling students experiencing significant educational disadvantage to elite independent schools serving much more advantaged student cohorts. Highlighting teachers’ experiences in themselves rather than their impact on students, this timely book will be of interest and value to scholars of sociology of education, teachers’ work and education policy.

This book explores the experiences of early career teachers in a profession that has become highly stratified by market processes. The author presents New South Wales, Australia as a case study: a state with a long history of academically selective and private sector schooling, which has become increasingly segregated under a series of neoliberalised policy reforms since the 1980s. The experiences of teachers in this book are rich and varied, from a variety of different contexts – ranging from public schools enrolling students experiencing significant educational disadvantage to elite independent schools serving much more advantaged student cohorts. Highlighting teachers’ experiences in themselves rather than their impact on students, this timely book will be of interest and value to scholars of sociology of education, teachers’ work and education policy.