Stephen Heimans

This book critiques the humanist legacy in education, arguing that it frames our thoughts, imaginations and conceptualisations of what education means and can be about. It offers an alternative perspective, unburdened by this legacy, and grounded in a ‘weak ontology’, as a means of opening up new possibilities for the educational imagination. The authors argue that by embracing humanism’s values of rectitude and redemption as foundational, education becomes nothing more than a means to “social hygiene and economic productivity” (Bojesen, 2020). The authors offer a repertoire of concepts that begin to affirm educational experience, each chapter exploring the potential and challenges of these concepts. Those concepts include subjectivity and inclination, conversation, natality and the event, finitude and death, and indeterminability. These are used to challenge the dominant educational drives for progress and economic growth and offers a bold and timely vision for education that truly matters in an age of relentless expansion and mounting global crises.

This book is a unique primer for school professionals, educators and policymakers to develop a solid understanding of the domains essential to cultivating and sustaining successful schools. It also provides essential reading for researchers interested in these issues more broadly. In response to various sensationalist discourses around schooling that dominate both mainstream and social media, the authors draw upon both long-standing and up-to-date research from around the world to present a more accurate, holistic, and optimistic approach. The book identifies the key domains that are necessary to address concerns in equity, leadership and teaching for enhanced student learning and wellbeing. Specifically, these domains relate to: (1) system-wide approaches to enhance school performance; (2) building teacher capability for student learning; (3) educational leadership as a vehicle for leading learning; and (4) building community ‘infrastructures’ for equitable, place-based learning. The book can be used in several ways: each chapter can be read as a stand-alone overview of key areas for school improvement. The broad topics are important jigsaw puzzle pieces that are necessary to ‘see the whole picture’ of a successful school/system. Each chapter includes ‘Key messages’ and ‘Ways forward’ and closes with extension questions to further guide thinking through the ‘big ideas’ presented in each chapter and how they are relevant to different schooling and policy contexts. Grounded in research into productive and proactive system and school practices from around the world, this book ensures professional educators are equipped with the latest research and practice, without being overwhelmed by the detail.

This book is a unique primer for school professionals, educators and policymakers to develop a solid understanding of the domains essential to cultivating and sustaining successful schools. It also provides essential reading for researchers interested in these issues more broadly. In response to various sensationalist discourses around schooling that dominate both mainstream and social media, the authors draw upon both long-standing and up-to-date research from around the world to present a more accurate, holistic, and optimistic approach. The book identifies the key domains that are necessary to address concerns in equity, leadership and teaching for enhanced student learning and wellbeing. Specifically, these domains relate to: (1) system-wide approaches to enhance school performance; (2) building teacher capability for student learning; (3) educational leadership as a vehicle for leading learning; and (4) building community ‘infrastructures’ for equitable, place-based learning. The book can be used in several ways: each chapter can be read as a stand-alone overview of key areas for school improvement. The broad topics are important jigsaw puzzle pieces that are necessary to ‘see the whole picture’ of a successful school/system. Each chapter includes ‘Key messages’ and ‘Ways forward’ and closes with extension questions to further guide thinking through the ‘big ideas’ presented in each chapter and how they are relevant to different schooling and policy contexts. Grounded in research into productive and proactive system and school practices from around the world, this book ensures professional educators are equipped with the latest research and practice, without being overwhelmed by the detail.

isrupting Education offers an exemplar of in-disciplinary, post-qualitative methodology 'in action'- reworking the inherent scientism that haunts qualitative methodologies. It makes a case for, and demonstrates an unfolding emergent methodology, drawing on recent advances toward post-critical scholarship that seek to resist the desires of capitalism for generic and convergent 'knowledge products'. It also makes a substantive addition to the scholarship of education policy/ research enactment. The divergent contributions are designed to offer resources to build upon for those researchers and educators who are working for a fair and more just world. This work seeks to offer possibilities for the re-enactment of education policies to work in the best interests of students underserved by institutions designed to have their best interests at heart. It cuts across the boundaries that hold sociology and philosophy apart, working with the disruptive resources offered by radical philosopher Jacques Ranciere and philosopher of science, Isabelle Stengers.