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Dominant conceptions in the field of education position teacher development and teaching as linear, cause and effect transactions completed by teachers as isolated, autonomous actors. Yet rhizomatics, an emergent non-linear philosophy created by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, offers a perspective that counters these assumptions that reduce the complexity of classroom activity and phenomena. In Becoming-Teacher: A Rhizomatic Look at First-Year Teaching, Strom and Martin employ rhizomatics to analyze the experiences of Mauro, Bruce, and June, three first-year science teachers in a highly diverse, urban school district. Reporting on the ways that they constructed their practices during the first several months of entry into the teaching profession, authors explore how these teachers negotiated their pre-professional learning from an inquiry and social-justice oriented teacher residency program with their own professional agendas, understandings, students, and context. Across all three cases, the work of teaching emerged as jointly produced by the activity of multiple elements and simultaneously shaped by macro- and micropolitical forces. This innovative approach to investigating the multiple interactions that emerge in the first year of teaching provides a complex perspective of the role of preservice teacher learning and the non-linear processes of becoming-teacher. Of interest to teachers, teacher educators, and education researchers, the cases discussed in this text provide theoretically-informed analyses that highlight means of supporting teachers in enacting socially-just practices, interrupting a dominant educational paradigm detrimental to students and teachers, and engaging with productive tools to theorize a resistance to the neoliberal education movement at the classroom level.

In an educational context where school and district performance is of increasing focus, it's essential for leaders at all levels of the educational system to focus on improving student performance. This volume zeros in on a promising set of strategies and practices for all leaders to motivate, support, and sustain learning in contemporary schools. Learning-Focused Leadership in Action explores what it means for educational leadership to be'learning-focused,'what this looks like in practice at both the school and district level, and how such leadership changes can be set in motion. Drawing on extensive case study research in schools and districts that are making progress on learning improvement, this volume explores how leaders at all levels of the educational system can productively seek to improve the quality of learning opportunities and student performance, no matter how challenging the circumstances.

Changing Urban Education considers the way we approach teaching and learning in the urban context and examines the debates concerning developments in wider social, cultural, political and economic contexts. Grounded in a strong conceptual, theoretical framework, this accessible text will guide the reader through this evolving area.Reflective exercises, interviews, chapter summaries and useful websites will encourage and support student learning and the application of new concepts. Recent debates and developments are considered, including:• The city as a social, cultural and economic resource• Virtual communities• The impact of the forces of globalisation on urban education• Challenging schools and urban policy• Mobile urban learningChanging Urban Education is essential reading for undergraduate and postgraduate students on education studies and related courses.