Books

A Learning Community of Reflective Teachers

From Whispers to Resonance

 Teachers possess a wealth of untapped wisdom and valuable experience. Be it educational policy, curriculum development or textbook selection, rare are the instances when teachers’ views are solicited. Traditionally, teacher development has been driven by administrators of schools, and it often takes the form of a ‘mentor’ teaching the staff of a school.

But what happens when teachers across different locations collaborate and learn together?

This volume documents such an initiative, sparked off by the Covid-19 pandemic, which brought people together online. It showcases the power of teachers debating, discussing and learning from each other. Based on an Indian experience, this book addresses a range of issues that teachers and educators across the world face– encompassing pedagogy, classroom management, school culture and teacher development. A unique story of community building and teacher education, this book also contains key outcomes and insights, while taking us through their action research projects. It showcases a model of teacher development that can be adopted by interested readers anywhere in the world.

Above all, it brings out the crying need for a teacher’s voice to be heard – for far too long, teachers have been mere implementers of decisions taken by policymakers or managements of schools. By means of networking communities such as the one described in this book, the transformation of teachers going from whispers to resonance is greatly amplified.

An important intervention in the domain of teacher development, this volume will be of great interest to students, researchers, educators, teacher educators and sociologists of education. It will also be useful for teacher trainees, academicians, policymakers, schoolteachers, curriculum developers, teacher training institutes and universities offering teacher education programmes.

Neeraja Raghavan
Published by Routledge India in 2024

The Reflective Teacher: Case Studies of Action Research
Neeraja Raghavan, Contributing Editor Vineeta Sood
Published by Orient Blackswan in 2015
The Reflective Learner: Seeing ‘Missed Takes’ in Mistakes
Why do students make mistakes? Is there a way of exploring their work beyond just ‘right’ and ‘wrong’? What is the hidden takeaway (missed take) in every mistake, for a student as well as a teacher? Here, you will find four accounts of teachers who examined such questions and effected a turnaround in the way that their ‘struggling’ students began to approach subjects like English and Mathematics.
Neeraja Raghavan
Teaching Tales, Learning Trails (2018)
This is a set of ten stories based largely on events that actually unfolded – ‘fictionalised fact’ – followed by rich discussions between groups of stakeholders, as they reflect on the questions raised by these stories.
Neeraja Raghavan, Vineeta Sood and Kamala Anilkumar