"This is a valuable book for the beginning teacher. It provides a sensible blend of practical and pragmatic chapters, alongside more philosophical and theoretical contributions" Education Review

• What are the key issues that affect classroom teachers?
• What can research tell us about schooling?
• What are the arguments for and against specific educational issues?

The second edition of this highly successful text addresses these important educational questions. Written for the benefit of student teachers and teachers at the beginning of their careers, the book is designed to represent a coherent, challenging and thoughtful set of articles that will help readers to firm up their own ideas and give a factual basis for discussion and debate. New teachers need accessible, readable and accurate information about educational issues. They need pithy accounts of the research findings relating to particular issues and they need to be able to see how their ideas and feelings compare with those of other people. Some of them will want answers to their questions - others will be more interested in understanding why some questions are more important than others. The book is written in a user-friendly style - providing ideas, arguments and enough references to help those interested in following-up the issues.

This second edition contains new chapters on school and teacher quality, inspection, literacy, citizenship, parents and schooling, and social justice whilst all other chapters have been thoroughly revised and updated.