This unique and powerful combination has resulted in what you hold in your hands – thoughts, ideas, words, questions, answers, wit and wisdom. This edition contains 28 chapters, two more than the second edition and five more than the first edition. There are new chapters on education for sustainability, school effectiveness and improvement, and education policy. There are 11 new contributors and many new ideas and issues. However, the overall philosophy of the book remains unchanged. This is not a ‘tips for teachers’ book, although some chapters do focus on technical issues. Each chapter is designed to give you some background in terms of, say, the historical context and to illuminate the key issues that you will be faced with every day.

Much of teaching relies on confidence. You need to be confident in your knowledge of your subject. Your students need to be confident in you as a teacher. Confidence can develop through experience and through feedback from other people. This book is designed to help you to become more confident in your understanding of what learning to teach involves. There will be much in this book that you have not thought of before – things that you disagree with or things that you feel are obvious. It is designed to be dipped into rather than read from beginning to end and, we hope, will point you in the direction of further reading.