Best Practices

Demoralisation, Best Practices, and the Moral Centre of Teaching

Posted on 23 September 2019 by Dr Kevin Smith

What’s lost when teaching is stripped of its moral core? Building on Doris Santoro’s concept of demoralisation, this post explores how the language of “best practices” can erode teachers’ ethical agency. It asks what it would take to re-centre education on the moral purposes that give teaching its soul.

Rethinking “Best Practices”: Teaching Beyond Technique

Posted on 20 July 2019 by Dr Kevin Smith

Have we mistaken good technique for good teaching? In this post, Dr Kevin Talbert challenges the “best practices” orthodoxy in education and argues for teacher preparation that cultivates wisdom, reflection and moral purpose. Drawing on Freire and Harris, he makes the case for re-centring teaching on values and vocation, not standardised methods.