The Thinking Teacher - Softcover

Quinlan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1781351082 ISBN 13: 9781781351086

Publisher: Independent Thinking Press, 2014

Synopsis

"Good teachers do, great teachers think." Oliver Quinlan presents ideas from education, business, and other areas of life that teachers and educational leaders can use to enhance and explore their thinking. In order to progress we must philosophize about learning, question traditional practice, and be resourceful in providing solutions for better education. The only way the education system can improve standards and be at its best is by ensuring that those who govern it don’t stop thinking about it! Innovation is the key to our progress as individuals and society as a whole.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

If we want thinking children, we need thinking teachers’, says Oliver Quinlan at the start of his book. He’s dead right and, systematically and skilfully, he shows us what that means. The result is a book of considerable depth, yet written with a lightness of touch that makes it eminently readable.
Geoff Barton, Head Teacher, King Edward VI School, Suffolk

Whilst good teaching is widely reported as the number one key to raising achievement in any classroom, educating teachers in the art and science of teaching is an expensive business. Simply training them to deliver a curriculum, on the other hand, is a whole lot less troublesome. But we need teachers who can think who can reflect on the process of learning, on pedagogy, on the nature of children and on the role of the professional 21st Century educator and, in doing so, seek to improve their profession on a daily basis.

When we genuinely help our teachers develop into being better thinkers we help our children to become better thinkers too.

Quinlan gets the reader to move on from thinking of learning as acquiring to learning as becoming’; in other words, he is advocating a classroom based around students becoming participants in the subject rather than possessors of certain, closely defined slices of it. This shift in thinking transforms a subject from a collection of knowledge or skills to be gained to a field of discussion, a community and a space.
Dr Jacek Brant, Institute of Education

The main aim of this book is to inspire you to develop yourself as a thinking teacher’, who will naturally help to nurture thinking children with the skills and aspirations to shape a truly successful and fulfilled future.
Helen Mulley, Editor, Teach Secondary magazine

Quinlan makes an impassioned plea in this manifesto for teachers and school leaders everywhere: don’t stop thinking. He makes a convincing case that making time to think is not just the key ingredient of great learning, it’s also in the make-up of our top teachers.
Ewan McIntosh, founder NoTosh.com

Oliver Quinlan is an educator with experience from Early Years and Primary to Higher Education. His background has involved developing the use of new technologies and pedagogical approaches based on authentic learning and communication for children and new and existing teachers. He has been a teacher, a Lecturer in Education and is now Programme Manager for Digital Education at Nesta, working on innovation projects in education.

About the Author:

Oliver Quinlan is an educator with experience from Early Years and Primary to Higher Education. His background has involved developing the use of new technologies and pedagogical approaches based on authentic communication with children and new and existing teachers. Since being a school teacher, Oliver has been a Lecturer in Education and Plymouth University and is now Programme Manager for Digital Education at Nesta, working on innovation projects in Education.

About this edition

• Publisher: Independent Thinking Press
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 1781351082
• ISBN 13: 9781781351086
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 160