The Turning Point for the Teaching Profession: Growing Expertise and Evaluative Thinking

A revolution is happening in education, with leaders and teachers now asked to focus on learning, to develop collaborative teams to impact on students, to use and raise professional standards, and to identify and esteem expertise in our profession. With new demands relating to technological advances, changing demographics, internationalism, and the inclusion of ‘twenty-first-century skills,’ there is pressure on schools to deliver greater and deeper success with more students.

The Turning Point aims to present the factors needed to affect real change for school systems, in classrooms, and in the teaching profession by:

• Arguing for the establishment of teaching as a true 'profession' alongside areas such as medicine or law.

• Identifying the expertise fundamental to the meeting demands of schools.

• Elaborating on evaluative thinking and clinical practice as the basis of this new profession.

• Outlining core levers of change to show how teachers can have profound impacts on educational, medical, and social dimensions of students.

This book is essential reading for teachers, school leaders, education policymakers, teacher candidates, and teacher educators. Those working in affiliated professions, such as adolescent psychologists and health workers, will also find aspects of the book relevant to their work.

Field Rickards was Dean of Melbourne Graduate School of Education for 13 years, and in that time led a revolution of its teacher education program, which moved from the traditional model to one based on clinical practice and evaluative thinking. He was also a member of the Australian Government task force in 2015 (Classroom Ready) that has led to major transformations in teacher education across Australia.

John Hattie is Laureate Professor at MGSE and has a background in measurement and research design. He wrote a series of books based on the Visible Learning® research that have now sold over a million copies and he is chair of the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership, which has the major responsibility for implementing the Classroom Ready recommendations.

Catherine Reid has a long career as a teacher and teacher educator. For more than a decade, she designed and implemented programs in language and literacy education, university-school partnerships, and clinical teaching at the Melbourne Graduate School of Education.