Teacher education for transformative agency: Critical perspectives on design, content and pedagogy

In this fascinating volume dedicated to illustrating transformative agency in teacher education by means of critical perspectives on design, content and pedagogy, editors Carina America, Nazeem Edwards and Maureen Robinson recognise the need to bring foreword the voices of teacher educators in the field, giving agency to and highlighting successful practices in culture-rich classrooms. Reading the introduction, I was reminded of the repeated call by James Martin (2004:7) to not only look at what is wrong with the world but instead provide “a complementary focus on community, taking into account how people get together and make room for themselves…in ways that redistribute power without necessarily struggling against it”. Hence, the focus of this book is on educational practices that inspire, encourage and revive us. In doing so, the book foregrounds the role of auto-ethnography in the telling of transformative stories by teacher educators that possess the knowledge and vocabulary to articulate these experiences largely within a critical pedagogy frame.