finding our way: Developing a shared pedagogy
Finding Our Way: Developing a Shared Pedagogy is a book for teachers and educational leaders everywhere. It is not about arriving at a fixed destination, but about engaging in an ongoing process of collective inquiry, reflection, and meaning making. The process of developing pedagogy together takes courage, and it begins with how the team comes together. If competing priorities, unclear direction, or fragmented practices have left your team feeling stuck, this book recognises the beauty and complexity of creating a shared vision while offering hopeful and practical approaches to guide the way forward.
Rather than offering a prescriptive framework or sequential list of strategies, the book presents a constellation of possibilities that leaders and teams can draw upon as they continually regenerate practice in thoughtful and meaningful ways. It invites educators to orient themselves within the evolving landscape of education while shaping approaches that are collectively personalised, politically conscious, reflexively adaptive, and grounded in the enduring power of joyful curiosity.
WHAT THE AUTHORS ARE SAYING…
“After decades of working alongside teams of teachers in schools and early childhood settings around the world, we came to recognise that one of the rarest and most significant aspects of educational leadership is the process of bringing educators together to discuss, challenge, and co-construct their own shared sense of pedagogy. While much has been written about curriculum, leadership, assessment, and outcomes, far less attention has been given to the deeply collaborative work through which teaching teams build collective meaning around the values, ideas, and intentions that shape their everyday practice.
This book was created to shine a light on that process. Through seven chapters centred on the big ideas that educators place at the heart of their pedagogy, we explore the conversations, tensions, reflections, and collaborative acts of meaning-making that occur as teams work together to define the work they do every day. Rather than presenting pedagogy as fixed or formulaic, we position it as something living, relational, and continuously evolving through dialogue, inquiry, and shared experience.”
“We imagine schools and early childhood settings in which joy, complexity, and curiosity are not sidelined but celebrated; settings in which the time to think, wonder, and explore is protected as a fundamental right. In these spaces, relationships are foundational, assessment is meaningful and embedded within authentic learning processes, and pedagogy is shaped through deep attentiveness to children’s identities, stories, experiences, and possibilities.
In resisting the pull of compliance and efficiency, educators can reclaim the purpose of education as a complex, deeply human, delightfully creative, and community-oriented endeavour. We invite teams to actively cultivate educational environments that honour children as present citizens, value teachers as intellectual and relational professionals, and prioritise deep, reflective practice over performative metrics. Let these spaces become sites of resistance, where relational pedagogies, ethical deliberation, and community connection flourish in defiance of narrow, predetermined, and standardised expectations.”
the reviews are in…
“This is, without doubt, the best book about education I have read in a very long time. As I read Anne and Fiona’s eloquent, passionate and wise words, I felt myself experiencing a kind of relief — a ‘breathing out’. This book offers every educator (not just those in the early years) a much needed and timely reset amid the current, troubling era in education driven largely by neoliberalist values. In stark contrast to the derivative and often questionable advice from self-appointed experts with which our social media is awash, every page of this book reverberates with the deep wisdom that can only come from the authors’ many decades of research and true, lived experience working with children, their families and educators around the world. It has never been more true that educators are struggling to find their way through a sea of uncertainty and a plethora of commercial programs. With this book, Anne and Fiona have given us a ‘north star’ — an opportunity to reflect deeply and critically on our values, our roles, and our purpose. Impeccably researched and highly practical, the tools offered throughout provide numerous ways to collaboratively inquire into and strengthen our practice.
Finding Our Way belongs on every teacher’s bookshelf and is the ideal guide for leaders wanting to support their staff in building a high-quality service to children and their families. I know it will stimulate many vital conversations in staff rooms and centres all over the world. Through this comprehensive body of work, Anne and Fiona remind us teaching is more than a job rather it is a profound vocation through which we can make a real difference to the lives of others. I cannot recommend this outstanding book highly enough.”
- KATH MURDOCH - Education consultant and author
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Work with the authors and collaboratively design professional development for your school, district, or organization.
