Across the world educators and policy makers are reaching for solutions to the very slippery problem of how to ensure consistency and quality in our education systems. There is an unwillingness to accept and live with uncertainty and yet each solution throws up more problems - many of them unexpected. This is because education, indeed the human brain, is a complex adaptive system in which outcomes emerge as more than a sum of their component parts.
Drawing predominantly on the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze, Becoming Mobius argues that teachers can and should learn to love uncertainty and complexity; that they should seek to become pedagogical activists working within a system while remaining outside of it - becoming like a Mobius strip both in and out. It argues that the interesting stuff in classrooms exists in the minute details, the pivotal moments of interactions, in relationships and in the affective dimension and that having faith in becoming attuned, and listening to the ‘gutterances’ of others leads teaching into a new world of possibility.
This is an honest, challenging and incredibly profound book that makes you stop and think - deeply - about what you do, why you do it and the effect it has. You will never look at teaching in the same light again.
Debra Kiddtaught for 23 years in primary, secondary and higher education settings. She is the author of three previous books - Teaching: Notes from the Front Line, Becoming Mobius and Uncharted Territories - and believes more than anything else that 'the secret to great teaching is to make it matter'. Debra has a doctorate in education and co-founded and organised Northern Rocks, one of the largest annual teaching and learning conferences in the UK.
View Debra's profile in Schools Week, October 2014.
Click here to listen in on Debra's podcast with Pivotal Education on 'teaching, learning and politics'.
Click here to watch a video interview with Debra as part of The Education Foundation's series of Education Britain Conversations.
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