Introduction to Teaching

An Introduction to Teaching is intended for students on pre-service and in-service courses who are training to be classroom teachers. It aims to inform teachers' decision making, planning, reflection and evaluation from a psychological perspective. It starts from the premise that an understanding of psychology can offer many benefits to teachers, and that teachers and psychologists have hugely overlapping interests in learning, communication, intellectual growth and human relations.

Too many textbooks present psychological theory in abstract terms and do not successfully relate to the actual practice of teachers. Throughout, An Introduction to Teaching explicitly brings this psychological research to bear on the range of practical problems routinely met by teachers in the classroom. It offers psychological perspectives to teachers in a critical and practical framework: critical in the sense that limitations and controversies are exposed as well as strengths and ramifications; practical in the sense that psychological perspectives are used to help learner teachers understand their situation and their options in promoting children's learning. Each contributor is an expert in their field and each defines the main pedagogic issues in the light of most recent research and thinking.