Detailed accounts of two influential initiatives of the 1990s, whose educational and political lessons remain highly relevant: systemic and pedagogic reform in one of Britain s largest cities, and the controversial three wise men government enquiry into primary teaching to which it led.

Alexander's controversial and widely-read report on primary education in Leeds has now been revised as a major study of policy initiatives in primary education and their impact on practice. The book examines an ambitious programme of local reform aimed at improving teaching and learning in the...

Getting to the heart of primary education: six contrasting studies of teachers, teaching, learning and classroom discourse, all set in a historical frame. Contains extended lesson transcripts for re-analysis.

The five studies in this book span the tumultuous period from the mid 1980s to the mid 1990s. This was a time when the dominant educational ideas and practices of the previous two decades were being questioned and primary teachers were being catapulted from the Plowden era into the very different ethos of the National Curriculum.
The first four studies portray the ideas,...