Big Fish, Little Fish Teaching and Learning in the Middle Years

Big Fish, Little Fish: Teaching and Learning in the Middle Years provides pre-service and early career teachers with a pathway to understanding the needs of students as they make the important transition from primary to secondary schooling. The book explores contemporary challenges for teaching and learning in the middle years, with a focus on student experience, identity, engagement and resilience. Key issues, such as teaching academically at-risk students, the impact of education policy on middle years students, and teacher preparation and identity, are given comprehensive coverage. Unique to this text is its focus on and analysis of the history of middle-years education, as well as its in-depth discussion of the experiences of young Indigenous and M?ori students. Drawing on the wide-ranging expertise of its contributors, Big Fish, Little Fish prepares pre-service teachers to best meet the needs of students as they enter the challenging middle years of their education.

Part I. Introduction: 1. Challenges for teaching and learning in the middle years Susan Groundwater-Smith and Nicole Mockler; 2. Questions arising from the history of schooling young people in the middle years Craig Campbell and Kay Whitehead; Part II. The Needs of Learners in the Middle Years: 3. Teaching academically at-risk students in middle school: the roles of explicit instruction and guided discovery learning Andrew J. Martin; 4. Success after (dis)continuous transfer? (Re)imaginative praxis for pedagogy, curriculum and assessment Lisa Hunter; 5. A fair go and student agency in the middle years classroom Susan Groundwater-Smith; 6. Consulting young people in the middle years in New Zealand Jenny Poskitt; 7. High possibility classrooms in the middle years: a model for reform Jane Hunter; Part III. Curriculum, Pedagogy and Assessment in the Middle Years: 8. Teaching strategies that encourage student effort in Year 8 and 9 Sara Murray and Jane Mitchell; 9. Visceral pedagogies: learning to teach middle years in the margins Sam Sellar; 10. The challenges of testing accountability: understanding limitations and negotiating consequences Greg Thompson; 11. Indigenous learners in the middle years Peter Buckskin; 12. The experiences of Māori students in the middle years Angus Macfarlane; 13. Changing scenarios for teaching and learning in middle years Margaret Mulcahy; Part IV. Preparing Teachers for the Middle Years: 14. Teacher identity in the middle years Donna Pendergast; 15. Swimming up-stream: struggles in teacher education Sally Knipe; 16. Leading teacher professional learning in the middle years Lyn Kirkby; Part V. Conclusion: 17. The middle years as a site for reform: from local to global Nicole Mockler.

Susan Groundwater-Smith is an Honorary Professor in the Faculty of Education and Social Work at the University of Sydney.
Dr Nicole Mockler is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Education at the University of Newcastle, New South Wales.