Our most recently purchased ebooks section is full of a wide range of interesting titles that have been added to the virtual shelves of our Education Ebook Collection including these recent publications written by members of the Faculty.
First we head off to the Leadership & School Improvement section with a chapter written by Haira Gandolfi.
Beasy, K., Maguire, M., te Riele, K., & Towers, E. (Eds.). (2024). Innovative school reforms: International perspectives on reimagining theory, policy, and practice for the future. Springer.
Chapter: A decolonial future for education and schools (pp. 131-152). Written by Haira Gandolfi
‘This book brings together contributions from across the USA, UK and Australia, with proposals of changes/reforms to schools that would maximize learning for all students, while addressing persisting issues within current schooling socio-historically driven by race, class, gender, and socio-economic inequities. Here different authors then seek to contribute with forward-thinking chapters (grounded in their own cultural/ economic/political setting(s)) that can guide the future reforms to the education process, identifying those things/practices that are currently dysfunctional within education as we build a case for our proposed reformed practices.
In my chapter, in particular, I explore on the role of educational ideas and practices within colonial projects, and on their legacies to contemporary schooling, including as tools of epistemic oppression, physical control, and racialization. In this chapter, I argue that acknowledging and challenging these legacies is imperative to those seeking to rethink the future of education and schools from Global North spaces that have occupied a central position in colonial histories, such as the UK, where such legacies have been embedded in curricula, educational experiences of racialised communities, teachers’ education and work. I first outline such roles and legacies of educational ideas and practices within Western colonial projects across the last five centuries or so. I then move onto exploring – through a coalition possibilities (or intergroup dialogue) approach – what different voices, practices and ideas from and surrounding the field of Decolonial Studies, such as radical southern, indigenous and Black pedagogies, can contribute to rethinking the future of education, paying specific attention to what decolonial educational systems, pedagogies and curricula can look like.’
Haira Gandolfi
Our next section to highlight is Children’s Literature Criticism with chapters by Blanka Grzegorczyk and Karen Coats.
Spencer, E., & Craig, J. D. (Eds.). (2024). Family in children’s and young adult literature. Routledge.
Chapter 13: A taste for the secret: Tracing secretive families in Malorie Blackman’s fiction (pp. 171-182). Written by Blanka Grzegorczyk
‘Do you have a taste for the secret? Blanka Grzegorczyk’s chapter in Family in Children’s and Young Adult Literature looks at the representations of family in the works of former Children’s Laureate Malorie Blackman through the lens of truth-telling and secrecy. From her fairy-tale revision in Blueblood (2020), through her middle-grade books such as A.N.T.I.D.O.T.E. (1996) and Pig-Heart Boy (1997), to her young adult novels like the Noughts and Crosses series (2001–2021) and Noble Conflict (2013), Blackman’s fictions of family are discussed as making a taste for the secret look like a pursuit of fantasy of domination and control, of human dissection, and of full access to the minds of others. At the same time, they are seen to provide revisions of traditional understandings of truth and knowability woven deep into the social fabric. Considering the uses of concealed and recovered knowledges in these texts, Grzegorczyk argues, helps reveal how questions of family loyalty, secrecy, and betrayal have continued to shape contemporary writing for the young.’
Blanka Grzegorczyk
This Autumn, the British Library has recently loaned its Malorie Blackman collection to the Time and Tide Museum in Great Yarmouth.
Our second Children’s Literature Criticism publication moves into the subsections Genre & Non-Mimetic Fiction and Post/Non-Human (Animal, Monster, Environment, Technology).
Horner, A., & Zlosnik, S. (Eds.). (2024). Comic gothic: An Edinburgh companion. Edinburgh University Press.
Chapter 10: The comic gothic in youth literature: From the explained supernatural to the ‘whimsical macabre’ (pp. 150-163). Written by Karen Coats
Our next publication can be found in both the Gender & Education and LGBTQ+ & Sexuality sections with a chapter written by Tabitha Millet.
Bustillos Morales, J. (Ed.). (2025). Questioning gender politics: Contextualising educational disparities in uncertain times. Routledge.
Chapter: Making sense of the need to queer curriculum, pedagogy, and practice (pp. 30-42). Written by Tabitha Millet
‘Over the past ten years, schools in the UK have welcomed support from LGBTQIA+ charities to provide anti-bullying education during assembly days and tutor time, yet arguably such measures have fallen short of troubling the heteronormativity embedded within school structures, leaving deeper explorations of gender and sexuality uninvestigated within the formal curriculum. Therefore, over the course of this chapter, I will be discussing a pedagogy that aims to adopt aspects of queer theory, as a way of moving beyond and queering current anti-bullying provisions in schools to disrupt heteronormativity. The aim is to propose a pedagogy which queers holistically, which means not only focusing on content discussed but also on how that content is explored with students. This queering of pedagogy may be more important than ever, as schools face extreme government accountability and educational standards that are overwhelmingly market driven, which has arguably restricted how knowledge is explored and created in schools.’
Tabitha Millet
Next we move onto the Second Language Teaching & Learning section with a publication written by Phung Dao.
Dao, P. (2024). Learner engagement in online second language classrooms. Springer.
‘This book examines current research on online instructed second language acquisition (SLA), specifically focusing on exploring online learner engagement from various theoretical perspectives, discussing conceptual and methodological issues, synthesizing research on the role of learner engagement in online L2 classroom interaction, and critically assessing its connection to teaching practices across different L2 settings. The book is intended for a wide audience, including undergraduate and postgraduate students in Applied Linguistics, TESOL, and Second Language Education who seek to understand the significance of learner engagement in online L2 learning, and researchers interested in staying updated on recent findings regarding the role of learner engagement in virtual L2 classrooms.’
Phung Dao
Our penultimate publication takes us to the Asylum & Migration section with a chapter written by Yongcan Liu and Lottie Hoare.
Pinson, H., Bunar, N., & Devine, D. (Eds.). (2023). Research handbook on migration and education. Edward Elgar.
Chapter 14: Complementary schools as heritage language communities of practice: Reaching beyond language maintenance (pp. 203-220). Written by Yongcan Liu and Lottie Hoare
‘Being aware of children not only speaking home languages at home but also in their community language schools at weekends or after school is often ignored or not even known about by teachers in mainstream schools in England and this research was very rewarding as it deepened our insight into the teachers and pupils experiences. ‘
Lottie Hoare
This chapter examines the multiple purposes of community-based language schools for migrant-background pupils, drawing on stakeholders’ views in six such schools teaching Arabic, Bulgarian, Chinese, Korean, Polish, and Spanish, respectively. We argue that the full range of purposes of these schools has not yet been fully recognised by stakeholders and policymakers. We, therefore, seek to raise awareness by providing an evidence-based understanding of different dimensions of complementary schooling including Social Integration, Emotional Wellbeing, Language Maintenance, Educational Opportunity, and Cultural Inheritance (the SELEC model). The chapter concludes by theorising community schools as ‘systems conveners’ (Wenger-Trayer & Wenger-Trayer, 2021) and complementary schooling as cultivating heritage language communities of practice (see also Wenger et al., 2002).
Yongcan Liu
Wenger, E., McDermott, R. A., & Snyder, W. (2002). Cultivating communities of practice: A guide to managing knowledge. Harvard Business School Press.
Wenger-Trayner, E., & Wenger-Trayner, B. (2021). Systems convening: A crucial form of leadership for the 21st century. Social Learning Lab.
We finish off this showcase by going to the Early Childhood Education and Primary Education sections with a publication edited by Sara Baker and Paul Ramchandani.
Durning, A., Baker, S., & Ramchandani, P. (Eds.). (2025). Empowering play in primary education. Routledge.
‘Empowering Play in Primary Education is a volume of essays dedicated to our late colleague, David Whitebread. Excellent pedagogy is showcased in this collection, giving space for teachers and learners to explore, enact, reflect, adapt… in short, to play. Authors of the essays include headteachers, clinicians, teachers, and researchers looking at play from a variety of perspectives across several phases of education, showing that play isn’t just for young children on the playground, but fundamental to everyone.’
Sara Baker
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