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This compilation of essays explores contemporary issues in educational practitioner inquiry and action research from the perspective of both university-based and school-based authors. The essays address practical, political and theoretical topics.

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Susan Groundwater-Smith is one of the most influential voices in the world of educational practitioner inquiry. The convener in Australia of the Coalition of Knowledge Building Schools, she is a staunch advocate of innovative methods of practitioner inquiry with a particular emphasis upon student voice and the use of images in capturing young people´s perspectives on their learning experience. So it is more than fitting that this unique text on practitioner inquiry and teacher professional learning is dedicated to her.

Rethinking Education Practice Through Reflexive Inquiry is a compilation of essays that explore contemporary issues in practitioner inquiry and action research from the perspective of both university-based and school-based authors. The essays discuss the practical, political and theoretical dimensions of practitioner inquiry, advancing the argument that the adoption of an inquiring approach to practice is both an integral dimension of teachers´ work in the modern school as well as critical to effective and authentic professional learning. And the essays draw on the work of Groundwater-Smith to demonstrate the benefits brought to bear on schools, teachers and learners when the complex nature of the relationship between inquiry and practice is understood and acted upon in pursuit of democratic knowledge interests.

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Foreword, Jennifer Nias.- Nicole Mockler & Judyth Sachs, Rethinking educational practice through reflexive inquiry: An introduction.- Part 1: Practitioner Inquiry.- Stephen Kemmis, A self-reflective practitioner and a new definition of critical participatory action research.- Bridget Somekh, Localization or globalization? The dynamic variations of action research .- Petra Ponte and Jan Ax, Inquiry-based professional learning in educational praxis: knowing why, what and how.- Michael Fielding, Patterns of partnership: student voice, intergenerational learning and democratic fellowship .- Lynda Kelly & Pauline Fitzgerald, Cooperation, collaboration, challenge: how to work with the changing nature of educational audiences in museums .- Greg Elliott, Creating spaces for practitioner research: Strategic leadership to create a third space for practitioner enquiry in an authentic professional learning community.- John Furlong, The English Masters in Teaching and Learning: a new arena for practitioner inquiry?.- Part 2: Teachers´ Work and Learning.- Nicole Mockler, Becoming and ´being´ a teacher: understanding teacher professional identity.- Anne Campbell, Connecting inquiry and professional learning: creating the conditions for authentic, sustained learning.- Judyth Sachs, Skilling or emancipating? Metaphors for continuing teacher professional development.- Colleen McLaughlin, Towards an ecology of teacher collaboration on research.-Jane Hunter & Jane Mitchell, The insider and outsider model of professional learning.- Kris Needham, Professional learning in an across school network: an epidemic of passion?.-Phillipa Cordingley, Extending connections: linking support for teachers engaging in and using research with what´s known about teacher learning and development.- Bob Lingard, Changing Teachers´ Work in Australia.- Postscripts, Susan Groundwater-Smith, Vale Shirley Grundy.- Nicole Mockler & Judyth Sachs, A final word.

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