Teaching Middle Years: Rethinking curriculum, pedagogy and assessment (Second Edition) edited by Donna Pendergast and Nan Bahr

As any teacher in this stage of a child’s development knows, the middle years are crucial to a child’s development and learning. It is a time that has significant consequences for ongoing educational success.

Teaching Middle Years offers a systematic overview of the philosophy, principals and issues in middle schooling. It includes contributions from academics and school based practitioners on intellectual and emotional development in early adolescence, pedagogy, curriculum and assessment of middle year students.

It is a book that has been written for teachers, student teachers, education leaders and policy makers. It is an essential resource for anyone involved in educating young adolescents and because it is written in Australia, it is more relevant to teaching in New Zealand than many other overseas publications. All of the contributors also have experience working in this field, and each chapter has been peer reviewed adding more weight to the material.

Possibly this book comes across as a bit too theoretical at times and perhaps could be said to be slightly too teacher focused, but overall, Teaching Middle Years is an informative resource with clearly defined chapters and extremely relevant material. Whether you chose just to read chapters of particular relevance or interest or you read the whole book, you will find it a useful tool to help you improve your teaching in the middle years.

RRP $69.99
Published and distributed by Allen and Unwin