This book shows that teaching is a far more interesting and far more complex phenomenon than many contemporary views about teaching seem to suggest. Gert Biesta addresses five questions: what teaching is, how teaching works, where authority in teaching lies, what thoughtful teaching is, and how much teachers can and should say about their own teaching. He grapples with two competing popular views about teaching, firstly that traditional teaching is an outdated idea and secondly that teaching is the most important 'in-school factor' with regard to student achievement. Biesta argues that what is lacking in both accounts is a sufficiently nuanced conception and theory of teaching. In response to these tensions, the book offers a theory of teaching that does not provide recipes for action but rather helps us to see what teaching is, and what it can be.

Gert Biesta is Professor of Public Education in the Centre for Public Education and Pedagogy at Maynooth University, Ireland, and Professor of Educational Theory and Pedagogy at the Moray House School of Education and Sport, University of Edinburgh, UK. He is also a member of the Education Council of the Netherlands.