This article examines teachers' work as part of the everyday life of classrooms, schools and communities--as curriculum design, dynamic pedagogies and as an oeuvre which is assembled over time. One of the hardest aspects of the everyday work of teachers, and perhaps one of the most under-rated and under-studied, is listening, really listening.…

The fact that children growing up in poverty are likely to be in the lower ranges of achievement on standardised literacy tests is not a new phenomenon. Internationally there are a myriad of intervention and remedial programmes designed to address this problem with a range of effects. Frequently, sustainable reforms are curtailed by deficit views…