ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an introduction to the growing body of research on departments, helping teachers to critically reflect on their department and identify opportunities for making a positive contribution to their department. It introduces the concept of ‘psychological safety’, and also provides teachers suggestions for ways in which they can help to develop their department into one that is more creative, more constructively critical and ‘psychologically safer’ – a department that is educationally inspiring for both pupils and teachers. Culture is used to mean thebeliefs, values, habits and assumed ways of doing things among communities of teachers who have to deal with similar demands and constraints. The highly complex nature of teaching and education makes it inevitable that teachers have differing beliefs – and varying levels of understanding – about the assumptions underpinning schooling and the ends towards which they are working.
