ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in subsequent chapters of this book. One of the aims of this book is to help re-professionalise teachers and question approaches to curriculum imposition. The emphasis is on enhancing students learning, and prospective and experienced teachers practice, through a focus on curriculum design, classroom subject knowledge, subject task design, classroom organisation, assessment, student engagement and questions of agency in the learning process. Designing classroom tasks to enable learning requires the teacher to attend to both the design of the learning environment and to conceptual design. Vygotsky's followers Davydov and Elkonin used the phrase 'learning activity' to describe the design of activities that address the development of students grasp and use of higher order theoretical concepts. Harry Daniels suggests an inherent danger in the lack of theoretical clarity in the use of the term 'scaffolding' that can render the term meaningless in the context of teaching.
