11 - Valuing and Building on Southern Expertise

Summary

This chapter addresses two theoretical issues of importance to this book. The first involves ‘Southern theory’ in the social sciences, discussing the extent to which the author’s research may contribute in this emerging area. It argues that, by presenting concrete suggestions for how we may learn ‘from the South’ (not simply ‘about the South’), it may help to provide the foundations for what might be called ‘practical Southern theory’ in the social sciences. Example constructs and terms are offered for how this may be achieved, both from this study and others. The second area of theoretical interest involves how teacher expertise studies may contribute to a wider systematic and sustainable framework for building context-specific understandings of teacher expertise. The proposed framework is oriented around collaborative inquiry and practitioner research and may contribute both to the identification of appropriate good practices for a given context, and to supporting and encouraging practitioner-led (bottom up) teacher professional development within the wider educational system.