Rethinking the middle years: Early adolescents, schooling and digital culture

Amongst the wave of new Middle Years publications that seem to have turned into a flood in recent months, this book is a refreshing challenge and change. While most new texts provide pre-service and in-service teachers with a range of strategies to meet the ever-growing list of adolescent needs, this book presents a persuasive argument for Middle Years educators to take a step back and re-consider the future of middle schooling in Australia. Clearly drawing on the author’s empirical work in the Beyond the Middle (Luke et al., 2003) report (which found the Middle Years of schooling to be ‘unfinished’ and ‘exhausted’), this book considers the re-emerging interest in the Middle Years as an opportunity to engage with the diverse and rapidly changing contexts in which adolescents live, to develop more satisfying and challenging pedagogical experiences. The author states that her main goal is to describe the scope of contemporary Middle Years provision in Australia and in doing so to provide a critique that will encourage educators to rethink current philosophies and practice.