The time has come to challenge many of the age-old assumptions about schools and school learning. In this timely book, leading thinkers from around the world offer a different vision of what schools are for. They suggest new ways of thinking about citizenship, lifelong learning, and the role of schools in democratic societies. They question many of the tenets of school effectiveness studies which have been so influential in shaping policy, but are essentially backward looking and premised on school structures as we have known them. Each chapter confronts some of the myths of schooling we have cherished for too long and asks us to think again and to do schools differently.

John Macbeath OBE is the Chair of Educational Leadership at the University of Cambridge and Director of the Wallenberg Centre and Leadership for Learning: the Cambridge Network.
Lejf Moos is Associate Professor and Director of the Research Programme on Professional Development and Leadership at the Danish University of Education, Copehagen. He is also President Elect of the International Congress on School Effectiveness and Improvement.

Introduction 1. Democratic Learning and Schools Effectiveness: Are They By Any Chance Related? 2. Reforming for Democratic Schooling: Learning For the Future Not Yearning For the Past 3. Democratic Values, Democratic Schools: Reflections in an International Context 4. Learning Democracy by Sharing Power: The Student Role in Effectiveness and Improvement 5. Children's Participation in a Democratic Learning Environment 6. The Darker Side of Democracy: A Visual Approach to Democratising Teaching and Learning 7. Democratic Leadership in an Age of Managerial Accountability 8. Democratic Leadership for School Improvement in Challenging Contexts 9. Learning in Knowledge Society: The Democratic Dimension