This chapter reviews relevant literature and introduces the evolving theoretical framework for GIMMS. Educational innovation and change in the project was conceptualised as pedagogical and political text, a deliberative discourse crossing borders within and between schools and going beyond schools to other institutions (Giroux, 1988, 2009; Aronowitz & Giroux, 1991; Mc Laren, 1991 a,b; Pinar et al., 2008). GIMMS sought to support and challenge teachers inside a web of democratic mentoring relationships of learning with colleagues, teacher educators, and sometimes others, such as policymakers. It challenged tradiational models of teaching and teacher education and gave teachers 'thinking time', direct access to research and up-to-date subject knowledge and 'findings', 'structures', 'supports' and deisgnated public incubation spaces to explore their teaching and learning. It provided teacher educators with a unique cross-national opportunity to re-consider their own developing pedagogy in assisting teachers become agents of educational innovation and change (Loughran, 2006).
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