In Praise of Context: Teaching the Way We Aspire to Teach This is a cross-post of a piece that I wrote today for the Canadian Education Association website. It relates to the recently released CEA/CTF study: Teaching the Way We Aspire to Teach: Now and in the Future. We live in a period where a scientific perspective on school reform has come to dominate the education discourse in this country. You know the drill: find the best research-based knowledge about teaching and learning and work to move it into the practice of each and every teacher. After all, if it works, it works! It's this perspective that has grounded and inspired much of the work with which most school districts across Canada have busied themselves over the past decade or more. It's not necessarily wrong; in fact, its a very hopeful step to developing a more enhanced sense of professionalism. But, as a perspective, it's incomplete. I fear that, in an effort to get to what is knowable, usable, and replicable about teaching and learning, we've pushed to the side the fact that schools exist in a highly nuanced and richly woven context where goals, interests and measures of quality collide on a daily basis. Some of these conflicts are very recognizable, but others are hidden deep in the DNA of this place we call school. There is a sense in which Teaching the Way We Aspire to Teach: Now and In the Future is an attempt to explore more