Why This Book, Why Now?
We didn’t set out to write a book.
At least, not at first.
For decades, we worked alongside schools and teachers across different countries, cultures, and educational systems. Sometimes we were in the same places at the same time: leading workshops, facilitating professional learning, speaking at conferences. And when that happened, a familiar ritual emerged. At the end of a long, full day, we would find ourselves at a small table somewhere, often over dinner, debriefing. As our friendship and connection strengthened, it soon became a ritual that we both savoured.
Alongside an eagerly anticipated re-connection with each other, those conversations became a kind of quiet through-line in our own thinking, learning and research.
Each time we would talk about the teachers we had met that day. The questions they were asking. The tensions they were carrying. We compared notes: what felt particular to a context, and what seemed to echo, no matter where we were in the world. Again and again, similar themes surfaced: the challenge of bringing a team together; the difficulty of honouring different experiences, strengths, and perspectives while still building coherence; the longing for a shared pedagogy that wasn’t imposed, borrowed, or generic, but culturally grounded and shaped with a particular community in mind.
During those years, we travelled with heavy bags - packed to the brim with our favourite early childhood texts, articles, provocations, and resources that we leaned on again and again. All of these resources were important, each sharing key perspectives and aspects of practice - yet there was not one resource that seemed to ‘have it all’ when it came to shaping a collective pedagogical approach. There we were, often, somewhere between the taxi ride and the dumplings at the end of the day (so many delicious dumplings!), wondering why there had not been a stand-alone resource, that we had found, that supported leaders and their teams to embark on this journey - to develop a shared pedagogy together.
Not a manual.
Not a program.
But something that spoke honestly to the real work teachers were trying to do.
Slowly, across different cities and many delicious meals, the idea began to take shape. If the book we kept wishing for didn’t exist, perhaps we needed to write it ourselves.
It felt like an easy decision - and, at the same time, a significant leap of faith.
Writing, in itself, wasn’t unfamiliar territory for us. We had both been fortunate to contribute to curriculum materials and teacher guidance resources for global education organisations over several decades. But writing this book was different. For the first time, we weren’t responding to a brief. We weren’t constrained by outcomes, frameworks, or publishing templates. We could choose what mattered. We could decide what needed depth, where stories belonged, and which questions were worth lingering with.
We knew early on what the book needed to be - and what it couldn’t be.
It needed to hold some chunky thinking: careful explorations of ideas that teachers and leaders are often asked to enact without ever really having time to examine. It needed to be grounded in practice, peppered with stories from real contexts, real teams, and real moments of uncertainty and possibility. And it needed to offer thinking tools - not answers, but invitations - for leadership teams and teaching communities to work with, together and over time.
Most of all, we wanted to write a book that recognised pedagogy as something that is lively, human and relational. Not a fixed position, but an ongoing, delicate process of coming into alignment with one another - professionally, ethically, and culturally. Like many things in teaching, it’s a process that requires trust, listening, negotiation, and a willingness to sit in tension and complexity.
So, this book grew out of years of conversation - between us, and with teachers all over the world. It is shaped by the belief that shared pedagogy is not something you purchase, prescribe or mandate, but something you build together, slowly and deliberately, in response to values, children, communities, cultures and places.
In many ways, this book is the one we always wanted to pack in our bags. And now, with a mix of immense pride, a little disbelief and a genuine sense of gratitude, it is edging ever-closer to being ready to be shared.
Perhaps this is also an invitation to consider what it might mean to take a similar leap of faith in your work.
What idea, question, or longing have you been carrying for some time, and what might it look like to take one small step toward it?
What support, conversation, or act of trust would you need to put yourself out there in service of something that matters to you?
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