Book review: Review of Empowering teachers for equitable and sustainable education: action research, teacher agency, and online community, by Maria Teresa Tatto & Lindsey Brown

Clare Brooks, Professor of Education at the University of Cambridge and Honorary Professor at the University of Cumbria, reviews the book 'Empowering teachers for equitable and sustainable education: action research, teacher agency, and online community', edited by Maria Teresa Tatto & Lindsey Brown (Routledge, 2025).

Empowering Teachers for Equitable and Sustainable Education: Action Research, Teacher Agency, and Online Community is a timely, ambitious, and—most importantly—transparent book. It sets itself  a demanding task: to show how a fully online Master of  Education can induct working teachers into rigorous, justice-oriented research that not only investigates inequity but helps to counter it in situated ways. It succeeds, and in doing so it makes a rare contribution to the teacher-education literature: an account of  a theorised programme model including a granular account of  pedagogy and assessment design, with an illustrative set of  practitioner-research studies that embody the programme’s commitments in diverse contexts. Across the volume, the argument is clear: teachers’ learning is made possible when they are enabled to produce authoritative knowledge about their own practice and systems, not simply to consume it. Action research is shown to be a key driver for change for teaching professionals particularly when orientated to issues of equity.Empowering Teachers for Equitable and Sustainable Education: Action Research, Teacher Agency, and Online Communityis a timely, ambitious, and—most importantly—transparentbook. It sets itself a demanding task: to show how a fully online Master of Education can induct working teachers into rigorous, justice-oriented research that not only investigates inequity but helps to counter it in situated ways. It succeeds, and in doing so it makes a rare contribution to the teacher-education literature: an account of a theorised programme model including a granular account of pedagogy and assessment design, with an illustrative set of practitioner-research studies that embody the programme’s commitments in diverse contexts. Across the volume, the argument is clear: teachers’ learning is made possible when they are enabled to produce authoritative knowledge about their own practice and systems, not simply to consume it. Action research is shown to be a key driver for change for teaching professionals particularly when orientated to issues of equity.