Research and writing on secondary education is often a specialised treatment of isolated themes. This reader draws together the most important work of recent years across the whole range of themes to give students and new teachers an overview of the most important issues and challenges facing secondary teachers in the 1990s. It looks at the central players - the children and the teachers, at the classrooms in which they work together, at the curriculum, both implicit and overt, and at the wider community and political context of secondary education. Throughout, the reader addresses the crucial issues of effectiveness, quality and achievement and how these will influence the work of the secondary teacher in the coming years.