The Good Life of Teaching: An Ethics of Professional Practice -- Contents -- Foreword by Richard Smith -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction: Why We Need a Virtue Ethics of Teaching -- Saints and scoundrels -- A brief for teacherly self-cultivation -- From the terrain of teaching to the definition of professional ethics -- Outline of the argument -- Part I: The Virtues of Vocation: From Moral professionalism to Practical Ethics -- 1: Work and Flourishing: Williams' Critique of Morality and its Implications for Professional Ethics -- Retrieving Socrates' question -- Modern moral myopia -- What do moral agents want? -- From moral professionalism to professional ethics -- 2: Worlds of Practice: MacIntyre's Challenge to Applied Ethics -- The architecture of MacIntyre's moral theory -- A closer look at internal goods -- The practicality of ethical reflection -- What counts as a practice: The proof, the pudding, and the recipe -- Boundary conditions: Practitioners, managers, interpreters, and fans -- 3: Labour, Work, and Action: Arendt's Phenomenology of Practical Life -- Arendt's singular project -- Defining the deed -- Hierarchy and interdependence in the vita activa -- Praxis in the professions -- 4: A Question of Experience: Dewey and Gadamer on Practical Wisdom -- The constant gardener -- The existential and aesthetic dimensions of vocation -- Our dominant vocation -- Practical wisdom and the circle of experience -- The open question -- Part II: A Virtue Ethics for Teachers: Problems and prospects -- 5: The Hunger Artist: Pedagogy and the Paradox of Self-Interest -- A blind spot in the educational imagination -- The hunger artist -- The very idea of a helping profession -- This ripeness of self -- 6: Working Conditions: The Practice of Teaching and the Institution of School -- A prima facie case for teaching as a practice -- MacIntyre's objection.

Schools as surroundings -- 7: The Classroom Drama: Teaching as Endless Rehearsal and Cultural Elaboration -- Education as the drama of cultural renewal -- A false lead -- Teaching as labour, work, and action -- Education, shelter, and mediation -- Teaching as endless rehearsal -- Teaching as cultural elaboration -- 8: Teaching as Experience: Toward a Hermeneutics of Teaching and Teacher Education -- Teaching as vocational environment -- Batch processing, kitsch culture, and other obstacles to teacher vocation -- The syntax of educational claims -- The shape of humanistic conversation -- Horizons of educational inquiry -- Teacher education for practical wisdom -- References -- Index.