Mike Fleming’s most recent book for Routledge is Starting Drama Teaching now into its third edition. It looks at the aims and purposes of drama and provides an insight into the theoretical perspectives that underpin practice with a new focus on identifying quality in drama teaching. Throughout his career, Mike’s writing has been valued for its clarity of style and purpose, for being rooted in practical experience and for presenting complex ideas in an accessible way.

Mike’s publications on drama and esthetics have been widely recognized as making a significant contribution to forging a contemporary, inclusive approach to the subject, integrating competing traditions from drama in education and theater. His theoretical influences come from literary theorists, progressive educators, philosophy (particularly the work of Wittgenstein) and classic and contemporary writers on esthetics. He began his writing career with a series of six text books that supported a creative approach to the implementation of the English national curriculum. He has since published extensively on the teaching of English and drama including nine books (with different editions of two of them) and a large numbers of journal articles and chapters in books. His research interests widened when he joined the intercultural research group in Durham, an association which has led to articles, chapters and a further four co-edited books.

More recently Mike has been part of a core group developing policy on language education at the Council of Europe. This work seeks to advance values of plurilingual and intercultural education as a human right throughout the 47 member states. For this project Mike has written a number of position papers on language teaching, assessment and the use of descriptors in curriculum planning. The project has led to the development of a ‘platform of resources and references for plurilingual and intercultural education’ which seeks to provide support as well as a focus for dialog and sharing of perspectives. He has been rapporteur for three major Council of Europe intergovernmental conferences.

In 2000 Mike was commissioned by Creative Partnerships to write a short monograph on Arts Education and Creativity. He has also contributed a chapter to the recent Routledge International Handbook of Creative Learning. These publications were well received and helped to motivate Mike’s latest project. His sole-authored book The Arts in Education: An Introduction to Aesthetics, Theory and Pedagogy will be published by Routledge in 2012. Within education the arts inspire considerable commitment and passion but this is not always matched by clarity of understanding. This book will address key theoretical questions associated with arts education and explain how these are related to practice.