This two volume collection consists of a number of essays originally published in Critical Pedagogy Networker between 1988-2002 in an Australian context that drew in a number of significant international as well as local scholars. The purpose in bringing this collection into existence is to make available what amount to a number of quite remarkable ideas that have hitherto had only limited visibility, and to do that in a context where the ideas have even more veracity than when they were originally written. The intent is to allow a number of key ideas to be revisited in a contemporary context that is arguably even more troubled than when the papers were initially conceived. The focus of all of the papers in the two volumes is around what it means to be a critical scholar/practitioner in a variety of educational contexts. Organized broadly around the theme of criticality and teachers' work, this first volume cascades through a number of contemporarily relevant themes involving three aspects: (i) developing a sense of criticality; (ii) an analysis of some cases of criticality in practice; (iii) a concluding section, involving a more extended discussion of what criticality means for teachers' work. John Smyth is Emeritus Research Professor, Federation University Australia