The formative years of life provide the most important elements to equip children with the capacity to learn. Therefore, underpinnings for art pedagogy for Australian First Nations early childhood education should ensure that educators and teachers may contribute environmental foundations for children’s learning while ensuring that children have effective resources to prepare them for an ever-changing world. The challenge is balancing the expectations of the home with the expectations of teaching and learning in early childhood educational settings.

In this chapter we extend that discussion by considering classroom management in relation to creating engaging and motivating learning environments. Engagement and motivation are essential to young people’s success in various educational contexts, including early years, primary and secondary settings, and they can only occur in positive teaching and learning environments. Establishing and fostering such environments through effective classroom management is a source of concern for many preservice teachers, and this will continue to be the case as teachers progress throughout their career. This chapter provides an overview of various proactive strategies that serve to promote positive teaching and learning environments along with strategies for responding to student disengagement or off-task behaviour. Positive student–teacher relationships will also be described as an essential component for engaging and motivating students’ learning.

High-quality teachers and teaching are essential for quality educational outcomes, and ultimately Australia’s economic and social wellbeing. This is recognised globally and has resulted in the development, implementation and enforcement of teacher standards to improve teacher quality and teacher professionalisation. The Australian Professional Standards for Teachers (APST) (Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership and the Initial Teacher Education Program Standards were developed to enhance and regulate teacher preparation and the quality of graduates. The standards are used by state and territory regulators to describe minimum levels of competence for teacher registration in Australia. Initial teacher education (ITE) programs now have specified entry requirements, including levels of academic achievement and dispositional attributes. However, the focus on preservice education to improve teacher quality is one-sided, overlooking the inservice issues that impact teacher quality, such as teacher shortages, pay and employment conditions.

This chapter will add a further layer of understanding from what you have read in Chapter 7 (diversity, inclusion, and social justice) and Chapters 8 and 9 (classroom management and creating positive learning environments). However, this chapter will focus on one particular group of learners: those who have lived through complex trauma. The reason why an entire chapter is dedicated to this one group is a growing understanding that we need a different way of thinking, believing, planning and acting if we are to be successful in improving the educational and life outcomes for these children and young people. We also know that a trauma-informed approach to educating and supporting these young learners can enhance the personal and professional well-being of the adults working hard to deliver education programs, which is vital.

This chapter recommends an approach to teaching art in the early years that begins with an underpinning layer of post-structuralist theory. Post-structuralist theories help to examine and question some heartfelt beliefs about art in the early years. There are a number of different theories for teaching the arts with young children. Mostly, it is the role of the teacher that is the focus for examination and analysis. Educators can use theory about discourse and the construction of ideas, thoughts and practices to challenge taken-for-granted beliefs and consciously decide on ways they can support children’s arts learning and their wellbeing.

In this book, we provide a positive, futures-oriented approach to assist you to build on your knowledge, skills, strengths and abilities so that you are prepared for teaching in the current era and able to embrace the many rewards associated with working in the educational sphere. Cognisant of the standardised and high-stakes accountability contexts within which teachers now work, the book will assist in preparing you to understand, and to begin to address, the mandatory accreditation requirements for teaching in Australia. From the outset, you will also be encouraged to develop and reflect on your own personal and professional philosophies of teaching. This chapter introduces some of the literature, research and practices that will help students learn about and reflect on teaching and the teaching profession. It also introduces relevant information about Australia’s school communities and school structures so students can best understand the complex and diverse nature of the work involved in teaching children across the full learning spectrum from early years to senior secondary.

Digital technologies influence every facet of our lives – education, health, leisure activities, finances and jobs. You may have heard terms for digital technologies, such as information technology and information and communication technology (ICT). In this chapter, we use digital technology and ICT interchangeably. In the first section, titled ‘Digital technologies and you’, we explore pre-service teachers’ personal and educational experiences with digital technologies and investigate attitudes towards digital technologies in education. A historical overview of technology and associated challenges is presented. The second section, ‘Digital technology in education’, explores the current situation in early childhood, primary and secondary school contexts. It offers some insights into theoretical frameworks, curriculum implications, pedagogical implications and practical considerations for contemporary classrooms. The third section, ‘Using digital technologies in class’, provides numerous suggestions and practical information on how digital technologies can be used for teaching and learning in the classroom.

In the ‘betweens’ of art, research and teaching, this chapter adopts an a/r/tographic approach to explore children’s learning through media art within the Anthropocene, a proposed epoch that acknowledges human impact on Earth’s geology and ecosystems. This learning is thought of as ‘connected learning’, a type of learning that emphasises the integration of educational experiences across various settings, leveraging new media to foster innovative approaches to knowledge creation. The idea of connected learning aligns with the linked concept of children’s lifeworlds – which Arnott and Yelland take to encompass the everyday interactions that children negotiate in daily life as well as the less visible social, technical and material forces that shape those experiences – and the significance of Land as a participant in children’s learning. Children co-labour (or collaborate) with words, materials, technologies and Land to make meaning with their lifeworlds (e.g. semiosis as a process of wording and worlding). They do this in situated practice and through speculation (e.g. by asking “What if...?) to examine possible futures and alternative realities.

The terms ‘curriculum’, ‘pedagogy’, ‘assessment’ and ‘reporting’ are often heard. Each of these terms has been interpreted in different ways and, throughout the history of formal education, one or another has been often at the forefront of educational thinking and practice. We consider that these four areas are inextricably interwoven and changes in policy or practice in one area influence each of the others. This chapter introduces some of the literature, research and practice to help develop an understanding of curriculum, pedagogy, assessment and reporting. We will discuss the interrelationship and alignment of these four areas, enabling reflection on how changes in each of these areas at a national, system or school level impact the day-to-day work of teachers.

Music is a powerful resource for human relating and the expression of meaning. From birth, infants are sensitive to music, explore vocal sounds in musical ways and have the ability to process music. Studies examining interactions between infants and their adult caregivers have discovered the fundamental musicality of these interactions, and the more musical these interactions, the more meaningful they tend to be. However, the potential of music functioning as a conduit for meaning expression, particularly in application to the education and care of young children, has largely been overlooked.

The portrayal of infants and young children’s music-making tends to cast their music participation as a process of becoming, potentialities and efforts towards an adult ‘expert’ state of being musical. Such views can lead to a view of young children as deficient musicians, their music-making as inadequate, and a dismissal of the ways in which they use music in their world-making. Further, through a singular focus on the adult ‘expert’ musician, music education tends to be shaped to achieve that outcome instead of a perspective of music education as preparation for lifewide and lifelong engagement. The adult ‘expert’ view of music participation in adulthood is restricted to a particular form of participation that can disenfranchise and silence many adults’ active music. This chapter will explore what happens when we shift our focus from a perspective of young children’s music-making as becoming from ‘emulation of expert adult activity’ to a manifestation of their being, of their agency, identity work and world-making through embodied music and song-making.

Young people’s learning is at the heart of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander education. Teachers and educators can create successful learning experiences for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students by responding to our diverse cultural, linguistic and knowledge backgrounds. All students benefit from learning about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives, and good teaching practices work for all students. This chapter explores Country and Peoples, and the impact of the past on the present, as well as looking at practical strategies to identify appropriate inclusions for teaching practice to demonstrate capability against the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers 1.4 and 2.4 (discussed later in the chapter).