Learning to Teach in a New Era is a foundational text with scope for use throughout an entire initial teacher education (ITE) degree program. The book equips preservice teachers with introductory understanding and skills in the areas of professional knowledge, professional practice and professional engagement. Aligned with the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers (APST) and the Australian Curriculum, it contributes to the preparation of those in early childhood, primary and secondary preservice education to meet the Graduate Standards.

The importance of effective communication between the adults in the lives of children and young people has gained prominence in theory, policy and practice, and throughout the different contexts in which students participate. In educational contexts throughout the world, it has been well established that the best outcomes occur for children and youth when the adults in their lives come together to support them. Communication is at the core of interaction and provides the building blocks for positive relationships to emerge and develop. Such relationships enhance learning and support students, their families and teachers to recognise and reach their full potential. The field of communication offers some sound insight into effective communication between adults, including different models that aid in developing a better understanding about the complex nature of communication in education-based settings.

Teachers work across a diverse range of learning environments in an array of different contexts, sectors and settings. Therefore, teachers need to organise and manage particular learning environments according to a number of factors, including the age range, learning needs and number of students they are teaching, the nature of the learning context, and the aims and purpose of the teaching and learning being undertaken. The first section of this chapter explores this theme, and provides insight into how classroom management practices are historically, socially and culturally contextualised. In the second section, we introduce some of the theoretical principles and practical issues associated with establishing and maintaining positive, supportive, safe and inclusive learning environments that encourage all students to participate fully in educational opportunities. Theories are of little use in classroom management if they exist only at the level of abstract thought, so we explore ways in which theory can be enacted in practice across learning contexts.

The Australian Professional Standards for Teachers (APST), as introduced in Chapter 1, require that teachers not only know the content and how to teach it, but also know their students and how they learn. This chapter introduces the concept of pedagogy and examines the centrality of relationships between teacher, student and content, as a defining feature of pedagogy. Pedagogy is the most outward expression of how a teacher considers that teaching and learning best take place. Teachers should always base their decisions on ‘how’ to teach on their understanding of how the students in their class learn best. This involves a number of considerations, such as their stage of development (physical, cognitive and social), individual interests and preferred ways of learning. A number of different pedagogical frameworks are explored in the chapter, which concludes with a discussion of some of the key elements of exemplary teaching and how these elements are embedded in pedagogy.

Planning for learning is essential for creating environments conducive to deep learning and to developing student understandings. Standard 3 of the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers (APST) specifies the need for all graduate teachers to be able to ‘plan for and implement effective teaching and learning’. Quality planning involves the systematic use of feedback data to design activities that encourage the assimilation and synthesis of information, leading to the creation of new understandings. Student learning should always be the goal.

Education changes lives. It opens doors and provides us with the skills and dispositions to achieve what we believe in. But not all students flourish in their educational settings. The ways students experience their education are shaped by the differences among them. Despite many years of equity-based reform in schools, the children most at risk of educational alienation, failure or withdrawal in the third decade of the twenty-first century are, for the most part, the same children who were most at risk 50 and 100 years ago. Children from low socioeconomic backgrounds, rural and isolated areas, non-dominant cultural, language, or religious groups, students with disabilities, and many who don’t fit the stereotypes associated with a particular subject area, gender or culture have been shown to experience schools as places of alienation, not as places of growth, opportunity and learning. Issues of sexual and gender identity, mental health, and instability of citizenship, housing, and employment combine to make the situation even more complex.

As a novice teacher, it is important for students to be aware that they are entering a profession with a set of guiding policy frameworks to inform their knowledge, practice and engagement. Chapter 1 introduced a range of data snapshots that provide insight into current Australian and global education systems in the twenty-first century. Data are increasingly used to inform policy, but policy is also shaped by many other complex and multifaceted factors operating across both local and global contexts. This chapter further examines the education landscape and looks at how policy is shaped by, and in turn shapes, our educational thinking, work, teaching practices and future research.

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.

A company is a legal entity, distinct from its creators, members, directors and managers. Chapter 3 of this book discusses the separate legal status of the company in detail. For the purposes of this current chapter, we emphasise that for a company to come into existence there must be a conferral of that status by the state. Unlike some other forms of association, such as a partnership, it is not legally effective for a group of people to simply declare themselves to be a company. A company is a type of corporation. The corporate status of a company is brought into existence through a process of registration under the Corporations Act. Other types of corporate entities are created by different legislative mechanisms, and we briefly describe some of these later in this chapter.

This chapter describes the range of basic company structures available under the Corporations Act, focusing on three ways in which companies can be categorised: their proprietary or public status; how they structure the liability of their members; and their relationship to other companies. The chapter examines the role of corporate groups, as well as the difference between closely-held, one-person, and widely-held companies.

During the winding up process, the business of the company is brought to an end, its assets are collected and sold, and the proceeds applied in accordance with the priorities set out in the Corporations Act. First, the proceeds are applied to creditors and any balance is paid to shareholders. Thereafter, the company is deregistered and ceases to exist. Winding up may be either compulsory (court-ordered) or voluntary. The most common reason for winding up or liquidation is the company’s insolvency.

A note on terminology: the terms ‘winding up’ and ‘liquidation’ are sometimes used interchangeably and at other times they are differentiated. For the purposes of explanation in this chapter we separate these terms. ‘Winding up’ is used to refer to the whole process as just described; this accords with the language of the Corporations Act Parts 5.4 to 5.7. ‘Liquidation’ refers to the particular task of realizing (or selling) the company’s assets so that the proceeds are available to be distributed to creditors (and possibly shareholders). Note, however, that the term ‘liquidator’ is used in the Act, and in practice, to refer to the person appointed to conduct the whole winding up process.

This is the first of three chapters dealing in depth with directors’ duties, following the overview provided in Chapter 10. The duties are divided into two themes: duties of care, skill and diligence, and duties of loyalty and good faith. The focus in this chapter is on the duties of care, skill and diligence. These duties are imposed by the common law, equity and the Corporations Act. This chapter commences with the common law and equitable foundations of the duty of care, skill and diligence, and considers their adoption into statute and the current law. It examines the safe harbour provided by the business judgment rule, and recent discussion on the scope and application of that rule. This chapter examines the ability of directors to delegate their duties and to reasonably rely on the information or advice provided by certain types of persons. Finally, the chapter considers the requirements imposed on directors and officers as a company approaches insolvency. The chapters which follow then consider the duties of loyalty and good faith.

In this chapter I present the main elements of the theory of bare phrase structure: principally the basic operation Merge. This operation replaces phrase-structure rules of all kinds, including the X′-theoretic ones, as the generative component of the theory. We will see that c-command can be directly derived from the effects of Merge. We will also see that Merge can give us a notion of projection. We look at the relation between Merge and LCA, and also introduce the Labelling Algorithm.