The objective of this chapter is to define socio-dramatic play from a cultural-historical perspective and to describe how teachers can become co-players with children in their play. To do this we present case studies from research and a pedagogical toolbox to support children’s participation, learning and development. The chapter begins by outlining children’s socio-dramatic play using a cultural-historical perspective to focus on interactions in shared play. In socio-dramatic play, imagination and creativity are central as children create narratives together. Play creates conditions for children to express and construct meaning with others and to become co-players in a shared imagined world. Adults in early childhood settings traditionally support children’s play by planning, resourcing and observing, although their role as co-player is less understood.

This chapter discusses laws and arrangements that impose obligations upon intermediaries to achieve some protection of clients involved in financial product transactions. We have already encountered some intermediaries who provide financial services in Chapter 17—the brokers who participate in the ASX markets. However intermediaries are usually involved in transactions involving financial products, so the range of people who are involved in, or who can influence financial product transactions is much wider and clearly includes financial advisers. Now we examine how the activities of some people in this diverse group are regulated to achieve a measure of investor protection.

The question of regulation of financial advice and financial services has been contentious in Australia over the last two decades. Following several large financial collapses, it is now recognised that the quality of financial advice in Australia is often poor, particularly to retail and other non-professional investors.

First, this chapter canvasses the history of the fiduciary obligation as it applies to the director–company relationship. The fiduciary obligation includes two duties: a duty of loyalty and a duty to account for benefits gained—more informally termed the ‘no conflict’ and ‘no profit’ rules. This chapter then discusses examples of the ‘no conflict’ and ‘no profit’ rules from case law, and the modern exceptions to this general principle on the basis of commercial realities, such as the business opportunity rule. It then considers ss 182–3 of the Corporations Act which deal with a director’s misuse of information or position to gain an advantage for themselves or others, or to cause detriment to the company. While there is a clear relationship between these sections and the ‘no profit’ rule, they have developed differently since enactment as legislative provisions. This chapter then considers the requirements for directors to disclose their material personal interests under ss 191–195, and the inconsistent treatment of the disclosure requirements with the ability of a fiduciary to seek the fully informed consent of the company in general meeting. Finally, this chapter considers the protection afforded to members of a public company under ch 2E of the Corporations Act for related party transactions.

In this chapter we extend the role of asymmetric c-command still further, showing how it can derive the linear order of terminal nodes by the Linear Correspondence Axiom (LCA). We start by looking at how X′-theory can be parametrised so as to provide an account of cross-linguistic word-order variation in terms of the Head Parameter, before moving on to the c-command-based theory of linear order based on the LCA. We then look at the consequences of LCA-based theory for the analysis of cross-linguistic word-order variation.

Here we first look carefully at how Featural Relativised Minimality applies to wh-movement. This leads to a discussion of the relation between phases and Featural Relativised Minimality. We consider whether it is possible or desirable to reduce phase-based locality to Relativised Minimality or vice versa.

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.

In this book, we have mostly depicted companies as legal actors in their own right that act through certain human agents. In this chapter, our focus changes: we now think of companies as things that may be owned and controlled. Nevertheless, the motivations of human agents remain at the forefront. Some of the law that we encountered in previous chapters will be relevant here, because it regulates the behaviour of the human protagonists; for example, the law on directors’ duties. However, the law of takeovers in Australia is a special body of law. This law is set out in chs 6, 6A, 6B and 6C of the Corporations Act, together with a unique dispute resolution system that diverts disputes away from the courts and into an administrative body—the Takeovers Panel (‘the Panel’)—during the life of a takeover bid. The decision-making of the Panel is guided by policy and commerciality, rather than legal doctrine.

This chapter discusses the legal capacity of a company to enter contracts. We discuss how companies enter contracts through agents and the statutory assumptions that protect third parties when dealing with companies. We also discuss pre-incorporation contracts.

There are several competing policy issues in this area of law. It is important that companies can enter contracts easily and be bound by their obligations. It is also important that third parties are not prejudiced if the internal requirements of a company in terms of capacity or authority to act as the company are not complied with. Both the law of contract and the Corporations Act seek to balance these issues—sometimes in interesting ways. It is useful to keep these policy perspectives in mind when studying this area of law.

Corporate law, like all law, has a context; indeed, it has many contexts. To understand corporate law today, we need to appreciate the forces—social, political, economic, global and local— which shape that law. Modern corporations and contemporary Australian corporate law should be understood as a product of, and a compromise between, various social, economic and legal ideas and philosophies. This is the focus of the first two chapters of this book.

In this chapter, we ask the reader to temporarily postpone the quest for a more detailed explanation of the legal concepts that are introduced. We will come back to examine these concepts in detail elsewhere in the book.

This chapter explores young children’s semiosis (meaning-making) and transformations when immersed with artworks that were made by professional artists. Paintings and sculptures (static, moving and sound-making) ‘resided’ (were installed) in their classroom for two school terms. The first part of the chapter provides a brief context for how artworks as mediating tools elicited children’s meaning-making through individual and social activity and describes how the children’s communication and representation of meaning was multimodal. The second part of the chapter delves into Illustration of Practice 7.1 based on recent research, where semiosis was studied through two key processes: (1) noticing, or becoming aware of signs within artworks, based on an individual’s perceptions, knowledge and emotions; and (2) immersion into the artworks. Immersion involved mediating signs through perezhivanie (a cognitive-embodied-emotive encounter that requires working-through) and transmediating (translating meaning from one mode of expression to another). Illustration of Practice 7.1 highlights how young children’s representation and communication of meaning are socially mediated, cognitive, affective and embodied.

This chapter provides theoretical and practical examples of how children’s meaning-making is enriched through teachers’ mediation. It shifts attention away from a traditional literacy perspective to a semiotic orientation that honours young children’s symbolic communication through art, music, play and dance. Exemplars are given of how children’s sign-making practices in the arts are of equal significance, and are the precursors, to sign-making in language and literacy. Indeed, the arts are children’s ‘first literacies’ because they help children find their way into the sign systems of reading and writing. Illustration of Practice 8.1 demonstrates the notable link between playing and drawing, and how children cross between graphic, narrative and embodied modes to communicate meaning. Illustration of Practice 8.2 foregrounds art making in a Reggio-inspired preschool classroom. Concluding sections focus on the building blocks of meaning-making, with an emphasis on its co-creation and the importance of documenting and interpreting children’s creative processes and learning.

In this chapter, we explore in detail two key corporate law concepts: the separate legal status of the corporation and limited liability. We discuss limitations and inroads into these concepts, as well as how the corporation—separate from the people who invest in or run it—can be liable in tort and criminal law. This chapter builds on the themes raised in Chapter 2: the relevance of different theoretical and ideological perspectives on the corporation and its role and purpose in contemporary society. To reiterate why these questions are important:

The broad and basic purpose of examining corporate theory is to develop a framework within which we can assess the values and assumptions that either unite or divide the plethora of cases, reform proposals, legislative amendments, and practices that constitute modern corporate law. This law has not sprung up overnight. We need some way of disentangling the differing philosophical and political perspectives from which it has been constructed. Indeed, the great benefit of theoretical inquiry is to reveal the existence of these differences in the first place.

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.