For many adults, the idea that infants and toddlers are ‘knowers, thinkers and theorisers’ is a strange one. Such concepts are often associated with older children whose abilities to build and express understandings are more evident and align more readily with traditional ideas about learning and teaching. Furthermore, cognitive states and processes such as ‘knowing’, ‘thinking’ and ‘understanding’ are not visible in the same way that physical, social and emotional behaviours. This means that they have to be inferred and interpreted, especially when pre-verbal infants and toddlers cannot tell you what is going on in their heads. Together these challenges may result in a deficit view that, instead of seeing infants and toddlers as active and capable learners, positions very young as waiting to learn. Also, an emphasis on meeting physical and emotional needs may come at the cost of overlooking infants and toddlers cognitive capabilities and potentials.

Grammar has historically been an important component of language and literacy education. It has been understood and defined in various ways, depending on the different linguistic perspectives throughout history. This chapter discusses two main historical perspectives on grammar: traditional grammar and functional grammar. Both implicitly and explicitly underpin the Australian Curriculum: English. The metalanguage and concepts used in the Curriculum and the National Literacy Learning Progression are a combination of traditional and functional grammar terms. Many traditional grammar terms (e.g. nouns, verbs, subject-verb-object) are used alongside functional grammar terms (e.g. participants, processes, circumstances, noun groups, verb groups) to describe sentence-level components, but functional grammar terms are mostly used to describe text-level components. Therefore, it is crucial for pre-service and in-service teachers to be equipped with explicit knowledge of these two grammar traditions to be able to teach in contemporary English classrooms.

Children are alike and different; the value of multiple perspectives; the complexity of child development; the future of the village; last words.

Human emotional responses are a complex mixture of physiological, cognitive, social and communicative activity. Emotional activity occurs in response to inner and outer worlds and is deeply shaped by the social and cultural environments in which it is embedded. Very young children experience (and learn about) emotions by feeling, understanding and showing them. These sophisticated emotional capabilities lay the groundwork for co-creating social affective relationships with important people in their lives. As the Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF) states, when educators tune into and try to understand children’s emotions and feelings within respectful and reciprocal relationships, they support their learning, development and wellbeing. Emotional wellbeing can be seen as the glue that holds children’s learning and development together. Similarly, an educator’s emotional wellbeing can bind their professional learning, development and satisfaction together. Without emotional wellbeing, learning and development for both children and educators can be negatively impacted.

It is very important that teaching and learning activities and assessment are designed to cater for the needs of schools and pupils. Chapter 8 looks at the connection between learning and assessment and includes approaches and strategies for both formative and summative assessment. How to plan for and manage assessment of learners’ progress is examined in detail with practical advice on how to do this in a structured way. How to use assessment for learning within a framework of formative assessment is detailed, including self-assessment and peer-assessment techniques with practical examples for use in class. The development of metacognitive strategies in learners is explored and advice is given on how to promote and develop this in learners in stages. The importance of giving regular feedback to pupils on their learning is also emphasised. Techniques and suggestions in this chapter can be adapted for different classes and year groups.

In this chapter, we consider vector spaces over a field that is either the real or complex numbers. We shall start from the most general situation of scalar products. We then consider the situations when scalar products are nondegenerate and positive definite, respectively.

The aftermath of civil wars is a fraught experience that does not end once a peaceful resolution is established. The study of civil war termination is vital to shaping our understanding of what factors dictate prospects for long-term peace once armed conflicts conclude. In particular, the types of conflict termination – from peace agreements to ceasefires and outright victories – have a strong bearing upon whether sustainable peace will be established, or violence will recur. Chapter 9 explores the relationship between the nature of civil war termination and the prospects for durable peace. It considers the factors and data provided by, for example, the Uppsala Conflict Data Program on which termination processes succeed and why long-term peace might be evasive for some conflicts. These approaches offer a ripe area of contemporary research and debate when seeking to resolve ongoing conflicts.

Chapter 2 explores economic views of sustainability, defined as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (WCED, 1987). This implies the current population’s needs are met, and future generations have access to at least the same economic opportunities and well-being as today. The systems approach to sustainability optimizes goals across environmental, economic, and social systems. The economists’ capital approach treats nature as capital. Natural, physical, and human capital form a portfolio of assets representing an economy’s wealth, which determines economic opportunities and human welfare. “Weak” sustainability assumes that maintaining and enhancing the overall stock of all capital is sufficient to achieve sustainable development. “Strong” sustainability asserts that preserving essential, irreplaceable, and non-substitutable natural capital is also necessary. The “resource curse” hypothesis and the environmental “Kuznet’s curve” hypothesis (EKC) are explained. Achieving sustainable development requires addressing extreme poverty, inequality, and unsustainable resource use.

Continuing professional development (CPD) is examined, emphasising the importance of maintaining skills and keeping abreast of current research and curriculum developments in the teaching of modern languages. Examples of professional learning are given, as well as advice on how collaborative working with colleagues locally, nationally and internationally can enhance learning and teaching. In addition, links are given to sources of further information and advice on a range of opportunities available to teachers to help them with their career-long professional learning (CLPL). Finally, the chapter discusses the important area of teacher well-being and gives guidance and advice on how student teachers can build emotional resilience that prepares them for a career in the classroom, noting sources of support for their own mental health and well-being.

Understand how children direct their own learning and learn from others; describe the importance of imitation, play, and instruction; explain how children transfer what they know across different contexts.