This chapter proposes ways of becoming more aligned with the aspirations of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students and community members through pre-service and professional experiences. It also outlines a range of strategies and opportunities that seeks to make sense of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories, cultures and education studies for participants in Initial Teacher Education (ITE) programs through corequisite, experiential learning opportunities in educational and community settings. The chapter also discusses some of the challenges and dilemmas that may be encountered in the process of developing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander professional experience frameworks within teacher education programs.

There are many reasons why we should study and teach about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures. An underlying factor is that Australia is our home, and we should have a thorough knowledge of the country’s history. As Joe Sambono says in Chapter 9, ‘If you don’t know about us, how can you have a respectful conversation with us?’ Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies is about educating all Australians in relation to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, histories, societies and cultures. That we are educating Australia in a climate of increasing racism is another important point.

Disability is an unspoken aspect that is overshadowed by larger issues in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander education. Young Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander people with a disability often fall through the cracks in the education system, with their disability not recognised or not supported. The presentation of their disability in the classroom is routinely mis-characterised as behavioural issues rather than a learning disability requiring specific support, an assumption that leads to excessively high rates of suspension and expulsion when disability is a factor in the education of Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander children and young people.

Indigenous boarding programs have long been framed as a response to the structural barriers faced by First Nations students from remote and regional communities in accessing secondary education. For many First Nations families, boarding schools represent a double-edged sword: an avenue for opportunity that also perpetuates colonial systems of dislocation and assimilation. This chapter critically examines the lived experiences of Indigenous students in boarding schools, foregrounding the voices of those most impacted – students, families and communities. It interrogates the systemic and cultural challenges faced by these students while celebrating the strength, adaptability and agency of First Nations peoples. Through an Indigenous lens, the chapter seeks to move beyond narratives of ‘success’ and ‘opportunity’, calling instead for culturally led and self-determined ways for boarding to support students who live away from home for schooling.

I have often been asked: How can mathematics be beautiful? This question is usually sparked by popular culture, such as the movie A Beautiful Mind or television shows that have popularised mathematics. For most of the inquirers, their experience with mathematics is so divorced from subjective statements such as ‘beautiful’ that they cannot fathom any connection between them. They have also been taught that mathematics is supposed to be objective – that is, transcending our own subjectivity (or bias) to find ‘the truth’. These are common perceptions of mathematics informed by our common experience with the teaching and learning of mathematics. This chapter explores such perceptions, questions notions such as objectivity and explores how these perceptions have positioned Indigenous people as mathematical learners. In essence, this chapter explores the connection between culture and mathematics – putting subjectivity back into mathematics and looking at how this can affect the teaching and learning of mathematics for Indigenous students. These new approaches also have implications for mathematics education in general, by allowing students to connect with mathematics through their own social and cultural backgrounds.

This chapter employs the timestamp of the World Indigenous Peoples’ Conference on Education (WIPCE), emphasising that elements of education relating to both First Nations communities and the teaching profession are central to transversing and bridging the two knowledge traditions of Indigenous and Western knowledges. Within this timestamp, we will look at the foundations we have created, the distance we have travelled and the new challenges we face for what remains as unfinished business.

This chapter explores how important it is for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students in particular to have access to studying their own languages across all jurisdictions in Australian education. It also explores the increasing options available to teachers to provide these opportunities for students from Foundation to Year 12. The value is not limited to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students; all students in Australian schools can benefit from the deeper understanding of Indigenous peoples, cultures and histories that develops through the study of Indigenous languages. Language is the vehicle of cultural expression, and when a language is no longer spoken by its people all humanity is diminished by the loss of cultural transmission that occurs when a language ‘goes to sleep’. Teachers are very well positioned to work with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities to help wake up the sleeping Australian languages and to maintain those that are still languages of everyday communication.

Game worlds are steeped in depictions of different characters, settings, events and, in many cases, different cultures and cultural knowledges. In some cases, these in-game cultural depictions have been created by outsiders of the culture and, even with good intentions, these creators may misrepresent the culture or represent the community in superficial ways. My game design approach attempts to respond to this issue faced by digital game designers and developers and provides an approach that encourages close collaboration with communities, cultural immersion by developers and greater forms of rigorous research in constructing game worlds. While the intent of my approach is to help designers create more meaningful and deeper cultural representations in digital games, the design process itself is an educative experience and there may be opportunities to capitalise on this digital and cultural design approach in learning contexts.

The Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australians identified that a world class curriculum in the twenty-first century required more than learning areas alone. It also required the interweaving of other aspects such as fundamental skills and capabilities as well as being able to respond to critical educational issues and future needs. These requirements were met by the Australian Curriculum through its three-dimensional structure of Learning Areas, General Capabilities and the Cross-Curriculum Priorities. The Melbourne Declaration noted that to meet its commitment of ensuring that all Australians could become active and informed citizens, each learning area would require all students to have the opportunity to access First Nations Australian content where relevant. Additionally, the Declaration highlighted the need to improve educational outcomes for First Nations Australians to ensure that, as a nation, we achieve not only equality of opportunity but also more equitable outcomes. The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Histories and Cultures Cross-Curriculum Priority provides a national opportunity to confront First Nations Australian educational disadvantage and break the cycle of non-First Nations Australians not knowing about or who this country’s diverse and vibrant First Nations peoples are.

Chapter 1 assesses the evidence beyond the charter corpus for literary activity in Kent, Mercia and Wessex in the mid-ninth century. This evidence comprises five categories: surviving manuscripts with contemporary English provenances, letters, inscribed objects, the events of the 850s, and Asser’s account of King Alfred’s childhood engagement with books. The importance of understanding survival patterns and the nature of the evidence is stressed, particularly because attempts were rarely made to preserve letters for posterity, and because different ways of engaging with books and inscribed objects generated varyingly large fingerprints for twenty-first-century eyes. Asser’s famous account, furthermore, needs to be approached with caution, though it does in several ways align with the impression of literary activity that one gets from mid-ninth-century sources. A good deal remains unknown about many of the contexts in which literary activity took place, but it is nonetheless clear that the written word was conspicuous in many mid-ninth-century social settings, despite the likelihood that in some contexts resources for new literary productions were limited. Much of this literary culture was fundamentally social, and it was often inspired by international exchange.

The chapter addresses: What Is a Motion Picture?; What Is an Instructional Video?; What Is the Role of Instructional Video in Education and Training?; Are Instructional Videos Effective? And How Can We Design Effective Instructional Videos?

The chapter addresses: 1. Three Types of Research on Instructional Video. 2. Taking a Closer Look at Value-Added Research on Instructional Video. 3. How to Tell If an Instructional Method Has an Effect on Learning Outcomes. 4. How to Tell If an Instructional Method Has an Effect on Learning Processes. 5. How to Tell If Instructional Effects Depend on Individual Differences and/or Other Boundary Conditions

The chapter addresses: 1. What Is a Motion Picture? 2. What Is an Instructional Video? 3. What Is the Role of Instructional Video in Education and Training? 4. Are Instructional Videos Effective? 5. How Can We Design Effective Instructional Videos?

Chapter 4 INTELLIGENCE, REGRESSES, AND EMPIRICISM discusses the prospects for a view that reduces intelligence to skillfulness—the Skill View of Intelligence. Though the view comes with many perks, I argue that it does not fit well with an independently motivated empiricism and that, on these bases, we ought to reject it. Nonetheless, many of its perks can be retained on a weaker understanding of the relation between skill and intelligence, one on which intelligence is a bundle of capacities—to acquire, to maintain, to exercise a cluster of skills in a variety of domains (general intelligence) or in specific domains (domain-specific intelligence).

This chapter introduces learning methods – the essential phase that transforms action into growth. After trying out a prototype, it’s tempting to move on quickly. But real progress happens when we pause to reflect, extract insights, and adapt. The Growth Journey Map is the Core Method, guiding you to make sense of your experience – what you did, what you learned, and what that means for your next step. Two additional methods enrich this reflection: PPCO Hollywood Star, a constructive feedback tool adapted from screenwriting, and Start–Stop–Continue, a simple framework to clarify what to keep, let go, or try anew. Whether your prototype felt like a success, a flop, or something in between, these tools help you close the loop with clarity, deepen your self-awareness, and fuel your momentum with a growth mindset.

It is likely that you have experienced the impact of place on your education without even thinking about it. Maybe you’ve had a class on a boiling hot day, with bad lighting and no aircon. Maybe you’ve had to sit in traffic on the way to class, and thought ‘Wow, I wish I didn’t have to be at school by 8 am!’. Maybe you’ve accessed your education online, and felt the differences (good and bad), between in-person and online learning. Or perhaps you’ve sat under a lovely tree after class and chatted with your friends. Maybe you’ve experienced traditional ways of learning on Country, and connectedness to the environment around you. Whatever it may be, you get the drift – if you’ve had an education, it’s happened somewhere.