At the beginning of this book, we examined your own play memories and those of other people. We concluded that play really matters to children. But what do we really learn about children’s learning and development when we observe and analyse play? We begin this chapter by looking at a play memory of a 16-year-old boy whose parents used play to support their son in dealing with the arrival of his new baby sister.

In this chapter, we will look at how children play in families, and the diversity of roles that parents may take in children’s play. We begin this chapter with details of the play practices of two families living in the same community. We argue that play is learned in families, and in early childhood centres and classrooms, rather than being something that arises naturally within the child. Through reading this chapter on families at play, you will gain insights into how some families play and how play is learned in families, and an understanding that play practices learned at home lay the foundation of children’s play and learning, and that as teachers we should consider how to build upon these early experiences in our early childhood centres and classrooms.

This chapter has been designed to help you learn about: how others plan for play-based learning and intentionality in the The Early Years Learning Framework for Australia (V2.0); what a Conceptual PlayWorld looks like for three groups – infants and toddlers, preschoolers, and children transitioning to school; how to design a Conceptual PlayWorld to support cultural competence; and how to plan a Conceptual PlayWorld for a range of educational settings.

In this chapter, we look at how play can support children’s learning in schools. We begin by examining how teachers can support children’s learning in play by exploring a range of playful approaches to learning curriculum content. A case study of a play-based approach from the Netherlands is also presented, followed by a range of practical suggestions and resource ideas to support the setting up of a play-based inquiry approach using the Australian Curriculum.

Play is a key dimension of early childhood education. How play is conceptualised and how a teacher uses play to support curriculum activities have a bearing on what a child experiences. We know from research that play is discussed in different ways in different countries, and also that play is presented in different ways in education curricula around the world.

In creative work, as all of life, failure is inevitable. In this chapter, artists talk about how they feel about failure, how they incorporate it into their future work, and how it affects their attitudes toward creativity. They discuss how it can open new areas of creativity that they might otherwise not have considered. The artists also share their definitions of failure, which vary widely. Some artists dwell on failure regularly while others try their best to avoid such thoughts. They also talk about how they cope with failure.

Whereas operating globally once meant penetrating and exploiting markets around the world, in today’s knowledge-based economy the challenge is to innovate by learning from the world. Sustaining competitive advantage now requires a firm to be able to sense, meld, and thoughtfully leverage the knowledge that is available throughout its global footprint.

The study of individuals with hippocampal damage and amnesia provides a compelling opportunity to directly test the role of declarative memory to communication and language. Over the past two decades, we have documented disruptions in discourse and conversation as well as in more basic aspects of language in individuals with hippocampal amnesia including at the word, phrase, and sentence level across offline and online language processing tasks. This work highlights the critical contribution of hippocampal-dependent memory to language and communication and suggests that hippocampal damage or dysfunction is a risk factor for a range of language and communicative disruptions even in the absence of frank disorders of amnesia or aphasia. This work also raises questions about the reality and utility of the historical distinction between communication and language in defining cognitive-communication disorders as individuals with isolated memory impairments show deficits that cut across both communication and language.

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 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.

This chapter discusses how to apply principles of statistics, optimization, and linear algebra in advanced techniques of data science and machine learning. The chapter shows how to use principal component analysis and singular value decomposition for analyzing complex datasets and discusses advanced estimation techniques such as logistic regression, Gaussian process models, and neural networks.

This chapter focuses on dance and learning in the early years, presenting a theoretical framework that reflects the changing Australian cultural context for dance. Building upon an earlier model for dance education, culturally responsive pedagogy is an inclusive approach to dance learning from birth to age eight. Key influences are introduced with attention given to aesthetic experiences, early dance relationships, ‘dance-play’, young children’s engagement with technology and the explosion of dance on screen. Consideration is given to established truths about dance and the emerging presence of Indigenous dance within dance education. Examples of dance artists in education settings, along with visual and transcribed examples, are provided, demonstrating how early years educators may support young children’s agency as critically responsive co-creative participants in dance.

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.

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.

The concluding chapter provides a synthesis and reflection on insights from this book. It first summarizes the main findings regarding how disaster risk today is a legacy of urban history, drawing on salient examples from the six case study cities and cautioning that risk becomes very “path dependent” as future options are constrained by past decisions. After discussing limitations of the study and further research needs, the chapter suggests that the Urban Risk Dynamics framework and findings from the six cases are relevant to any city, demonstrating this for Vancouver (Canada). It then reflects on the practical significance of the book. It argues that the findings demonstrate why disaster risk and risk reduction should be viewed dynamically; why understanding risk should start with the city, not the hazard or disaster; and why interdisciplinary approaches are critical for reducing risk. Recognizing this can help analysts, planners, and policy-makers, for example, to not only identify current risk hotspots but anticipate future ones, to consider risk from a multihazard standpoint, and to develop strategies and solutions that are effective in the long term.

The context in which health professionals help people has evolved: as evidence-based technologies are implemented to improve patient and consumer health outcomes, new roles, tasks, responsibilities and accountabilities develop as a consequence. The health industry is challenged with fundamental change, not only forcing health professionals to acquire new skills continuously, but also to contribute towards changing the environments in which health services are delivered. Demands on the individual have also changed, including the need for the individual to actively participate and plan their personal development.