Educators acknowledge the importance of utilising, implementing, and applying curriculum; a day-to-day engagement in a wide range of educational settings. So often, focus centres upon the curriculum itself; however, this chapter provides strategies for navigating curriculum and provides proven helpful cross-curriculum tools and processes for applying curriculum in effective and efficient time-friendly ways. A wide range of examples are provided to cover many aspects of the Australian Curriculum, importantly inclusive of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Knowledge.

Chapter 1 introduces ideology, and Guidelines, Theses, Procedures, Caveats for empirical ideological research in pragmatics and discourse analysis presented in Jef Verschueren’s Ideology in Language Use: Pragmatic Guidelines for Empirical Research. It introduces the data to be analyzed: Amnesty International reports, webpages, emails, appeal letters addressed to powerful individuals on behalf of Prisoners of Conscience, and, for contrast, two racist American Nazi documents. It briefly introduces the main foci of the analysis: the documents’ intended audience, language, temporal and geographic perspectives, and the coverage and degree of detail that the documents provide regarding the situations they describe. As many people, including Amnesty International, deny that liberational discourses such as that of human rights are ideological, the book asks whether the AI documents are in fact ideological. The remainder of the book demonstrates that they fulfill the criteria defining ideological discourse proposed in Terry Eagleton’s Ideology: An Introduction and by Verschueren and are therefore undeniably ideological. The chapter concludes with a brief plan of the following chapters.

Poetic Lines can be used to capture the strength, resilience, and aspirations of Indigenous students, ensuring their perspectives are represented in research and education policy. For Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, knowledge is not just written: it is sung, danced, spoken and felt. Indigenous poetic inquiry recognises this by using poetry as a way to share knowledge that is rich in meaning and emotion. Unlike conventional educational writing, which often privileges Western structures of knowledge, this approach allows for more fluid and relational ways of understanding. Poetry, with its rhythm, metaphor and storytelling, provides space for Indigenous voices to be heard on their own terms, resisting colonial narratives and centring Indigenous perspectives.

Chapter 2 explores a broad range of differing academic and policy views on politics in relation to climate change mitigation – organised according to whether they are more in favour of depoliticising or politicising the issue and/or how it is governed. One of the aims of the chapter is to illuminate how relevant perspectives on politics are to how climate mitigation is approached, which actors are considered to have agency to drive emissions down, and the extent to which dedicating political capacity and public resources to processes of mitigation is deemed necessary. Perspectives on politics also influence what policy is understood to be for, for example, mainly technical or also social change, how its costs are distributed, whom it benefits, and which aspects of human systems need to be altered.

To open this eceletic book of ideas, we present the key themes and ask the question, Is our education system providing the right opportunities, knowledge and skills to empower children and young people to thrive on planet Earth? Introducing the concept of the series, we explain that there seem to be three existential uncertainties - the climate and environmental crises, fractured communities and insecurities about self and purpose - that require a diverse collection of voices and their ideas to bridge academia with the practitoner wisdom in classrooms.

A framing case study examines South Africa’s allegation in early 2024 that Israel committed genocide in Gaza. Then the chapter examines: (1) the history of international law, from ancient societies through the Middle Ages and the classical, positivist, and modern eras; (2) important actors in international law, including states, international organizations, peoples (groups), individuals, and non-governmental groups; and (3) the critical, contractual, and sociological perspectives on how international law can influence politics.

Taking the child’s perspective means looking at the world through the eyes of the infant or the child. This can help us to better understand play practices and better plan for children’s learning and development. But how do we do this in practice? In this chapter we explore these ideas and help you design programs where you gain insight into the importance of documenting infants’ and young children’s perspectives on their play and identify a range of practical ways to find out children’s perspectives on their play.

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.

Chapter 5 addresses the application of the law on disfigurement from the point of view of employers. It analyses the findings from interviews with HR and EDI professionals about their approaches to disfigurement equality at work. It explores employer approaches to visible difference in a variety of contexts – from recruitment to workplace culture to making reasonable adjustments. This chapter reveals considerable uncertainty among employers about how to address the social barriers of looking different. This uncertainty is addressed by guidance in Appendix 1. Moreover, drawing on literature about the legal consciousness of human resources departments, it also uncovers tensions in the daily reality of HR practice which may impact both their ability and motivation to create appearance-inclusive workplaces.

Through HASS, children critically consider the moral challenges of our time and make informed and ethical decisions. The rationale to the HASS F–6 (v.9.0) curriculum asserts that HASS empowers students ‘to value their belonging and contribution to their community and beyond’. By engaging with key topics, children can impact their surroundings and effect change. Children explore historical and geographical concepts of significance, continuity and change, and place and space before they even reach school. Upon entering school, further intradisciplinary and interdisciplinary concepts are developed and refined. Thus, early in young people’s lives, teachers aim to introduce children to the study of humanities, which helps us to understand who we are, our identity and human interaction. This chapter explores the nature of HASS learning and pedagogy in the early childhood and primary years; considers the policy basis for teaching social science knowledge and skills; and outlines how play-based and inquiry-based pedagogical approaches can be used to teach HASS; and the value of learning propositional knowledge in the humanities and the significance of maintaining the integrity of discipline-based ways of ‘knowing’ and ‘doing’ to deliver a deeper understanding of HASS topics and concepts.

The Australian Curriculum’s three cross-curriculum priorities are intended to give global, national, and local perspectives, providing students with the tools and language to be able to understand the world in which they live and to consider the future world they could inhabit.Within the Australian Curriculum, three cross-curriculum priorities have been defined: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Histories and Cultures; Asia and Australia’s Engagement with Asia; and Sustainability. These three cross-curriculum priorities are not intended to be taught as separate Learning Areas; instead, they are about exploring relationships between subjects. They offer learning opportunities to add depth and richness to student learning in specific discipline content at the same time as developing knowledge, understanding and skills relating to the three priorities.

In contemporary Australian society, the word ‘quality’ is ever-present in professional and political discussions about early childhood education. Educators and families are told that ‘quality is important’; curriculum documents, such as Australia’s Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF), aim to enhance quality; services are rated for the quality of education and care that they deliver; and governments regulate service conditions and provisions in order to facilitate the provision of high quality practice. Together, these social, professional and political structures communicate a strong message that quality matters for young children’s learning and wellbeing.

Investment facilitation, aiming for improvements in the transparency, efficiency, and predictability of domestic investment frameworks, plays an important role in complementing currently prevailing international measures for attracting external development. Finance and various investment facilitation reform initiatives are under way at multiple levels. However, empirical evidence on currently prevailing levels of adoption of investment facilitation measures and resulting reform and support needs is still scarce.

We rely on other people’s ideas because they often know more than we do about many aspects of the world. A negative consequence of shared beliefs occurs when people focus too much on information that originates from people who hold the same opinions. A group is particularly vulnerable to groupthink when its members have similar backgrounds, the group is insulated from outside opinions, and there are no clear rules for decision making. Shared beliefs can nonetheless contribute to group cohesion, coordination of ideas, and shared mental models. The flipside of shared beliefs are unshared beliefs that can cause conflicts. Advice for resolving conflicts includes engaging in persuasive listening, acknowledging common ground, and discussing reasons for a lack of progress. Considering alternative perspectives also broadens views. High levels of task discourse enable team members to resolve ambiguities, refine their ideas, and discuss the potential innovation of those ideas. Training should therefore emphasize a diversity of perspectives, the open exchanges of ideas, the reduction of biases, and an increased motivation for accuracy.