Britons and British subjects with family members deeply involved in the transatlantic economy were an important feature of University life. These students, who grew in number due the increasing profits of the slave economy and the underdeveloped state of tertiary education in the colonies, were accepted and nurtured by fellows and masters who, in many cases, owned plantations, held investments in the slave trade, or had family members serving as governors in the North American colonies. In following the experiences of these students, the chapter details the lives and struggles of undergraduates, particularly those who traveled abroad to Cambridge, and the emotional and personal bonds that fellows and their young charges developed. The chapter is a reminder that, when considering institutional connections to enslavement, political economy was but one side of the story – the emotional, social, and cultural bonds between the sons of enslavers and their fellow Britons were also integral.

In the ‘betweens’ of art, research and teaching, this chapter adopts an a/r/tographic approach to explore children’s learning through media art within the Anthropocene, a proposed epoch that acknowledges human impact on Earth’s geology and ecosystems. This learning is thought of as ‘connected learning’, a type of learning that emphasises the integration of educational experiences across various settings, leveraging new media to foster innovative approaches to knowledge creation. The idea of connected learning aligns with the linked concept of children’s lifeworlds – which Arnott and Yelland take to encompass the everyday interactions that children negotiate in daily life as well as the less visible social, technical and material forces that shape those experiences – and the significance of Land as a participant in children’s learning. Children co-labour (or collaborate) with words, materials, technologies and Land to make meaning with their lifeworlds (e.g. semiosis as a process of wording and worlding). They do this in situated practice and through speculation (e.g. by asking “What if...?) to examine possible futures and alternative realities.

Music is a powerful resource for human relating and the expression of meaning. From birth, infants are sensitive to music, explore vocal sounds in musical ways and have the ability to process music. Studies examining interactions between infants and their adult caregivers have discovered the fundamental musicality of these interactions, and the more musical these interactions, the more meaningful they tend to be. However, the potential of music functioning as a conduit for meaning expression, particularly in application to the education and care of young children, has largely been overlooked.

The portrayal of infants and young children’s music-making tends to cast their music participation as a process of becoming, potentialities and efforts towards an adult ‘expert’ state of being musical. Such views can lead to a view of young children as deficient musicians, their music-making as inadequate, and a dismissal of the ways in which they use music in their world-making. Further, through a singular focus on the adult ‘expert’ musician, music education tends to be shaped to achieve that outcome instead of a perspective of music education as preparation for lifewide and lifelong engagement. The adult ‘expert’ view of music participation in adulthood is restricted to a particular form of participation that can disenfranchise and silence many adults’ active music. This chapter will explore what happens when we shift our focus from a perspective of young children’s music-making as becoming from ‘emulation of expert adult activity’ to a manifestation of their being, of their agency, identity work and world-making through embodied music and song-making.

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.

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.

Relationships between teachers and students are a focus of both developmental and educational science, with implications for policies and experiences that affect millions of students globally. These relationships can be measured through various methods and have unique value for students’ learning and development, and they can be improved systematically. The study of teacher–student relationships confirms the value of adult–child relationships in human development more generally, with evidence of links to mechanisms of differential susceptibility and other broad developmental phenomena. Additional scientific efforts to understand the co-regulating linkages among social settings in classrooms, dyadic processes between teachers and students, and their respective individual developmental capacities hold promise for advancing developmental theory and its application in educational contexts.

The upbringing and professional career of Wu Jian (1462–1506) and his uncle, Wu Cong, shed light on two key issues. First is the gradual transformation of merit nobles within the Ming polity, particularly their role in dynastic defenses. Second is the dynasty’s continued efforts to secure military ability through instituting new practices, including the education and training of young merit nobles and entrusting capable civil officials with substantial military responsibilities. Before turning to Wu Jian’s career, however, we first consider the experiences of his mother and other women, whose abilities both in managing large, complex households and negotiating with the dynastic state, were essential to the fortunes of all merit noble families.

1. What insights about different ways of becoming a social worker has Liam’s life story brought to the fore? 2. What stories have you met in your own social work practice that have affected your way of understanding what ought to be the core of social work? 3. How do you from your own experiences understand the expression ‘social work poetry’? How could it be an inspiration in your own work?

This chapter charts Edgar Wilson’s elevation in status and class identity, embodying the book’s main theme, the capacity of expatriate employment to create career opportunities for ordinary Britons, in this case for the impecunious lower middle class. Wilson’s earlier family background, with schoolteacher parents, underlines the precarious position of the ‘middling sort’ in semi-rural districts during dramatic social and economic transformation, but then the role of education and culture in enabling the three sons to achieve professional and business careers. After marrying, and with dismal white-collar stagnation in London, his subsequent experience in Persia depicts a rare picture of life on a remote river port, Ahwaz, in the early years of oil exploration. The tragic loss of his first wife from typhoid left him with two infant sons, a grim price of expatriate social mobility. His transfer to Tehran, mixing with political and diplomatic elites, cemented his rise in status and authority, and brought a new romantic venture. Socially, Wilson had arrived.