Chapter 10 takes you to your own professional future. The handy ‘Twelve Principles’ summary enables teachers and school leaders to orient their teaching towards harnessing linguistic diversity for their own professional and personal development, and for the wellbeing and academic achievement of students.

Chapter 9 moves further forward into considering students’ futures, specifically linguistically diverse students, and how teachers can support the development of ‘futures thinking’ for many contexts.

This chapter focuses on the areas of Humanities and Social Sciences (HASS), Health and Physical Education, Science, Technologies and Languages and we approach these areas using the critical framework of the Ten Teacher Questions. We hope that you may revisit Chapter 6 to refresh your understanding of the ACARA Cross-curriculum Priorities, and as you progress into the Teaching Ideas of this chapter.

Welcome to this book. We welcome local and international readers in both rural and urban contexts. This book is about linguistic diversity in schools and how teachers can harness multilingual resources and diverse worldviews to promote the wellbeing and achievement of all students.

Throughout the book we present examples of effective practice in classrooms around Australia, ranging from Menindee (New South Wales) to Yarrabah State School (Queensland), from Kalgoorlie (Western Australia) to the Eyre Peninsula (South Australia) and from Mallacoota (Victoria) to Tennant Creek (Northern Territory). The principles and pedagogies promoted here will also apply to multilingual classrooms and communities globally. In Australia or elsewhere, you may be training to become a teacher, or may be a graduated teacher wishing to expand your skills. Our goal is that this book will shape new ideas and perspectives on teaching practice within all schools.

In Chapter 3, we are fortunate to have three contributing authors, Susan Poetsch, Denise Angelo and Rhonda Anjilkurri Radley, bringing their research and lived experience in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages.. The chapter describes a dynamic and detailed picture of the multilingualism of communities and the developing ecologies of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages. Through six real-life vignettes and visits to communities, we meet multilingual Indigenous children in their daily lives, who move between multiple modes of language use, with their families and in school. The chapter highlights the widespread use of new Indigenous languages (including creoles such as Kriol and Yumplatok) and the revival and revitalisation of traditional Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages in some communities. The chapter also highlights Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people’s ways of using English, and the linguistic challenges faced by many children in school.

Chapter 1 encourages readers to reflect on their own experience of linguistic diversity, and their perception of the multilingual nature of rural, remote and urban Australia today. The chapter establishes its relevance to readers’ development in the first AITSL Teaching Standards (‘Know your students and how they learn’).

Chapter 2 engages you with both international and local research evidence of the clear connections between teacher support of multilingualism in students, and student wellbeing and school achievement. Understanding the implications of these research findings is core to the argument of the book, and to your engagement with and commitment to developing pedagogy for linguistically diverse classrooms.

In Chapter 9 we considered how to support student wellbeing in the digital space, and how to develop eSafety and digital citizenship. In this chapter, we will consider the implications of your professional digital image or identity and how it impacts upon your role as an educator who actively uses digital technologies. We will also discuss your responsibilities as an educator in developing student digital literacy skills, even if access to technology is limited. Additionally, we will explore strategies to overcome these limitations as well as considering educators’ responsibilities to communicate with students’ parents or carers, and how digital tools can help facilitate this communication.

The first chapter considers the value of and opportunities with digital technologies, and how they can be used as tools and environments for learning. It talks about the importance of being agentic and using digital tools with purpose. The use of digital tools to develop 21st-century skills in students is discussed and there is an overview of the curriculum and policy mandates for the use of digital technologies, including development of the general capability of digital literacies.

This chapter considers the opportunities for students to explore interests, such as independent learning and personal projects, eSports and interest groups, such as maker spaces and coding clubs. It then looks at the changing roles for students and educators in which you are all co-learning–you as the educator do not need to be the expert.