How to support female students, advise a women in physics student group, and promote a sense of belonging for students. How to cope with gender bias in student attitudes and student evaluations, and how to navigate emotional work and avoid burnout.

Chapter 13 explores the concept of mathematical identity and how both students and teachers come to see themselves in relation to mathematics. It examines the impact of maths anxiety – particularly in the early years of teaching – and how identity is influenced by community, context, and experience. The chapter highlights the importance of understanding and responding to diverse school settings, including rural, regional, and remote communities. You will also consider how to meaningfully embed the Australian Curriculum cross-curriculum priorities – Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures, Asia and Australia’s engagement with Asia, and sustainability – within mathematics lessons.

This chapter explores the experiences of hundreds of Kenyan students who travelled to the Soviet Union, East Germany, Bulgaria and other communist states during the late 1950s and 1960s and the politics surrounding them. Initiated for similar reasons as Mboya’s own airlift of students to the United States and expanded in a deliberate effort to compete with Mboya’s programme, the support of students for study in Eastern and Central Europe was a major part of Odinga’s efforts to build his own political base and to address Kenya’s urgent educational needs. After independence in 1963, and with Odinga increasingly in conflict with both Mboya and Kenyatta, these students became a source of considerable political controversy. The fact that some of the students had been sent for military training under agreements struck by nationalist leaders before independent Kenya’s military deals with Britain were finalised meant that returning graduates became the subject of Cold War–inspired rumours of coup plots to support Odinga. With Odinga forced out of the ruling party and government in 1966, the graduates from Eastern and Central Europe were frozen out of senior roles in government.

Chapter 6 delves into experiments, models, and simulations in mathematics, introducing powerful strategies for inquiry and representation. You will learn how to scaffold students’ understanding of mathematical concepts through modelling frameworks and interactive tools, enhancing conceptual understanding and problem-solving.

Perhaps Mboya’s most famous initiative was the so-called ‘Airlift’, a programme that provided travel assistance to hundreds of Kenyans to enable them to take up scholarship opportunities in North America. Remembered now for its alumni, the airlift was a major part of Mboya’s efforts to get returns from his international networks, both in terms of the political capital he accrued as a result of the massive popularity of the programme and the opportunities it provided to Kenyans. Education was a particularly powerful issue within the politics of decolonising Kenya. The limited educational opportunities provided by British colonial rulers to Kenya’s African subjects meant there was enormous demand and need for any opportunity to travel overseas to acquire a university education. However, the programme was also highly political. The chapter considers the role played by members of Mboya’s American network and how their participation was shaped by Cold War priorities. It also examines the personal experience of the students, with a particular emphasis on the financial hardships many faced as a consequence of the way the programme was deliberately structured.

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 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.

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.

Florence Price’s contributions to the keyboard literature range from pedagogical works for beginners, many of which she composed for her own students, to expansive multi-movement pieces that were written with the concert musician in mind. In addition to their varying levels of difficulty, variety also comes in the form of their stylistic influences. African American folk idioms are prevalent, as are the sound worlds of nineteenth century Romanticism and early twentieth-century chromatic experimentalism. As this chapter shows, Price’s keyboard music additionally sheds light on the influence of the publishing industry and the market for these works. Ultimately, however, Price’s keyboard output provides a window into her impetus as an educator and composer, and reveals Price the pianist and organist who frequently programmed her unpublished works in her own recitals and played for pleasure.

It is argued here that the modern school isn’t just about ‘education’ in some abstract, humanist sort of way; rather, schools have an essential role to play in how we govern our society. It is tempting to think that the process of teaching children has always been pretty much the same, and that mass schooling emerged as a result of greater concern for the wellbeing of the young. The evidence paints a somewhat different picture, wherein mass schooling formed a crucial component of a new form of social regulation based upon an increasing focus on individuality, where the school subtly conforms to the requirements of the state and where the disciplinary management of the population is made possible through continual surveillance and the close regulation of space, time and conduct.

There are all sorts of dilemmas when it comes to technology and education. How much should be allowed in schools? Do teachers have to worry about students’ data security and privacy? Is it ok for you to ask a computer to write your essay for you? Are we ruining the eyesight and attention spans of an entire generation thanks to excessive screen time? This chapter looks at the debates that exist when it comes to digital technology and education. It will be argued here that the interplay between technology and education is highly complex – and changing – at a pace that is almost unimaginable.