This concluding chapter highlights the important contributions that this volume makes in featuring the diversity of forms of leadership in the ancient world and in illustrating how ancient people were asking questions about leadership that we should be asking more often today. It further argues that future research on ancient leadership should help readers to draw connections among the different forms of leadership in the ancient world, especially those readers who are not expert in ancient studies, and also to draw lessons that can help us better lead and better select our leaders. Ancient leadership studies need to play a vital role in helping us understand contemporary leadership as a moral, creative and collaborative art that we can all learn from one another.

Chapter 6 turns to a cluster of broadly cosmological episodes: the events and agents of creation, the texts that tell of these events and agents, and the authors who wrote these more and less authoritative texts. It focuses on two stretches of Cyril’s Against Julian, broadly concerning the modes of divine management of the cosmos but covering topics ranging from the breadth of human diversity to the Mosaic sacrificial system to the Tower of Babel and Homer’s Aloadae giant brothers. Cyril’s consistent objective is to dislodge the characters of the gods from Julian’s Hellenic story while also demonstrating how much better sense they make within the Christian story as fallen demons. That “all the gods of the nations are demons” (LXX Ps 95:5) was, of course, a common apologetic line. But this re-narrating claim is more than a polemical trope, structuring in fact a surprising range of arguments.

This chapter will add a further layer of understanding from what you have read in Chapter 7 (diversity, inclusion, and social justice) and Chapters 8 and 9 (classroom management and creating positive learning environments). However, this chapter will focus on one particular group of learners: those who have lived through complex trauma. The reason why an entire chapter is dedicated to this one group is a growing understanding that we need a different way of thinking, believing, planning and acting if we are to be successful in improving the educational and life outcomes for these children and young people. We also know that a trauma-informed approach to educating and supporting these young learners can enhance the personal and professional well-being of the adults working hard to deliver education programs, which is vital.

Teachers work across a diverse range of learning environments in an array of different contexts, sectors and settings. Therefore, teachers need to organise and manage particular learning environments according to a number of factors, including the age range, learning needs and number of students they are teaching, the nature of the learning context, and the aims and purpose of the teaching and learning being undertaken. The first section of this chapter explores this theme, and provides insight into how classroom management practices are historically, socially and culturally contextualised. In the second section, we introduce some of the theoretical principles and practical issues associated with establishing and maintaining positive, supportive, safe and inclusive learning environments that encourage all students to participate fully in educational opportunities. Theories are of little use in classroom management if they exist only at the level of abstract thought, so we explore ways in which theory can be enacted in practice across learning contexts.

Education changes lives. It opens doors and provides us with the skills and dispositions to achieve what we believe in. But not all students flourish in their educational settings. The ways students experience their education are shaped by the differences among them. Despite many years of equity-based reform in schools, the children most at risk of educational alienation, failure or withdrawal in the third decade of the twenty-first century are, for the most part, the same children who were most at risk 50 and 100 years ago. Children from low socioeconomic backgrounds, rural and isolated areas, non-dominant cultural, language, or religious groups, students with disabilities, and many who don’t fit the stereotypes associated with a particular subject area, gender or culture have been shown to experience schools as places of alienation, not as places of growth, opportunity and learning. Issues of sexual and gender identity, mental health, and instability of citizenship, housing, and employment combine to make the situation even more complex.

As a novice teacher, it is important for students to be aware that they are entering a profession with a set of guiding policy frameworks to inform their knowledge, practice and engagement. Chapter 1 introduced a range of data snapshots that provide insight into current Australian and global education systems in the twenty-first century. Data are increasingly used to inform policy, but policy is also shaped by many other complex and multifaceted factors operating across both local and global contexts. This chapter further examines the education landscape and looks at how policy is shaped by, and in turn shapes, our educational thinking, work, teaching practices and future research.

Summary of the argument, implications, directions for further research.

Throughout this book, you have been challenged to look at the role the Arts play in society and in education. Various methodologies have been suggested and each specific Arts area has been broken down for you. The tools are now in place for you to organise Arts learning and teaching in your classroom. You also have reflective tools to apply to the learning and teaching you undertake. In this final chapter, we challenge you to imagine your Arts-rich classroom. What do you want the Arts to look like and how do you want your students to engage in them? These decisions will reflect your vision and rationale for teaching the Arts and your many experiences in working with the Arts as you have progressed through this book. These decisions are best made by the person who decides the ‘what’ and ‘how’ for their students every day: you.

The previous chapters have explored the teaching methodologies and concepts related to different forms of the Arts, as well as methodologies for integration and organisation. However, in addition to being able to teach the Arts, we need to have in place a system for evaluating the teaching process to ensure the outcomes and goals we wish to achieve are met for the learners. There has been a great deal of research to identify specific teaching practices that can improve children’s outcomes. This chapter does not intend to analyse the validity or otherwise of these outcomes, as these are mandated by the various examination and education boards. In part, this is because it is difficult to isolate any specific technique or learning skill that works for individuals because all children have unique and individual learning styles. For these reasons, the focus of recent research has been to isolate general characteristics. This chapter looks at the application of reflective learning tools to enhance teaching of the Arts, as well as inclusion and diversity in the classroom (specifically disability). Its focus, therefore, is to separate teaching from subjective assessment of teachers.

The worldwide scope and depth of the present international system and its sense of legitimacy have not been applied in the same way everywhere. There is still much diversity among countries and the courses of action and the policies that they embrace. This explains, in part, the tensions and disagreements concerning the nature and dynamic of this international system as well as the claims of legitimacy in it. The redistribution of power currently underway at the international level, epitomized by the rise of China, could create more stress in the future. Nevertheless, overlooking the scope and depth of the present international order and its culture of legitimacy would be a mistake. The scope and depth of the present international order and its culture of legitimacy are the manifestations and the products of the following elements working together: position of power dominance, means of penetration and integration, values and norms, and secularization and democratization.

This chapter examines the specificities at work at the international level and their implications for the issue of legitimacy, concentrating on the contemporary context. These specificities have to be understood in relation to the notion and experience of the international community. There are five distinctive features that characterize the international level in connection with the sense of international community. Although the interactions of these characteristics make the international system what it is, this chapter addresses them individually to identify clearly their nature and respective significance for international legitimacy. These features include the ambiguity of the international community; the national bent of international life; cultural diversity and disparity of development; the hegemonic and yet fragmented and contested conception and exercise of power; and the extent to which actors (states and individuals, in particular) have the possibility of ownership—that is, of being represented and of participating at the international level, including in terms of consent.

In the 1990s, privatisations, globalisation, and the ICT revolution opened up the British economy. This chapter examines how CEOs took advantage of these opportunities. Privatisation of national industries meant CEOs such as George Jefferson of BT now led some of Britain’s largest companies. Jefferson and his successors ensured their pay increased significantly. The average pay of CEOs rose rapidly, becoming a fixture of media debates, making the likes of Cedric Brown of British Gas a cause célébre. British CEOs finally underwent a managerial revolution in terms of education levels and training, but did increased pay correspond with improved corporate performance? In banking, pay rose for the likes of Fred Goodwin of RBS, and James Crosby and Andy Hornby of HBOS. But these CEOs all played leading roles in the collapse of their banks in 2008. The chapter shows how the Cadbury Report sought to rein in CEO excesses, but with limited effect. Governance problems were exacerbated as CEOs got younger and their tenures shorter, further incentivising short-term thinking. Women finally entered the role of CEO with Marjorie Scardino of Pearson and Cynthia Carroll at Anglo American.