This first chapter provides an introduction to the book as well as outlining some of its major themes and issues. It provides a general outline of the theory of conscience defended in the book.

In this book, we provide a positive, futures-oriented approach to assist you to build on your knowledge, skills, strengths and abilities so that you are prepared for teaching in the current era and able to embrace the many rewards associated with working in the educational sphere. Cognisant of the standardised and high-stakes accountability contexts within which teachers now work, the book will assist in preparing you to understand, and to begin to address, the mandatory accreditation requirements for teaching in Australia. From the outset, you will also be encouraged to develop and reflect on your own personal and professional philosophies of teaching. This chapter introduces some of the literature, research and practices that will help students learn about and reflect on teaching and the teaching profession. It also introduces relevant information about Australia’s school communities and school structures so students can best understand the complex and diverse nature of the work involved in teaching children across the full learning spectrum from early years to senior secondary.

Learning to Teach in a New Era is a foundational text with scope for use throughout an entire initial teacher education (ITE) degree program. The book equips preservice teachers with introductory understanding and skills in the areas of professional knowledge, professional practice and professional engagement. Aligned with the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers (APST) and the Australian Curriculum, it contributes to the preparation of those in early childhood, primary and secondary preservice education to meet the Graduate Standards.

This chapter introduces the hard problem of sensory phenomenal consciousness and the three-part solution, the MOUDD theory, developed in the book.

Chapter 1 sets the scene for the book. It provides a chapter breakdown and sets out the key claims which the book makes. It also addresses the problematic issue of terminology.

This introduction extols reasons to study Augustine’s sermons for the academy and Church today. It introduces the sixteen chapters written by an international team of experts. It then lays the foundation of humility for the rest of the volume by considering this theme in the volume’s three parts: Augustine’s pastoral task of preaching sermons; sermons on the Scriptures and liturgical feasts; and preaching themes.

Our goal in writing this book was to address a notable gap in the availability of essential resources dedicated to this critical content area. Despite its foundational importance, no existing text offers a focused, in-depth exploration of language and literacy knowledge tailored for pre-service and in-service teachers working in Foundation to Year 10. The 2008 Bradley Review highlighted a deficiency in teachers’ language and literacy awareness and proficiency, a concern that was addressed by the introduction of the Literacy and Numeracy Test for Initial Teacher Education Students (LANTITE) in 2016. Consequently, initial teacher education programs have initiated courses and support services in English language and literacy to bolster teachers’ personal knowledge and skills, enabling them to pass the LANTITE’s literacy component.

The introduction presents the aims, methodology, genre, audience, and content of the book. My focus is on Tolkien’s literary ‘theory’, as informed by his own self-exegesis, that is, by Tolkien’s “experiment” and “observation” of his own literary work and experience as a writer. This explains my methodology, which is primarily inductive and exegetical, grounded as it is on a series of close readings of passages from Tolkien’s works. At the same time, Tolkien’s ‘theory’, however idiosyncratic, cannot be detached from the literary discourses of his age, nor from the traditions in which it is anchored. Despite its scope and specialism, the book is not only addressed to Tolkien readers and scholars, but also to the educated reader of English literature, who might have strong biases about the literary merits of Tolkien’s enterprise. In the book I will thus illustrate the depth and complexity of Tolkien’s literature by focusing on its meta-literary sophistication, that is, its self-reflexive focus on the nature and purpose of literature.

Epidemiology is the study of patterns and determinants of disease and other health states in populations. It primarily uses quantitative methods (those methods dealing with counting, measuring and comparing things) that definitely use statistics and include statistical methods, but in this book we will not be talking about performing any statistical acrobatics more complicated than completing a sudoku puzzle.

Chapter 1 introduces the rising power of interest groups in education, provides a brief literature review, and poses the research questions. This is followed by a section on institutional theory and how vested interests fit within this research programme and how this is applied to education policy. The chapter also presents key educational interest groups, their origins and causes, and the different types of mediation systems, detailing the traditional relationships between the state and these groups across the case countries and the European Union. Thereafter, there is a brief section on method and an overview of the chapter structure of the book.

This chapter introduces the book, defines key terms, and outlines the book’s scope and contribution. It explains the enthusiasm governments have for technology, and analyzes government automation against administrative law values of transparency, accountability, rationality, participation, and efficiency. The chapter then outlines the governance framework of the book, and sets out its structure.

This chapter introduces the research, justifies the methodological choices and outlines the structure of the book.

The introductory chapter is a brief recap on the history and origins of wind power, from windmills in ancient times to today’s multi-megawatt turbines. Energy security has arguably been the historic driver for wind power, and it was a primary source of mechanical power until the advent of the Industrial revolution when it was superceded by coal and oil. The first electricity generating wind turbines were built in the late nineteenth centry, and the technology was pursued most vigorously in Denmark, a country with limited energy reserves: the role of this country in creating the modern wind turbine is described. The worldwide energy crisis of the 1970s brought wind power into the frame internationally, and the pivotal role of legislation under President Carter in expanding the market for wind energy in the US and elsewhere is outlined. Since then the rationale for wind power has expanded to include climate change and the technology has grown exponentially in terms of global installation of wind power and the physical size of wind turbines. The chapter concludes by introducing some of the technological steps that have enabled this process, and which are detailed in subsequent chapters.

This introductory chapter, encyclopaedic in nature, covers the main aspects of catastrophe (CAT) risk from a qualitative perspective, offering an overview of what will be explored in quantitative terms in the subsequent chapters. It starts with the definition of the fundamental terms and concepts, such as peril, hazard, risk, uncertainty, probability, and CAT model. It then describes the historical development of catastrophe risk science, which was often influenced by the societal impact of some infamous catastrophes. The main periods are as follows: from ancient myths to medieval texts, mathematization (eighteenth and nineteenth centuries) and computerization (twentieth century). Finally, it provides an exhaustive list of perils categorized by their physical origin, including geophysical, hydrological, meteorological, climatological, biological, extraterrestrial, technological, and socio-economic perils. In total, 42 perils are covered, with historical examples and consequences for people and structures discussed for each one of them.

This chapter provides an introduction to the Cambridge Handbook of Bilingual Phonetics and Phonology, and emphasizes the interdisciplinarity of the scholarship included in the Handbook, which contributes to the diversity of approaches, to theory-building, and to the collaborative connections that are enhancing the field. The abstracts of each of the thirty-five chapters are also included and are followed by concluding remarks providing a roadmap for the future of research on bilingual phonetics and phonology.

In this chapter I lay the foundations of the book and give an overview of the argument. After introducing the importance of studying state capacity and the main puzzle of why certain states are set in divergent state building trajectories, I discuss the state of bellicist theory and criticisms related to its alleged functionalist approach to history, and lack of fit with a world where inter-state war has become less frequent. I then turn to Latin America, a poster child of anti-bellicist scholars. There I review the aforementioned books by Centeno, Kurtz, Mahoney, Mazzuca, Saylor, and Soifer, amongst others. My book is set against this new consensus which dismisses war as an explanation for intra-regional variation in state capacity. In a final section, I propose the need to rethink the theory with a focus on the long-term consequences of war outcomes rather than pre-war conditions. The introduction closes with a discussion of my case selection strategy and chapter layout.