The language continuum is defined by the dimensions of language ability (from language talent to language disorder) and bilingual language proficiency (from monolingual to multilingual) in this chapter. Although the terms “language ability” and “proficiency” are often used interchangeably in the literature, we systematically differentiate these two dimensions in order to explain variations in speakers from different linguistic backgrounds. Cross-linguistic data are presented to strengthen this argument. The differentiation of these two language dimensions is important for professionals to prevent the over- and underdiagnosis of children who come from language minority groups or exhibit bilingual language disorder. A discussion of similarities in language acquisition between typically developing monolingual and bilingual first language speakers and between monolingual and bilingual children with developmental language disorder is included to highlight common features along the language dimensions. Within-subject approaches and different measures of assessment are described to support the classification of children from diverse linguistic environments.

This chapter is divided into three main sections. The first proposes the Ten Teacher Questions framework. This set of questions is designed to provide you with a generic framework for critical enquiry into all your pedagogical choices, and to connect your pedagogical knowledge to what you have learned in previous chapters. The second section provides the curriculum context structures ‒ that is, the ACARA Cross-curriculum Priorities and General Capabilities, which inform our work. The third section presents Teaching Ideas in Mathematics, The Arts and English. Our key message is not that you must implement every Teaching Idea! Instead, we hope the examples will consolidate a practical approach to harnessing the linguistic diversity of your students. We hope that you will grasp the principles which you can see at work in the Teaching Ideas, and the way that they respond to one or more of the Ten Teacher Questions.

We have seen rapid development of various brain training methods in the past few decades that quickly became popular among educators, despite the lack of evidence about these products’ effectiveness. Some negative outcomes prompted researchers from both neuroscience and education to develop collaboratively neuroscience-based approaches to educational and clinical practices. This chapter discusses fundamental training-related questions, such as neuroplasticity, transfer, and individual differences and provides a detailed examination of one domain-specific method (i.e., working memory training) and a multi-domain approach (i.e., music training). Based on the findings, we point out how critical it is to determine the specific cognitive or linguistic skills that researchers intend to target with a given training method prior to the beginning of the training process. Further, it is essential to identify the overlapping processing components and underlying neural regions between the training tasks and the post-training measures to achieve transfer to untrained tasks.

This chapter analyzes why the SPD failed to stop the collapse of the Weimar Republic and whether it could have averted this outcome, discusses the lessons that German Social Democrats drew from this failure, and assesses to what extent the history of Weimar democracy and its collapse is relevant for analyzing the threat or reality of democratic breakdown in the contemporary world. The SPD leadership decided not to initiate any direct protest action to oppose the Nazi takeover. The chapter argues that any such action, if it had been undertaken, would very likely have been crushed and proven ineffective. There is no imminent threat of democratic breakdown in contemporary Germany or Western Europe. However, the Nazi takeover was the culmination of a process of executive aggrandizement that characterizes many contemporary cases of democratic decline and breakdown. Champions of democracy must combat this process from the outset – before it is too late.

A thorough taxonomy of explanations alternative to the orthodox explanation (predicated on the Hot Big Bang) is outlined and presented (including a diagram) in this chapter. Two basic groups are those predicated on the cosmological validity of relativistic field equations and their nonrelativistic radical alternatives. The first group includes explanations within variations on the Big Bang model (tepid and cold Big Bangs) and those aiming at regular astrophysical explanations (e.g., thermalization by grains or tired light hypothesis). The taxonomy reflects cosmological and astrophysical motivations, as well as explanations aiming to support a particular cosmological model or those aiming to explain the radiation as a regular astrophysical phenomenon. It is pointed out that the rest of the book analyzes technical details of explanations, predictions, and suggested tests, the historical context in which the explanations were devised, and explicit and implicit epistemic, metaphysical and methodological motivations for constructing them.

The possibility of the multiverse bean with early steady-state theories postulating causally unconnected regions, a standard Big Bang where spatial cross-sections are flat or open, or even an eternal inflationary universe. These cosmological options present a philosophical challenge to a realist understanding of the universe that is addressed through a discussion of the CMB’s central relevance in it in the chapter.

Introduction

During fieldwork in the Santal Parganas in February 2006, I was one day accosted by a policeman – the head of the local thana (police station). He was visiting the village where I was staying to talk to the parganait (leader of a group of villages) about the tense situation in the area. There were press reports on the growing activities of Naxalite groups in the region, he said, led by ‘civil elements from outside’. Training in the use of firearms was being organised and an atmosphere of violence being created in this otherwise peaceful region.

I soon realised that he was talking about the neighbouring panchayat (village council) of Pachwara in Pakur district, which has witnessed strong resistance to a large coal mining project in the last three years. I was told that compensation has now been paid out in cash and the resistance broken. Work was on full swing on the project, and it was now only a few people who were creating problems – these were the Naxalites, who needed to be arrested at the earliest!

This brief encounter raised a number of issues: How had the state actually managed to acquire land and get an agreement on cash compensation from the local adivasi people? Was any dialogue ever held or was this agreement a one-sided one? Was this solution not in contradiction to the existing protective land policies, as legalised through the Santal Pargana Tenancy Act (SPTA) of 1949? And was it not a gross violation of the Supreme Court's Samata judgment of 1997?

The fundamental issue behind these questions seems to be one of differing conceptualisations of land in cultural and political terms by the local people and the state, including the meaning of and principles underlying the notion of non-alienability of land in today's context. Economic growth and ‘national development’ require additional resources, whether minerals or land, for power generation, construction, industry or infrastructure development. Both industry and government make a strong case for the extraction and use of resources which are ostensibly being ‘wasted’ in ‘undeveloped’ and ‘remote’ adivasi regions such as Jharkhand. This view of land use and development, however, differs from local adivasi understandings. For the adivasis, apart from food production, land is valued for its ability to provide security and reinforce a sense of personhood (Rao, 2008).