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In this chapter we detail our understandings of inclusive pedagogical practices that enable all students to assemble complex literate repertoires. We discuss generative concepts from international related literature (e.g. Au, Dyson, Janks, Luke, McNaughton, Moll, Thomson). We then present descriptions of two lessons as examples of how inclusive pedagogical practices might look in primary and secondary classrooms. The focus will be on how texts work to represent the world in particular ways and not others – and the implications of this for the inclusion of diverse student cohorts in developing complex literate repertoires.

The influence of extralocally produced texts, such as professional standards and systems of accreditation, on the ruling relations that govern teachers’ work and their learning about that work is a matter of concern in Australia, as it is in Canada, UK, and USA. This chapter explains how a dialogic analysis and the construction of individual maps of social relations were employed to reveal the influences that governed teachers’ learning about their work at the frontline. A dialogic analysis of research conversations about learning, based on the work of Mikhail Bakhtin, revealed the existence of both centralizing, hegemonic discourses associated with a managerial agenda and contextualized, heterogeneous discourses supportive of transformative learning. It also revealed the uneven influence of extralocally produced governing texts on both the locally produced texts and the “doings” of individuals. The production and use of “individual” maps represents a variation on the way “mapping” has generally been used by institutional ethnographers. From these informant specific maps, we can begin to observe some broad patterns in relation to the coordination of people’s “doings” both within a given context and from one context to another.

In 2012, the Department of English at the University of Sydney, Australia, established The LINK Project, a faculty-driven outreach program that builds sustainable partnerships with low socioeconomic status (SES) secondary schools across the state of New South Wales. Focused on discipline-centered engagement, LINK positions pedagogic work as a vital site for the advancement of a social inclusion agenda. However, the operative logic of such programs present a distinct set of pedagogical challenges if they are to negotiate the established scholarly frameworks that resist principles of inclusion and threaten to displace and exclude the cultural knowledges, skills, and capitals of students of low SES backgrounds.

This chapter postulates a framework for productive disciplinary engagement that generates new spaces for “relational equity” (Boaler, 2008) between post-secondary institutions and outreach high schools and within diverse tertiary classrooms. It draws on three LINK learning modules designed to foster new ways of forming attachments and enhancing achievement in outreach contexts. In doing so, it describes an approach that seeks to open higher education institutions to multiple knowledges and ways of knowing (Gale & Mills, 2013) in the pursuit of what Jacques Rancière (1987, p. 2) calls “the minimal link of a thing in common.”

When Rambo Last Blood hit the screens in 2019 to an almost unanimous thumbs down from the critics, it seemed as if Sylvester Stallone's ‘last outing’ as his iconic action hero, John Rambo was to bow out with more of a violent whimper than a spectacular bang. But action heroes never really do know when to quit. There is always one last mission to undertake. In an online interview in September 2019, Stallone indicated that Rambo 6 could well be on the cards. This chapter will discuss not only ideas about ‘Rambo’ as a character and his character arc, but posit the idea that Stallone, through the process of gerontology, has moved through the decades to become not a simplification or distillation of a cinematic action hero, but rather a much more complex one that asks questions about the politics of the era, masculinity, fragility and ageing.

This chapter describes a teacher education initiative for in-service teachers from around the United States focused on engagement with historical sites in New Mexico. The initiative invited professional educators to reconceptualize and “re-read” the history of the United States by studying the history of culture of Santa Fe and surrounding communities. This chapter will include an overview of place-conscious education. Additionally, it will advance three place orientations that are rooted in New Mexico history and culture: querencia, contested homelands, and sites as layered, storied texts. The chapter will also include an overview of the history of New Mexico that informed the professional development including a description of three historic sites that exemplify New Mexico's place orientations. Finally, the chapter will discuss qualities of the professional development experience itself with key insights gained from the participants around the place orientations identified in the chapter.