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Business Schools and other executive training providers have come under withering attacks since before the global financial crisis for their standardised, non-integrated executive curricula, rigid methods of instruction and weak participant engagement. The crisis has extended this critique. Further criticisms relate to the inability of providers who are schooled in Western paradigms of instruction to manage increasingly multi-cultural, executive workshops. This chapter proposes a play-based approach to executive training. The chapter argues that a play-based approach re-dresses some of the above imbalances and re-positions the interests of entrepreneurial and executive learners. The chapter evaluates the development of the approach to learning by using play-based and experiential-learning simulator called Synergy. Initial arguments are presented with indications and results on why play-based designs can offer a productive response to some of the current criticisms that are levelled at executive and entrepreneurial training provision.

This chapter explores how to introduce young children to coding as a literacy using mobile devices. Learning how to code is changing what it means to be literate in the twenty-first century and, increasingly, early years educators are expected to teach young children how to code. The idea that coding is a literacy practice is relatively new, and this chapter first presents strategies for introducing coding without technology. It then explores how to scaffold young children’s coding literacy proficiencies through programming and coding robotic toys. When young children have become familiar with coding and solving challenges using concrete materials and robotic toys, it is possible to introduce mobile devices, apps and humanoid robots in playful ways. This chapter explores how this can be done.

This chapter will explore the impact of life in warzones, life in transit, and life in camps on children’s development. It will consider the potential of play-based approaches in supporting children holistically, providing respite, and enabling positive learning experiences.

It draws upon the authors’ experiences of two visits to the Dunkirk Refugee Children’s Centre at La Liniere refugee camp, located in the Grande-Synthe area of Dunkirk. We will discuss the approaches that have proved successful in supporting children’s learning and development, the challenges faced, and the lessons learned. It will consider how these approaches could support successful transition into more formal education. Finally, it will examine the implications for staff training and development.

Drawing from the inclusive pedagogical approach in action framework and Pierre Bourdieu’s social theory concepts of habitus, field and capital, this chapter positions literacy and numeracy learning as core components of further learning, and living successfully in the world. It addresses learner diversity in early childhood settings and recognises the uniqueness of every child within the context of a broad range of cultural knowledge. The chapter concludes with two sample lessons and reflective questions, which early childhood teachers can use as models to expand children’s literacy and numeracy concepts, enabling creative and critical interactions across a range of modes in the context of everyday life across families and cultures.

Currently, the world is experiencing the highest levels of displaced peoples ever recorded by The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (Australian Human Rights Commission, 2016). Consequently, greater numbers of refugees and asylum-seekers are being resettled in host nations in Anglophone and some European nations. An increasing body of literature is examining the consequences for educational systems as this new and increasingly diverse cohort of students enters various education sectors – preschools, schools, universities and adult education. Despite a surge of interest in this area, however, the practical and theoretical implications for school leaders’ practices and praxis remain under-examined and under-theorized. Moreover, scholarship on leadership for diversity fails to capture the complex nature of leading learning for refugee students who too frequently are homogenized and essentialized under the umbrella of immigrant or culturally diverse students. This chapter contributes to filling a critical gap in our knowledge in these areas.

The nature of early care and education (ECE) programs in the United States, serving children from birth through age eight, has shifted dramatically in the last 20 years. With his 2013 State of the Union address, President Obama positioned ECE at the top of his educational reform agenda. His acknowledgment of the importance of the early years in providing a foundation for children’s lifelong learning and the critical need for national reform is welcoming to those of us in the field; yet, we meet it with some trepidation. ECE has a history of fragmented services for children and families, relying primarily on inconsistent state funds. Additionally, the pressure to be more competitive with our global counterparts has led to an academic push down at all levels of education, including ECE, rather than an increase in support for schools to meet the diverse needs of young children. The President’s proposed initiative further contributes to this pressure on our youngest children, their families, and their ECE caregivers.

In this chapter, we examine the current state of the ECE field, with an emphasis on the years prior to kindergarten.

We analyze two federal ECE initiatives, and argue for a return to the original purposes of ECE that best serve young children and families.

This chapter provides a rationale for this book and highlights the key literature in the entrepreneurship education discipline as a background context for the study. The organisation and structure of the book is identified and justified. Thereafter, each chapter included within the text is introduced and profiled. The chapter ends by drawing the overall conclusions of the studies included with suggestions for further research. Implications for the discipline in terms of policy and practice arising from the book are thereafter considered.