Alison Bedford

Teaching Secondary History provides a comprehensive introduction to the theory and practice of teaching History to years 7–12 in Australian schools. Engaging directly with the Australian Curriculum, this text introduces pre-service teachers to the discipline of History. It builds on students' historical knowledge, thinking and skills and offers practical guidance on how to construct well-rounded History lessons for students. From inquiry strategies and teacher- and student-centred practice, to embedding the cross-curriculum priorities in planning and assessment, this text supports the learning and development of pre-service History teachers by connecting the 'big ideas' of teaching with the nuance of History content. Each chapter features short-answer and Pause and think questions to enhance understanding of key concepts, Bringing it together review questions to consolidate learning, classroom scenarios, examples of classroom work and a range of information boxes to connect students to additional material.

This book is grounded in the belief that every nation had its own ‘Great War’, and that children’s picture books are an important barometer of each country’s national approach. To explore the depiction of the Great War in Australian, British, and French modern children’s picture books, where this historical event is reimagined in different ways as a futile conflict, a painful victory, and as part of one country's founding mythology, this book uses the concept of the hero's journey as underlying framework. It claims that this monomythic pattern, as developed by Joseph Campbell and modified by Christopher Vogler, not only informs all picture books selected for this project but can also be used to highlight the extent to which modern children’s picture book authors and illustrators conform to their respective nation’s cultural memory. It further maintains that the specific historical context of the Great War in these children's picture books can be used to identify a variant of the hero's journey: the 'ordinary soldier's journey.’ This analysis of children's picture books about the Great War through the lens of Campbell's hero's journey will be of interest to both students and researchers in the fields of children's literature, literary theory, history, cultural studies and education.

This book explores the portrayal of refugee experiences in children’s picture books using insights from Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Chapter 1 considers this emerging genre of children’s literature within its social and educational context and explains how the narratives embedded within these books were examined. Chapter 2 cites key studies in the field of children’s picture books about refugees to uncover common narrative arcs, characterisations, themes and educative value. Remaining chapters detail the three core elements of Campbell's canonical narrative arc to review how the experience of refugees is presented in modern picture books using this familiar narrative structure as a means of exploring a humanitarian issue with overt political overtones. In so doing, the authors employ an innovative means of analysing picture books that deal with refugees by positioning them within a familiar narrative arc that belies the fear of difference they may otherwise represent.

Just over 200 years ago on a stormy night, a young woman conceived of what would become one of the most iconic images of science gone wrong, the story of Victor Frankenstein and his Creature. For a long period, Mary Shelley languished in the shadow of her luminary husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley, but was rescued from obscurity by the feminist scholars of the 1970s and 1980s. This book offers a new perspective on Shelley and on science fiction, arguing that she both established a new discursive space for moral thinking and laid the groundwork for the genre of science fiction. Adopting a contextual biographical approach and undertaking a close reading of the 1818 and 1831 editions of the text give readers insight into how this story synthesizes many of the concerns about new science prevalent in Shelley's time. Using Michel Foucault's concept of discourse, the present work argues that Shelley should be not only credited with the foundation of a genre but recognized as a figure who created a new cultural space for readers to explore their fears and negotiate the moral landscape of new science.