This concluding chapter creatively and authentically synthesises the book’s key concepts and ideas to consider how our connections with people and places are foundational to the collaborative and inquiring nature of teaching and learning in early childhood contexts. Exemplars of early childhood teachers’ practice are shared to explore the possibilities and challenges they face in their daily working lives. This chapter provides a rich, descriptive narrative for readers to garner the inspiration and confidence to understand their own teaching philosophies and values, and to reflectively and purposefully make a difference in the lives of the children, families and communities of which they are a part.

Chapter 5 examines the bubble that occurred in Australia in the late 1880s. During 1887 and 1888, there was a major bubble in the price of suburban land, particularly in Melbourne. In addition, companies involved in the financing and development of urban land were created at this time and during the first half of 1888, their share prices doubled. After the peak in October 1888, the share prices of these companies and urban land prices fell sharply. We then explain why it took several years for the liquidation of the land boom to affect the wider economy. The chapter then moves on to discuss how the bubble triangle explains this episode. In particular, this was the first major bubble where investors were speculating with other people’s money, provided ultimately by the country’s banks. The spark which ignited the land boom was the liberalisation in 1887 of the restriction on banks’ lending on the security of real estate. This was the final act in a 25-year liberalisation process. The chapter concludes by examining the dire consequences of the bubble. In 1893, the Australian banking system collapsed and, as a result, Australia experienced a very long and deep economic recession

Chapter 10 zooms in on resistance in public-housing estates, a most unlikely setting because residents are transient and vulnerable. The chapter presents two pairs of cases, in Toronto and Melbourne, each city displaying a success and a failure in both mobilization and impact. The Toronto cases show how cultural producers engaged in boosterish programming that distracted public opinion from ongoing displacement in one site, while, in the other, experiential tools and preexisting networks combined to foster a strong residents’ voice in revitalization plans and prevented displacement. The analysis of Melbourne’s estates confirms the powerful role of union support and shows how a councillor’s ideology gains salience in the context of multimember districts.