When we think about the health and wellbeing of children, we need a model that is holistic in its conceptualisation and comprehensive in its design, to ensure we gain the best understanding of their health needs and can provide the most effective support. The International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) (WHO, 2001) was developed by the WHO to provide a comprehensive and holistic framework for conceptualising health. WHO first defined health in a holistic way in 1946, regarding it as ‘the state of complete physical, mental and social wellbeing and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity’ (p. 100). WHO recognised a need to develop a framework that would enable professionals, services and governments to enact that definition. The ICF is based on a biopsychosocial framework and aims to integrate the medical and social models of health. In this chapter, we provide an overview of the components of the ICF and describe educational, clinical and research applications of the framework to early years learners.

This chapter focuses on implementing transformative pedagogy as a solution to support students in their learning rather than feeding into their learning anxiety. The officers who join the Ecole de guerre (French War College) have been taught English through communicative and transactional methods, acquiring grammar and linguistics rather than the ability to communicate in the language. Provided in this chapter is a description of the implementation of a new approach, TLLT, based on learner autonomy and the lessons learned in the process: (1) the need for caution in analyzing the learning environment to avoid introducing a method without properly adapting it, (2) the transition from one method to another that allows the metanoic process and transformation to happen, and (3) all all the key players - the head of department/course designer, the faculty, the leadership of the college and, last but not least, the students experienced the metanoia. The most important lesson? When students realize that TLLT is about transforming their frame of reference and not re-setting who they are, their motivation rockets through the roof.

Women have often been profiled as prototypical users of hedges, i.e. linguistic devices such as I believe lowering the pragmatic force of a statement to potentially save interlocutors’ faces. Still, empirical investigations of gender-preferential hedging as employed by learners – specifically in postcolonial territories – are not available. This study establishes corpus-linguistically a) whether men or women use more hedges in native-speaker and postcolonial learner contexts, b) what factors determine hedge choice and c) on a theoretical level, the relation between learners and the evolutionary progress of their postcolonial habitat. A total of 1,530 hedges are extracted from texts by British native speakers and by learners (maximally level B1 in the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages) from Hong Kong, the Philippines and Singapore. Males use more hedges in Britain and Singapore, while female learners employ more hedges in Hong Kong and the Philippines, but the concrete hedge chosen is determined by region – with Singapore being notably different from other territories – mode and gender. More generally, the findings suggest that speaker status differences, i.e. whether speakers are second-language or foreign-language users, may be less important in explaining linguistic choices than the evolutionary status of their sociolinguistic habitat.

Knowing your learner means more than being able to list the facts of their age, gender, socio-cultural demographics and report grades. This chapter’s fertile question invites you to consider what other factors need to be understood, and how we can go about gathering and acting upon this knowledge.

The development and expansion of communication skills occurs across our entire lifespan. However, the foundations are established in our early years. In this chapter, we define communication and distinguish between different types of communication. We describe stages in the development of communication skills in the early years, explore the key achievements associated with each stage, and identify features that may indicate concerns at each stage. Finally, we discuss the links between oral and written communication skills and we suggest strategies for stimulating and supporting communication development across the early years.

In this chapter we will explore the unique nature of the Arts along with what the Arts ‘do’ for people. The differences between Arts education policy and its actual provision will be presented with particular reference to the need for broad access to, and equity in, Arts education in primary and early childhood settings. The importance of an approach to Arts education that encourages and embeds learner agency and cultural diversity is discussed, and the benefits of sustained ‘quality’ Arts education are presented. Your role in the provision of the Arts in early childhood and primary education is discussed and a ‘praxial’ vision for the Arts in education is presented.