Contemporary Capacity-Building in Educational Contexts extends current understandings of what capacities and capacity-building are and of the dimensions that maximise their prospects of success in current educational policy-making and provision. It does this by exploring how capacity-building is implemented among nine groups of research participants, including Australian, Dutch and English circus families, migrants and refugees in an Australian regional town, and a university education research team. These data sets are analysed to address eight 'hot topics' and 'wicked problems' in contemporary education: consciousness; creativity; dis/empowerment and agency; diversity and identity; forms of capital and currencies; knowledge sharing; regionality and rurality; and resilience.

Educational Learning and Development: Building and Enhancing Capacity explores the topic of educational learning and development in order to examine issues that are impacting, either positively or negatively, on current research in this area. This is explored through ten groups of research participants from various countries, including circus families and teachers, students and teachers in a senior secondary art classroom, a parent-run alternative school, and refugees and migrants in a rural setting. These data sets are analysed through eight 'hot topics' and 'wicked problems' in contemporary education, seeking to uncover the capacity building potential of the research projects and what factors impacted on or assisted their development.