This book provides a practical philosophy for promoting students' sophisticated thinking from Early Childhood to PhD in ways that explicitly interconnect across the years of education. It will help teachers, academics and the broader learning and teaching community to understand and implement these connections by introducing a conceptual framework, the Models of Engaged Learning and Teaching (MELT). By covering the nature, philosophy, practice and implications of MELT for teachers and students alike, the book will help teachers to facilitate students' awareness of, and increasing responsibility for, the thinking demanded by subject and discipline-specific learning as well as interdisciplinary learning, whether face to face, online or in blended modes. The book will also provide educators with ways to effectively engage with complex, and sometimes conflicting, contemporary educational concepts, and with a diverse variety of colleagues involved in the learning and teaching enterprise. The book provides guidance that allows curriculum improvement, teacher action research and larger-scale research to be reported on from a common perspective, bridging the gap between those readers focused on research and those focused on teaching. The book shares valuable insights and ways of addressing the contemporary issue of discipline-based learning versus transdisciplinary learning, reducing the dichotomy and enabling the two approaches to complement each other. This is an Open Access book.

THE AFFLICTED MAN'S COMPANION was written with the benevolent intention (according to the author) "that the afflicted may have a book in their houses, and at their bed-sides, as a monitor to preach to them in private, when they are restrained from hearing sermons in public;" and the work is admirably calculated to have the soothing effect intended by its able and amiable author. "John Willison (1680-1750), an influential evangelical minister of the Church of Scotland, was renowned as a prolific writer of practical Christian literature. 'The Afflicted Man's Companion, ' a veritable treasure-house on coping with sickness, dying, and other afflictions, was one of his most frequently reprinted titles. While being led through the valley of affliction some years ago, I frequently perused this volume with great profit. I know of no book so biblical, God-honoring, and practical for times of suffering, for the believer and the unconverted alike. Here is practical theology at its best. Give a copy to every suffering friend you have." --Dr. Joel R. Beeke, Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary, Grand Rapids, Michigan "John Willison ranks with the great Scottish preachers and writers of long ago. Scotland has given us Knox, Durham, Boston, Colquhoun, among many others, and John Willison. His 'Afflicted Man's Companion' is a must-have book for those under God's afflicting hand. If you or someone you know is going through a time of dark providence, then give them this title. Read it; then read it again; and then read it again. The silver lining behind the cloud will begin to show itself to you eventually as God reveals Himself. " - Dr. Don Kistler, founder of The Northampton Press