This book comprises a series of engaging and provocative essays directed towards an optimistic consideration of hope, informed by practices that can be nurtured in school education and other sites of learning and are associated with courage and wisdom. Written from a range of perspectives and experiences each essay brings to the reader a positive orientation; one that is too often lacking in today's global era in which much attention is paid to simplified solutions, often unfit for purpose, and which engender a spirit of despondency and demoralization. Attention has been directed to the essay form as a departure from the academic chapter or journal article, with an expectation that the book will be of value beyond the walls of academia. The genre seeks to stimulate the reader's and scholar's imagination and to create new mental models that can stimulate reflection and rumination. The essays are sensitive to the many global, economic, societal and environmental discourses so dominant in the public domain and so act as antidotes to the more pernicious influences that those discourses have on educational policy making and practice.