Tag: Perspectives

Free Download School Leadership – International Perspectives By Mel West, Mel Ainscow (auth.), Stephan Huber (eds.)
2010 | 328 Pages | ISBN: 9048135001 | PDF | 4 MB
Research into school effectiveness in recent decades has corroborated the theory that the school leader has a pivotal role to play in making their school a successful institution and especially in its improvement. In fact, the school leader is most often cited as the key factor in a school’s development.Reflecting the importance it is given in today’s education landscape, this book explores the latest trends in school leadership from both theoretical and practical perspectives. Each chapter provides insight into an aspect of current research and analyzes its consequences for school leadership, with many offering internationally comparative assessments. Detailed case studies come from as far afield as Hong Kong and Canada. Among other things, chapter authors look at the growing importance placed on activities to "professionalize" school leaders, such as training and development programs and selection procedures. They also examine the professional standing and the level of decision-making authority that school leaders have in various countries.In view of the ever-increasing burden of responsibility placed on higher management to safeguard and enhance the quality of education they provide, school leadership is now a core concern of policy makers. In addition, most countries are undertaking fundamental education reforms that will have a major influence on the nature of school leadership. Offering the most up-to-date research on this central issue, this book will both inform and shape the debate.

Free Download Perspectives on Scientific Argumentation: Theory, Practice and Research By Jonathan Osborne, Anna MacPherson, Alexis Patterson, Evan Szu (auth.), Myint Swe Khine (eds.)
2012 | 292 Pages | ISBN: 9400724691 | PDF | 5 MB
Argumentation-arriving at conclusions on a topic through a process of logical reasoning that includes debate and persuasion- has in recent years emerged as a central topic of discussion among science educators and researchers. There is now a firm and general belief that fostering argumentation in learning activities can develop students’ critical thinking and reasoning skills, and that dialogic and collaborative inquiries are key precursors to an engagement in scientific argumentation. It is also reckoned that argumentation helps students assimilate knowledge and generate complex meaning. The consensus among educators is that involving students in scientific argumentation must play a critical role in the education process itself. Recent analysis of research trends in science education indicates that argumentation is now the most prevalent research topic in the literature. This book attempts to consolidate contemporary thinking and research on the role of scientific argumentation in education. Perspectives on Scientific Argumentation brings together prominent scholars in the field to share the sum of their knowledge about the place of scientific argumentation in teaching and learning. Chapters explore scientific argumentation as a means of addressing and solving problems in conceptual change, reasoning, knowledge-building and the promotion of scientific literacy. Others interrogate topics such as the importance of language, discursive practice, social interactions and culture in the classroom. The material in this book, which features intervention studies, discourse analyses, classroom-based experiments, anthropological observations, and design-based research, will inform theoretical frameworks and changing pedagogical practices as well as encourage new avenues of research.

Free Download Perspectives on Males and Singing By Scott D. Harrison, Graham F. Welch, Adam Adler (auth.), Scott D. Harrison, Graham F. Welch, Adam Adler (eds.)
2012 | 368 Pages | ISBN: 9400726597 | PDF | 6 MB
"Since singing is so good a thing,I wish all men would learne to sing" (William Byrd, 1588)Over the centuries, there has been reluctance among boys and men to become involved in some forms of singing. Perspectives on Males and Singing tackles this conundrum head-on as the first academic volume to bring together leading thinkers and practitioners who share their insights on the involvement of males in singing. The authors share research that analyzes the axiomatic male disinclination to sing, and give strategies designed to engage males more successfully in performing vocal music emphasizing the many positive effects it can have on their lives.Inspired by a meeting at the Australian symposium ‘Boys and Voices’, which focused on the engagement of boys in singing, the volume includes contributions from leading authorities in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the United States and Europe.

Free Download Perspectives On Privacy: Increasing Regulation In The USA, Canada, Australia And European Countries By Dieter Dörr, Russell L. Weaver
2014 | 179 Pages | ISBN: 3110338173 | PDF | 2 MB
Due to rapid developments in the communication sector, the right to privacy faces new challenges. The increasing digitization and internationalization of communication processes have raised a number of issues, and lead to conflicts wherever national legal systems and moral concepts collide. Particularly in the areas of data protection and liability of online service providers, universal approaches are required. This title presents positions of specialists in Europe, Australia, the US and Canada which contribute to the international dialogue and thereby offer a starting point for a sustainable policy for the protection of privacy rights.

Free Download Multicultural Education: Issues and Perspectives By James A. Banks; Cherry A. McGee Banks
2012 | 384 Pages | ISBN: 1118360087 | PDF | 5 MB
Multicultural Education: Issues and Perspectivesis designed to help current and future educators acquire the concepts, paradigms, and explanations needed to become more effective practitioners in culturally, racially, and linguistically diverse classrooms and schools. The Eighth Edition has been revised to reflect new research and data regarding the decreasing non-Hispanic White population in the U.S. Two new sections to the Multicultural Resources include "Special Education and Equity," and "Gifted Education and Equity." The Multicultural Resources in the Appendix have also been revised and updated and the Glossary has been revised to incorporate 2010 census data and new developments in the field.

Free Download Imagining Xerxes: Ancient Perspectives on a Persian King By Emma Bridges
2015 | 248 Pages | ISBN: 1474260721 | PDF | 4 MB
Hailed by Tom Holland as a ‘fascinating and compendious survey of ancient attitudes to Xerxes’ and now available in paperback, Imagining Xerxes is a transhistorical analysis that explores the richness and variety of Xerxes’ afterlives within the ancient literary tradition and the reinvention of his image in a remarkable array of cultural and historical contexts.This Persian king, who invaded Greece in 480 BC, quickly earned a notoriety that endured throughout antiquity and beyond. The Greeks’ historical encounter with Xerxes – which resulted, against overwhelming odds, in the defeat of the Persian army – has inspired a series of literary responses to the king in which he is variously portrayed as the archetypal destructive and enslaving aggressor, as the epitome of arrogance and impiety, or as a figure synonymous with the exoticism and luxury of the Persian court.Emma Bridges examines the earliest representations of the king, in Aeschylus’ tragic play Persians and Herodotus’ historiographical account of the Persian Wars, before tracing the ways in which the image of Xerxes was revisited and adapted in later Greek and Latin texts. The author also looks beyond the Hellenocentric viewpoint to consider the construction of Xerxes’ image in the Persian epigraphic record and the alternative perspectives on the king found in the Jewish written tradition.

Free Download Environmental Sociology: European Perspectives and Interdisciplinary Challenges By Harald Heinrichs, Matthias Gross (auth.), Matthias Gross, Harald Heinrichs (eds.)
2010 | 361 Pages | ISBN: 904818729X | PDF | 6 MB
Despite being a relatively young sub-discipline, European environmental sociology has changed considerably in the last decades towards more interdisciplinary collaborations and problem solving. Current trends such as global environmental modernization and processes of economic, political and socio-cultural globalization, fuelled by developments of transport, environmental flows, scientific uncertainty, and information technologies, have fostered new conceptual approaches that move beyond classical sociological mind-sets toward broader attempts to connect to other disciplines. Environmental Sociology is the first book to broaden the realm of environmental sociology by forging links to other environmental disciplines, such as environmental policy, media studies, geography, ecological economics, ecological modeling, or ecological design. The book’s focus on current environment-related issues in interdisciplinary developments are not only of relevance for strengthening environmental sociology but will make it a great read for upper undergraduate and graduate courses in social sciences dealing with environmental topics

Free Download Dispersals and Diversification Linguistic and Archaeological Perspectives on the Early Stages of Indo-European By Matilde Serangeli; Thomas Olander (ed.)
2019 | 302 Pages | ISBN: 9004414509 | PDF | 5 MB
Dispersals and diversification offers a reassessment of some of the pivotal linguistic and archaeological questions concerning the early phases of the disintegration of Proto-Indo-European, including discussions of the methodological approaches involved.

Free Download Created in the West Indies: Caribbean Perspectives on V.S. Naipaul By Jennifer Rahim; Barbara Lalla
2011 | 234 Pages | ISBN: 9766374120 | PDF | 10 MB
"Created in the West Indies: Caribbean Perspectives on V.S. Naipaul updates and furthers the debates on the life and work of an internationally acclaimed writer, Nobel laureate and native son of Trinidad and Tobago. The book draws together the proceedings of a series of outstanding public lectures and an academic symposium that featured a distinguished cadre of Caribbean scholars who, during 2007, participated in a year-long schedule of activities initiated by the University of the West Indies, St Augustine campus, to honour the life and work of this highly accomplished ‘enigma’ of Caribbean letters. The essays in this collection are organised into three sections that represent a compression of the multifaceted range of V.S. Naipaul’s creative concerns, thematic explorations, even obsessions, and philosophical persuasions. The singular power of these contributions is their ability to push at the borders of Naipaul scholarship, cutting new pathways for considering this most intriguing creative mind and offering fresh perspectives on the now familiar themes of postcolonial identity and nationalism, the fiction of history and history of fiction, home and belonging in a world characterised by flux, movement and cultural contact. Controversy has always companioned Naipaul’s career. Not surprisingly, some of the contributions are unrelentingly honest in their exposé of Naipaul for his trademark impatience with the very societies that created his unique sensibility and his propensity for self-contradiction. "

Free Download Asian Perspectives and Evidence on Health Promotion and Education By Toshiyuki Takizawa (auth.), Takashi Muto M.D., Ph.D., Toshitaka Nakahara M.D., Ph.D., M.P.H., Eun Woo Nam (eds.)
2011 | 445 Pages | ISBN: 4431538887 | PDF | 7 MB
Globalization and information technology have caused many health problems: mental health issues like depression, and lifestyle-related disease like diabetes and obesity. To cope with these health issues, health promotion and education are desperately needed. Convincing policy decision makers to invest in health promotion and education programs, it is needed to show its effectiveness. Health promotion and education professionals are expected to construct evidence of health promotion and education. Most of such evidence has been produced in the US and European countries. Because socio-economic conditions differ between the Asia and Western countries, we cannot depend on such evidence to implement adequate health promotion and education in our region. We must produce and accumulate our own evidence based on Asian perspectives.