Quality teacher education improves the quality of teaching and learning processes. What role do the sociocultural backgrounds play here? The book highlights how actors' sociocultural backgrounds influence the quality of teacher training within a pedagogical reform project involving participants from Cameroon and Germany. The analysis and interpretation of qualitative data shows that actors' sociocultural backgrounds are important factors influencing international, intercultural dialogues on teacher education as well as teaching-learning interaction dynamics in classrooms. The book further discusses the influence of sociocultural contexts on learner-centered classrooms based on principles of diversity, interaction and reciprocal responsibility.

Somewhere some time ago the Agents of F.E.E.L.S were formed. Working together to Feel Every Emotion Like Superheroes our helpful heroes are here to assist YOU the unsuspecting reader understand the emotions that are trying to mess up YOUR day

Following the successful publication of the first edition, this new edition updates the factual context of the volume and includes many new case studies and topic areas. In addition, new GCSE and 'A' level questions are incorporated and these should prove useful to all beginning students, including college students.

The volume covers the major areas of interest in sociology including the family, infant care, divorce, class, politics, industrial relations, gender, race, ageing, education, medicine, urbanism, deviance, the mass media, and research (which includes a section on GCSE course work). At the end of each chapter there are exercises, self-examination questions, post-exam questions, discussions, case studies and projects.

"[An] elegant ... Survival Manual ... Brief, witty and full of practical applications." - Stefan Kanfer, Time

Why do even well-educated people understand so little about mathematics? And what are the costs of our innumeracy? John Allen Paulos, in his celebrated bestseller first published in 1988, argues that our inability to deal rationally with very large numbers and the probabilities associated with them results in misinformed governmental policies, confused personal decisions, and an increased susceptibility to pseudoscience of all kinds. Innumeracy lets us know what we're missing, and how we can do something about it.

Sprinkling his discussion of numbers and probabilities with quirky stories and anecdotes, Paulos ranges freely over many aspects of modern life, from contested elections to sports stats, from stock scams and newspaper psychics to diet and medical claims, sex discrimination, insurance, lotteries, and drug testing. Readers of Innumeracy will be rewarded with scores of astonishing facts, a fistful of powerful ideas, and, most important, a clearer, more quantitative way of looking at their world.

Most people agree that schools should prepare young people for democratic life. Yet in the United States there has never been agreement on what types of skills, dispositions, and knowledge ought to be taught, nor even agreement on how they should be taught. Grounded in thick empirical description and rich in ethical debate, The Political Classroom is the first book to focus on how democratic education is actually taught in real schools with real teachers and students.

Based on one of the largest, mixed-methods studies of civic education ever undertaken, award-winning author Diana Hess and Paula McAvoy provide a systemic analysis of various approaches to teaching young people about democracy and democratic participation that exist in high schools throughout United States. By bringing the tools of social science and philosophy into conversation, this book engages readers in an examination of some persisting, important, and challenging dilemmas that are inherent in the process of educating young people to actively participate in political and civil society. Both clear and thoughtful in their presentation, Hess and McAvoy promote a coherent plan for improving the quality of classroom-based democratic education.

In an in-depth comparative and long-term analysis, first published in 2004, Daniele Caramani studies the macro-historical process of the nationalization of politics. Using a great wealth of data on single constituencies in seventeen West European countries, he reconstructs the territorial structures of electoral support for political parties, as well as their evolution since the mid-nineteenth century from highly fragmented politics in the early stages toward nation-wide alignments. Caramani provides a multi-pronged empirical analysis through time, across countries, and between party families. The inclusion in the analysis of all the most important social and political cleavages - class, state-church, rural-urban, ethno-linguistic and religious - allows him to assess the nationalizing impact of the class cleavage that emerged from national and industrial revolutions, and the resistance of preindustrial cultural factors to national integration. Institutional and socio-economic factors are combined with actor-centered patterns and differences between national types of territorial configurations of the vote.

"Here is a human being speaking with calm and sanity out of the wilderness. We would do well to hear him."--The Washington Post Book World
Art of the Commonplace gathers twenty essays by Wendell Berry that offer an agrarian alternative to our dominant urban culture. Grouped around five themes--an agrarian critique of culture, agrarian fundamentals, agrarian economics, agrarian religion, and geo-biography--these essays promote a clearly defined and compelling vision important to all people dissatisfied with the stress, anxiety, disease, and destructiveness of contemporary American culture.
Why is agriculture becoming culturally irrelevant, and at what cost? What are the forces of social disintegration and how might they be reversed? How might men and women live together in ways that benefit both? And, how does the corporate takeover of social institutions and economic practices contribute to the destruction of human and natural environments?
Through his staunch support of local economies, his defense of farming communities, and his call for family integrity, Berry emerges as the champion of responsibilities and priorities that serve the health, vitality and happiness of the whole community of creation.

This comprehensive overview of the political role of the Russian military (from Peter the Great's time in 1689 to the present) reveals why Russia has not experienced a successful military coup in over two centuries. Including materials from archives and interviews, the book covers the Imperial, Soviet, and post-Soviet periods through detailed analysis of some of the most important events in Russian political history.

This new edition of the series has been completely rewritten to conform to the requirements of the Revised National Curriculum Statement. It covers all the learning outcomes and assessment standards for Mathematics, ensuring that the level is appropriate and that adequate progression occurs. The material is also suitable for those classes or learners that can achieve more than the minimum requirements of the Revised Curriculum.

This friendly Learner's Book is both a resource for teachers who want their learners to have a clear and confident understanding of Mathematics, and a fun and easy way for learners to brush up or revise their Mathematics through self-study. The authors guide learners in a learning area that often proves to be a stumbling block instead of an inspiration!

Keenly known for both his triumphs and his failures, Lyndon B. Johnson was one of the most complex and compelling presidents in US history. Anne Quirk's biography alternates between chapters that follow LBJ's childhood in rural Texas learning politics from his parents, his time teaching Mexican American students at a small-town school, and his days in Congress as majority leader and as vice president; and chapters that cover his work alongside civil rights leaders and the passage of the Voting Rights Act. An epilogue discusses the Supreme Court's 2013 ruling that struck down key portions of the act. With engaging storytelling, Quirk paints a rich portrait of Johnson's presidency, celebrating the accomplishments of his Great Society programs while refusing to shy away from his catastrophic decisions regarding Vietnam and the summer riots of 1967. Larger Than Life presents striking parallels to today's political arena: an outsize character presiding over a divided nation-but to different ends.

Praise for previous editions... 'A comprehensive and illuminating resource on both citizenship and citizenship education.' - David Hicks, Times Educational Supplement What is the role of citizenship? How can it be taught effectively? Learning to Teach Citizenship in the Secondary School is an essential resource for students training to teach citizenship in the secondary school as well as teachers of citizenship looking for fresh ideas and guidance. Written by leading experts in the field, the book is underpinned by the latest research and theory and explores a variety of inspirational approaches to teaching and learning in a subject which provides a critical underpinning to the whole school curriculum. This new, third edition has been comprehensively updated and restructured to emphasise the role of citizenship across the curriculum, exploring a wider range of subjects including geography, modern foreign languages, mathematics and science. Key topics include: historical origins and contemporary contexts developing subject knowledge and skills of enquiry effective lesson plans, schemes of work and assessment citizenship beyond the classroom: community-based work and learning outdoors citizenship across the curriculum: English, drama and media; history, geography and religious education; modern foreign languages; mathematics and science; and RE research in citizenship. Including key objectives and chapter summaries, together with carefully developed tasks to support your own professional development, Learning to Teach Citizenship in the Secondary School is designed to develop theoretically informed good practice in citizenship education. It is a source of support, guidance and creative ideas for all training citizenship teachers and those teaching the subject as non-specialists, and offers specialists new insight into this crucial subject.