This research-based volume presents a substantive, panoramic view of ways in which Australia and countries in Africa, Asia, Europe, and North and South America engage in educational programs and practices to transform the learning processes and outcomes of their students. It reveals and analyzes national and global trajectories in key areas of educational development, and enhances readers' understanding of the nature and complexity of educational transformation in a global context. The book's comprehensive analysis of factors associated with transforming education within globally representative geographical, cultural, and political contexts contributes to critical scholarship; its discussion of individual country findings and cross-country patterns has significant implications for educational practitioners and leaders. The volume has direct practical relevance for educational practitioners and leaders, policymakers, and researchers, as nations remain in dire need of effective ways and means to transform their respective educational systems to (1) more ably realize educational equity, (2) make learning relevant to an increasingly diverse overall student populace, (3) ensure individual and general prosperity, and (4) promote substantive global collaboration in developing the new economy.

Experiment and Experience is a collection of critical essays on twenty-first-century women-authored literature in France. In particular, the volume focuses on how contemporary women's writing engages creatively with socio-political issues and real-life experiences. Authors covered include well-established names, the 'new generation' of writers who first came to the fore of the French literary scene in the 1990s and whose work has now matured into an important oeuvre, as well as new emerging writers of the 2000s, whose work is already attracting scholarly and critical attention. Within the overarching theme of 'experiment and experience', the contributors explore a range of issues: identities, family relations, violence, borders and limits, and the environment. They consider fiction, autobiography, writing for the theatre, autofiction and other hybrid genres and forms. Their analyses highlight difficult issues, refreshing perspectives and exciting new themes at the start of the new millennium and moving forward into the coming decades.

Infancy is a time of rapid growth, when brain plasticity is at a maximum. Event-related potentials (ERPs) are one of the few methods that can easily and safely be used to study this process, and have led to exciting discoveries about human brain functioning and the neural basis of cognition. Over recent years, there has been a massive rise in the level of interest in ERPs and this book considers the advantages which they offer to researchers and clinicians. In particular, it looks at the benefits of this form of neuroimaging as a non-invasive tool for detecting impairments in brain and cognitive development very early in life. The potential use of ERPs for clinical settings is also explored in detail. The contributions are all from eminent researchers in the field and represent the latest thought on the topic. Infant EEG and Event-Related Potentials explains the basics of event-related potentials for those less familiar with the procedures and terminology, as well as offering a valuable handbook of the latest theories and empirical findings for those working in the field. This will be a valuable source for those interested in developmental psychology and neuropsychology, and for clinicians interested in application of ERPs.

First published in 1998. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Although several decades of feminist social action have made significant progress to the social, economic and political condition of many women, change has been uneven and there remain considerable advancements to be made globally. This valuable third edition updates some of the perennial issues that women face for today and looks at new arenas of difficulty, including digital exclusion, sustainable community development and environmental justice.

This interdisciplinary volume aims to deepen and enrich the reader's understanding of children's lives in the Global South. At a time when provision for Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) is expanding across the globe, this book highlights issues around early childhood development as well as exploring the importance of including local traditions, culture and knowledge in developing professional practices in the sector. A range of international contributors, including key scholars in the field of early childhood, draw on topics identified for discussion at the Early Childhood in Developing World Contexts International Conference, held at University College Cork, Ireland, in 2011. Much of the exciting research being undertaken in this area remains unrecognized, and the volume aims to communicate some of the important debates currently taking place. The essays are organized into three broad themes: children's lives and livelihoods; early years policy and practice; and language and culture.

This volume brings together multiple diverse perspectives from around the globe on quality of life and community well-being from a place-based perspective. It provides both conceptual and applied explorations across disciplines, ideas and perspectives to foster more interest and research in community well-being. Topics include surveying at the community level, child friendly communities, collective impact, grieving, and happiness. Those working in the areas of public policy, community development, community and social psychology, as well as planning and development will find this volume particularly useful for the array of perspectives, research, and analytical approaches presented.

This book provides the first comprehensive information and detailed data on the welfare systems of all twenty-seven EU member states and offers the reader an invaluable introduction and basis for comparative welfare research. The introductory chapter summarizes the actual debate about welfare states and welfare (state) regimes, gives an overview on current welfare (state) research and analyses the main recent developments necessitating a new focus on European Welfare Systems. The twenty-seven chapters on the welfare systems of the member states are written on the basis of a common structure by experts from the individual states. An additional chapter analyses the current social and welfare policies of the EU and focuses on the interplay and limits between European and national social policies. Two concluding chapters provide (a) a first comparative analysis on the basis of all twenty-seven European Welfare Systems and (b) a theoretical reflection both arguing for and venturing the idea of politically limited pluralism in European welfare politics.

Available Open Access under CC-BY-NC licence. Single parents face a triple bind of inadequate resources, employment, and policies, which in combination further complicate their lives. This book - multi-disciplinary and comparative in design - shows evidence from over 40 countries, along with detailed case studies of Sweden, Iceland, Scotland, and the UK. It covers aspects of well-being that include poverty, good quality jobs, the middle class, wealth, health, children's development and performance in school, and reflects on social justice. Leading international scholars challenge our current understanding of what works and draw policy lessons on how to improve the well-being of single parents and their children.

Over the last 250 years, the global capitalist system has been responsible for rapid economic growth and technological change. The consequent increase in production of an ever-changing and expanding range of products and services has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty and deprivation. This book suggests, however, that the primary purpose of current production and distribution is not to satisfy human needs but to create profit for the owners of capital that in turn has devastating consequences for the environment and for vulnerable people. Multidisciplinary in perspective, contributors to this volume addresses issues of inequality which affect both developed and developing countries. While they are concerned with the framework of income distribution they also explore the wider dynamics of capitalist systems of production and consumption and examine the dimensions of inequality from both an economic and socio/cultural perspective. The book has three key themes: relations between technologies, inequalities and exploitation; issues surrounding technologies and development; and the nature of technologies and their associated opportunities in the face of the future. That future is contested, and in the present context of persistent inequalities, a debate about where we might be going and how we might get there is crucial. This book makes a trenchant and challenging contribution to this debate.

For many, caring for a chronically ill family member is "the right thing to do," but it is also often a source of emotional hardship, physical stress, and social isolation. In response, skill-building, coping, and psychoeducational programs have emerged to help caregivers meet the changes and challenges in their - as well as the patients' - lives.

"Education and Support Programs for Caregivers "reveals the diversity of the caregiver population as well as their experiences and needs, and it introduces an empirically solid framework for planning, implementing, and evaluating caregiver programs. The book synthesizes current trends, exploring the effectiveness of different types of programs (e.g., clinic, community, home based) and groups (e.g., peer, professional, self-help), and how supportive programs lead to improved care.

Coverage includes:

Improving service delivery of education and support programs to underserved caregivers.Cultural, ethnic, and gender issues in conducting caregiver education and support groups.Utilization patterns (e.g., a key to understanding service needs).E-health, telehealth, and other technological developments in caregiver services.Evaluating the effectiveness and sustainability of programs.Recommendations for future practice, training, policy, and advocacy.

"Education and Support Programs for Caregivers" offers a wealth of insights and ideas for researchers, practitioners, and graduate students across the caregiving fields, including psychology, social work, public health, geriatrics and gerontology, and medicine as well as public and education policy makers.

This book reviews how local social and employment policy fields react to the European Social Fund (ESF) to determine the role of the ESF in local activation policies. Drawing on both sociology and political science literature on welfare state reforms, the author examines what shapes local policy reactions to ESF and what effects these reactions have on change in local policy fields. Comparing data from 18 local case studies across 6 European countries, and deploying an innovative mixed-method approach, the book presents comparative evidence on everyday challenges in the context of the ESF and discusses how these findings are applicable to other funding schemes.

First Published in 1998. This is Volume VIII of an eighteen volume library of Sociology on Public Policy, Welfare and Social Work and includes a study on the professional task in welfare practice. The book covers objectives of the welfare professions and gives guidance in this vocation, techniques, training and skills and comments on the themes of reassurance, faith, political commitment and reform, as well as the concept of treatment in non-medical settings.

First published in 1998. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The volume is a selection of the most incisive analyses related to the issues of gender and social transition that appeared in the pages of the quarterly East European Politics and Societies. The articles look at what was happening to women in the changing East European societies and propose new perspectives on the history of the region. Articles cover many countries and come from a period of twelve years - 1994 to 2006 - when the efforts of introducing gender into East European studies were most intense. The volume shows the trajectory leading from the introduction of the lens of gender into the East European studies to the moment at which the tools of gender analysis were applied without apology to the research on East European politics, law, history, culture and economy.

The Everyday of Memory explores manifestations of the communist past in the everyday lives of Eastern Europeans today. Representing a wide range of disciplines including cultural studies, film studies, urban studies, sociology, media, literature and art, the contributors to this book question the myth of a homogeneous Eastern European identity (as opposed to its historical Western counterpart). At the same time, they insist that those who experienced communism have a 'right to remember', and that their memories offer an alternative to the project of globalizing capitalism. The volume presents a critique of the current withdrawal of Eastern European politics from discussion of the communist past, in which the latter tends to be regarded as an obstacle to the neoliberal transition to democracy. As the book's microstudies of the everyday life of memory show, communism has never been isolated from its capitalist nemesis: the two systems have been intertwined in the post-Enlightenment interplay of the humanist ideals that underpin the modernist project. Through a close observation of the unconstrained ways in which memory works, this book offers an insight into the paradoxes of the two ideological powers which posited the subservient homo sovieticus against the civilized homo economicus. The book also invites debate about the contemporary relevance of the ideological polarization of communism and capitalism.

Contemporary Issues in the Sociology of Race and Ethnicity: A Critical Reader occupies, expands, and challenges the issues raised by critical race theory. Fleshing out the theoretical pillars of Critical Anti-Racist Theory (CART) as its central organizing framework, this text responds to the central issue of race in terms of public and academic discourses, meta-narratives, and its implications for social policy. Drawing from popular culture, this edited collection features a variety of real-world analyses, from media bias to contentious Africentric school programs. This collection serves as a timely and accessible text for academic and wider audiences. In addition to outlining the philosophical underpinnings of CART, the text considers how this theory may inform current socio-political dynamics in a wide, globally-reaching range of areas. This book could be used in the undergraduate and graduate levels in these disciplines: Anthropology, Diaspora Studies, Education, Ethnic Studies, Law, Multiculturalism Studies, Politics, Social Work, and Sociology.

In China, social development has fallen far behind economic development. This book looks at why this is the case, and poses the question of whether the conditions, structures and institutions that have locked China into unbalanced development are changing to pave the way for the next stage of development. Based on an empirical examination of ideological, structural and institutional transformations that have shaped China's development experiences, the book analyses China's reform and development in the social domain, including pension, healthcare, public housing, ethnic policy, and public expenditure on social programs. The book moves beyond descriptive analyses to understand the role of broader changes in shaping and redefining the pattern of development in China.

The contributions to this edited collection, first published in 1983, are based on two underlying themes. The first examines the major recession that took hold of the global economy during the 1980s and assesses its effects on key areas of social structure, including political and economic democracy and trade union representation. The second theme considers the limitations of state intervention in such changing circumstances, with particular reference to the welfare state. This is a comprehensive title, which is of great relevance to those with an interest in the current global economic situation and the potential impact of this on the welfare state and class structure.

First Published in 1998. This is Volume IV of eighteen in the Sociology of Behaviour and Psychology series This is a study of social isolation, plus its causes. Written in 1952 rather than just ask what is wrong with the state of the world today, Dr Halmos turns to scientific analysis, constructive criticism and positive suggestion has he passes from study of basic social forces, through historical and empirical investigations, to the practical problems of reform and therapy. He has penetrated below the facile generalisations of common experience by distinguishing between neurotic types -the anxious, the depressed and the hysterical-and studying the different ways in which each is related to social isolation or participation.

Drawing on several years of research with grief support organizations and the families and friends of murdered children, this book examines the emotional experience of families in the aftermath of a homicide. It examines the politics of sorrow, offering a comparative analysis of White and African-American families as they navigate the experience of homicide, shedding light on the ways in which the class location or ethnicity of mourners affects their experience. Analyzing the manner in which police and other authorities differentially extend emotional support to bereaved families, notify them of a homicide, or assign blame, The Politics of Sorrow reveals how 'disenfranchised grief' comes to be an institutionalized outcome of their practice. The book further examines the effects of 'announcement shock' and the importance to the family of the moral career of the deceased, as they seek to manage his or her identity, often dealing with their grief through an active pursuit of justice in court, or through political involvement with a grief support organization, which mobilizes families in pursuit of its political ends. A rigorous study of stigma, identity, and stratified experiences of grief, The Politics of Sorrow will appeal to sociologists interested in interactionist methods, race, class, and emotion.

This book provides multinational evidence on active and healthy ageing. It generates authoritative new knowledge for mutual learning and policymaking in addressing challenges linked with population ageing. The authors discuss how to achieve better active ageing outcomes through appropriate policies including addressing life course determinants of active and healthy ageing. The chapters are distinctive in their focus on quantitative analysis of active and healthy ageing based on a first-of-its-kind composite measure, the Active Ageing Index developed during the 2012 European Year for Active Ageing and Solidarity between Generations. Contributors include researchers, civil service representatives, policymakers and other stakeholders from national, regional and European organisations. This edited volume provides a multidisciplinary resource for academics and policy makers in various areas of the social sciences, especially those studying population ageing and its consequences, economists, sociologists, social policy analysts and public health experts.

The first comprehensive and up-to-date overview of the literature on poverty, communal welfare systems and alternative welfare strategies. Offers a new perspective on how we should conceptualise poverty and how ordinary families and communities responded to that poverty.. Indicates the need for new directions in the study of poverty and welfare using previously unpublished results form one of the biggest poor law databases in existence.. Argues that welfare historians have paid too little attention to the complexities of defining and measuring poverty, and a variety of primary source material is used to reconsider the extent of poverty in the period 1700-1850.. Provides the first systematic attempt to discuss the regional dimensions of the welfare system in an English context. This book is relevant to United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 1, No poverty. -- .

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What is the power of the Treasury in controlling the policies and development of the welfare state? Drawing on in-depth interviews with officials of the Treasury and the spending departments, this book traces the developing role of the Treasury in setting social policy, especially under Gordon Brown's chancellorship. It reveals the tense relationship within Whitehall as the Treasury tries to set the Government's strategy but is resisted by spending ministers and officials.