This book examines the approaches, content and design, and practices of current early childhood teacher preparation programs in universities across Australia, and compares them with those in Finland, Norway and Sweden. It is well established that investment in good quality early childhood education yields the best outcomes for children, and that there is significant correlation between quality early childhood learning environments and qualified teachers. As such, this book offers key insights into academic approaches to the design, implementation and assessment of early childhood teacher programs, and how these programs are shaped in response to requirements and constraints, both within the university context and beyond. This book provides a focus to inform future practice for decision-makers of early childhood teacher policy; researchers interested in improving the quality and status of early childhood education; and assessors of early childhood teacher programs.

Nanoscience and nanotechnology, the application of the research-based nanoscale science, have changed significantly over the last three and a half decades. The "bucky" ball, 60 carbon atoms arranged like a soccer ball, and an often-used symbol of nanotechnology, was discovered in 1985 and 4 years later scientists at IBM were able to manipulate xenon atoms on a surface. In the intervening years, nanotechnology has evolved from a singly focused research topic to an understanding that infiltrates every aspect of science and engineering disciplines. In addition, nanotechnology, and both naturally occurring and engineered nanomaterials, have become the focus of legal, environmental, and application and regulation disciplines. The first portion of this text serves as an introduction to nanotechnology: the history, mathematical concepts, and instruments required to study and manipulate the world at the atomic scale. The later portion of the text discusses the connectivity of nanotechnology to the more traditional scientific disciplines as well as emerging technologies. This text can serve as an introduction to the nanoscale for science, computer science, and engineering disciplines. It can also provide a valuable foundation for disciplines such as industrial hygiene, architecture, sociology, ethics, and the humanities. There does not exist an educational discipline, market segment, or career avenue which will not be impacted by nanotechnology.

Undergraduate and first-year graduate students engaging in engineering research need more than technical skills and tools to be successful. From finding a research position and funding, to getting the mentoring needed to be successful while conducting research responsibly, to learning how to do the other aspects of research associated with project management and communication, this book provides novice researchers with the guidance they need to begin developing mastery. Awareness and deeper understanding of the broader context of research reduces barriers to success, increases capacity to contribute to a research team, and enhances ability to work both independently and collaboratively. Being prepared for what's to come and knowing the questions to ask along the way allows those entering researcher to become more comfortable engaging with not only the research itself but also their colleagues and mentors.

This book is about the role of some engineering principles in our everyday lives. Engineers study these principles and use them in the design and analysis of the products and systems with which they work. The same principles play basic and influential roles in our everyday lives as well. Whether the concept of entropy, the moments of inertia, the natural frequency, the Coriolis acceleration, or the electromotive force, the roles and effects of these phenomena are the same in a system designed by an engineer or created by nature. This shows that learning about these engineering concepts helps us to understand why certain things happen or behave the way they do, and that these concepts are not strange phenomena invented by individuals only for their own use, rather, they are part of our everyday physical and natural world, but are used to our benefit by the engineers and scientists. Learning about these principles might also help attract more and more qualified and interested high school and college students to the engineering fields. Each chapter of this book explains one of these principles through examples, discussions, and at times, simple equations.

The volume is devoted to the research of comparative vocational education and training, placing a special emphasis not only on theoretical development, but also on methodological approaches and on achieving excellent research outcomes by strictly concerning comparative studies in vocational education and training. This volume contains scientific contributions by renowned researchers of vocational education from all over the world.

The theory of electromagnetic beams is presented in a simple and physical way, with all necessary mathematics explained in the text. The topics covered are in free-space classical electrodynamics, but contact is made with quantum theory in proofs that causal beams of various kinds can be viewed as superpositions of photons. This follows from explicit expressions for the energy, momentum and angular momentum per unit length for each type of beam. The properties of beams in the focal region, of special experimental and theoretical interest, are discussed in detail. There are eight chapters: on Fundamentals, Beam-like solutions of the Helmholtz equation, Electromagnetic beams, Polarization, Chirality, Comparison of electromagnetic beams, a chapter on Sound beams and particle beams (to show the similarities to and differences from the vector electromagnetic beams), and a final chapter on Measures of focal extent. Ten Appendices cover mathematical or associated physical topics.

History and archaeology tell us that when our far ancestors began to settle in localized groups, they codified their lives and experiences, and formed a collective for mutual support. This proto-civilization would have arisen from each individual's questions about the world, and their attempt to understand themselves and their place in the world. These groups, or tribes, evolved rules of conduct to facilitate communal living, and made a calendar for the group's celebration of harvests, and other events upon which the group was utterly dependent. This process of social evolution is the origin of religion, and of a magical way of looking at Nature. Eventually, this developing worldview was also the origin of science, which is our investigation of Nature to understand something of what is happening around us, and to use this knowledge to ensure our survival in a violent, indifferent Universe. After all, science and religion seek to answer the same question: Why and how is the natural world the way it is? This book seeks to show how science evolved from religion and magic, in response to a need to understand Nature.

This book gathers papers presented at the 22nd International Conference on Interactive Collaborative Learning (ICL2019), which was held in Bangkok, Thailand, from 25 to 27 September 2019. Covering various fields of interactive and collaborative learning, new learning models and applications, research in engineering pedagogy and project-based learning, the contributions focus on innovative ways in which higher education can respond to the real-world challenges related to the current transformation in the development of education. Since it was established, in 1998, the ICL conference has been devoted to new approaches in learning with a focus on collaborative learning. Today, it is a forum for sharing trends and research findings as well as presenting practical experiences in learning and engineering pedagogy. The book appeals to policymakers, academics, educators, researchers in pedagogy and learning theory, school teachers, and other professionals in the learning industry, and further and continuing education.

"Word Identification Strategies: Building Phonics into a Classroom Reading Program, Fifth Edition," gives pre- and in-service teachers essential information for planning and implementing effective word identification in elementary classroom reading programs-plus the tools to carry it out.

This book presents classical relativistic mechanics and electrodynamics in the Feynman-Stueckelberg event-oriented framework formalized by Horwitz and Piron. The full apparatus of classical analytical mechanics is generalized to relativistic form by replacing Galilean covariance with manifest Lorentz covariance and introducing a coordinate-independent parameter to play the role of Newton's universal and monotonically advancing time. Fundamental physics is described by the -evolution of a system point through an unconstrained 8D phase space, with mass a dynamical quantity conserved under particular interactions. Classical gauge invariance leads to an electrodynamics derived from five -dependent potentials described by 5D pre-Maxwell field equations. Events trace out worldlines as advances monotonically, inducing pre-Maxwell fields by their motions, and moving under the influence of these fields. The dynamics are governed canonically by a scalar Hamiltonian that generates evolution of a 4D block universe defined at to an infinitesimally close 4D block universe defined at + . This electrodynamics, and its extension to curved space and non-Abelian gauge symmetry, is well-posed and integrable, providing a clear resolution to grandfather paradoxes. Examples include classical Coulomb scattering, electrostatics, plane waves, radiation from a simple antenna, classical pair production, classical CPT, and dynamical solutions in weak field gravitation. This classical framework will be of interest to workers in quantum theory and general relativity, as well as those interested in the classical foundations of gauge theory.

What does memory mean for learning in an age of smartphones and search engines?Human minds are made of memories, and today those memories have competition. Biological memory capacities are being supplanted, or at least supplemented, by digital ones, as we rely on recording-phone cameras, digital video, speech-to-text-to capture information we'll need in the future and then rely on those stored recordings to know what happened in the past. Search engines have taken over not only traditional reference materials but also the knowledge base that used to be encoded in our own brains. Google remembers, so we don't have to. And when we don't have to, we no longer can. Or can we? Remembering and Forgetting in the Age of Technology offers concise, nontechnical explanations of major principles of memory and attention-concepts that all teachers should know and that can inform how technology is used in their classes. Teachers will come away with a new appreciation of the importance of memory for learning, useful ideas for handling and discussing technology with their students, and an understanding of how memory is changing in our technology-saturated world.

This book addresses the nature of professional learning, paramedic skill development, practice assessment, and feedback from both clinical and educational theory perspectives. It provides clear guidance from the literature, learning theory, and current research to help clinical educators plan robust professional education activities that address students' learning needs and clinical practice expectations. Based on the premise that assessment of practical skills and applied knowledge is integral to paramedic education, the book presents a worked example of a validated assessment approach. Each chapter contains realistic case studies for the array of paramedic education contexts, including simulated supervision, continuing in-service education, tertiary education and formal graduate programs. All chapters include a series of questions designed to guide both individual and group-based reflection on educational practice and philosophy.

Advances in Accounting Education: Teaching and Curriculum Innovations publishes both non-empirical and empirical articles dealing with accounting pedagogy. All articles explain how teaching methods or curricula/programs can be improved. Non-empirical papers are academically rigorous, and specifically discuss the institutional context of a course or program, as well as any relevant tradeoffs or policy issues. Empirical reports exhibit sound research design and execution, and develop a thorough motivation and literature review, including references from outside the accounting field, where appropriate. Volume 15 examines the following topics: ways to incorporate self-directed learning in managerial accounting courses, the intent of students to major in accounting during recessionary periods; and incorporating core competencies in the accounting curriculum. Volume 15 also includes a special section that examines efforts to integrate accounting with other core business disciplines in the curriculum. This section includes the experiences of two universities that successfully integrated introductory accounting material with other business courses.

This book aims to provide insight into how digital technologies may bridge and enhance formal and informal workplace learning. It features four major themes: 1. Current research exploring the theoretical underpinnings of digital workplace learning. 2. Insights into available digital technologies as well as organizational requirements for technology-enhanced learning in the workplace. 3. Issues and challenges for designing and implementing digital workplace learning as well as strategies for assessments of learning in the workplace. 4. Case studies, empirical research findings, and innovative examples from organizations which successfully adopted digital workplace learning.

This book promotes the idea that professionalism among teachers should be marked by democratic relations, rather than by managerialism and performance management. It provides a thorough investigation of issues around the participation of trainee teachers in the Lifelong Learning Sector, by reflecting on their experiences and questioning how well initial teacher education prepares teachers as professional practitioners in the sector. The reflexive nature of the book promotes a deep discussion of the nature of professionalism, drawing upon the works of John Dewey, Michel Foucault and Pierre Bourdieu, and places initial teacher education in the Lifelong Learning Sector firmly within the policy and ideological context of regulation, audit and control. It also illuminates pertinent discussions around teacher agency through a consideration of confidence, excellence, and routinised practices. Finally, the book takes us 'through the looking glass' to reveal the tensions within the teacher education curriculum as it prepares trainee teachers for a ready-made world, whilst at the same time attempting to encourage principles of social justice, inclusive practice and education as a democratic endeavour. It will be compelling reading for students and researchers working in Education and Sociology, particularly those with an interest in lifelong learning and teacher training.

This book examines the interactional practices of nurse practitioners (NPs) and the delivery of health care in the US. The author takes a discourse analytic approach, examining the linguistic resources that NPs employ in their interactions with patients. These linguistic features are connected to the concept of professional competency with specific focus on the enactment of the patient-centered approach. Analytic focus is placed on how NPs address organizational responsibilities during medical visits with patients, the form and function of patient education, the use of indirect speech, and the role that small talk plays in health care encounters. The book explores the understudied professional field of nurse practitioners and examines their linguistic practices with an eye on crossing disciplinary boundaries, integrating research from linguistics, discourse analysis and health communication. It will appeal to those interested in medical discourse analysis and health communication, as well as applied linguistics scholars.

This book draws on the stories of thirty-two young Australians to identify the barriers and obstacles they face in 'getting a job' in precarious times and from their vantage point. It maps the kinds of educational policies and practices that need to be created and more widely sustained to assist their career aspirations and life chances. It is timely in terms of contributing to an alternative set of possibilities based on a commitment to the principles and values of social justice, respect, trust, care, democracy and citizenship. In constructing an alternative vision and practice for education and training it advocates the right of all young people to have a say in these broader public debates. In pursuing this agenda, it deliberately sets out to listen to what young people themselves have to say with a view to interrupting the way things are. In other words, the book seeks to identify and explain the dreams, desires and aspirations of young people with a view to creating a new imaginary and socially just future.

This book advocates for an alternative to the hierarchical positioning of leaders. It proposes to value leadership practices which emerge from collective concerns about learning and the realisation that collegial interactions offer opportunities for rich explorations of pedagogy and new understandings to be developed. The book draws upon illustrative examples from a longitudinal study of early career teachers, entitled "Teachers of Promise: Aspirations and realities". It explores matters of personal ambition, support from significant others, and barriers to teacher leadership. It shows that these vary from context to context and individual to individual. Examples highlight the ways in which each teacher's experience has been enabled and constrained by different considerations. In combination, the examples offered demonstrate the need for the teaching profession to be more systematic in identifying and supporting talented teachers who could be the leaders of learning for tomorrow. The book shows that individuals themselves need to have an openness to consider how they might become more effective teachers through their engagement in leadership work. This, it suggests, involves developing a different conception of leadership to counter the prevailing view that leadership is typically positional and defined by its distance from classroom teaching. The more promising portrayal is to link teacher leadership explicitly with learning.

The journey to becoming an exemplary engineering educator is one that is rarely simple and straightforward. Simply being exposed to active learning strategies or innovative pedagogies rarely leads to a transformation of one's own teaching. In this book, we present a collection of stories from exemplary engineering educators that are told in their own voices. These stories are shared to enable readers to immerse themselves in first-person recollections of transformation, involving engineering educators who changed their teaching strategies from the ways that they were taught as engineering undergraduate students to ways that more effectively fostered a conducive learning atmosphere for all students. It is our hope that providing stories of successful engineering educators might stimulate thoughtful and productive self-reflection on ways that we can each change our own teaching. These stories are not simple, linear stories of transformation. Instead, they highlight the complexities and nuances inherent to transforming the way that engineering faculty teach. Through our strategy of narrative storytelling, we hope to inspire future and current engineering educators to embark on their own journeys of teaching transformations. We conclude the book with some lessons that we learned during our readings of these stories, and invite readers to extract lessons of their own.

This book addresses the education and training of Members of Parliament (MPs). It examines existing training programs offered in various countries around the world, evaluates their strengths and weaknesses and makes recommendations for a new approach, which aligns the professional development of MPs to 21st century requirements. Contributors address the role of parliamentarians, how to prepare them for their multi-faceted functions, the importance of ethics in any program, the requirement for more sophisticated adult learning approaches, human resource implications and the need to reform existing education and training models. The book will appeal to scholars in the fields of political science, adult education and human resource management, as well as to parliamentarians interested in enhancing their skills so as to perform more efficiently and effectively.

The title is part of the International Handbook of Vocational Education and Training, the standard reference for comparative research in vocational education in German. It is intended for an academic audience as well as vocational education and training practitioners. Selected titles are translated to make them available to the much broader English readership.

To understand modern science as a coherent story, it is essential to recognize the accomplishments of the ancient Hindus. They invented our base-ten number system and zero that are now used globally, carefully mapped the sky and assigned motion to the Earth in their astronomy, developed a sophisticated system of medicine with its mind-body approach known as Ayurveda, mastered metallurgical methods of extraction and purification of metals, including the so-called Damascus blade and the Iron Pillar of New Delhi, and developed the science of self-improvement that is popularly known as yoga. Their scientific contributions made impact on noted scholars globally: Aristotle, Megasthenes, and Apollonius of Tyana among the Greeks; Al-Biruni, Al-Khwarizmi, Ibn Labban, and Al-Uqlidisi, Al-Ja?iz among the Islamic scholars; Fa-Hien, Hiuen Tsang, and I-tsing among the Chinese; and Leonardo Fibbonacci, Pope Sylvester II, Roger Bacon, Voltaire and Copernicus from Europe. In the modern era, thinkers and scientists as diverse as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Johann Gottfried Herder, Carl Jung, Max Muller, Robert Oppenheimer, Erwin Schroedinger, Arthur Schopenhauer, and Henry David Thoreau have acknowledged their debt to ancient Hindu achievements in science, technology, and philosophy. The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), one of the largest scientific organizations in the world, in 2000, published a timeline of 100 most important scientific finding in history to celebrate the new millennium. There were only two mentions from the non-Western world: (1) invention of zero and (2) the Hindu and Mayan skywatchers astronomical observations for agricultural and religious purposes. Both findings involved the works of the ancient Hindus. The Ancient Hindu Science is well documented with remarkable objectivity, proper citations, and a substantial bibliography. It highlights the achievements of this remarkable civilization through painstaking research of historical and scientific sources. The style of writing is lucid and elegant, making the book easy to read. This book is the perfect text for all students and others interested in the developments of science throughout history and among the ancient Hindus, in particular.

Many of us have implemented oral communication instruction in our design courses, lab courses, and other courses where students give presentations. Others have students give presentations without instruction on how to become a better presenter. Many of us, then, could use a concise book that guides us on what instruction on oral communication should include, based on input from executives from different settings. This instruction will help our students get jobs and make them more likely to move up the career ladder, especially in these hard economic times. Oral Communication Excellence for Engineers and Scientists: Based on Executive Input is the tool we need. It is based on input from over 75 executives with engineering or science degrees, leading organizations that employ engineers and scientists. For the presentation chapter, the executives described what makes a "stellar presentation." And for every other chapter, they gave input-on, for example, how to effectively communicate in meetings and in teams, how to excel at phone communication, how to communicate electronically to supplement oral communication, and how to meet the challenges of oral communication. They also provided tips on cross-cultural communication, listening, choosing the appropriate medium for a communication, elevator pitches, and posters; and using oral communication to network on the job. Oral Communication Excellence for Engineers and Scientists includes exercises and activities for students and professionals, based on instruction that has improved Georgia Tech's students' presentation skills at a statistically significant level. Slides demonstrating best practices are included from Capstone Design students around the country. Table of Contents: Introduction / Background Preparation / Presentation: Customizing to your Audience / Presentation: Telling your Story / Presentation: Displaying Key Information / Delivering the Presentation / Other Oral Communication Skills / Advanced Oral Communication Skills / References

This volume brings together both political and educational scientists. While educational research literature has so far not systematically addressed the tool of simulations of decision-making, political scientists have hardly used insights from research on assessment or on motivation and interest of students. Almost all political science publications on simulations merely discuss how to implement the tool in class and fall short of providing evidence of the effects on student outcomes such as increased interest and performance. Combining the two disciplines is mutually enriching. Political science benefits from state of the art educational science measuring and testing of the claims made by the proponents of simulations, while educational sciences adds the systematic analysis of simulations of decision-making to their list of empirical objects, which also adds insights to the theories on the affective component of student learning. It is the explicit aim of the volume to address how simulating decision-making environments fosters learning. Implications for research and practice regarding student learning are addressed in all chapters.

This book draws on experiences from a range of vocational education systems in different nation states and re-examines the purpose of providing experiences outside educational institutions; the kinds and extent of those experiences; and efforts made to ensure the integration of students' experiences across sites. Analyses of the various vocational education systems, their purposes and practices across nations, and challenges experienced by different stakeholders illustrate different approaches to the integration of learning at different sites. The book includes a consideration of what constitutes the integration and reconciliation of experiences, and their attendant educational implications. This extends an appraisal of the concepts of integration, reconciliation, curriculum and work readiness, each of which has a range of connotations. Integration or reconciliation is differentiated from transfer of learning, which is commonly based on simple assumptions that the educational institutions will provide theory and that the workplaces will provide practice from the workplaces, and that the two can be easily linked by students. The contributions from different nation states clearly demonstrate that integration is a collaborative process and requires the agency of stakeholders operating at global, national and specific learning site levels.