This monograph presents the result of the authors' scientific research on the development of cognitive discursive approach to issues of intercultural professional and business communication (IPBC) and the study of the language of professional communication, the links binding the language with non-linguistic and extralinguistic realia in the framework of cognitive linguistics, as well as oral and written communication in intercultural professional business discourse. The authors proceed from the assumption that IPBC can only reach maximum efficiency provided that its participants assimilate its inherent norms and rules and are able to skillfully implement these norms and rules to verbalise their cognitive activity in the sphere of professional business interaction. Topics covered include: analysis of the theory of business communication, of codified and uncodified vocabulary, theory of euphemy, and euphemisms used in intercultural professional and business communication.

Early in the 20th century, our world was small and closed with boundaries. And, there were no appreciable changes. Therefore, we could foresee the future. These days, however, we could apply mathematical rationality and solve problems without any difficulty. As our world began to expand rapidly and boundaries disappeared, the problem of bounded rationality emerged. Engineeres put forth tremendous effort to overcome this difficulty and succeeded in expanding the bounds of mathematical rationality, thereby establishing the ""Controllable World."" However, our world continues to expand. Therefore such an approach can no longer be applied. We have no other choice than ""satisficing"" (Herbert A. Simon's word, Satisfy + Suffice). This expanding open world brought us frequent and extensive changes which are unpredictable and diversification and personalization of customer expectations. To cope with these situations, we need diverse knowledge and experience. Thus, to satisfy our customers, we need teamwork. These changes of environments and situations transformed the meaning of value. It used to mean excellent functions and exact reproducibility. Now, it means how good and flexible we can be to adapt to the situations. Thus, adaptability is the value today. Although these changes were big, and we needed to re-define value, a greater shift in engineering is now emerging. The Internet of Things (IoT) brought us the ""Connected Society,"" where things are connected. Things include not only products, but also humans. As changes are so frequent and extensive, only users know what is happening right now. Thus, the user in this Connected Society needs to be a playing manager-he or she should manage to control the product-human team on the pitch. Moreover, this Connected Society will bring us another big shift in engineering. Engineering in this framework will become Social Networking, with engineering no longer developing individual products and managing team products. The Internet works two ways between the sender and the receiver. Our engineering has ever been only one way. Thus, how we establish a social networking framework for engineering is a big challenge facing us today. This will change our engineering. Engineers are expected to develop not only products, but also such dream society. This book discusses these issues and points out that New Horizons are emerging before us. It is hoped that this book helps readers explore and establish their own New Worlds.

This book is not just about thinking or acting in transdisciplinary ways, but about being transdisciplinary. To achieve this requires a deconstruction of our current way of acting within the definition of being that others impose upon us. Transdisciplinarity is a phenomenological perspective of reality and its manifestation in the world in which we exist. The volume develops a widely based transdisciplinary understanding of the issues faced by higher education institutions and those who work within and with these institutions to educate professionals. It incorporates international contributions from organisational theory, anthropologists, historians, psychologists, social sciences, philosophers and practitioners to create a volume that makes an important and distinct contribution to the literature on higher education and professional practice. "Transdisciplinarity provides one of our greatest challenges in higher education, both to the way it is organized and to the nature of the curriculum. This book is an important contribution to the debate about its implications." "Higher education is being challenged by the nature of knowledge and how it is organized-the world is transdisciplinary but out institutions are constrained by the disciplines. This book contributes to the important debates about the challenges transdisciplinarity provides to our institutions." Professor David Boud Emeritus Professor, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Technology, Sydney

This book analyses the learning experiences of students of Business English at a Chinese university. It addresses several topical issues in English for Specific Purposes (ESP) education and Business English teaching, including how ESP students learn, how they develop multiple identities. In particular, it focuses on their professional identity in the classroom, and how these identities are transferred to the workplace. This allows the author to present a model of learning Business English that corresponds to the lived experiences of students in China, but which can also be applied to other ESP learner contexts. In doing so, he demonstrates how to research the professional identity of ESP learners from multiple perspectives, and contributes to the validity of research on language learning and learner identity. This book will appeal to scholars of English for Specific Purposes, Second Language Acquisition, and TESOL Education.

This book shares a range of examples where international students have undertaken a work placement, practicum, internship or participated in work integrated learning. Contributions reflect on the successes and challenges that this particularly diverse group of students experience when undertaking work placement programs in a variety of disciplines, such as education, engineering and health. The book explores these experiences via three main conceptualisations: 1. Internationalisation and interculturalisation - including the diversity of international student cohorts and the associated policy, practices and assessment related to international students in higher education; 2. Multi-socialisation - of international students with a focus on new cultural contexts, professional learning and disciplinarity; and 3. Reflection and reflective practice - acknowledging that for improvement and change to occur those involved need to reflect on current and possible future practice. A working model of effective practice is introduced which can inform prospective international students, their mentors/supervisors, work placement coordinators and other relevant university staff.

This book offers a detailed examination of reflective practice in teacher education. In the current educational context, where reflective practice has been mandated in professional standards for teachers in many countries, it analyses research-based evidence for the power of reflective practice to shape better educational outcomes. The book presents multiple theoretical and practical views of this often taken-for-granted practice, so that readers are challenged to consider how factors such as gender and race shape understandings of reflective practice. Documenting approaches that enhance learning, the contributions discuss reflective practice across the globe, with a focus on pre-service, in-service and university teachers. At a time when there is pressure to measure teachers' work through standardised tests, the book highlights the professional thinking that is integral to teaching and demonstrates ways it can be encouraged in beginning teachers. Aimed at the international community of teacher educators in schools and universities, it also includes a critical examination of methodological issues in analysing and evaluating reflective practice and showcases the kind of reflective practice that empowers teachers and pre-service teachers to make a difference to students.

This book critically explores the use of nine recognized methodologies for the mediation of professional learning in the context of teacher education: The story, the visual text, the case, the video, the simulation, the portfolio, lesson study, action research, and Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). Drawing on theories of mediation and professional learning, the book establishes connections between theoretical, empirical and practical-based aspects of each of these methodologies. It consolidates a body of knowledge that offers a holistic portrayal of these methodologies in terms of their purposes (what for), processes (how), and outcomes (what), both distinctively and inclusively. Each chapter offers four perspectives on each methodology (1) theoretical groundings of the genre (2) research-based evidence on methodologies-as-pedagogies for mediating teacher learning (3) mediation tasks for teacher education as reported in studies and (4) a synthesis of recurrent themes identified from selected books and articles, including a comprehensive list of publications organized by decades. The last chapter presents an integrative framework that conceptualizes connections and weak links across the different methodologies of mediation.

This book advances the theory of action research, analyzing how it can be used to develop autonomy among language teachers. Although acknowledging that the research process is not always linear, the authors proceed according to a clear progression which teachers can adapt to their needs. They provide examples, narratives, questions and tasks, and give multiple ideas for establishing research questions, choosing appropriate methodologies, adapting to existing contexts, and collecting data. They also suggest possible instruments, and give clear instructions for carrying out the most common kinds of statistical procedures, and ideas for presenting, discussing, and writing up research findings. In spite of its practical bias, the book is theoretically and ethically rigorous, and contains an extensive glossary for quick and easy reference. It will appeal to trainee teachers, in-service teachers wanting to expand their own professional horizons or working for a higher qualification, and is an invaluable reference for teacher-educators and scholars.

This volume discusses entrepreneurship education in Europe on the basis of in-depth case studies of related activities at twenty higher education institutions. Based on a model of entrepreneurship education, the analysis addresses curricular and extra-curricular teaching, as well as the institutional and stakeholder context of delivering entrepreneurship education within higher educational institutions. The book offers both insightful entrepreneurship teaching practices and a discussion of potential organizational drivers and barriers. Accordingly, it provides a valuable resource for researchers, instructors, and managers of entrepreneurship education alike.

What is it like to be a researcher or a scientist? For young people, including graduate students and junior faculty members in universities, how can they identify good ideas for research? How do they conduct solid research to verify and realize their new ideas? How can they formulate their ideas and research results into high-quality articles, and publish them in highly competitive journals and conferences? What are effective ways to supervise graduate students so that they can establish themselves quickly in their research careers? In this book, Ling and Yang answer these questions in a step-by-step manner with specific and concrete examples from their first-hand research experience. Table of Contents: Acknowledgments / Preface / Basics of Research / Goals of Ph.D. Research / Getting Started: Finding New Ideas and Organizing Your Plans / Conducting Solid Research / Writing and Publishing Papers / Misconceptions and Tips for Paper Writing / Writing and Defending a Ph.D. Thesis / Life After Ph.D. / Summary / References / Author Biographies

This book discusses how the Dutch vocational education system has undergone significant waves of reform driven by global imperatives, national concerns and governmental policy goals. Like elsewhere, the impetuses for these reforms are directed to generating a more industry-responsive, locally-accountable and competence-based vocational education system. Each wave of reforms, however, has had particular emphases, and directed to achieve particular policy outcomes. Yet, they are more than mere versions of what had or is occurring elsewhere. They are shaped by specific national imperatives, sentiments and localised concerns. Consequently, whilst this book elaborate what constitutes the contemporary provision of vocational education in the Netherlands also addresses a broader concern of how vocational education systems become formed, manifested within nation states, and then are transformed through particular imperatives, institutional arrangement and localised factors. So, the readers of this book whilst learning much about the Dutch vocational education system will also come to identify and engage with a selection of contributions that inform factors that situate, shape and transform vocational education systems. Such a focus seems important given an era when there are concerns to standardise and make uniform educational provisions, often for administrative or political imperatives. As such, this book will be of interest not only to those who are engaged in the field of vocational education, but those with an interest in educational policy, practice and comparative studies.

This book analyses the development of hospitality education from vocational to higher education, and discusses the positioning of hotel schools. It addresses questions such as: Should hospitality management become part of generic business education? Are the technical training programmes that have defined the identity of these schools a remnant of their vocational past, or have they contributed to the successful careers of many hospitality graduates? Topics discussed in the book are curriculum innovation, the theory of experimentation, the nature of hospitable behaviour, information technology, life-long learning and developments for future curricula. The book makes clear that the debate on the balance between theory and practice will not only define the future of hospitality management education, but can also be considered a relevant case study in other business disciplines. The history of hospitality education goes back to the end of the nineteenth and early twentieth century when hotel schools were founded to train the protocol and technical skills required to receive the travellers of those days. Since then, the scale and complexity of the hospitality industry and its professions have changed, as well as our understanding of what makes a business -whether it offers accommodation or something else- "hospitable". The scope and educational level of hotel schools have evolved accordingly, and hospitality management has become a popular discipline in the traditional and renowned hotel schools as well as in universities.

This book was written to help people understand and transform education and professional practice. It presents and extends the theory of practice architectures, and offers a contemporary account of what practices are composed of and how practices shape and are shaped by the arrangements with which they are enmeshed in sites of practice. Through its empirically-based case chapters, the book demonstrates how the theory of practice architectures can be used as a theoretical, analytical, and transformational resource to generate insights that have important implications for practice, theory, policy, and research in education and professional practice. These insights relate to how practices are shaped by arrangements (and other practices) present in specific sites of practice, including early childhood education settings, schools, adult education, and workplaces. They also relate to how practices create distinctive intersubjective spaces, so that people encounter one another in particular ways (a) in particular semantic spaces, (b) that are realised in particular locations and durations in physical space-time, and (c) in particular social spaces. By applying such insights, readers can work towards changing practices by transforming the practice architectures that make them possible.

This book explores the impact on EU member states of intensified European cooperation in the field of vocational education and training. By employing the Varieties of Capitalism approach as an analytical framework, it seeks to bridge diverging views from an innovative standpoint: While many experts argue that EU policies liberalize national training systems in spite of being 'soft law', Varieties of Capitalism argues that these polices do not produce a convergence of national institutions. The book maintains that European instruments such as the European Qualifications Framework and the European Credit System for Vocational Education and Training are indeed biased towards liberal training regimes. On the basis of case studies on Germany, the Netherlands and England, it shows that the initiatives were implemented in line with national training systems. Thus, European soft law does not lead to a convergence of training regimes - or, as the book posits, of welfare states in general.

This is he first edited book on gender issues in transnational business cooperation concerning knowledge work. This area has so far been researched mainly by organizational theorists, with their background in business studies, finance, communication or sociology, and gender has seldom been taken into account in these studies. This book shows how fruitful a gendered take on issues within this area is, both for a deepened understanding of these organizational issues and for a widened understanding of gender issues. The chapters in the book cover a range of themes from a gender perspective; culture, communication, identity work, structures, organizational change, globalization, mobility, resistance, leadership and management, international business, work life balance, education and labour market, policies and value systems. The chapters also demonstrate the multidisciplinarity within gender research itself and how different perspectives on gender can be combined and developed. They on the social constructionist approach of "doing gender", feminist organization theory, gendered discourse analysis, techno-feminism, and critical studies on men and masculinities. The book provides insights relevant for some of the relevant debates in business, economics, geography, sociology, and gender and women's studies. While primarily a research volume, the book is also useful for people who develop and manage transnational business relations.

This book offers a history of Continuing Professional Development (CPD) in the Australian context. It presents an approach that links the development of CPD to a series of 'missed opportunities' and the identification of three key themes (mandatory CPD, competencies and regulation/registration) as well as with national regulation for select health professions. It not only relates the evolution of CPD in Australia but also serves as a guide to examining the situation in other countries and the emergence of CPD in individual professions. CPD has been provided for many decades, but it has not been rated as a 'high priority' or a key area of provision and has not been the focus of discussions or disputes in the higher education sector or in vocational education circles. Nevertheless in describing CPD's development, evidence is presented that CPD has made a significant contribution to the broad field of vocational education.

This book presents thirty-one accounts by final-year pre-service teachers, providing guidance and insights for less advanced teacher education students, and illustrating the use of life history and narrative stories as methods for pre-service teachers to explore educational issues in classroom practice. This life-history approach identifies those political, economic, and social forces that have impinged on the individual at different points in their life and contributed to the process of changing their identities. These stories are not written by established specialists in the areas they deal with, but instead by novice teachers at the beginning of their paths towards mastering the intricacies of teaching and learning in school settings. As such the book provides a mentoring framework and a means of helping pre-service teachers share their valuable experiences and insights into aspects such as how to manage practicum requirements. It helps establish a supportive relationship among pre-service teachers, providing them with access to valuable peer experiences. In addition it helps pre-service teachers make sense of their own practicum experiences and reflect on their own beliefs and professional judgement to develop their approaches and solve problems in their own classroom practice.

This book is designed to introduce designers, engineers, technologists, estimators, project managers, and financial analysts as well as students in engineering and business to strategic cost tools for project cost evaluations. The three main sections are as follows. (1) Cost Relationships, Financial Statements, and Performance Measures-This section describes the relationships between cash flows and profits; the relationships between financial statements and the Purcell Diagram; and the issues of cost estimating, time-based breakeven analysis and time-based earned schedule. (2) Tools for Economic Evaluations-This section considers the basic mathematical relations used behind the economic equations and factors; discrete and continuous interest; depreciation terms and methods; and the Present Value of Principal Approach for evaluating loans. (3) Methods for Project Evaluation and Risk Analysis-This section considers payback periods, present worth analysis, return on investment, internal rate of return, benefit/cost ratios and positive-negative project balances; risk techniques of sensitivity analysis, optimistic-pessimistic analysis, discrete probability examples, and continuous probability models using the normal and triangular distributions.

This book is designed to be used in an introductory sophomore-level undergraduate course in chemical engineering, civil engineering, industrial engineering, chemistry, and/or industrial chemistry. Senior-level students in resource development, soil science, and geology might also find this book useful. In addition, it is our hope that even advanced mathematics-oriented high school seniors might find the material easy to master as well. This book emphasizes concepts, definitions, chemical equations, and descriptions with which some chemical science professionals struggle. It stresses the importance of maintaining uniformly high standards in pure chemical science and manufacturing technology while still keeping in mind that procedures that might seem strange also yield results that prove effective.

This book is written to address the issues relating to data gathering, data warehousing, and data analysis, all of which are useful when working with large amounts of data. Using practical examples of market intelligence, this book is designed to inspire and inform readers on how to conduct market intelligence by leveraging data and technology, supporting smart decision making. The book explains some suitable methodologies for data analysis that are based on robust statistical methods. For illustrative purposes, the author uses real-life data for all the examples in this book. In addition, the book discusses the concepts, techniques, and applications of digital media and mobile data mining. Hence, this book is a guide tool for policy makers, academics, and practitioners whose areas of interest are statistical inference, applied statistics, applied mathematics, business mathematics, quantitative techniques, and economic and social statistics.

Each one of us has views about education, how discipline should function, how individuals learn, how they should be motivated, what intelligence is, and the structures (content and subjects) of the curriculum. Perhaps the most important beliefs that (beginning) teachers bring with them are their notions about what constitutes "good teaching". The scholarship of teaching requires that (beginning) teachers should examine (evaluate) these views in the light of knowledge currently available about the curriculum and instruction, and decide their future actions on the basis of that analysis. Such evaluations are best undertaken when classrooms are treated as laboratories of inquiry (research) where teachers establish what works best for them. Two instructor centred and two learner centred philosophies of knowledge, curriculum and instruction are used to discern the fundamental (basic) questions that engineering educators should answer in respect of their own beliefs and practice. They point to a series of classroom activities that will enable them to challenge their own beliefs, and at the same time affirm, develop, or change their philosophies of knowledge, curriculum and instruction.

Michael Goller gives a structured overview of the current discourses of human agency in relation to professional learning and development. Based on this discussion, the author develops a theoretical framework including human agency as an individual feature (i. e., a disposition) as well as a set of self-initiated and goal-directed behaviours that are assumed to affect employees' learning and development (e. g., crafting of new work experiences). He then further specifies this theoretical framework and investigates it empirically in the domain of geriatric care nursing. Based on the findings of the three empirical studies conducted, the author discusses the relevance of human agency for the development of professional expertise of geriatric care nurses. The work received the American Educational Research Association (AERA) Workplace Learning SIG 2017 Dissertation of the Year Award.

This open access book discusses the functionality of the use of the language of photography in teachers' initial and ongoing training. It analyzes the nature of photography as a representation system, facilitating inquiry and reflection on its practice for teachers and evocating on theories and beliefs that may guide their work in classrooms. Photography is used to represent symbolically and affectively possible contradictions in teaching activities or the inconsistencies between planned teaching tasks and the educational purposes pursued. Resolving these conflicts is one of the ways to promote professional development. This book also describes photo-elicitation and photographic storytelling as work procedures. By analyzing the contributions of these techniques, the development of teachers is improved.

Ziel dieser Untersuchung ist es, Erfordernisse, Moeglichkeiten und Grenzen professioneller zahnarztlicher Fortbildung vor dem Hintergrund erwachsenenpadagogischer und qualitatsorientierter Erkenntnisse zu beleuchten und Entwicklungsmoeglichkeiten und Perspektiven aufzuzeigen. Dazu gibt die Studie Einblicke in Historie, Forschungsstand und politische Hintergrunde dieses Fortbildungsbereichs und zeigt wesentliche Aspekte zur Professionalitat in der Gestaltung institutioneller Weiterbildung. Die praxisorientierte Erkenntnisgewinnung resultiert aus einer umfangreichen Teilnehmerbefragung des Initiativkreis Umfassende Zahnerhaltung (IUZ), einem jeweils zwei Jahre dauernden Fortbildungszyklus fur Zahnarzte. So koennen Wirkungsmoeglichkeiten effektiver zahnarztlicher Fortbildung, Ansatze zu ihrer professionellen Gestaltung, aber auch weitergehende Forschungsanliegen dargestellt werden.

While in many university courses attention is given to the human side, as opposed to the technical side of engineering, it is by and large an afterthought. Engineering is, however, a technical, social, and personal activity. Several studies show that engineering is a community activity of professionals in which communication is central to the engineering task. Increasingly, technology impacts everyone in society. Acting as a professional community, engineers have an awesome power to influence society but they can only act for the common good if they understand the nature of our society. To achieve such understanding they have to understand themselves. This book is about understanding ourselves in order to understand others, and understanding others in order to understand ourselves in the context of engineering and the society it serves. To achieve this understanding this book takes the reader on 12 intellectual journeys that frame the big questions confronting the engineering professions.