This book provides the first comprehensive comparative analysis of the emerging civil service systems in 9 Central and East European states. Its comparative nature provides a fascinating insight into the emerging patterns of administrative development in the region since the beginning of the transition period. The authors apply the same methodological framework developed by the Civil Service Research Consortium to all the country case studies, which gives the book a high level of coherence and enhances the comparability of the country case studies. This methodological framework provides a solid background for the in-depth analysis of the history of the civil service system, internal labour market, public opinion, relations between politicians and administrators and civil service reform and development. Special attention is given to topical issues such as the influence of the European Union on the emerging civil service systems and possibility of European Union candidature. Civil Service Systems in Central and Eastern Europe will be warmly welcomed by academics and advanced level students in public administration, law, political science and transition studies as well as policymakers and international organizations helping to develop civil services in former communist countries.

A volume in Critical Constructions: Studies on Education and Society Series Editor: Curry Stephenson Malott Education has rarely been absent from local and national public discourse. Throughout the history of modern education spanning more than a century, we have as a culture lamented the failures of public schooling, often making such claims based on assumptions instead of any nuanced consideration of the many influences on teaching and learning in any child's life-notably the socioeconomic status of a student's family. School reform, then, has also been a frequent topic in political discourse and public debate. Since the mid-twentieth century, a rising call for market forces to replace government-run schooling has pushed to the front of those debates. Since A Nation at Risk in the early 1980s and the implementation of No Child Left Behind at the turn of the twenty-first century, a subtle shift has occurred in the traditional support of public education-fueled by the misconception that private schools out perform public schools along with a naive faith in competition and the promise of the free market. Political and ideological claims that all parents deserve school choice has proven to be a compelling slogan. This book unmasks calls for parental and school choice with a postformal and critical view of both the traditional bureaucratic public school system and the current patterns found the body of research on all aspects of school choice and private schooling. The examination of the status quo and market-based calls for school reform will serve well all stakeholders in public education as they seek to evaluate the quality of schools today and form positions on how best to reform schools for the empowerment of free people in a democratic society.

As the need for sustainable development practices around the world continues to grow, it has become imperative for citizens to become actively engaged in the global transition. By evaluating data collected from various global programs, researchers are able to identify strategies and challenges in implementing civic engagement initiatives. Analyzing the Role of Citizen Science in Modern Research focuses on analyzing data on current initiatives and best practices in citizen engagement and education programs across various disciplines. Highlighting emergent research and application techniques within citizen science initiatives, this publication appeals to academicians, researchers, policy makers, government officials, technology developers, advanced-level students and program developers interested in launching or improving citizen science programs across the globe.

"True development, justice and the fulfillment of the maximumeconomic and social potential of Zimbabwe can take place only whendevelopment experts give serious and adequate consideration to the keyroles women play in their economies and societies. While social policyhas improved women's lives in some important ways, it has failed toimprove w omen's poorer economic situation compared to men."

Vital Statistics of the United States: Births, Life Expectancy, Deaths, and Selected Health Data brings together a comprehensive collection of birth, mortality, and health data into a single volume. It provides a wealth of information compiled by the National Center for Health Statistics and other government agencies. Vital Statistics contains over 225 tables and is divided into four parts: Births, Mortality, Health, and Marriage and Divorce. Charts and graphs, available at applicable points in each chapter, illustrate some of the most vital trends in the data. In addition, updated definitions reflect the latest federal parameters for information about births, mortality, health, and marriages.

What and how to teach in the K-16 classroom history has been a perennial and, at times, heated debate. Beginning as early as 1892, the question of what knowledge is of the most worth and what should be the central function of the history curriculum became a focus of many interested in education. It was felt that the teachers needed to move away from "traditional" methods of teaching history, such as rote memorization and the "dry and lifeless system of instruction by textbook," and find new and engaging ways to "broaden and cultivate the mind." Unfortunately, these recommendations faced many critics and did not take hold in K-16 classrooms at this time or, frankly, at any point since then. Even though we tend to have a nostalgic memory of earlier time periods and, in turn, the educational capabilities of the children from various times in our nation's past, the results from multiple studies examining the historical knowledge base of America's youth has remained fairly discouraging. Much of the lack of knowledge present stems from the manner in which history is traditionally taught. Ineffective instructional methods greatly impact the interest levels, or more frequently the distaste, generated for learning about historical content and, thus, the public's corresponding perception of the importance of history within K-16 curricula. This book makes an effort at overcoming the persistent boredom and lack of historical knowledge present in our students, by focusing on ways in which history instruction can be improved.

Mentoring in teacher education has been a key issue in ensuring the healthy development of teacher learning. Variety in the actualization of mentoring can lead to the exposition of new qualities and the evolving roles that mentors might undertake. Mentorship Strategies in Teacher Education provides emerging research on international educational mentoring practices and their implementation in teacher education. While highlighting topics such as e-mentoring, preservice teachers, and teacher program evaluation, this publication explores the implementations and implications that inform the existing practices of teacher education mentoring. This book is a vital resource for researchers, educators, and practitioners seeking current research on the understanding and development of existing mentorship strategies in a variety of fields and disciplines.

This book investigates whether, how and where the cultural milieu of European societies has changed as a result of the socio-economics crisis. To do so, it adopts a psycho-cultural approach, which views the cultural milieu as a set of meanings, placing the generalized image social actors have of themselves, the world, events and their relationships in the context of the socio-political and institutional environment, including policies. By analyzing the changes in cultural milieu and social identity, the book develops strategic and methodological guidelines for the design of post-crisis policies, providing a concept of how the cultural dynamics are associated with certain individual characteristics and specific socio-economic phenomena.

This book carries an ethnographic signature in approach and style, and is an examination of a small Brooklyn, New York, African-American, Pentecostal church congregation and is based on ethnographic notes taken over the course of four years. The Pentecostal Church is known to outsiders almost exclusively for its members' "bizarre" habit of speaking in tongues. This ethnography, however, puts those outsiders inside the church pews, as it paints a portrait of piety, compassion, caring, love-all embraced through an embodiment perspective, as the church's members experience these forces in the most personal ways through religious conversion. Central themes include concerns with the notion of "spectacle" because of the grand bodily display that is highlighted by spiritual struggle, social aspiration, punishment and spontaneous explosions of a variety of emotions in the public sphere. The approach to sociology throughout this work incorporates the striking dialectic of history and biography to penetrate and interact with religiously inspired residents of the inner-city in a quest to make sense both empirically and theoretically of this rapidly changing, surprising and highly contradictory late-modern church scene. The focus on the individual process of becoming Pentecostal provides a road map into the church and canvasses an intimate view into the lives of its members, capturing their stories as they proceed in their Pentecostal careers. This book challenges important sociological concepts like crisis to explain religious seekership and conversion, while developing new concepts such as "God Hunting" and "Holy Ghost Capital" to explain the process through which individuals become tongue-speaking Pentecostals. Church members acquire "Holy Ghost Capital" and construct a Pentecostal identity through a relationship narrative to establish personal status and power through conflicting tongue-speaking ideas. Finally, this book examines the futures of the small and large, institutionally affiliated Pentecostal Church and argues that the small Pentecostal Church is better able to resist modern rationalizing forces, retaining the charisma that sparked the initial religious movement. The power of charisma in the small church has far-reaching consequences and implications for the future of Pentecostalism and its followers.

Elgar Advanced Introductions are stimulating and thoughtful introductions to major fields in the social sciences, business and law, expertly written by the world's leading scholars. Designed to be accessible yet rigorous, they offer concise and lucid surveys of the substantive and policy issues associated with discrete subject areas. This Advanced Introduction provides a critical review and discussion of research concerning spatial statistics, differentiating between it and spatial econometrics, to answer a set of core questions covering the geographic-tagging-of-data origins of the concept and its theoretical underpinnings, conceptual advances, and challenges for future scholarly work. It offers a vital tool for understanding spatial statistics and surveys how concerns about violating the independent observations assumption of statistical analysis developed into this discipline. Key Features: A concise overview of spatial statistics theory and methods, looking at parallel developments in geostatistics and spatial econometrics, highlighting the eclipsing of centography and point pattern analysis by geostatistics and spatial autoregression, and the emergence of local analysis Contemporary descriptions of popular geospatial random variables, emphasizing one- and two-parameter spatial autoregression specifications, and Moran eigenvector spatial filtering coupled with a broad coverage of statistical estimation techniques A detailed articulation of a spatial statistical workflow conceptualization The helpful insights from empirical applications of spatial statistics in agronomy, criminology, demography, economics, epidemiology, geography, remotely sensed data, urban studies, and zoology/botany, will make this book a useful tool for upper-level students in these disciplines.

In New African Thinkers, young scholars from across Africa discuss their vision for the social, political, and economic future of their continent. A unifying element running throughout their work is the argument that culture-defined broadly as a way of life, system of values and controls, and modes of practice and expression-lies at the heart of a reimagined Africa: a place of prosperity and socioeconomic well-being, integration, and self-determination. The book grew out of the Tenth African Young Graduates and Scholars conference, the theme of which was the African Union's Agenda 2063.

The book is based on the recently held Symposium on mathematics and its connections to the arts and sciences, namely the second Mathematics and its Connections to the Arts and Sciences (MACAS2)Symposium in Odense, Denmark (May 29-31, 2007). The chapters are an eclectic collection of interdisciplinary research initiatives undertaken by mathematics educators with implications for practitioners concerned with teaching and learning processes. The papers cover a wide genre of research domains within mathematics education (cognition, modelling, problem solving, teacher education, ethnomathematics, mathematical/statistical literacy, curricular and technological initiatives and research related to science education). The major interdisciplinary themes of the papers in this book are: 1. How can modelling activities be used to foster interdisciplinary projects in the school and university setting? 2. How can the intricate connections between mathematics and physics be used to design and research interdisciplinary activities in schools and the university? 3. How can research within the ethnomathematics domain of mathematics education be linked to critical mathematics education and interdisciplinary projects involving mathematics, art and culture? 4. How can the push for mathematical and statistical literacy be connected to other subjects in the school curricula and emphasized via interdisciplinary activities? 5. What are concrete examples of classroom experiments with empirical data that demonstrate new and unusual connections/relations between mathematics, arts and the sciences with implications for pedagogy? 6. What is the role of technology and new ICT interfaces in linking communities of learners in interdisciplinary activities involving problem solving? The book is an important contribution to the literature on educational initiatives in interdisciplinary education increasing vital for emerging professions of the 21st century.

Before today's teachers are ready to instruct the intellectual leaders of tomorrow, they must first be trained themselves. Information and communication technology can greatly increase the effectiveness of this training and also aid teachers as they seek to bring the latest technological advancements into their own classrooms. The Handbook of Research on Enhancing Teacher Education with Advanced Instructional Technologies explains the need to bring technology to the forefront of teacher training. With an emphasis on how information and communication technology can provide richer learning outcomes, this book is an essential reference source for researchers, academics, professionals, students, and technology developers in various disciplines. The many academic areas covered in this publication include, but are not limited to: Curriculum Design and Trends in Higher Education Curriculum Development and Scientific Research Education and Globalization Online and Blended Learning The 21st Century Library and Information Services Use of Communication Technologies in Adult Education Video Use in Teacher Education

Based on a reassessment of primary documents from the beginning of Judaism through to the Reformation, author A. J. Deus evaluates the Judaic scriptures of the Jews, the Christians, and the Muslims for their potential to stir hatred, violence, and terrorism. He searches for messages in the scriptures that may alter the economic behavior of societies. In this, the second volume of "The Great Leap-Fraud, " Deus exposes the frauds that overrun the Islamic faith. He focuses on the scriptural foundation of the Muslims and explains the status of terrorism, Jihad, and human rights in the historical context. Tying history to contemporary issues, Deus puts the evidence together that shows how the Jews used the doctrinal difference of the time to heave themselves into power and redeem Israel. He demonstrates how societies and economies have changed because of religion and shows the consequences of those who preach hatred against humanity. In "The Great Leap-Fraud, " Deus argues that religious freedom poses the biggest threat to humanity, and he calls for the regulation of religion as an industry. He encourages citizens to look at religious history through unbiased eyes. See http: //www.ajdeus.org for more information, previews and articles.

This title is a guide to doing research in the burgeoning field of food studies. Designed for the classroom as well as for the independent scholar, the book details the predominant research methods in the field, provides a series of interactive questions and templates to help guide a project, and includes suggestions for food-specific resources such as archives, libraries and reference works. Interviews with leading scholars in the field and discussions of how the study of food can enhance traditional methods are included. Food Studies: An Introduction to Research Methods begins with an overview of food studies and research methods followed by a guide to the literature. Four methodological "baskets" representing the major methodologies of the field are explored together with interviews from leading scholars in: food history (Ken Albala); ethnographic methods (Carole Counihan); material culture and media studies (Psyche Williams-Forson); and quantitative methods (Jeffery Sobal). The book concludes with chapters on research ethics, including working with human subjects, and technology tools for research.

This book shows how to decompose high-dimensional microarrays into small subspaces (Small Matryoshkas, SMs), statistically analyze them, and perform cancer gene diagnosis. The information is useful for genetic experts, anyone who analyzes genetic data, and students to use as practical textbooks.Discriminant analysis is the best approach for microarray consisting of normal and cancer classes. Microarrays are linearly separable data (LSD, Fact 3). However, because most linear discriminant function (LDF) cannot discriminate LSD theoretically and error rates are high, no one had discovered Fact 3 until now. Hard-margin SVM (H-SVM) and Revised IP-OLDF (RIP) can find Fact3 easily. LSD has the Matryoshka structure and is easily decomposed into many SMs (Fact 4). Because all SMs are small samples and LSD, statistical methods analyze SMs easily. However, useful results cannot be obtained. On the other hand, H-SVM and RIP can discriminate two classes in SM entirely. RatioSV is the ratio of SV distance and discriminant range. The maximum RatioSVs of six microarrays is over 11.67%. This fact shows that SV separates two classes by window width (11.67%). Such easy discrimination has been unresolved since 1970. The reason is revealed by facts presented here, so this book can be read and enjoyed like a mystery novel. Many studies point out that it is difficult to separate signal and noise in a high-dimensional gene space. However, the definition of the signal is not clear. Convincing evidence is presented that LSD is a signal. Statistical analysis of the genes contained in the SM cannot provide useful information, but it shows that the discriminant score (DS) discriminated by RIP or H-SVM is easily LSD. For example, the Alon microarray has 2,000 genes which can be divided into 66 SMs. If 66 DSs are used as variables, the result is a 66-dimensional data. These signal data can be analyzed to find malignancy indicators by principal component analysis and cluster analysis.

While many facets of our lives are rapidly becoming more digital, educational institutions are now faced with the task of finding new and innovative ways to incorporate technology into the classroom. Examining the latest trends in digital tools provides a more effective learning environment for future generations. The Handbook of Research on Digital Content, Mobile Learning, and Technology Integration Models in Teacher Education is a pivotal scholarly reference source that outlines the most efficient ways for educators to employ technology-enhanced lesson plans in their classroom. Featuring pertinent topics that include blended learning environments, student engagement, artificial intelligence, and learner-centered pedagogy, this is an ideal resource for educators, aspiring teachers, and researchers that are interested in discovering recent trends and techniques related to digital learning environments and technology-enhanced classrooms.

Nowadays, event history analysis can draw on a well-established set of statistical tools for the description and causal analysis of event history data. The second edition of Event History Analysis with Stata provides an updated introduction to event history modeling, along with many instructive Stata examples. Using the latest Stata software, each of these practical examples develops a research question, refers to useful substantive background information, gives a short exposition of the underlying statistical concepts, describes the organization of the input data and the application of the statistical Stata procedures, and assists the reader in performing a substantive interpretation of the obtained results. Emphasising the strengths and limitations of event history model techniques in each field of application, this book demonstrates that event history models provide a useful approach with which to uncover causal relationships or to map out a system of causal relations. It demonstrates how long-term processes can be studied and how changing context information on the micro, meso, and macro levels can be integrated easily into a dynamic analysis of longitudinal data. Event History Analysis with Stata is an invaluable resource for both novice students and researchers who need an introductory textbook and experienced researchers (from sociology, economics, political science, pedagogy, psychology, or demography) who are looking for a practical handbook for their research.