This book focuses on how new pedagogical scenarios, task environments and communication tools within Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) environments can favour collaborative and productive confrontations of ideas, evidence, arguments and explanations, or arguing to learn. The first to assemble the work of internationally renowned scholars, this book will be of interest to researchers in education, psychology, computer science, communication and linguistic studies

Building on the foundations of human geography and regional science, there has now emerged a powerful theoretical basis that underpins a spatially integrated approach in social science research. This approach explicitly recognizes the key role that geographical (or spatial) concepts - such as distance, distribution, location, proximity, connectivity, place, neighborhood and region - play in human society and the behavior of individuals, groups and organizations. It also promotes research that advances the understanding of spatial patterns and processes.The chapters in this unique Handbook provide broad coverage of the theoretical foundations and methodologies that typify research using a Spatially Integrated Social Science (SISS) approach. This insightful volume is intended chiefly as an introduction for students and budding researchers who wish to investigate social, economic and behavioural phenomena by giving explicit consideration to the roles of space and place. The majority of chapters provide an emphasis on demonstrating applications of methods, tools and techniques that are used in SISS research, including long-established and relatively new approaches. Accessible and packed with key instructions on organizing SISS research, the book is structured into five distinct parts which give the reader a unparalleled overview of the field: - A Spatially Integrated Social Science Approach - Setting Up Your Research - Data Sources, Data Collection and Information Generation - Research Tools and Techniques and Applications - Producing Research Output This volume will appeal to all students and researchers with an interest in understanding the techniques, method and application of the spatial dimension of social sciences. Contributors: Imran Azeezullah, Irfan Azeezullah, A. Beer, M. Bell, D. Brown, C. Brunsdon, P. Chhetri, J. Corcoran, G. Daraganova, D. Faulkner, M. Goodchild, K. Grossner, A. Harding, K.E. Haynes, B.W. Head, G. Hugo, D.G. Janelle, R. McCrea, T. McGee, P. McGuirk, L. Mazerolle, W. Mitchell, A. Murray, K. O'Connor, P. O'Neill, L. Mazerolle, P. Pattison, J. Poot, K. Risley, D. Rohde, T.-K. Shyy, A. Sorensen, R.J. Stimson, R. Stough, R. Tanton, M. Watts, M. Western, R. Wickes

The essays bring to contemporary debates about educational research both a first hand familiarity with the practices and arguments of the educational research community and a clear grasp of the ways in which philosophical sources and analysis can inform them. They are both measured and passionate - sparked by an intense personal curiosity, which takes Bridges into unexpected resources and territory (such as the insights of museology into debates on educational research as narrative fiction) as well as more familiar material relating to, for example, issues about the assessment of quality of educational research and the concern for its relevance.

The book makes an articulate case, by its own example as well as in its argument, for the continuing contribution of philosophical thinking to the development and critique of educational research. It will be essential reading for researchers already engaged in this development and for masters and doctoral students who are coming to terms with educational research, and it offers a contribution to the literature in philosophy of education which is richly grounded in the wider field of educational research.

This book covers all types of literature on existing trend analysis approaches, but more than 60% of the methodologies are developed here and some of them are reflected to scientific literature and others are also innovative versions, modifications or improvements. The suggested methodologies help to design, develop, manage and deliver scientific applications and training to meet the needs of interested staff in companies, industries and universities including students. Technical content and expertise are also provided from different theoretical and especially active roles in the design, development and delivery of science in particular and economics and business in general. It is also ensured that, wherever possible and technically appropriate, priority is given to the inclusion and integration of real life data, examples and processes within the book content. The time seems right, because available books just focus on special sectors (fashion, social, business). This book reviews all the available trend approaches in the present literature on rational and logical bases.

Today, any regular newspaper reader is likely to be exposed to reports on manifold forms of (physical, emotional, sexual) child abuse on the one hand, and abnormal behavior, misconduct or offences of children and minors on the other hand. Occasionally reports on children as victims and children as offenders may appear on the same issue or even the same page. Rather seldom the more complex and largely hidden phenomena of structural hostility or indifference of society with a view to children are being dealt with in the press. Such fragmentary, ambiguous, incoherent or even contradictory perception of children in modem society indicates that, firstly, there is a lack of reliable information on modem childhood, and secondly, children are still treated as a comparatively irrelevant population group in society. This conclusion may be surprising in particular when drawn at the end of The Century of the Child proclaimed by Ellen Key as early as 1902. Actually, there exist unclarities and ambiguities about the evolution of childhood in the last century not only in public opinion, but also in scientific literature. While De Mause with his psycho-historic model of the evolution of childhood, comprising different stages from infanticide, abandonment, ambivalence, intrusion, socialisation to support, underlines the continuous improvement of the condition of childhood throughout history and thus rather confirms Key's expectations, Aries, with his social history of childhood, seems to hold a more culturally pessimistic view.

Prevent, Repent, Reform, Revenge is a study of the aims that people intend to achieve by the sanctions and treatments they recommend for wrongdoers. The book is designed to answer two main questions: What kind of analytical scheme can profitably reveal the nature of people's reasoning about the aims of sanctions they propose for perpetrators of crimes and misdeeds? In the aims that people express, what changes in overt moral reasoning patterns appear between later childhood and the early adult years? The authors conducted interviews with 136 youths between the ages of 9 and 21 to find out what sanctions and aims they felt were appropriate in three cases of wrongdoing. The resulting information provides an important insight into adolescent moral development. LC 95-16145.

This handbook provides a comprehensive view of the field of the sociology of gender. It presents the most important theories about gender and methods used to study gender, as well as extensive coverage of the latest research on gender in the most important areas of social life, including gendered bodies, sexuality, carework, paid labor, social movements, incarceration, migration, gendered violence, and others. Building from previous publications this handbook includes a vast array of chapters from leading researchers in the sociological study of gender. It synthesizes the diverse field of gender scholarship into a cohesive theoretical framework, gender structure theory, in order to position the specific contributions of each author/chapter as part of a complex and multidimensional gender structure. Through this organization of the handbook, readers do not only gain tremendous insight from each chapter, but they also attain a broader understanding of the way multiple gendered processes are interrelated and mutually constitutive. While the specific focus of the handbook is on gender, the chapters included in the volume also give significant attention to the interrelation of race, class, and other systems of stratification as they intersect and implicate gendered processes.

This book proivdes an account of the nature and value of the family within a liberal society. It defines "family," and assesses the right to have a family, whether the family promotes injustice, and what future there is for the family in the face of significant changes.

Statistics indicate that African American females , as a group, fare poorly in the United States. Many live in single-parent households - either as the single parent mother or as the daughter. Many face severe economic hurdles. Yet despite these obstacles, some are performing at exceptional levels academically. Based on interviews with hundreds of successful young women and their families, Overcoming the Odds provides a wealth of information about how and why they have succeeded - what motivates them, how their backgrounds and family relationships have shaped them, even how it feels to be a high academic achiever.

How are group-based identities related to intergroup conflict? When and how do ethnic, religious, and national identities lead to oppression, violence, rebellion, war, mass-murder, and genocide? How do intergroup conflicts change people's identities? How might social identity be harnessed in the service of reducing conflict between groups? The chapters in this book present a sophisticated and detailed interdisciplinary analysis of the most topical and fundamental issues involved in understanding identity and conflict.

This volume acknowledges two important themes found in recent work in urban sociology. First is the effort to apply new theoretical models to the analysis of the urban landscape, in particular the recent work in the new urban sociology and the renewed emphasis on the role of the state in shaping urban life. Second is the borrowing of important theoretical ideas from other disciplines, including postmodern theory and cultural analysis from the humanities. "New Directions in Urban Sociology" suggests both a beginning and a continuing evolution of sociological theorizing about contemporary urban places.

This book focuses on three interdependent challenges related to managing transitions toward sustainable development, namely (a) mapping sustainability for global knowledge e-networking, (b) extending the value chain of knowledge and e-networking, and (c) engaging in explorations of new methods and venues for further developing knowledge and e-networking. While each of these challenges constitutes fundamentally different types of endeavors, they are highly interconnected. Jointly, they contribute to our expansion of knowledge and its applications in support of transitions toward sustainable development.

The central theme of this book revolves around ways of transcending barriers that impede the use of knowledge and knowledge networking in transitions toward sustainability. In order to transcend these barriers, we examine the potential contributions of innovations in information technologies as well as computation and representation of attendant complexities. A related theme addresses new ways of managing information and systematic observation for the purpose of enhancing the value of knowledge. Finally, this book shows applications of new methodologies and related findings that would contribute to our understanding of sustainablity issues that have not yet been explored. In many ways, this is a book of theory and of practice; and it is one of methods as well as policy and performance.

In this book, experts in statistics and psychometrics describe classes of linkages, the history of score linkings, data collection designs, and methods used to achieve sound score linkages. They describe and critically discuss applications to a variety of domains. They define what linking is, to distinguish among the varieties of linking and to describe different procedure for linking. Furthermore, they convey the complexity and diversity of linking by covering different areas of linking and providing diverse perspectives.

This book explores the complex problem of how to measure the 'success' of social organisations, projects and activities. Whether improving a local situation, organizing a campaign around sustainability, or assessing the intangible effects of perceived social benefits, currently we have only have a very limited range of mechanisms for judging effectiveness. On the one hand, a market-driven logic demands that qualitative perceptions and experiences are quantified into simplified and numerically defined variables. On the other, community projects are left un-assessed, as one-off outcomes of local and situated processes that must somehow automatically 'make things better'. For academics, researchers and other professionals working in this field this has resulted in the deep frustration of not being able to assess the things that are most centrally important: higher human values such as integrity, trust, respect, equality and social justice. Measuring Intangible Values argues that we can make shared social values - and their measurement - central to decisions about improving civil society. But because these social values are intangible, we need to develop ways of eliciting and validating them at the local level that can capture people's shared meanings across multiple goals and perspectives. We need to develop mechanisms for evaluating whether these values are met that use rigorous but also relevant measures. And we need to develop ways of doing this that are scalable, transferable and comparable across different kinds of organisations and fields of activity. This book will be valuable for researchers in all social science disciplines which touch on human values, such as sociology, social psychology, human geography, social policy, architecture and planning, design and community studies.

Volume three concerns political action on the margins of conventional political participation in a democracy: extremist, protest, and social movements. This theme covers a huge spectrum, ranging from pro-democracy movements in authoritarian regimes to anti-democratic extremist. The volume is organised in four sections: first, a theoretical paper linking the social movements literature to the literature on democratization; second, a series of comparative studies; third, essays on the United States and western Europe; and finally, a set of studies of successful or failed democratic transition in Yugoslavia, South Africa and the Philippines. The first section presents an ambitious synthesis of social movement theories with the 'political interactionist' theories of democratization associated with Guillermo O'Donnell, Philippe Schmitter, Adam Przeworski and others. The second section contains comparative studies, examining whether recent right-wing extremist voting in western Europe represents a real shift to the right. Two dimensions of nationalism in eastern Europe are examined and another chapter looks at two contextual factors affecting political protest in western democracies: mobilization by collective organizations and national political and socioeconomic conditions. Finally Karl-Dieter Opp examines the prospective role of political protest in the European unification process. Four papers pursue the analysis of contemporary far right in France, Germany and Austria. What are the characteristics of French National Front voters? Focus is also placed on right-wing violence in unified Germany and racism and anti-semitism in Austria. Two potential threats to democracy are studied: Basque terrorism and nazism in interwar Germany. Finally in this, there is an examination of the rise to power of the Nazy Party in Germany.

The purpose of this book is to break a number of the conventions of research texts by writing an academic text on methodology as a case study of building case studies, one that cites classic works in the field and contains autobiographical considerations throughout its account, one that narrates the conscious process of designing a framework from the range of philosophies that were involved in chronicling this topic.

"Global Change Scenarios of the 21st Century" informs readers of conceivable environmental changes in the next hundred years. Integrated scenarios are used to communicate large amounts of information about different aspects of the global environmental system, together with society's role within this system. Uniquely, the scenarios are generated by an integrated computer model, IMAGE 2.1, which enhances consistency and provides a framework for linking environmental and social aspects of global change.
The book is divided into four parts, the volume begins by describing the model used to generate these scenarios, explaining its current features. This is followed by scenarios of changing climate, energy and food use, land cover, acidification, sea level and many other indicators of global change up to 2100. The long term consequences of actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are then explored in a section which uses the concepts of 'safe landing' and 'safe emission corridors' to address the connection between the long-term climate protection and short-term emission reductions. The final sections examines how the complicated and crucial issue of how complex global scenario information can be communicated to policy makers.

A collection of essays by distinguished scholars in the academic study of religion, The Craft of Religious Studies represents the variety of research and analytical methods that researchers employ when examining religious phenomena, whether personally or socially expressed. Autobiographical in cast, this collection points to diversity of approaches in the academic study of religion and highlights the interdisciplinary nature of the field. While the ways scholars approach the study of religion in human culture vary, the common ground among them - as seen in these fourteen contributions - remains their quest for understanding more so than the paths toward understanding they have chosen.

This book presents papers from the 9th Applied Research Conference in Africa (ARCA), showcasing the latest research on sustainable education and development. The conference is focused on applied research discussion and its dissemination, developing understanding about the role of research and researchers in the development of the continent. ARCA gathers papers which explain how key education is to transforming lives, eradicating poverty and driving sustainable development in Africa. Presenting high quality research about developing economies, construction, education and sustainability, this proceedings will be of interest to academics, postgraduate students, and industry professionals.

Leading African American scholars examine the often neglected cultural context in research and policy development in African American higher education in this collection of essays. Past research has most often been conducted by individuals unfamiliar with the historical and cultural considerations of specific ethnic groups. Therefore, the outcomes of research and the development of programs have been based on deficit models, that is, what is wrong with African Americans, or what they cannot achieve. The book examines the questions; what is the relationship between African Americans' culture and experiences, and how should their culture be integrated into research and practice? How do African Americans' intra- and interrelations differ in higher education? How does understanding African American culture as it relates to higher education research enhance policy-making and practice? What role do HBUCs play in African Americans' participation in higher education? What are the policy and practice implications of past and current research? Scholars and practitioners of education, culture, and race relations will find this collection informative and interesting.

This annual publication is devoted to the advancement of ethics research and education in the profession and practice of accounting. It aims to advance innovative and applied ethics research in all accounting-related disciplines on a global basis; to improve ethics education in and throughout the professional accounting and management curricula at the undergraduate and graduate levels; and to provide a source of information for the professional eccounting and auditing community for integrating ethics and good business practices in public firms, business corporations, and governmental organizations. This annual's primary objective is to provide a forum for business leaders and educators to discuss and debate the plethora of ethical issues that affect accounting organizations and the financial community in the USA and abroad. It includes commentary and editorials from accounting practitioners, standard setters and regulators. Papers are empirical or theoretical in nature, and draw upon paradigms in related disciplines such as philosophy, psychology, theology, economics and sociology. Volume 2 includes a section on the public interest considerations of ethical obligations of CPAs in advertising and solicitation. Other subjects covered include: ethics violations in the accountancy profession; applying behavioural models as prescriptions for ethics in accountancy practice and education; auditor's responsibility to the public; and the impact of ethics education in accountancy curricula.

Thirty-two years after the publication of the legendary 'Rasch book' (Rasch, 1960), the rich literature on the Rasch model and its extensions was scattered in journals and many less accessible sources, including 'grey' literature. When asked by students or junior researchers for references to the Rasch model, it was a typical reaction on the part of the editors to state that it was difficult to name one, or just a few; actually, only a whole list of references differing in notation and level of formal abstraction seemed to meet the request in most cases. Therefore, in 1992 the editors decided to invite a number of outstanding authors in the field of Rasch modeling to contribute to a book presenting the current state of knowledge about Rasch models. The aim was not just to collect a number of papers on the subject, rather to produce a well-organized monograph. To this end, a workshop was held in Vienna from 25 to 27 February 1993 in which, after a process of mutual reviewing, drafts of all chapters were read and discussed by all authors, leading to a more systematic organization of the topics treated in unified notation and terminology. (The workshop was sponsored by the University of Vienna; here, the editors would like to express their thanks, in the name of all contributors, both for the financial support and for the hospitality granted.

Generalizability theory offers an extensive conceptual framework and a powerful set of statistical procedures for characterizing and quantifying the fallibility of measurements. It liberalizes classical test theory, in part through the application of analysis of variance procedures that focus on variance components. As such, generalizability theory is perhaps the most broadly defined measurement model currently in existence. It is applicable to virtually any scientific field that attends to measurements and their errors, and it enables a multifacteted perspective on measurement error and its components. This book provides the most comprehensive and up-to-date treatment of generalizability theory. In addition, it provides a synthesis of those parts of the statistical literature that are directly applicable to generalizability theory. The principal intended audience is measurement practitioners and graduate students in the behavioral and social sciences, although a few examples and references are provided from other fields. Readers will benefit from some familiarity with classical test theory and analysis of variance, but the treatment of most topics does not presume specific background. Robert L. Brennan is E.F. Lindquist Professor of Educational Measurement at the University of Iowa. He is an acknowledged expert in generalizability theory, has authored numerous publications on the theory, and has taught many courses and workshops on generalizability. The author has been Vice-President of the American Educational Research Association and President of the National Council on Measurement in Education (NCME). He has received NCME Awards for Outstanding Technical Contributions to Educational Measurement and Career Contributions to Educational Measurement.

This is the second volume of papers in the topical area of environmental management. Arising from work done by the International Centre for the Environment at the University of Bath, the papers address interdisciplinary environmental themes particularly from a business and management perspective.