Humanities & Social Sciences

The Learning Engineering Toolkit is a practical guide to the rich and varied applications of learning engineering, a rigorous and fast-emerging discipline that synthesizes the learning sciences, instructional design, engineering design, and other methodologies to support learners. As learning engineering becomes an increasingly formalized discipline and practice, new insights and tools are needed to help education, training, design, and data analytics professionals iteratively develop, test, and improve complex systems for engaging and effective learning. Written in a colloquial style and full of collaborative, actionable strategies, this book explores the essential foundations, approaches, and real-world challenges inherent to ensuring participatory, data-driven, learning experiences across populations and contexts.

Die in dieser Veröffentlichung zusammengestellten Beiträge sind zu einem großen Teil während der GDSU-Jahrestagung 2004 in Potsdam zum Thema "Zwischen Grundlagenforschung und Unterrichtspraxis - Erwartungen an den Sachunterricht" Teil des Tagungsprogramms gewesen und für diesen Band ausgewählt worden. Sie geben Antworten auf konkrete praxisrelevante Fragen der Sachunterrichtsdidaktik, thematisieren Grundprobleme der fachdidaktischen Forschung und Lehre und berichten über konkrete sachunterrichtsdidaktische Forschungsvorhaben. Damit wird das breite Spektrum der Aufgaben der Sachunterrichtsdidaktik in Theorie und Praxis sichtbar: Es verbindet Praxis des Unterrichts, darauf gerichtet, sachunterrichtsrelevante Inhalte bildungswirksam zu erschließen mit fachdidaktischer Theorie, die sowohl grundlegende Überlegungen zur Weiterentwicklung und Stärkung der Wissenschaftsdisziplin - Didaktik des Sachunterrichts" anstellt als auch mit konkreten Forschungsprojekten dazu beiträgt, die Qualität des Unterrichts, der Lehrerbildung und wissenschaftlichen Forschung zum Sachunterricht und seiner Didaktik zu erhöhen.; Most of the contributions compiled in this publication were part of the conference programme at the 2004 GDSU annual conference in Potsdam on the topic of "Between basic research and teaching practice - expectations of non-fiction teaching" and were selected for this volume. They provide answers to concrete questions of practical relevance to the didactics of subject didactics, address basic problems of subject didactics research and teaching and report on concrete research projects in the field of subject didactics. In this way, the broad spectrum of tasks in the didactics of non-fiction teaching in theory and practice becomes visible: It combines the practice of teaching, aimed at developing content relevant to non-fiction teaching in an educationally effective way, with subject-specific didactic theory, which both provides fundamental considerations for the further development and strengthening of the academic discipline - "didactics of non-fiction teaching" and contributes to improving the quality of teaching, teacher training and academic research into non-fiction teaching and its didactics with specific research projects.

This is a book about musical gestures: multiple ways to design instruments, compose musical performances, analyze sound objects and represent sonic ideas through the central notion of ‘gesture’. The writers share knowledge on major research projects, musical compositions and methodological tools developed among different disciplines, such as sound art, embodied music cognition, human-computer interaction, performative studies and artificial intelligence. They visualize how similar and compatible are the notions of embodied music cognition and the artistic discourses proposed by musicians working with ‘gesture’ as their compositional material. The authors and editors hope to contribute to the ongoing discussion around creative technologies and music, expressive musical interface design, the debate around the use of AI technology in music practice, as well as presenting a new way of thinking about musical instruments, composing and performing with them.

This book examines the recent phenomenon in Latin America of national Truth and Reconciliation commissions. Few studies have examined the role of Churches or religion in political processes that proclaim valued theological terms as their agenda - truth, forgiveness, and reconciliation. This book questions the role of religion, specifically of established Churches. The impact of such reconciliation commissions on Indigenous Native Americans is also examined, as is the role of women and how both commissions and Churches or religions were challenged by their experiences. The contributors offer differing perspectives on one or more national truth and reconciliation processes and thus offer a collection that serves as valuable source for the disciplines of Religious Studies, Ethics, Theology, Political Science, Social Sciences and Women's Studies.

Natural Theology: A Reassessment offers corrections to widespread misinterpretations of the authoritative sources of Christian theology and shows that these sources affirm a traditional view of natural theology that refers to what can be rationally believed about God without using religious doctrines as premises. Contrary to popular misconceptions, Hume and Kant did not successfully rebut the arguments of natural theology, which are still being defended today. This book develops a more rigorous deductively valid formulation of the Cosmological, Teleological, and Moral Arguments for the existence of God and shows how the truth of their premises can be defended, thus demonstrating the soundness of these arguments which show that God exists. Using a unique approach which engages with philosophical theology of both analytic and continental traditions, it offers new arguments to address long-standing problems in epistemology of theology concerning foundationalism, epistemic circularity, divine transcendence, the culturally variant notion of human reason, the lack of consensus among experts, and the accusation of anthropomorphism and ontotheology and provides a thorough response to theological objections, the god-of-the-gaps objection, and the objection that arguments are open to revisions. The author develops an interdisciplinary approach involving theology, philosophy, and science to move the discussion ahead in a new and significant way. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

The volume analyses the decision-making process of public entities and defines a regional environmental accounting methodology according to which the environmental variable contributes to the definition of strategic choices. The first part describes the regional public expenditure related to the environmental field and deals with the theoretical and methodological aspects commenting the principles applied to the cases of Campania, Calabria and Basilicata regions through the analysis of the regional financial statements. The second part offers a deep analysis on the relationship between economy and environment through a system of indicators that represent the economic and social context and environmental quality, that is the application of the DPSIR Model (Driving forces-Pressures-States-Impacts-Responses) to the regions examined. From the set of information provided by the analysis of the economic, social and environmental context, public decision-makers can draw an informed judgement on the convenience of specific operations to be planned and implemented.

The 43rd UID conference, held in Genova, takes up the theme of ‘Dialogues’ as practice and debate on many fundamental topics in our social life, especially in these complex and not yet resolved times. The city of Genova offers the opportunity to ponder on the value of comparison and on the possibilities for the community, naturally focused on the aspects that concern us, as professors, researchers, disseminators of knowledge, or on all the possibile meanings of the discipline of representation and its dialogue with ‘others’, which we have broadly catalogued in three macro areas: History, Semiotics, Science / Technology. Therefore, “dialogue” as a profitable exchange based on a common language, without which it is impossible to comprehend and understand one another; and the graphic sign that connotes the conference is the precise transcription of this concept: the title ‘translated’ into signs, derived from the visual alphabet designed for the visual identity of the UID since 2017. There are many topics which refer to three macro sessions: - Witnessing (signs and history) - Communicating (signs and semiotics) - Experimenting (signs and sciences) Thanks to the different points of view, an exceptional resource of our disciplinary area, we want to try to outline the prevailing theoretical-operational synergies, the collaborative lines of an instrumental nature, the recent updates of the repertoires of images that attest and nourish the relations among representation, history, semiotics, sciences.

This Open Access book constitutes the proceedings from the First Global Internet of Things and Edge Computing Summit, GIECS 2024, held in September 24–25, 2024, in Brussels, Belgium. The 12 full papers presented here were carefully reviewed and selected from 21 submissions. These papers have been organized under the following topical sections: Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and Digital Twins; Data Management, Privacy, and Trust in Distributed Systems; Edge Computing and Cross-Domain Systems.

Exploring a range of international works such as films, streaming television series, a graphic novel, and a picture book, this open access book interrogates how, and to what extent, fairy tales are put to work for justice in the areas of environment and ecology, kinship and family, ability and disability, and sex and gender. As Bacchilega and Greenhill demonstrate, some 21st-century fairy tales channel the genre’s wonder to offer otherwise possibilities for being and acting in the world that are not confined to socially sanctioned paths. Drawing on visual and audio-visual case studies of texts such asThe Magic Fish, Julián Is A Mermaid, Pokot [Spoor], Gräns [Border], The Dragon Prince, Gatta Cenerentola [Cinderella the Cat], andSweet Tooth, they examine how the wonder and preternatural of fairy tales model a sustained desire to believe in and realize new ways of existence that have often been too easily dismissed. Guided by theories in fields including ecological, gender, disability, critical race, Indigenous, fantasy, posthuman, and adaptation studies as they intersect with folklore and fairy tale studies, this book examines how creators of wonder tales since the beginning of the new millenium have presented provocations around humans’ political and social relations with nature and culture. Analyzing justice from a variety of positions and establishing how tales of the otherwise can develop optative thinking, Justice in 21st-Century Fairy Tales and the Power of Wonder refutes the conservative, patriarchal, and merely nostalgic Disnified narrative of the genre and insists on the power of wonder within and beyond fairy tales. The eBook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada grant 435-2019-0691 and The University of Winnipeg, Canada.

Is Russia a fearful giant, an economic partner or a belligerent aggressor? The answer to this question depends on the perspective. What perspectives and consequently what answers does the German press landscape have to offer? What does the reporting on ""Putin's Russia"" look like in Germany? And how diverse is it? Danny Schmidt analyses how leading German media write about Russia. Articles from the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Neues Deutschland, Der Spiegel, Süddeutsche Zeitung and Welt paint a clear picture. The perspective is narrowed, the diversity of perspectives reduced, a neutral view not always given. Historical discourses reactivate stereotypes and fuel resentment. The result is the construction of a vital image of the enemy, which has become a sad reality in the war in Ukraine.

This monograph casts new light on Nietzsche’s philosophy of religion by examining the role of mood in the philosopher’s critical project. The novel approach does not only contribute to scholarship on Nietzsche it also raises challenging questions for the interdisciplinary discourse on secularization. If there are moods intimately related to specific religions, are there also moods specific to forms of atheist experience?

Winner of the 2008 Outstanding Book Award by the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences Michelle Oberman and Cheryl L. Meyer don’t write for news magazines or prime-time investigative television shows, but the stories they tell hold the same fascination. When Mothers Kill is compelling. In a clear, direct fashion the authors recount what they have learned from interviewing women imprisoned for killing their children. Readers will be shocked and outraged—as much by the violence the women have endured in their own lives as by the violence they engaged in—but they will also be informed and even enlightened. Oberman and Meyer are leading authorities on their subject. Their 2001 book, Mothers Who Kill Their Children, drew from hundreds of newspaper articles as well as from medical and social science journals to propose a comprehensive typology of maternal filicide. In that same year, driven by a desire to test their typology—and to better understand child-killing women not just as types but as individuals—Oberman and Meyer began interviewing women who had been incarcerated for the crime. After conducting lengthy, face-to-face interviews with forty prison inmates, they returned and selected eight women to speak with at even greater length. This new book begins with these stories, recounted in the matter-of-fact words of the inmates themselves. There are collective themes that emerge from these individual accounts, including histories of relentless interpersonal violence, troubled relationships with parents (particularly with mothers), twisted notions of romantic love, and deep conflicts about motherhood. These themes structure the books overall narrative, which also includes an insightful examination of the social and institutional systems that have failed these women. Neither the mothers nor the authors offer these stories as excuses for these crimes.

With changes in technology and a renewed effort to catalog the world's biodiversity, huge amounts of data are being generated on biodiversity issues. As response to the call for better information systems to manage the biodiversity crisis, a wide range of solutions are being developed for inventorying, managing, and disseminating taxonomic data. This book brings together a diverse array of authors, expertise, and assessors that discuss technical developments to improve the construction, population, and dissemination of biodiversity information. It is designed to inform students and researchers of biodiversity about the changes and challenges that need to be understood by everyone in this information age.

Too often, observers of globalization take for granted that the common ground across cultures is a thin layer of consumerism and perhaps human rights. If so, then anything deeper and more traditional would be placebound, and probably destined for the dustbin of history. But must this be so? Must we assume--as both liberals and traditionalists now tend to do--that one cannot be a cosmopolitan and take traditions seriously at the same time? This book offers a radically different argument about how traditions and global citizenship can meet, and suggests some important lessons for the contours of globalization in our own time. Adam K. Webb argues that if we look back before modernity, we find a very different line of thinking about what it means to take the whole world as one’s horizon. Digging into some fascinating currents of thought and practice in the ancient world, the Middle Ages, and the early modern period, across all major civilizations, Webb is able to reveal patterns of "deep cosmopolitanism", with its logic quite unlike that of liberal globalization today. In their more cosmopolitan moments, everyone from clerics to pilgrims to empire-builders was inclined to look for deep ethical parallels—points of contact—among civilizations and traditions. Once modernity swept aside the old civilizations, however, that promise was largely forgotten. We now have an impoverished view of what it means to embrace a tradition and even what kinds of conversations across traditions are possible. In part two, Webb draws out the lessons of deep cosmopolitanism for our own time. If revived, it has something to say about everything from the rise of new non-Western powers like China and India and what they offer the world, to religious tolerance, to global civil society, to cross-border migration. Deep Cosmopolis traces an alternative strand of cosmopolitan thinking that cuts across centuries and civilizations. It advances a new perspective on world history, and a distinctive vision of globalization for this century which has the real potential to resonate with us all. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

Statistical studies over the last forty-five years show that, although there are success stories, very many mergers and acquisitions do not result in the increased operating profits that economics textbooks would lead one to expect. As consultancy McKinsey have put it, ‘Anyone who has researched merger success rates knows that roughly 70% fail’. Yet—mysteriously—M&A activity has boomed across the globe, with a forty-fold increase in deals done each year now compared with four decades ago, in spite of the adverse general evidence. How can it be that talented, energetic, highly skilled, law-abiding, income-maximising participants in the M&A market will often promote mergers that lead to no operating gains, frequently with adverse effects on the wider economy too? Drawing on findings from a wealth of statistical analyses and case evidence from many businesses, the book presents answers to this merger mystery. In a synthesis of ideas from several disciplines, solutions are detected in misaligned incentives, distorted financial engineering and information asymmetry. By revealing how weaknesses at multiple points can interact and cumulate to produce inefficient outcomes, the discussion serves as a corrective to the overwhelmingly positive tone of most commentary on M&A, whilst also advocating changes in participants’ contracts, in taxation, and in regulation which could significantly reduce the number of mergers that fail. Designed to be accessible to a wide readership, the book will be of interest to investors, to M&A practitioners and commentators, to researchers and students of economics, political economy, finance, management and accounting, and—importantly—to policy makers working in these areas.