Open Access Books

This Open Access book addresses the theoretical grounding of the pedagogical dimensions of higher education leadership and its empirical study. The book’s general point of departure is that educational leadership is a multi-level phenomenon, operating as policy work on a transnational and national level, as educational leadership on various organizational levels, and as supervision and teaching on an interactional level. It is in and through these discursive practices that policies are initiated, interpreted, translated and enacted. The volume demonstrates how Non Affirmative Theory (NAT) of education applies to understanding and dealing with the pedagogical dimensions of the multi-level and multi-actor phenomena of HE leadership in a coherent manner. It allows one to explore how the pedagogical scope of action at each level of leadership is framed or staged by the other levels, as well as how actors at different levels utilise their scope. The book starts out by exploring the pedagogical aspects of HE leadership as a multi-level and multi-actor phenomenon at a theoretical level. It continues to discuss nation state HE in a global perspective, and HE leadership in an organisational perspective. Next, the book looks at departmental leadership, management and development. Parallel with this, the volume critically explores the non-affirmative position itself by a contrasting dialogue with other theoretical approaches.

American ideals—liberty, equality, democracy, national unity—are bandied about by liberal politicians as a package deal, inseparably intertwined. But the words often flow together better as rhetoric than they mold together in theory. But, as Herbert Croly and his turnofthecentury contemporaries found, jelling these appealing yet often conflicting concepts into a liberal philosophy was not nearly as easy as embracing them in a campaign speech. In this first fulllength study of Herbert Croly's political theory, Edward Stettner analyzes Croly's writings and examines the events, experiences, and people who influenced Croly's thinking. In the process, he reveals Croly's significant influence on modern liberalism as classical liberal theory merged with progressive philosophy. Croly, founder of The New Republic, expounded on issues from the nationalization of railroads to the Espionage Act in his search for a middle way between socialism and capitalism. Stettner illustrates how Croly's political theory influenced the editorial position of one of the leading liberal journals and how his thought in turn was modified in reaction to national and world events, such as presidential elections and World War I. Stettner portrays Croly as a modest and conscientious intellectual who wholeheartedly came to embrace the progressive movement and consequently helped establish the framework for modern liberalism. In doing so, Stettner emphasizes how Croly's philosophy evolved and how Croly was drawn to the conclusion that a strong national government and individual rights could indeed coexist—if not always serenely—in a democratic society.

This book on Slavic matriarchy is the result of the studies and researches that Evel Gasparini carried out over the span of his lifetime. Intrigued by the possibility of a close link between the collective ownership of the land and the ancient agricultural-matriarchal substrate of Slav culture, Gasparini launched on the titanic enterprise of analysing the archaeological and historical sources of early Slavic civilisation. Basing himself on a concept of culture elaborated in the ethnological field, he brought to light certain contradictions in the application of the Indo-European paradigm to Slavic culture and identified a series of elements illustrating the matriarchal substrate. Exploiting an uncommon knowledge of cultural anthropology and profound linguistic competencies, in this book Gasparini maps out a complex panorama ranging from the economy to the social structure and from the religious traditions to music and dance. Out of print for some time, the book is now proposed in a new, more convenient form, complete with an appendix on Finns and Slavs – which was originally intended as another chapter in the book but was then left out – a detailed preface by Gasparini's disciple Remo Faccani, and a bibliography of the scholar's oeuvre edited by Donatella Possamai.

Materials from the past that wrongly anticipate the future, or present information or judgments that are later proved misleading or erroneous, are sometimes overlooked in reconstructing the past. Yet such documents are as legimiate, and perhaps as important, as those that are vindicated by events or continue to share perspectives with later generations. The five documents reproduced in Nineteenth-Century China are typical of the periods from which they come, but each was overtaken or contradicted by events. Collected with a belief in the legitimacy of attempting to see every period as much as possible in its own terms, these texts offer a glimpse of what China looked like and suggested to Englishmen on the spot in Canton and Hong Kong in the first half of the nineteenth century, and how they viewed their own country and its role vis-à-vis the China they observed. The first two texts in Nineteenth-Century China exemplify the imperialist mind's eagerness to explore the world, to get a picture of all of its parts, and as rapidly as possible to "open" all areas to the benificent influence of the West, notably through an expanded commerce that would enrich its Western masters. Samuel Ball's "Observations" (1817) show how much detailed information was available to Westerners and what the mercantile British were after, and an anonymous dissertation (1838) provides an example of the dream of the China as El Dorado: an immense population of eager traders, hard workers, and willing buyers. The third text (1845) is an early foreshadowing by a colonial official, R. M. Martin, of Western imperial arguments, rationalizations, and attitudes that would become common fifty years later. The fourth selection consists of an exchange of correspondence in 1847 about British access to and use of land in the vicinity of Canton. A short statement of purpose (1848) from the Morrison Education Society, demonstrating a missionary enterprise combining Christian evangelism and English education, concludes the book.

Publication that analyzes the entrepreneurial intention of the students of the University of Murcia. The report responds to the request of the Social Council of the University of Murcia that aims to publicize the current predisposition of the students of the University of Murcia to generate business ideas and undertake.The report has been made from the participation of 2,280 students enrolled in graduate and 413 postgraduate studies. The entrepreneurial intention has been measured from a planned behavior model that has been validated in scientific literature for its ability to predict entrepreneurial activity. The entrepreneurial intention of the students is analyzed deepening the explanatory factors that lead to the decision to undertake: entrepreneurial attitude, social pressure and perceived control. In addition, a broad analysis of the determinants of the entrepreneurial intention, inconveniences and professional trajectories is included based on the main contextual factors: gender, age access to the university, studies that currently attend at the university, distinguishing by branches of knowledge, Academic level and degree degrees, work experience, parents' studies, and socioeconomic group of families. Based on the results of this study, measures that favor attitude and entrepreneurial and business training can be taken at all levels of university education in order to favor the entrepreneurial activity of the students of the University of Murcia.

Wie hängen ethische Fragen der Reproduktionsmedizin mit unterschiedlichen Vorstellungen des guten Lebens zusammen? Die Beiträger*innen nutzen das Konzept der Intersektionalität, um zu klären, wer als reproduktives Subjekt adressiert wird und welche Vorstellungen guten Lebens im Gegenzug durch Abwertung oder Nichtbeachtung ausgeschlossen werden. Im Zentrum stehen dabei normalistische Konzeptionen guten Lebens sowie angemessene Zeitlichkeit mit Blick auf menschliche Fortpflanzung. So gelingt es, zentrale Hintergrundannahmen in der Ethik der Reproduktionsmedizin kritisch zu reflektieren und Debatten über Marginalisierungsprozesse im deutschsprachigen Raum anzustoßen.

Dès le dernier tiers du xve siècle, un nouveau genre de publication dissémine un éventail de petits textes en langue française, dont il permet une circulation à une échelle inédite : les pièces gothiques. Ce sont des livrets à bon marché, imprimés en caractères gothiques tout au long du xvie siècle. Précurseurs du « livre populaire », beaucoup de ces brochures sont des ouvrages de catéchèse rudimentaire, des vies de saints, des pronostications, des recueils de recettes médicales, ainsi que des textes qui, relevant du folklore, fleurissaient jusqu'à Rabelais, à savoir des sotties, des farces qui mettent en scène la vie quotidienne, ou encore des textes parodiques et satiriques aux sujets scatologiques et misogynes. D'autres apparaissent comme les ancêtres de notre presse d'information en colportant des « nouvelles » sur l'actualité politique, militaire ou prodigieuse. Au-delà des savoirs qu'elles divulguent, les pièces gothiques constituent des vecteurs de normes et de valeurs qui concourent à façonner l'opinion, l'âme et le comportement de leurs lecteurs et auditeurs. Elles contribuent ainsi au développement et au fonctionnement de deux structures indispensables et complémentaires à l'État moderne : celle de la légitimation idéologique et celle de l'opinion. À partir de l'étude minutieuse des 2 200 pièces gothiques environ qui ont pu être recensées, ce livre retrace l'histoire complète, dans le temps et dans l'espace, de ce nouveau média. Les pièces gothiques nous permettent de saisir les nouvelles conditions de circulation des textes et de diffusion de l'information à l'ère de l'imprimerie et elles contribuent à renouveler notre compréhension tout à la fois de la « culture populaire » et du système de communication au tournant du xvie siècle.

This book contains research articles on the advances in the aetiology of idiopathic scoliosis (IS), the spinal growth related to the implementation of growth modulation for the surgical treatment of early-onset IS, the non-surgical treatment of IS using Physiotheraputic Scoliosis Specific Exercises, and braces. Additionally, it focuses on issues related to surgical treatment, issues related to body posture and the quality of life of this sensitive group of people. The high quality of published papers in this Special Issue of the JCM serve these objectives.

Technology development has led to a growing availability of low-cost data ready-to-use, frequently derived from large scale observations (i.e. data from pervasive systems like GPS sensors, or remote sensing data from earth observation technologies). Oftentimes, these data can’t directly answer specific questions posed by researchers and data users, or even if they can they are subject to measurement errors or self-selection bias. In both cases it is still necessary to rely, at least partially, on ad-hoc probabilistic surveys. On the other hand, the precision and quality of surveys estimates can be improved by using the data derived from these new sources as auxiliary information in the design phase and/or in the estimation phase. We present a sequential sampling strategy, suitable to investigate a spatially-related phenomenon, which exploits the auxiliary information at design level in order to obtain efficient estimates when the relation between the auxiliary and study variables it is not completely known and/or is not univocally defined for the whole population under study. Using this strategy the final sample is obtained after two (or more) steps: (i) in the first step we collect an initial sample of observations on the target variable, which is used also to investigate the relation between the auxiliary and study variables; (ii) then, this relation is exploited to target and tailor the subsequent sampling step; (iii) additional steps can be included by applying the procedure iteratively. The performance of the suggested strategy is investigated through Monte Carlo experiments by considering several scenarios, which differ in the distributions of the auxiliary and study variables and in their relation.

Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) are remarkable machines that revolutionized the process of gathering ocean data. Their major breakthroughs resulted from successful developments of complementary technologies to overcome the challenges associated with autonomous operation in harsh environments. Most of these advances aimed at reaching new application scenarios and decreasing the cost of ocean data collection, by reducing ship time and automating the process of data gathering with accurate geo location. With the present capabilities, some novel paradigms are already being employed to further exploit the on board intelligence, by making decisions on line based on real time interpretation of sensor data. This book collects a set of self contained chapters covering different aspects of AUV technology and applications in more detail than is commonly found in journal and conference papers. They are divided into three main sections, addressing innovative vehicle design, navigation and control techniques, and mission preparation and analysis. The progress conveyed in these chapters is inspiring, providing glimpses into what might be the future for vehicle technology and applications.

La notion de « patrimonialisation » désigne certes une tendance à la production croissante de « patrimoines », par des acteurs hétéroclites (institutions nationales ou internationales, acteurs locaux, société civile) et à des échelles locales et globales fortement intriquées. Mais le terme a également intégré le vocabulaire des sciences sociales, au croisement de plusieurs champs de recherche et de nombreux débats théoriques et méthodologiques. Normative pour les uns, heuristique pour les autres, la question de la patrimonialisation est loin de faire consensus. Les processus patrimoniaux constituent néanmoins un observatoire privilégié des rapports entre affirmation de valeurs et prescription de normes, entre situations locales et dynamiques globales. Basé sur des enquêtes de première main diverses par leur provenance géographique et leur ancrage disciplinaire, cet ouvrage explore certaines de ces patrimonialisations croisées. Des indiens Shuar d’Équateur à la ville nouvelle de Chandigarh, en passant par les balafonistes du Burkina Faso et les danseurs sur braises du nestinarstvo, les recherches présentées ici témoignent des nombreux acteurs locaux qui s’invitent à la table de la patrimonialisation, négociant avec les instances internationales, développant des stratégies variées pour bénéficier d’une nouvelle ressource économique, asseoir leur pouvoir ou affirmer leur singularité, interrogeant notre regard occidentalocentré sur la notion de patrimoine. Au-delà des différences de contexte, les auteurs questionnent en particulier les rapports entre mécanismes institutionnels, pratiques sociales et logiques de développement à l’œuvre dans la formation d’un paradigme patrimonial – plus qu’un modèle – qui contribue à redéfinir les dynamiques culturelles contemporaines.

El objetivo en este texto es presentar la experiencia de la resurrección, el hecho o el acontecimiento, suponiendo los datos de los evangelios y las reflexiones de varios teólogos; se busca, con base en estos elementos, realizar una pastoral catequética que ayude a los cristianos a hacer de la resurrección el fundamento de sus vidas. Son muchos los interrogantes que se presentan en el momento de afrontar la realidad misma de la resurrección y de los que los fieles deben ir tomando consciencia cada vez más plena, sabiendo que la resurrección se hace presente en la vida sacramental que el señor Jesús instituyó en la Iglesia y para comunicar su vida mediante el Espíritu Santo. Aunque el tema de la resurrección es suficiente extenso, lo presentaremos mediante tres capítulos: una valoración teológica, una reflexión pastoral y unas conclusiones. Estos capítulos facilitan de un modo pastoral catequético ese gran acontecimiento de la resurrección de Jesucristo.

EPDF and EPUB available Open Access under CC-BY-ND licence. This important book uses empirical evidence to explore the concept of public trust in health systems. In doing so, it provides a comprehensive contemporary explanation of public trust, how it affects health systems and how it can be nurtured and maintained as an integral component of health system governance.