Open Access Books

This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license. This book describes the history, structure and institutions of open and distance education in six countries: Australia, Brazil, Canada, Germany, the UK and the US. It discusses how open and distance education is evolving in a digital age to reflect the needs and circumstances of national higher education systems in these countries, and explores the similarities and differences between the ways in which they are organized and structured. It is the first book to make such comparisons and draw conclusions about the nature of open and distance education in the context of various national higher education systems. In a digital era with growing use of online education as well as open and distance education, this book is particularly useful for policy-makers and senior administrators who want to learn about organizing and expanding open and distance education provision. It is also a valuable reference for researchers, academics and students interested in understanding the different approaches to open and distance education.

Die Studie untersucht, wie Crowdworker:innen in Plattformarbeit individuelle Beruflichkeit entwickeln und wie Arbeitserfahrungen Subjektivierung prägen. Im Mittelpunkt steht die Frage, welche Gestaltungsprinzipien Lern- und Entwicklungspotenziale in Crowdwork unterstützen. Aus berufs- und wirtschaftspädagogischer sowie arbeitssoziologischer Perspektive verbindet die Publikation theoretische Ansätze zu Arbeit, Beruf und Subjektivierung mit empirischen Ergebnissen aus Untersuchungen von Crowdwork-Plattformen in Deutschland. Die Ergebnisse werden im Kontext des Forschungsprojekts CKoBeLeP (2021-2024) eingeordnet und auf Implikationen für lernförderliche Plattformgestaltung bezogen. Geeignet für Studierende und Forschende der Berufs- und Wirtschaftspädagogik, Arbeitssoziologie und Digitalisierungsforschung sowie für Akteur:innen in Arbeitsgestaltung, Weiterbildung und Plattformregulierung.

This unique volume brings together academics of Russian journalism and media with journalists and editors who reported or continue to report on the country, to explore and reflect on the changing landscape for journalists in Russia or covering Russia, and the increasing control exerted by the government on independent journalists. Combining rigorous academic research with reflective practitioner essays, the volume investigates the future of reporting in Russia and the implications for the future of the country. It offers an understanding of the experience of independent journalists and media outlets in Russia, as well as other individuals who experience censorship (academics, activists), and examines how the current situation in Russia and people’s experiences of censorship can inform both our theoretical understandings of censorship and information control, in the context of the twenty‑first‑century digital technologies and the policymaking both inside and outside of Russia. Offering important insight into what is happening within Russia’s borders, this volume will appeal to researchers and students of journalism, political science, international relations, propaganda and censorship, mass media, as well as journalists and policymakers. Chapter 4 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

Cultural practices have the potential to cause human suffering. The Tensions between Culture and Human Rights critically interrogates the relationship between culture and human rights across Africa and offers strategies for pedagogy and practice that social workers and educators may use. Drawing on Afrocentricity and emancipatory social work as antidotes to colonial power and dehumanization, this collection challenges cultural practices that violate human rights, and the dichotomous and taken-for-granted assumptions in the cultural representations between the West and the Rest of the world. Engaging critically with cultural traditions while affirming Indigenous knowledge and practices, it is unafraid to deal frankly with uncomfortable truths. Each chapter explores a specific aspect of African cultural norms and practices and their impacts on human rights and human dignity, paying special attention to the intersections of politics, economics, race, class, gender, and cultural expression. Going beyond analysis, this collection offers a range of practical approaches to understanding and intervention rooted in emancipatory social work. It offers a pathway to develop critical reflexivity and to reframe epistemologies for education and practice. This is essential reading not only for students and practitioners of social work, but for anyone seeking a deeper understanding of African cultures and practices.

This study outlines small-scale fishing Sardinia through specificities related to the state of the fishing fleet at the major and minor port systems of the island, the main techniques, and tools (fixed longlines, bottom trawls, purse seines, casting nets, driftnets). Mapping fishing areas in the Marine Protected Area of Asinara Island was important to define efficient fisheries management measures shared by stakeholders. Therefore, the work focused on the mapping of fishing areas in MPA, its techniques and tools.This work is a premise for future and more applicative lines of research

Main topics: "The Second World War in Historical Studies and Remembrance Culture in Germany and Russia" "Russian Emigration in Germany, German Emigration in Russia in the 20th Century" The fourth volume of the Mitteilungen der Deutsch-Russischen Historikerkommission documents the colloquia "The Second World War in Historical Studies and Remembrance Culture in Germany and Russia" (Saratov 2005) and "Russian Emigration in Germany, German Emigration in Russia in the 20th Century" (Munich 2006) as well as lectures at a conference on the German Flying School in Lipeck.

This volume brings together a selection of contributions on the forms and functions of both contemporary and historical visual media. It aims to bring a range of perspectives from philosophical, cultural studies, and media studies on the materiality, semiotics, and aesthetics of images and other visual media forms into productive dialogue with each other.

Mechthild of Hackeborn represents medieval mysticism. Her Revelations were written down in the 1290s in Helfta, Germany. The oldest surviving versions are in Latin, but in the Middle Ages, the Revelations were translated at least into Dutch, English, Swedish, and German. The text was translated into Swedish in 1469 by Jöns Budde, a Bridgettine brother from Naantali. Budde made few omissions but many additions in the text, mainly explanations to meet the needs of the Bridgettine sisters. Budde’s translation is faithful to the original text, and he made few mistakes. My Finnish translation of the text follows Budde’s version where possible. However, Budde translated an abridged version that omitted some chapters, and the only surviving copy of Budde’s translation is incomplete. I have therefore translated the missing sections from Latin and incorporated them in the text. My translation also includes editorial comments on the language, the contents, and the historical and theological contexts of the Revelations.

From the 14th to the 18th July 2014, more than 200 scholars, coming from 21 countries and belonging to 126 universities, centres and institutions, met in Venice to celebrate the X International Conference of the Asociación Siglo de Oro on the occasion of its 25th anniversary. These pages comprise the better part of what was said after the contributions underwent the peer-review process prior to their publication. The conference’s content was divided into three sections: the first one collects the five plenary conferences, whereas the second one the “Moved Recollection of Isaías Lerner on the 25th Anniversary of AISO”; finally, the third section includes the contributions. The latter are subdivided into five other sections (“Poetry”, “Theatre”, “Prose”, “Language and Translation”, “Miscellany”), which mirror the multidisciplinary character of the meeting. As a matter of fact, the cultural and historical aspects of the Hispanic world of the XVI and XVII centuries that were dealt with in the contributions, as well as their success nowadays, significantly vary.

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book deals with the difficult issue of sexual violence and the complex memory struggles over it. It also deals with the gendered memories of womens active participation in armed forces, whether as part of organized armies or as members of the resistance. The book explores gendered memories of war and conflict through fictionalized and visualized memory narratives in the form of film, literature, photography and art. Finally, it focuses on Feminist Reimaginings, looks simultaneously at the past and future of feminist scholarship on gendered memories of war and political violence, offering thought-provoking self-reflection and imagining new forms of research, writing and analysis. Cynthia Cockburn investigates the afterlife of her previous projects in the former-Yugoslavia, Ireland and Israel/Palestine, exploring new research methodologies, critically analyzing processes of knowledge production, and posing questions regarding the mediation of memories during the research process itself.

This open access book introduces the fundamentals of the space–time conservation element and solution element (CESE) method, which is a novel numerical approach for solving equations of physical conservation laws. It highlights the recent progress to establish various improved CESE schemes and its engineering applications. With attractive accuracy, efficiency, and robustness, the CESE method is particularly suitable for solving time-dependent nonlinear hyperbolic systems involving dynamical evolutions of waves and discontinuities. Therefore, it has been applied to a wide spectrum of problems, e.g., aerodynamics, aeroacoustics, magnetohydrodynamics, multi-material flows, and detonations. This book contains algorithm analysis, numerical examples, as well as demonstration codes. This book is intended for graduate students and researchers who are interested in the fields such as computational fluid dynamics (CFD), mechanical engineering, and numerical computation.

While being rooted in the academic discourse, The Things That Really Matter comprehensively explores the most fundamental aspects of human life in an accessible, non-technical language, adding fresh perspectives and new arguments and considerations that are designed to stimulate further debate and, in some cases, a deliberate redirection of research interests in the respective areas. It features a series of conversations about the things in our life that we all, in one way or another, wrestle with if we are at all concerned about what kind of world we live in and what our role in it is: things like birth, age, and death, good and evil, the meaning of life, the nature of the self and the role the body plays for our identity, our gendered existence, love and faith, free will, beauty, and our experience of the sacred. Situating abstract ideas in concrete experience, The Things That Really Matter encourages the reader to participate in an open-ended dialogue involving a variety of thinkers with different backgrounds and orientations. Lively and accessible, it shows thinking as an open-ended process and a collaborative endeavour that benefits from talking to each other rather than against each other, featuring real conversations, where ideas are explored, tested, changed, and occasionally dropped. It is thinking in motion, personal yet universal.

This open access book analyzes the main drivers that are influencing the dramatic evolution of work in Asia and the Pacific and identifies the implications for education and training in the region. It also assesses how education and training philosophies, curricula, and pedagogy can be reshaped to produce workers with the skills required to meet the emerging demands of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The book’s 40 articles cover a wide range of topics and reflect the diverse perspectives of the eminent policy makers, practitioners, and researchers who authored them. To maximize its potential impact, this Springer-Asian Development Bank co-publication has been made available as open access.

The COVID-19 pandemic and the restrictions that came with it led to unprecedented disruptions in learner development and put them at risk of poor developmental outcomes. It is thus important that the extent of the disruption on their development and the support needs of learners be investigated. Researching the impact of the disruption should focus on holistic development. In this book, the authors use multiple research approaches and methods of gathering data in their respective fields to examine the impact of the disruption and determine the support needs of learners. Data gathered through the different methods are processed and findings are presented. The findings have implications for both practice and future research in the fields of inclusive education, learner support, educational psychology, movement education, Life Orientation and curriculum development.

The Italian contributions to the XIII International Congress of Slavists (Ljubljana, 15-21 August 2003) had a very limited circulation between the participants in the congress and the restricted circle of experts. Considering the high scientific value of the individual contributions, to which we continue to refer in the framework of Slavic literature, it was decided to publish these acts in the series "Library of Slavic Studies" also to celebrate the ten years of its existence. Faced with a consolidated tradition of studies in the philological and literary field, Italian Slavistics of the beginning of the millennium found itself facing new needs. On the one hand, a new generation of linguists has established themselves, who have developed a series of innovative research on Slavic languages, especially in the contrastive field. On the other hand, new research paths have developed in contemporary literature, especially in relation to the most recent historical circumstances which have seen profound cultural transformations in the Slavic countries themselves, with the need to reconstruct consolidated literary canons also on the basis of the literature of emigration. The same philological research has been able to question itself again on its role by taking up in a different form traditional issues such as the Cyril-Methodian question, the problem of biblical citations or the debate on the Latin Slavia and the Orthodox Slavia, as well as the more traditional ecdotic issues manifesting a new sensitivity starting from religious issues. Alberto Alberti is researcher in Slavistics at the University of Bologna.