Bøker utgitt av Springer International Publishing

This book is about the policy-practice praxis in English language education, and draws on research from a diverse range of under-explored international settings to showcase the importance of contextual realities on how policy and practice interact. The case studies covered in the volume come from five continents (Africa, Europe, Asia, and South and North America) and cover 11 countries in total. The authors cover a wide range of themes and identify a number of issues at the interface between policy and practice. In some cases they also highlight local initiatives for navigating these issues, providing contextually-grounded guidance and experience which will be of use to teachers and teacher trainers in other settings. This book will be of interest to policy makers, EMI researchers, ELT practitioners, teacher trainers and trainees, and the broader Applied Linguistics research community.

This book is the first history of commercial television in regional Australia, where diverse communities are spread across vast distances and multiple time zones. The first station, GLV Latrobe Valley, began broadcasting in December 1961. By the late 1970s, there were 35 independent commercial stations throughout regional Australia, from Cairns in the far north-east to Bunbury in the far south-west. Based on fine-grained archival research and extensive interviews, the book examines the key political, regulatory, economic, technological, industrial, and social developments which have shaped the industry over the past 60 years. Regional television is often dismissed as a mere extension of ¿ or footnote to ¿ the development of Australiäs three metropolitan commercial television networks. Michael Thurlow¿s study reveals an industry which, at its peak, was at the economic and social heart of regional communities, employing thousands of people and providing vital programming for viewers inprovincial cities and small towns across Australia.

This book connects clinical sociology to the food justice movement through gardens in incarcerated settings. Situated within the larger food justice movement, the authors highlight the shortcomings of the global food system and the inequalities produced by the lack of adequate nutrition, particularly in the context of marginalized populations, such as those in carceral institutions. The book provides an up-to-date overview of horticulture programs in different incarcerated settings in the US, including prisons and community correction units, and provides in-depth discussion on innovative best-practice models. It also features a detailed analysis of an ongoing multi-site research project on gardening in incarcerated settings for women at local, state, and federal levels. Unlike other literature on prison and jail horticulture, this book contextualizes gardening in incarcerated settings with critical historical analysis, presenting the theoretical background to sociological action research projects. Serving as a starting point for establishing gardening as an evidence-based practice in prisons and jails, it is essential reading for researchers and practitioners of clinical sociology and social work, criminologists, prison and corrective institution administrators, and citizen groups interested in therapeutic gardening and alternatives to industrial prison food.

This book provides a comprehensive overview of the rapidly expanding field of decentralized finance (DF) and discusses how entrepreneurs can leverage it in their business activities.Decentralized finance (DF) is a system for exchanging value without centralized intermediaries. It relies heavily on peer-to-peer lending and borrowing, decentralized exchanges, trustless systems, and blockchain. Decentralized Finance is seen as a disruptive technology that could replace traditional financial systems in the future due to its advantages of being inclusive, non-discriminatory, resilient to risk management failures, cost-effective for lenders and borrowers to access the system and more efficient in terms of financial intermediation through automated trustless systems. This book explains the challenges and opportunities that these blockchain-based financial innovations present for both entrepreneurship and the broader financial system.

This book examines the lives of children and young adults living in residential care systems in Zimbabwe and their unique conceptualization of family. While the importance of family for the development and wellbeing of children can't be overemphasized, the questions of what and who counts as family to orphans and vulnerable children (OVCs) are under-researched. Gwenzi brings a social constructionist approach to study OVCs in institutional care as well as living with their families in Zimbabwe, finding that they do not have a single definition of family and that they use diverse characteristics to describe what family means to them. With the data suggesting a need for belonging, continuity of relationships, protection, and trust, this study makes recommendations for policy and practice with youth in alternative care in sub-Saharan Africa.

This book discusses resilient urban water resources management in the context of climate change and ongoing urbanization. Twelve cities worldwide representing different climates and growth stages serve as case studies. Using these case cities, this book first identifies the main water issues, including water demand, floods, and droughts, in relation to the historical development of each city, investigates current strategies for dealing with climate-related water hazards, and explores potential adaptive strategies. The authors draw some common lessons by comparing and contrasting these case studies while acknowledging place-based unique adaptation strategies.

This book presents rich information on Romanian mythology and folklore, previously under-explored in Western scholarship, placing the source material within its historical context and drawing comparisons with European and Indo-European culture and mythological tradition. The author presents a detailed comparative study and argues that Romanian mythical motifs have roots in Indo-European heritage, by analyzing and comparing mythical motifs from the archaic cultures, Greek, Latin, Celtic, Sanskrit, and Persian, with written material and folkloric data that reflects the Indo-European culture. The book begins by outlining the history of the Getae-Dacians, beginning with Herodotus' description of their customs and beliefs in the supreme god Zamolxis, then moves to the Roman wars and the Romanization process, before turning to recent debates in linguistics and genetics regarding the provenance of a shared language, religion, and culture in Europe. The author then analyzes mythcreation, its relation to rites, and its functions in society, before examining specific examples of motifs and themes from Romanian folk tales and songs. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of folklore studies, comparative mythology, linguistic anthropology, and European culture.

This edited volume provides an anthropological study of family businesses and business families. In previous research on family firms and business families, the comparative cross-cultural approach of anthropology has so far received little attention. As a result, family firms and business families are too often analyzed without considering cultural and kinship differences adequately. Similarly, although the topics of kinship and the economy are central to anthropological analysis, research on family firms and business families has been a marginal topic only that lacks in-depth discussions within anthropology. This volume breaks the mold by offering new empirical and theoretical insights into discussion about business families and family firms from a comparative cross-cultural perspective. It first addresses how the business family can be defined in different cultures and how kinship becomes understandable as a process and through ¿doing family¿. In this, the book provides a systematic comparison of the connections between family, kinship and economic activity in different cultures, whereas many of the previous studies have concentrated on only one or a few regions or cultures. It also shows the complexities and challenges when grounding the analysis of economic activity and entrepreneurship in cultural context.

This book addresses the need for a comprehensive reappraisal of what it means to be a ¿civic university¿. For two decades the ¿civic¿ agenda has been driven by a concern with economic impact and regional economic development. While recognising the importance of these aspects of universities¿ civic influence, there is a need to more comprehensively outline how universities can and should make a difference across a wide spectrum of place-based activity, against a background of intensifying global social and environmental challenges. Rooted in collaborative work by the Civic University Network and community-based partners, the book provides a clear logical framework that universities and their partners can use to examine the extent of their civic activities, but also challenges them to use that framework as a starting point for deeper reflection and engagement. It celebrates the actions universities have taken to respond to communities¿ needs, and encourages them to think more rigorously about what they can do in the future, and how they can become more accountable to the communities they serve. The book is an essential read for university leaders, academics involved in public engagement, and civic leaders and representatives who wish to develop closer engagement with their local universities.