Library: Best sellers

This research, undertaken with children's services social workers who have worked in an urban Local Authority in South Wales, UK, sets out to explore whether statutory social services departments meet the psychological needs of refugee children. The study is in the form of a comparative study of refugee and non-refugee children. The comparison was made in relation to the children's psychological presentation pre- and post-intervention by the statutory social services department. This investigation was undertaken in response to general observation and research evidence that suggest the possibil...

The fragmentation of strategies that distinguishes the more successful elementary grade students from those least successful has been documented previously. This study investigated whether this phenomenon of divergence and fragmentation of strategies would occur among undergraduate students enrolled in a remedial algebra course. Twenty-six undergraduate students enrolled in a remedial algebra course used a reform curriculum, with the concept of function as an organizing lens and graphing calculators. The other major focus of this study was to investigate whether students who are more successfu...

Mindanao, in the southern Philippines, has been the landscape of religious, social and political conflict for more than 500 years. The Magindanawn people, who embraced Islam after contact with Malay Muslims in the late 1400s, have experienced clan rivalries and other outsider aggressions leading to disenfranchisement and displacement from their ancestral domain in west Central Mindanao. In the activism and rebellion of the late 1960s and early 1970s, Magindanawn people were often caught between Philippine military forces and the Bangsamoro mujahideen. In the 1980s, there was some respite bu...

The aim of this project is to start creating awareness and to convey the idea that optical sensor technologies are now technically and economically mature enough to provide safety enhancement features in the residential environment and market. A first application of these technologies can be that of real time building structural health diagnosis: a utility company or telecommunications operator is in a position to provide it as a service by means of its urban optical fiber infrastructure and service management expertise. There are several advantages accruing from continuously monitoring the...

The research problem focused on Panama's low-income consumers' decision making process when shopping for consumer-products. The purpose of the research was to determine Panama's low-income consumers' consumption values, preferences, and loyalty towards a particular brand over another. The qualitative research method was employed in this study, and the data collection process consisted of observation and in-depth interview documents that were organized and categorized. The results of the study found that Panama's low-income consumers' brand preferences were widely varied and brand-loyalty behav...

Since the turn of the century the use of computer-mediated-communication (CMC) has become more widespread in educational contexts and weblogs (blogs), one of the more popular forms of CMC (Bloch, 2007), have been the focus of numerous studies. However, whilst these studies have listed the potential benefits of blog use for language learners, few studies have offered any practical tips for educators who wish to implement the use of writing blogs in the EFL classroom. Moreover, the vast majority of studies have focused on the use of blogs with relatively high-level learners in academic contexts....

'Attitudinal change' in the context of economic reforms has been referred to in Rodrik and Subramanian (2005), DeLong (2003), Kohli (1989), and Panagariya (2004, 2008). This dissertation provides empirical support for this literature, establishing an earlier start for India's economic policy liberalisation than presented in stylized accounts. It demonstrates the endogenous nature of the origins of these policy shifts. 'Attitudinal change' literature had directed attention to the need for further research into India's policy changes of the early 1980s and for studying broader comparability issu...

The dissertation describes the processes surrounding the production of investigative knowledge within the Danish Police based on in-depth analyses of how investigators seek out, discover, and produce knowledge that can assist in the production of evidence for identification and prosecution. The central question informing the dissertation is the question of how knowledge comes about, and how such processes of knowledge can be studied anthropologically. The dissertation develops a theoretical frame for the study of knowledge, which addresses the becoming of knowledge as the effect of the inte...

Before the seismic events of Northridge (Los Angeles, 17 January 1994) and Hyogoken-Nanbu (Kobe, 17 January 1995), MRFs were supposed to be the most reliable seismic resistant systems due to the high number of dissipative zones that are able to develop. Before these earthquakes, especially in the United States, MRFs were realized, generally, by adopting fully welded connections, which, at the time, were retained to perform better compared to other joint typologies. In addition, the economic advantages deriving from the adoption of field fully welded connections strongly influenced choices of b...

While distance education is solidly entrenched in the American educational scene, clinical training using distance learning technology is not yet so clearly accepted. A review of the literature found very few studies of the use of Internet technology for clinical training. This study used semi-structured interviews combined with Giorgi's method of phenomenological analysis of experiences of students and site supervisors involved in the Amridge University clinical training program. The purpose of the study was to examine the process by which master's degree students are able to construct their ...