Learning and teaching languages in an online environment is one of contemporary education's great challenges. The challenge is made particularly difficult because language learners benefit from a social constructivist approach in which individual learners learn by doing together - negotiating meaning in collaborative interaction. The open source revolution in technology has opened up the possibility of communal efforts to develop technological solutions to such pedagogical challenges. This volume brings together reports from the Covcell Project which developed collaborative tools for the learning management system, Moodle, with papers relating to a range of other tools for online language teaching, in a number of domains including language for special purposes, foreign language equivalency certification, cultural learning practices and oral skills development.

No, but we are different. Tonpa Sherab treated men and women in the same way, he passed on his teachings to both men and women and that is why we nuns are on equal footing with the monks, quite unlike the Buddhists.' The Bön religion is often seen as a part of the Tibetan Buddhism but its bond is actually far more complex and has its own origin in the history of Tibet. The role of women worshipping in Bön and Tibetan Buddhism, is quite different. And although there are studies on Buddhist nuns, there is hardly any research available on nuns in the Bön tradition. This pioneering study vividly portrays the nuns of the Redna Menling monastery in Dolanji (India), the headquarters of the Bön religion, in exile. It focuses on the developments of the Bön in exile, the specific context in which Bön nuns live and how the monastic tradition takes shape. It provides interesting insights into the monastic community in exile, the historic context of the Bön religion as well as the personal motives to become a nun.

During the 1960s and 1970s, Texas was rocked by a series of political transitions. Despite its century-long heritage of solidly Democratic politics, the state became a Republican stronghold virtually overnight, and by 1980 it was known as "Reagan Country." Ultimately, Republicans dominated the Texas political landscape, holding all twenty-seven of its elected offices and carrying former governor George W. Bush to his second term as president with more than 61 percent of the Texas vote.Sean P. Cunningham examines the remarkable history of Republican Texas in Cowboy Conservatism: Texas and the Rise of the Modern Right. Utilizing extensive research drawn from the archives of four presidential libraries, gubernatorial papers, local campaign offices, and oral histories, Cunningham presents a compelling narrative of the most notable regional genesis of modern conservatism. Spanning the decades from Kennedy's assassination to Reagan's presidency, Cunningham reveals a vivid portrait of modern conservatism in one of the nation's largest and most politically powerful states. The newest title in the New Directions in Southern History series, Cunningham's Cowboy Conservatism demonstrates Texas's distinctive and vital contributions to the transformation of postwar American politics.

Traced here are the beginnings of literacy and literature for Inuit living in Labrador and the eastern Canadian arctic. Inuit living in Labrador in the 19th and early 20th centuries were more literate than white settlers as a direct result of the Moravian missionaries who taught them to read and write in Inuktitut in the mission schools. Many of the original Inuktitut texts used by the mission teachers and students are included as part of this exhibition. The Labrador Inuit are the first Canadian Inuit to have their own language. Their first texts took the form of songs or narratives. This catalog represents this history with images from pages and covers of books in the collection along with detailed descriptions of their importance.Texts in French, English, Inuktitut and Inuktitut roman orthography & descriptions in English.

This volume is the first definitive reference and textbook in the one-hundred-fifty year history of college health. Written for professionals and for those working in student services and higher education administration, it covers the history of college health, administrative matters including financing and accreditation, and clinical issues such as women's health, HIV/AIDS, and mental health. The book also focuses on prevention, including immunization and tuberculin testing. The contributors are well respected in the field and are actively working in the specific areas on which they write.

Recent years have seen a rapidly growing hotel business built around health and well-being. Leisurely experiences are packaged, staged and consumed as commercial commodities - the tourist complexes have become part of the so called "cultural economy". In the book, ethnologist Tom O'Dell uses spas to highlight the manner in which the culturalisation of the economy has developed. The author takes his readers on a journey from the seventeenth century into the present and shows how issues of hospitality, well-being and religious magic have been handled in commercialised settings through history. He also anchors his discussion firmly in a cultural analysis of the body and senses that draws upon recent work in cultural theory that has been developed in the humanities and social sciences.

This volume is intended as a contribution to the study of administration. The contributors represent several branches of social and behavioral sciences, including anthropology, economics, industrial management, sociology, and social psychology. The data for the empirical studies were gathered in the United States, Germany, Great Britain, Norway, West Africa, and the Fox Indian society, and from different types of organizations, including manufacturing, mining, shipping, higher education, hospitals, the military, and social welfare agencies. Contributors: Frederick L. Bates; Warren G. Bennis; Frank A. Cassell; Rose Laub Coser; William R. Dill; Frederick H. Harbison; Ernst K\u00f6chling; Walter B. Miller; Stephen A. Richardson; Heinrich C. Ruebmann; Edward J. Thomas; and the editors.

It has become a truism that "leadership depends upon the situation," but few behavioral scientists have attempted to go beyond that statement to examine the specific ways in which leaders should and do vary their behavior with situational demands. Vroom and Yetton select a critical aspect of leadership style-the extent to which the leader encourages the participation of his subordinates in decision-making. They describe a normative model which shows the specific leadership style called for in different classes of situations. The model is expressed in terms of a "decision tree" and requires the leader to analyze the dimensions of the particular problem or decision with which he is confronted in order to determine how much and in what way to share his decision-making power with his subordinates.Other chapters discuss how leaders behave in different situations. They look at differences in leadership styles, and what situations induce people to display autocratic or participative behavior.

Educational media has an immediate connection to education policies, new trends in schooling, child welfare, and pedagogical novelties. The transformation of the Swedish welfare state in the twentieth century was clearly visible in the structure and content of Swedish educational broadcasting. Media education mediated political and social change and reflected the changes of government policies as well as the fundamental cultural transformation of the Swedish society. It was an important instrument of modernisation. In this book, the authors provide new insights into the changes of the educational media policies, and how they interplayed with public service media as well as the educational system during the formative years of the Swedish welfare state. The political authorities formulated general ambitions for broadcast medias' role in society, a role reflecting far reaching desires to form the future. At the same time media education was organised within the framework of a public service system which emphasised its independence from state control -- even if it was to produce programs for the schools which were strictly government-controlled. From that position it was able to affect the views and construe the understanding of citizenship, equality, childcare, children's role in society, environmental issues, democracy, and everyday politics, and in that teachers, lecturers as well as journalists had their input. Educational radio thus had some fundamental influence but did not necessarily have the focused aim of the policies pronounced by the government since there was an opportunity for other political interests to influence the shape and direction of national education programs. Educational media was both a voice for progressive change and for established interests. In this study historians Bengt Sandin and Maija Runcis have a close look on how the educational broadcasting was negotiated between parties with varying agendas. It developed into a complex activity between journalism and education, critical scrutiny and schooling -- it became neither fish, nor fowl.

Archaeology is not just about the past, but the present and future too. Much of our present condition and future prospects are inevitably bound up with what states do and what they fail to do. To understand the inner-workings and motivations of states one must understand how and why they came into existence in the first place. This book describes how states formed in Egypt and Mesopotamia, China and the Andes, and also how the Indus Civilization functioned without a state. This work spans law, ideology, politics, economics, and psychology, the ancient world and modern history, in order to show how power is obtained, sustained and deployed, and in whose interests. Grounded in archaeological data, it examines human nature, morality, violence and governance, issues of special importance to everyone, but in particular to students of politics, anthropology, psychology and sociology, as well as archaeology.

Central Javanese temples were not built anywhere and anyhow. On the contrary: their positions within the landscape and their architectural designs were determined by socio-cultural, religious and economic factors. This book explores the correlations between temple distribution, natural surroundings and architectural design to understand how Central Javanese people structured the space around them, and how the religious landscape thus created, developed. Besides questions related to territory and landscape, Degroot's book analyzes the structure of the built space and its possible relations with conceptualized space, showing the influence of imported Indian concepts, as well as their limits. Going off the beaten track, this book explores the hundreds of small sites that scatter the landscape of Central Java. It is also one of very few studies to apply the methods of spatial archaeology to Central Javanese temples and the first in almost a century to present a descriptive inventory of the remains of this region.

Is the United States Congress dead, alive, or trapped in a moribund cycle? When confronted with controversial policy issues, members of Congress struggle to satisfy conflicting legislative, representative, and oversight duties. These competing goals, along with the pressure to satisfy local constituents, cause members of Congress to routinely cede power on a variety of policies, express regret over their loss of control, and later return to the habit of delegating their power. This pattern of institutional ambivalence undermines conventional wisdom about congressional party resurgence, the power of oversight, and the return of the so-called imperial presidency.In Congressional Ambivalence, Jasmine Farrier examines Congress's frequent delegation of power by analyzing primary source materials such as bills, committee reports, and the Congressional Record. Farrier demonstrates that Congress is caught between abdication and ambition and that this ambivalence affects numerous facets of the legislative process.Explaining specific instances of post-delegation disorder, including Congress's use of new bills, obstruction, public criticism, and oversight to salvage its lost power, Farrier exposes the tensions surrounding Congress's roles in recent hot-button issues such as base-closing commissions, presidential trade promotion authority, and responses to the attacks of September 11. She also examines shifting public rhetoric used by members of Congress as they emphasize, in institutionally self-conscious terms, the difficulties of balancing their multiple roles. With a deep understanding of the inner workings of the federal government, Farrier illuminates a developing trend in the practice of democracy.

After the revolutionary period of 1910-1920, Mexico developed a number of social protection programs to support workers in public and private sectors and to establish safeguards for the poor and the aged. These included pensions, healthcare, and worker's compensation. The new welfare programs were the product of a complex interrelationship of corporate, labor, and political actors. In this unique dynamic, cross-class coalitions maintained both an authoritarian regime and social protection system for some seventy years, despite the ebb and flow of political and economic tides.By focusing on organized labor, and its powerful role in effecting institutional change, Workers and Welfare chronicles the development and evolution of Mexican social insurance institutions in the twentieth century. Beginning with the antecedents of social insurance and the adoption of pension programs for central government workers in 1925, Dion's analysis shows how the labor movement, up until the 1990s, was instrumental in expanding welfare programs, but has since become largely ineffective. Despite stepped-up efforts, labor has seen the retrenchment of many benefits. Meanwhile, Dion cites the debt crisis, neoliberal reform, and resulting changes in the labor market as all contributing to a rise in poverty. Today, Mexican welfare programs emphasize poverty alleviation, in a marked shift away from social insurance benefits for the working class.

Leonard Plotnicov offers a fascinating study of the urbanization of tribal Africans. His study is based on extensive interviews with residents of Jos, Nigeria over a two-year period. The participants come from a variety of social and cultural backgrounds, and Plotnicov portrays the difficulties associated with assimilation into a Westernized society.

Work has always been central to the African American experience. Whether as slaves or freedmen, African Americans have struggled to gain economic opportunity. For Jobs and Freedom: Race and Labor in America since 1865 analyzes the position of African American workers in the U. S. economy and social order over the past century and a half. This comprehensive study focuses on black workers' efforts to gain equal rights in the workplace and deals extensively with organized labor's complex and tumultuous relationship with African Americans. Highlighting the problems and opportunities that have characterized efforts to build biracial unions and forge a strong labor−civil rights political coalition, it is an authoritative treatment on the subject of race and labor in modern America.

In this most timely book, Richard C. Lukas offers the historical perspective that any reader, scholar, or layman needs to grasp the political turmoil in Poland in the decades after World War II. Bitter Legacy is the first major analysis of Polish-American relations from the Potsdam Conference through the Polish elections of 1947, the critical period during which Poland became a satellite in the Russian sphere. Drawing on an impressive array of primary and secondary sources, a number of which have never been used by scholars before, Lukas shows in detail why and how American policy was never able to reverse the process, begun at the Yalta Conference, that transformed Poland into a communist state. In a clear and unambiguous style, he deftly combines two traditions in the writing of diplomatic history -- one that stresses intergovernmental relations and one that emphasizes domestic concerns and pressures.The result is a revealing book that adds significantly to our understanding of Polish-American relations and of domestic history in Poland and the United States during this important Cold War phase. It will appeal not only to scholars but also to all those with an interest in Poland's history.Bitter Legacy is a sequel to Lukas's earlier volume, The Strange Allies, which has been acclaimed as the best treatment in English of United States-Polish relations during World War II. If offers the same impeccable scholarship and balanced interpretation that characterized Lukas's earlier study.