This book explores the role of context and its link to action in organization and management theory, illustrated by examples from health care research. It discusses how context, action, and process are interwoven and provides a methodological approach to study context in action.

Since the discovery of mirror neurons, the study of human infant goal-directed actions and object manipulation has burgeoned into new and exciting research directions. A number of infant studies have begun emphasizing the social context of action to understand what infants can infer when looking at others performing goal-directed actions or manipulating objects. Others have begun addressing how looking at actions in a social context, or even simply looking at objects in the immediate environment influence the way infants learn to direct their own actions on objects. Researchers have even begun investigating what aspects of goal-directed actions and object manipulation infants imitate when such actions are being modeled by a social partner, or they have been asking which cues infants use to predict others' actions. A growing understanding of how infants learn to reach, perceive information for reaching, and attend social cues for action has become central to many recent studies. These new lines of investigation and others have benefited from the use of a broad range of new investigative techniques. Eye-tracking, brains imaging techniques and new methodologies have been used to scrutinize how infants look, process, and use information to act themselves on objects and/or the social world, and to infer, predict, and recognize goal-directed actions outcomes from others. This Frontiers Research topic brings together empirical reports, literature reviews, and theory and hypothesis papers that tap into some of these exciting developmental questions about how infants perceive, understand, and perform goal-directed actions broadly defined. The papers included either stress the neural, motor, or perceptual aspects of infants’ behavior, or any combination of those dimensions as related to the development of early cognitive understanding and performance of goal-directed actions.

The roots of pragmatics reach back to Antiquity, especially to rhetoric as one of the three liberal arts. However, until the end of the 18th century proto-pragmatic insights tended to be consigned to the pragmatic, that is rhetoric, wastepaper basket and thus excluded from serious philosophical consideration.It can be said that pragmatics was conceived between 1780 and 1830 in Britain, but also in Germany and in France in post-Lockian and post-Kantian philosophies of language. These early 'conceptions' of pragmatics are described in the first part of the book.The second part of the book looks at pragmatic insights made between 1830 and 1880, when they were once more relegated to the philosophical and linguistic underground. The main stage was then occupied by a fact-hunting historical comparative linguistics on the one hand and a newly spiritualised philosophy on the other.In the last part the period between 1880 and 1930 is presented, when pragmatic insights flourished and were sought after systematically. This was due in part to a new upsurge in empiricism, positivism and later behaviourism in philosophy, linguistics and psychology. Between 1780 and 1930 philosophers, psychologists, sociologists and linguists came to see that language could only be studied in the context of dialogue, in the context of human life and finally as being a kind of human action itself.

This book delivers a state-of-the-art survey of the issues and approaches in contemporary English as a foreign language (EFL) teacher education. It examines the professional development of the teachers who taught English as a foreign language and engaged in a teacher preparation programme of reflective teaching at a university in China. Situated in the context of the reforms of English language teaching and teacher education, this book focuses on the theme of how, if at all, reflective teaching contributes to Chinese university EFL teachers’ development in thinking about English language teaching and in their own classroom practice. To date, the study of English as a foreign language teacher education and professional development mainly focused on the teaching skills and pedagogical knowledge of teachers. However, this book approaches English language teacher education from a different perspective, through an empirical exploration of the teachers’ professional development in their thinking, beliefs, values, understandings of teaching, awareness of students, and their classroom practice while engaged with reflective teaching practice at the group level and the individual level respectively. Adopting an interpretivist and constructivist epistemological paradigm, and drawing on key aspects of reflective teaching theory, the book investigates how the novice, developing, and experienced teachers differed in their views about reflective practice; how the teachers’ thinking about English language teaching transformed; how the teachers’ performance in EFL classroom practice developed; and how the teachers dealt with the changes during the period of the teacher education programme. In addition, the book provides examples of research into the ways that individuals integrate multiple levels of reflection, accommodate different types of reflection, and make them interact with each other mutually and inseparably by using a more comprehensive and multidimensional reflective teaching model. Thus the book helps to better understand teachers’ trajectory of professional growth and is a new and unique resource for exploring effective ways of language teacher education for teachers, teacher educators, and educational researchers alike.

A key course text for advanced undergraduates and MBA students of human resource management. By using a thematic rather than a techniques-based structure, this book provides an opportunity to engage with current problems and issues by going beyond the normal emphasis on best practice and techniques and developing an awareness of the wider context. Accompanied by a website at http://www.palgrave.com/business/newell containing lecturer support materials, this text presents the key themes underpinning an understanding of human resource management through the use of detailed research-based case studies. Also available is a companion website with extra features to accompany the text, please take a look by clicking below - http://www.palgrave.com/business/newell/index.asp

Proceedings from the ninth International Conference on Artificial Life; papers by scientists of many disciplines focusing on the principles of organization and applications of complex, life-like systems. Artificial Life is an interdisciplinary effort to investigate the fundamental properties of living systems through the simulation and synthesis of life-like processes. The young field brings a powerful set of tools to the study of how high-level behavior can arise in systems governed by simple rules of interaction. Some of the fundamental questions include: What are the principles of evolution, learning, and growth that can be understood well enough to simulate as an information process? Can robots be built faster and more cheaply by mimicking biology than by the product design process used for automobiles and airplanes? How can we unify theories from dynamical systems, game theory, evolution, computing, geophysics, and cognition? The field has contributed fundamentally to our understanding of life itself through computer models, and has led to novel solutions to complex real-world problems across high technology and human society. This elite biennial meeting has grown from a small workshop in Santa Fe to a major international conference. This ninth volume of the proceedings of the international A-life conference reflects the growing quality and impact of this interdisciplinary scientific community.

"Clearly shows the success that can occur when a staff learns together. I highly recommend this book to aspiring and beginning principals, as well as those with years of experience." —Paul Young, Executive Director, West After School Center Former President, National Association of Elementary School Principals Foster schoolwide professional learning through a collaborative action research model! Action research is a popular method for individual educators to examine their practices and grow in their profession. In this how-to guide, readers will learn how Whole-Faculty Study Groups (WFSGs) use action research to involve an entire school in advancing staff learning and school performance. The WFSG model is a type of professional learning community (PLC) that catalyzes school change with schoolwide action research as a central component. With over 20 years of experience, the authors draw from hundreds of examples and case studies to describe how implementing WFSGs can help students, teachers, administrators, and other staff members work collaboratively to improve teacher practice and student learning. The authors′ empirical data and comprehensive approach help deepen educators′ understanding of how to use meaningful action research to strengthen teamwork and realize school reform. Additionally, readers will learn how: The WFSG system compares with other approaches to action research The schoolwide action research process can be applied in a wide variety of school reform efforts Study groups can move from discussion to action Principals and district leaders can support schoolwide action research Discover the ways WFSGs can enhance student learning and result in real school improvement in this highly relevant, must-have guide.

A novel, interdisciplinary exploration of the relative contributions of rigidity and flexibility in the adoption, maintenance, and evolution of technical traditions. Techniques can either be used in rigid, stereotypical ways or in flexibly adaptive ways, or in some combination of the two. The Evolution of Techniques, edited by Mathieu Charbonneau, addresses the impacts of both flexibility and rigidity on how techniques are used, transformed, and reconstructed, at varying social and temporal scales. The multidisciplinary contributors demonstrate the important role of the varied learning contexts and social configurations involved in the transmission, use, and evolution of techniques. They explore the diversity of cognitive, behavioral, sociocultural, and ecological mechanisms that promote and constrain technical flexibility and rigidity, proposing a deeper picture of the enablers of, and obstacles to, technical transmission and change. In line with the extended evolutionary synthesis, the book proposes a more inclusive and materially grounded conception of technical evolution in terms of promiscuous, dynamic, and multidirectional causal processes. Offering new evidence and novel theoretical perspectives, the contributors deploy a diversity of methods, including ethnographies, field and laboratory experiments, cladistics and phylogenetic tree building, historiography, and philosophical analysis. Examples of the wide range of topics covered include field experiments with potters from five cultures, stability and change in Paleolithic toolmaking, why children lack flexibility when making tools, and cultural techniques in nonhuman animals. The volume’s three thematic sections are: · Timescales of technical rigidity and flexibility · Rigid copying to flexible reconstruction · Exogenous factors of technical rigidity and flexibility The volume closes with a discussion by philosopher Kim Sterelny. Contributors Rita Astuti, Adam Howell Boyette, Blandine Bril, Josep Call, Mathieu Charbonneau, Arianna Curioni, Nicola Cutting, Bert De Munck, György Gergely, Anne-Lise Goujon, Ildikó Király, Catherine Lara, Sébastien Manem, Luke McEllin, Helena Miton, Giulio Ongaro, Sarah Pope-Caldwell, Valentine Roux, Manon Schweinfurth, Dan Sperber, Kim Sterelny, Dietrich Stout, James W. A. Strachan, Sadie Tenpas

"This is a wonderful book with deep insight into the relationship between teachers′ action and result of student learning. It discusses from different angles impact of action research on student learning in the classroom. Writing samples provided at the back are wonderful examples." —Kejing Liu, Shawnee State University Teacher Action Research: Building Knowledge Democracies focuses on helping schools build knowledge democracies through a process of action research in which teachers, students, and parents collaborate in conducting participatory and caring inquiry in the classroom, school, and community. Author Gerald J. Pine examines historical origins, the rationale for practice-based research, related theoretical and philosophical perspectives, and action research as a paradigm rather than a method. Key Features Discusses how to build a school research culture through collaborative teacher research Delineates the role of the professional development school as a venue for constructing a knowledge democracy Focuses on how teacher action research can empower the active and ongoing inclusion of nontraditional voices (those of students and parents) in the research process Includes chapters addressing the concrete practices of observation, reflection, dialogue, writing, and the conduct of action research, as well as examples of teacher action research studies