Offers an interdisciplinary approach to narrative perspective, with essays by leading scholars of literary studies, cognitive psychology, linguistics, philosophy, and film and media criticism.

In the spring of 2011, a diverse group of scientists gathered at Cornell University to discuss their research into the nature and origin of biological information. This symposium brought together experts in information theory, computer science, numerical simulation, thermodynamics, evolutionary theory, whole organism biology, developmental biology, molecular biology, genetics, physics, biophysics, mathematics, and linguistics. This volume presents new research by those invited to speak at the conference.The contributors to this volume use their wide-ranging expertise in the area of biological information to bring fresh insights into the many explanatory difficulties associated with biological information. These authors raise major challenges to the conventional scientific wisdom, which attempts to explain all biological information exclusively in terms of the standard mutation/selection paradigm.Several clear themes emerged from these research papers: 1) Information is indispensable to our understanding of what life is; 2) Biological information is more than the material structures that embody it; 3) Conventional chemical and evolutionary mechanisms seem insufficient to fully explain the labyrinth of information that is life. By exploring new perspectives on biological information, this volume seeks to expand, encourage, and enrich research into the nature and origin of biological information.

The volume constitutes an attempt to capture the intricate relationship between individual learner differences and other variables which are of interest to theorists, researchers and practitioners representing such diverse branches of applied linguistics as psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, pragmatics or language teaching methodology. It brings together contributions by Polish and international authors, including leading experts in the field, touching upon changing perspectives on individual variation, cognitive, affective and social variables, learning deficits as well as their impact on learning and teaching. It offers a multifaceted perspective on these problems and shows how theory and research can be translated into classroom practice.

"This is a timely book, enabling teachers to reflect critically upon their existing work-place practices, which have been so powerfully shaped by the target culture and the logic of performativity that has underpinned it for two decades. More importantly it will empower primary school teachers to play a more active role in effecting curriculum and pedagogical change in their schools and classrooms." Professor John Elliot, School of Education, University of East Anglia, UK This book encourages you to question the existing culture of schooling, its principles and practices. Current practices have been shaped and dominated by a target led and outcomes driven agenda. The book addresses some of the conflicts that arise in the demand for performance on the one hand and teachers' responsiveness to children and their learning on the other. Sue Cox sets out to show how change might be based on clear understandings of how children learn and how teachers contribute to that learning. She does this by providing frameworks for change and shows how, from these perspectives, participation is key to children's learning. She then goes on to explore the implications for teachers working collaboratively with children in areas such as interaction, curriculum and assessment. An underlying aim of the book is to provide the tools for teachers to develop a principled approach to what they do and how they think in order to challenge some entrenched practices and thinking. This book provides thoughtful reading and promotes reflective thinking for primary teachers, teachers in training and researchers with insight into new ways of thinking about and developing primary education.

When people attempt to learn a new language, the language(s) they already know can help but also hinder their understanding or production of new forms. This phenomenon, known as language transfer, is the focus of this book. The collection offers new theoretical perspectives, some in the empirical studies and some in other chapters, and consists of four sections considering lexical, syntactic, phonological and cognitive perspectives. The volume provides a wealth of studies on the influence of Chinese on the acquisition of English but also includes studies involving Finnish, French, Hindi, Korean, Persian, Spanish, Swedish and Tamil. It will be of great interest to researchers and students working in the areas of crosslinguistic influence in second language acquisition, language pedagogy and psycholinguistics.

New Perspectives in Philosophy of Education seeks to build a bridge between philosophical reflection and socio-political action by developing a range of critical discussions in the areas of ethics, politics and religion. This volume brings together established authorities and a new generation of scholars to ask whether philosophy of education can contribute to political and social discourse, or whether it is destined to remain the marginal gadfly of mainstream ideology. The philosophy of education stands in danger of becoming a neglected field at precisely the moment we need to be able to reflect upon the increasingly apparent costs of the technocratic attitude to education. While many of the educational policy discussions of recent years seem far-reaching and radical, critical debate surrounding these initiatives remain largely at a populist level. New Perspectives in Philosophy of Education provides contemporary responses to philosophical issues that bear upon educational studies, policies and practices, contributing to the debate on the role of philosophy of education in an increasingly fractured intellectual milieu.

Illustrated by an empirical study of English as a Foreign Language reading in Argentina, this book argues for a different approach to the theoretical rationales and methodological designs typically used to investigate cultural understanding in reading, in particular foreign language reading. It presents an alternative approach which is more authentic in its methods, more educational in its purposes, and more supportive of international understanding as an aim of language teaching in general and English language teaching in particular.

New Perspectives in Special Education opens the door to the fascinating and vitally important world of theory informing contemporary special education. It examines theoretical and philosophical orientations such as 'positivism', 'poststructuralism' and 'hermeneutics', relating these to contemporary, global views of special education.