BiblioVault - Books about Practice

Landscape Ecology and Resource Management

Linking Theory with Practice

Edited by John A. Bissonette and Ilse Storch

Island Press, 2002

Landscape Ecology and Resource Management bridges the gap between the science of landscape ecology and on-the-ground land and resource management, relating the theory and empirical research within landscape ecology to the practical needs of resource managers. It offers both a conceptual foundation of applicable and operational theory and case-study examples that address ways in which political, economic, and social factors influence the use of landscape ecology and other data-based science around the world.Contributors focus on links between theory and practice, between small-scale and large-scale, and between humans and nature. Specific linkages examined include:landscape patterns and biological realitytop-down effects and organismsthe indicator species concept and conservation effortsthe concept of fitness landscapes and the behavior and distribution of animalsbody mass patterns and wildlife conservationChapters feature examples of interactions between people and landscapes in boreal, central, and Mediterranean Europe; northern Australia; and Eastern Africa; along with case studies from central Europe, North America, and South America that show how theory and application can be linked in a variety of situations with varying management constraints.Landscape Ecology and Resource Management is the first book of its kind to focus on the linkages between the theory of landscape ecology and the practice of resource management, and will play an important role both in advancing landscape ecology as a science and in incorporating its ideas into management efforts.

[more]

Language Diversity in the Classroom

From Intention to Practice

Edited by Geneva Smitherman and Victor Villanueva. Foreword by Suresh Canagarajah

Southern Illinois University Press, 2003

It’s no secret that, in most American classrooms, students are expected to master standardized American English and the conventions of Edited American English if they wish to succeed. Language Diversity in the Classroom: From Intention to Practice works to realign these conceptions through a series of provocative yet evenhanded essays that explore the ways we have enacted and continue to enact our beliefs in the integrity of the many languages and Englishes that arise both in the classroom and in professional communities.

Edited by Geneva Smitherman and Victor Villanueva, the collection was motivated by a survey project on language awareness commissioned by the National Council of Teachers of English and the Conference on College Composition and Communication.

All actively involved in supporting diversity in education, the contributors address the major issues inherent in linguistically diverse classrooms: language and racism, language and nationalism, and the challenges in teaching writing while respecting and celebrating students’ own languages. Offering historical and pedagogical perspectives on language awareness and language diversity, the essays reveal the nationalism implicit in the concept of a “standard English,” advocate alternative training and teaching practices for instructors at all levels, and promote the respect and importance of the country’s diverse dialects, languages, and literatures.

Contributors include Geneva Smitherman, Victor Villanueva, Elaine Richardson, Victoria Cliett, Arnetha F. Ball, Rashidah Jammi` Muhammad, Kim Brian Lovejoy, Gail Y. Okawa, Jan Swearingen, and Dave Pruett.

The volume also includes a foreword by Suresh Canagarajah and a substantial bibliography of resources about bilingualism and language diversity.

[more]

Lawmaking for Development

Explorations into the Theory and Practice of International Legislative Projects

Julia Arnscheidt

Amsterdam University Press, 2008

Over the last decades there has been increased recognition that law and governance matter for development, be it macro-economic growth or the improvement of micro-level basic needs and freedoms. Legislation is a central part of state legal systems, and often the written legal norms are a starting point when seeking improvement of the legal system as a whole, or one of its specific aspects. This volume discusses how legislation (the product) and lawmaking (the process) function in developing countries, and how legislation contributes to development and how lawmaking and legislation can be improved either by the country itself or by donor assisted projects. It covers topics including legal transplantation, legislative quality, linkages between legislation and implementation, and the politics of lawmaking. The resultant volume combines insights from scholars, based on conceptual analysis and empirical research, with ideas from practitioners involved in lawmaking in legal technical assistance projects. Doing so, this volume aims to be useful for both academia and practice.

[more]

Lawyers in Practice

Ethical Decision Making in Context

Edited by Leslie C. Levin and Lynn Mather

University of Chicago Press, 2012

How do lawyers resolve ethical dilemmas in the everyday context of their practice? What are the issues that commonly arise, and how do lawyers determine the best ways to resolve them? Until recently, efforts to answer these questions have focused primarily on rules and legal doctrine rather than the real-life situations lawyers face in legal practice.

The first book to present empirical research on ethical decision making in a variety of practice contexts, including corporate litigation, securities, immigration, and divorce law, Lawyers in Practice fills a substantial gap in the existing literature. Following an introduction emphasizing the increasing importance of understanding context in the legal profession, contributions focus on ethical dilemmas ranging from relatively narrow ethical issues to broader problems of professionalism, including the prosecutor’s obligation to disclose evidence, the management of conflicts of interest, and loyalty to clients and the court. Each chapter details the resolution of a dilemma from the practitioner’s point of view that is, in turn, set within a particular community of practice. Timely and practical, this book should be required reading for law students as well as students and scholars of law and society.

[more]

Learner-Centered Pedagogy

Principles and Practice

Kevin Michael Klipfel

American Library Association, 2017

Today's emphasis on metrics and personalization make evidence-based instruction an imperative. In this practice-based handbook, the authors draw on the research of the humanistic psychologist and educator Carl Rogers to present an empathetic approach to information literacy sessions, reference service, and outreach. With an eye on everyday library work, they offer concrete, empirically-based strategies to connect with learners at all levels. Offering plentiful examples of pedagogy in action, this book covers:

6 cognitive principles for organizing information literacy instruction, with sample worksheets and organization tools for instruction planning;
how to establish rapport and kindle learners' motivation;
tactics for transcending "cite 5 sources" and other uninspiring research assignments;
educational evidence debunking the mythical perception that because students are skilled at computers and mobile technology, they already know how to do research;
questions to keep in mind for inspiring autonomous learning;
the power of story, as described by Joan Didion, Brené Brown's Ted Talk, and educational psychology research;
the science behind information overload; and
a balanced framework for evaluating specific educational technology tools.

Fusing theory with practice, this handbook is a valuable resource to help every practitioner connect with learners more effectively.

[more]

Legal Interpreting

Teaching, Research, and Practice

Jeremy L. Brunson

Gallaudet University Press, 2022

Linguistic minorities are often severely disadvantaged in legal events, with consequences that could impact one’s very liberty. Training for interpreters to provide full access in legal settings is paramount. In this volume, Jeremy L. Brunson has gathered deaf and hearing scholars and practitioners from both signed and spoken language interpreting communities in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. Their contributions include research-driven, experience-driven, and theoretical discussions on how to teach and assess legal interpreting. The topics covered include teaming in a courtroom, introducing students to legal interpreting, being an expert witness, discourses used by deaf lawyers, designing assessment tools for legal settings, and working with deaf jurors. In addition, this volume interrogates the various ways power, privilege, and oppression appear in legal interpreting.

Each chapter features discussion questions and prompts that interpreter educators can use in the classroom. While intended as a foundational text for use in courses, this body of work also provides insight into the current state of the legal interpreting field and will be a valuable resource for scholars, practitioners, and consumers.

[more]

Legal Writing, Legal Practice

The Biblical Bailment Law and Divine Justice

Yael Landman

SBL Press, 2022

Prescriptive law writings rarely mirror the ways a society practices law, a fact that raises special problems for the social and legal historian. Through close analysis of the laws of bailment (i.e., temporary safekeeping) in Exodus 22, Yael Landman probes the relationship of law in the biblical law collections and law-in-practice in ancient Israel and exposes a vision of divine justice at the heart of pentateuchal law. Landman further demonstrates that ancient Near Eastern bailment laws continue to influence postbiblical Jewish law. This book advances an approach to the study of biblical law that connects pentateuchal and ancient Near Eastern law collections, biblical narrative and prophecy, and Mesopotamian legal documents and joins philological and comparative analysis with humanistic legal approaches, in order to access how people thought about and practiced law in ancient Israel.

[more]

Library Marketing

From Passion to Practice

Jill Stover Heinze

Against the Grain, LLC, 2017

Charleston Briefings: Trending Topics for Information Professionals is a thought-provoking series of brief books concerning innovation in the sphere of libraries, publishing, and technology in scholarly communication. The briefings, growing out of the vital conversations characteristic of the Charleston Conference and Against the Grain, will offer valuable insights into the trends shaping our professional lives and the institutions in which we work.

The Charleston Briefings are written by authorities who provide an effective, readable overview of their topics—not an academic monograph. The intended audience is busy nonspecialist readers who want to be informed concerning important issues in our industry in an accessible and timely manner.

Why do librarians have so many problems with marketing?

At a time when universities and colleges demand that libraries demonstrate their value and users have so many other options to discover information, it seems bizarre that librarians would be so much against a tool that allows them to engage closely with the very users who are the lifeblood of libraries.

As Jill Heinze makes clear in this lively and passionate briefing, marketing is a tool that allows an institution to assess their place in a market and to communicate value to their users based on the users’ needs and problems. This marketing tool need have no relationship to traditional business concerns, and, indeed, mission- based marketing is now important even to for- profit institutions.

Embracing key marketing concepts and planning, says Heinze, can demand that libraries rethink organizational structures, operations, and missions, but she also demonstrates that this rethinking can be entirely commensurate with the mission of libraries within an educational context.

[more]

Living Ideology in Cuba

Socialism in Principle and Practice

Katherine A. Gordy

University of Michigan Press, 2015

In Living Ideology in Cuba, Katherine Gordy demonstrates how the Cuban state and its people engage in an ongoing negotiation that produces a “living ideology.” In contrast to official slogans and fiats, Cuba’s living ideology is a decentralized phenomenon, continually adapting, informing, and responding to daily life, without losing sight of the fundamental national principles of socioeconomic equality, unified leadership, and inclusive nationalism.

Tracing Cuba’s ideological history, Gordy first looks at the ways in which the 19th century wars of independence and the 1959 revolution were used as the basis for both challenging and legitimizing Cuban socialism. Following the embrace of a pure socialist ideology in the 1960s, state policies of the 1970s became more accommodating of market imperatives, while still holding on to the principles articulated by Che Guevara and Karl Marx. In the 1990s, the Cuban people themselves pushed back against further economic reforms, reasserting the value of socioeconomic equality. Gordy also examines ideological debates among intellectuals, from the controversy sparked by Fidel Castro’s “Words to the Intellectuals” speech to the demand in the 1990s for a separation between academia and the state—not to safeguard academia from politics, but to ensure that academics as such could contribute to the political dialogue.

[more]

Living Spirit, Living Practice

Poetics, Politics, Epistemology

Ruth Frankenberg

Duke University Press, 2004

In Living Spirit, Living Practice, the well-known cultural studies scholar Ruth Frankenberg turns her attention to the remarkably diverse nature of religious practice within the United States today. Frankenberg provides a nuanced consideration of the making and living of religious lives as well as the mystery and poetry of spiritual practice. She undertakes a subtle sociocultural analysis of compelling in-depth interviews with fifty women and men, diverse in race, ethnicity, national origin, class, age, and sexuality. Tracing the complex interweaving of sacred and secular languages in the way interviewees make sense of the everyday and the extraordinary, Frankenberg explores modes of communication with the Divine, the role of the body, the importance of geography, work for progressive social change, and the relation of sex to spirituality.

Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, and other practitioners come together here, speaking in terms both familiar and surprising. Whether discussing an Episcopalian deacon, a former Zen Buddhist who is now a rabbi, a Chicano monastic, an immigrant Muslim woman, a Japanese American Tibetan Buddhist, or a gay African American practicing in the Hindu tradition, Frankenberg illuminates the most intimate, local, and singular aspects of individual lives while situating them within the broad, dynamic canvas of the U.S. religious landscape.

[more]