Search results for ""Author Alan Booth""

'A memorable, oddly beautiful book' Wall Street Journal'A marvellous glimpse of the Japan that rarely peeks through the country's public image' Washington PostOne sunny spring morning in the 1970s, an unlikely Englishman set out on a pilgrimage that would take him across the entire length of Japan. Travelling only along small back roads, Alan Booth travelled on foot from Soya, the country's northernmost tip, to Sata in the extreme south, traversing three islands and some 2,000 miles of rural Japan. His mission: 'to come to grips with the business of living here,' after having spent most of his adult life in Tokyo.The Roads to Sata is a wry, witty, inimitable account of that prodigious trek, vividly revealing the reality of life in off-the-tourist-track Japan. Journeying alongside Booth, we encounter the wide variety of people who inhabit the Japanese countryside - from fishermen and soldiers, to bar hostesses and school teachers, to hermits, drunks and the homeless. We glimpse vast stretches of coastline and rambling townscapes, mountains and motorways; watch baseball games and sunrises; sample trout and Kilamanjaro beer, hear folklore, poems and smutty jokes. Throughout, we enjoy the wit and insight of a uniquely perceptive guide, and more importantly, discover a new face of an often-misunderstood nation.

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This collection brings together a range of international historians and educationalists interested in the future of history education. The book is designed to provide a clear and critical account of recent initiatives in the teaching of history, in order to stimulate debate on the current scope and nature of history, and its enhancement and development. It also provides practical information and assistance for those wishing to refresh their own thinking in the light of recent research into teaching and learning.

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Significant disparities exist in children's behavioral and learning capacities that support successful transitions into school. In this new volume, leading researchers from a variety of disciplines review the latest data on how families influence their children's transitions into school. The inequalities that exist in school readiness, the roots of the inequalities, and the ways in which families exacerbate or minimize these inequalities, are explored. The book concludes with a review of policies and programs that represent the best practices for how families, schools and communities can address these disparities.Each of the following topics is explored through a lead essay followed by three critiques: Inequalities in school readiness and the community, school, and family characteristics that contribute to these inequalities. Family processes and contextual conditions that impact the acquisition of literacy, numeracy, language, and cognitive skills. The role that extracurricular activities play in shaping children's school achievement, including differences based on gender, ethnicity, race, and socioeconomic status. Family processes underlying the development of behavioral control and its impact on school readiness. Disparities in School Readiness paints a compelling, interdisciplinary portrait using a variety of types of data and data sets, including longitudinal data from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development's Study of Early Childhood and recent analyses of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study from the National Center for Education Statistics. Interdisciplinary in nature, this new book appeals to researchers in family studies, human development, education, psychology, social work, sociology, economics, and public policy interested in improving children's school transitions.

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Workplace policies that provide flexible scheduling, leave for caregiving, and assistance with child care likely benefit employers in recruitment, retention, productivity, and health care costs. Their benefits to employees seem obvious. Researchers, however, are just beginning to move beyond correlational, descriptive studies into rigorous intervention research. These new investigations examine not only the effects of formal policies-whether federal law or company HR initiatives-but also changes in workplace culture. Work-Life Policies assembles a diverse group of commentators-industrial psychologists, labor organizers, policy analysts, management scholars, organizational psychologists, and others-to offer fresh ideas and new insight.

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Dramatic changes in the American family have transformed the way we care for its oldest and youngest members. Nuclear families have become smaller as childbearing has declined, but extended families have become larger as life expectancy grows. Divorce, extramarital childbearing, cohabitation, and remarriage, have increased our number of kin but often complicate relationships and diffuse responsibility for care. In Intergenerational Caregiving, an interdisciplinary group of scholars considers our changing family relationships and their effect on social policies. Caregiving and its effects on families’ relationships and resources are examined from economic, sociological, anthropological and psychological perspectives, and chapters on both elders and children with disabilities are included.

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Hispanics are the largest immigrant group in the United States and the largest ethnic minority group in the nation. One in five children in the U.S. has immigrant parents. These children face a range of challenges, often caught in their communities’ changing social, political, and economic forces.

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