Why Study the Media?


Book Description

"It′s easy to be snobbish about media culture; the great merit of Roger Silverstone′s book is to make the reader understand just how important that culture is." - Richard Sennett, New York University "A remarkable book which argues for a new paradigm for the study of the media." - Daniel Dayan, Centre National de la Recherche "A persuasive and sophisticated discussion of the role of the media in modern life at the threshold of the twenty-first century." - Ellen Seiter, University of California "A very important book, one that moves media theory and argument on at long last. This is an attempt to get people to think differently about the media - not just when they are writing essays, but also when they are arguing about media in everyday life." - Simon Frith, University of Stirling The centrality of the media, all media, to human experience - from the conduct of everyday life, to the exercise of power, to the creation of culture - is inescapable. We live in an intensely mediated world. Yet the academic study of the media has rarely made its own insights accessible and relevant to those outside its own limited sphere. Indeed it is constantly under attack for its lack of rigour, apparent failure to address the needs of industry and its inability to tell us anything substantive about the world in which we live. Written as a manifesto and in order to set a new intellectual agenda, Why Study the Media? argues for the importance of the media in our culture and society and the consequent necessity of taking the media seriously as an object of enlightened but rigorous investigation. At once human and humane, Why Study the Media? will be welcomed by all those in search of new ways of thinking about our mediated world.




How People Learn


Book Description

First released in the Spring of 1999, How People Learn has been expanded to show how the theories and insights from the original book can translate into actions and practice, now making a real connection between classroom activities and learning behavior. This edition includes far-reaching suggestions for research that could increase the impact that classroom teaching has on actual learning. Like the original edition, this book offers exciting new research about the mind and the brain that provides answers to a number of compelling questions. When do infants begin to learn? How do experts learn and how is this different from non-experts? What can teachers and schools do-with curricula, classroom settings, and teaching methodsâ€"to help children learn most effectively? New evidence from many branches of science has significantly added to our understanding of what it means to know, from the neural processes that occur during learning to the influence of culture on what people see and absorb. How People Learn examines these findings and their implications for what we teach, how we teach it, and how we assess what our children learn. The book uses exemplary teaching to illustrate how approaches based on what we now know result in in-depth learning. This new knowledge calls into question concepts and practices firmly entrenched in our current education system. Topics include: How learning actually changes the physical structure of the brain. How existing knowledge affects what people notice and how they learn. What the thought processes of experts tell us about how to teach. The amazing learning potential of infants. The relationship of classroom learning and everyday settings of community and workplace. Learning needs and opportunities for teachers. A realistic look at the role of technology in education.




To Err Is Human


Book Description

Experts estimate that as many as 98,000 people die in any given year from medical errors that occur in hospitals. That's more than die from motor vehicle accidents, breast cancer, or AIDSâ€"three causes that receive far more public attention. Indeed, more people die annually from medication errors than from workplace injuries. Add the financial cost to the human tragedy, and medical error easily rises to the top ranks of urgent, widespread public problems. To Err Is Human breaks the silence that has surrounded medical errors and their consequenceâ€"but not by pointing fingers at caring health care professionals who make honest mistakes. After all, to err is human. Instead, this book sets forth a national agendaâ€"with state and local implicationsâ€"for reducing medical errors and improving patient safety through the design of a safer health system. This volume reveals the often startling statistics of medical error and the disparity between the incidence of error and public perception of it, given many patients' expectations that the medical profession always performs perfectly. A careful examination is made of how the surrounding forces of legislation, regulation, and market activity influence the quality of care provided by health care organizations and then looks at their handling of medical mistakes. Using a detailed case study, the book reviews the current understanding of why these mistakes happen. A key theme is that legitimate liability concerns discourage reporting of errorsâ€"which begs the question, "How can we learn from our mistakes?" Balancing regulatory versus market-based initiatives and public versus private efforts, the Institute of Medicine presents wide-ranging recommendations for improving patient safety, in the areas of leadership, improved data collection and analysis, and development of effective systems at the level of direct patient care. To Err Is Human asserts that the problem is not bad people in health careâ€"it is that good people are working in bad systems that need to be made safer. Comprehensive and straightforward, this book offers a clear prescription for raising the level of patient safety in American health care. It also explains how patients themselves can influence the quality of care that they receive once they check into the hospital. This book will be vitally important to federal, state, and local health policy makers and regulators, health professional licensing officials, hospital administrators, medical educators and students, health caregivers, health journalists, patient advocatesâ€"as well as patients themselves. First in a series of publications from the Quality of Health Care in America, a project initiated by the Institute of Medicine










How People Learn


Book Description

How People Learn: Bridging Research and Practice provides a broad overview of research on learners and learning and on teachers and teaching. It expands on the 1999 National Research Council publication How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School, Expanded Edition that analyzed the science of learning in infants, educators, experts, and more. In How People Learn: Bridging Research and Practice, the Committee on Learning Research and Educational Practice asks how the insights from research can be incorporated into classroom practice and suggests a research and development agenda that would inform and stimulate the required change. The committee identifies teachers, or classroom practitioners, as the key to change, while acknowledging that change at the classroom level is significantly impacted by overarching public policies. How People Learn: Bridging Research and Practice highlights three key findings about how students gain and retain knowledge and discusses the implications of these findings for teaching and teacher preparation. The highlighted principles of learning are applicable to teacher education and professional development programs as well as to K-12 education. The research-based messages found in this book are clear and directly relevant to classroom practice. It is a useful guide for teachers, administrators, researchers, curriculum specialists, and educational policy makers.




Scientific Foundations of Cognitive Theory and Therapy of Depression


Book Description

Based on decades of theory, research, and practice, this seminalbook presents a detailed and comprehensive review, evaluation, andintegration of the scientific and empirical research relevant toAaron T. Beck's cognitive theory and therapy of depression. Sinceits emergence in the early 1960s, Beck's cognitive perspective hasbecome one of the most influential and well-researchedpsychological theories of depression. Over 900 scientific andscholarly references are contained in the present volume, providingthe most current and exhaustive evaluation of the scientific statusof the cognitive theory of depression. Though the application of cognitive therapy has been welldocumented in the publication of treatment manuals, the cognitivetheory of depression has not been presented in a unified manneruntil the publication of this book. Coauthored by the father ofcognitive therapy, Scientific Foundations of Cognitive Theory andTherapy of Depression offers the most complete and authoritativeaccount of Beck's theory of depression since the publication ofDepression: Causes and Treatment in 1967. Through its elaborationof recent theoretical developments in cognitive theory and itsreview of contemporary cognitive-clinical research, the bookrepresents the current state of the art in cognitive approaches todepression. As a result of its critical examination ofcognitive-clinical research and experimental informationprocessing, the authors offer many insights into the futuredirection for research on the cognitive basis of depression. The first half of the book focuses on a presentation of theclinical phenomena of depression and the current version ofcognitive theory. After outlining important questions that havebeen raised with the diagnosis of depression, the book then tracesthe historical development of Beck's cognitive theory and therapythrough the 1960s and '70s. It presents the theoretical assumptionsof the model and offers a detailed account of the most currentversion of the cognitive formulation of depression. The second half of the book provides an in-depth analysis of theempirical status of the descriptive and vulnerability hypotheses ofthe cognitive model. Drawing on over three decades of research, thebook delves into the scientific basis of numerous hypothesesderived from cognitive theory, including negativity, exclusivity,content specificity, primacy, universality, severity/persistence,selective processing, schema activation, primal processing,stability, diathesis-stress, symptom specificity, and differentialtreatment responsiveness. "In 1967 the first detailed description of the cognitive theory ofdepression was published in Depression: Causes and Treatment by oneof us, Aaron T. Beck. The basic concepts of the theory laid out inthat volume still provide the foundation for the cognitive model 30years later. As well the first systematic investigations of thetheory described in the 1967 volume contributed to a paradigmaticshift in theory, research, and treatment of depression thatresulted in a very vigorous and widespread research initiative onthe cognitive basis of depression. The present book is intended toprovide a comprehensive and critical update of the developments incognitive theory and research on depression that have occurredsince the initial publication in the 1960s."--David A. Clark, fromthe Preface.




The Heart & Soul of Change


Book Description

"At the root of many controversies surrounding therapy is one key question: What works? Is efficacy based on the singular curative powers of specialized techniques, or do other variables account for patient change? This book proposes the answer, which is not to be found in the languages, theories, or procedural differences of the field's warring camps. Instead, the answer lies in pantheoretical, or common factors--the ingredients of effective therapy shared by all orientations. /// More than 40 yrs of outcome research is pointing the way to what really matters in the therapist's day-to-day work. The editors have assembled researchers and practitioners in the field to analyze the extensive literature on common factors and to offer their own evaluations of what those data mean for therapy, therapists, and consumers. Consistent patterns are revealed in findings from multiple perspectives--clinical, research, quantitative and qualitative, individual and family, and medical and school. The result is a book that interprets the empirical foundation of how people change. Clinicians will especially appreciate the wealth of practical suggestions for using the common factors to improve their daily practice"--Jacket. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved).




Disidentifications


Book Description

There is more to identity than identifying with one’s culture or standing solidly against it. José Esteban Muñoz looks at how those outside the racial and sexual mainstream negotiate majority culture—not by aligning themselves with or against exclusionary works but rather by transforming these works for their own cultural purposes. Muñoz calls this process “disidentification,” and through a study of its workings, he develops a new perspective on minority performance, survival, and activism.Disidentifications is also something of a performance in its own right, an attempt to fashion a queer world by working on, with, and against dominant ideology. By examining the process of identification in the work of filmmakers, performance artists, ethnographers, Cuban choteo, forms of gay male mass culture (such as pornography), museums, art photography, camp and drag, and television, Muñoz persistently points to the intersecting and short-circuiting of identities and desires that result from misalignments with the cultural and ideological mainstream in contemporary urban America.Muñoz calls attention to the world-making properties found in performances by queers of color—in Carmelita Tropicana’s “Camp/Choteo” style politics, Marga Gomez’s performances of queer childhood, Vaginal Creme Davis’s “Terrorist Drag,” Isaac Julien’s critical melancholia, Jean-Michel Basquiat’s disidentification with Andy Warhol and pop art, Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s performances of “disidentity,” and the political performance of Pedro Zamora, a person with AIDS, within the otherwise artificial environment of the MTV serialThe Real World.




Living Wages


Book Description