Issues concerning the supply of teachers are of perennial concern to both policy-makers and researchers in the world of education. This trenchant and wide-ranging study not only provides major new research findings but also a re-interpretation of extant data. Combining qualitative and (very extensive) quantitative research, Teacher Supply provides a rigorous and iconoclastic treatment of issues relating to the recruitment, quality, training, and retention of teachers throughout the developed world and offers important recommendations for the future.
Asian Cultural Studies or Cultural Studies in Asia is a new and burgeoning field, and the Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Journal is at its cutting edge. Committed to bringing Asian Cultural Studies scholarship to the international English speaking world and constantly challenging existing conceptions of cultural studies, the journal has emerged as the leading publication in Cultural Studies in Asia. The Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Reader brings together the best of the ground breaking papers published in the journal and includes a new introduction by the editors, Chen Kuan-Hsing and Chua Beng Huat. Essays are grouped in thematic sections, including issues which are important across the region, such as State violence and social movements and work produced by IACS sub-groups, such as feminism, queer studies, cinema studies and popular culture studies. The Reader provides useful alternative case studies and challenging perspectives, which will be invaluable for both students and scholars in media and cultural studies.
This book provides statisticians and researchers with the statistical tools - equations, formulae and numerical tables - to design and plan clinical studies and carry out accurate, reliable and reproducible analysis of the data so obtained. There is no way around this as incorrect procedure in clinical studies means that the researcher's paper will not be accepted by a peer-reviewed journal. Planning and analysing clinical studies is a very complicated business and this book provides indispensible factual information. Please go to http://booksupport.wiley.com and enter 9781405146500 to easily download the supporting materials.
The economic success of Singapore has established the country as a model for other nations. Yet until now the ideas behind this accomplishment have not been critically examined. Communitarian Ideology and Democracy in Singapore fills this gap. The book outlines the policies the ruling party has adopted over the past three decades. It charts the government's move away from Western concepts towards the evolution of 'Asian democracy'. The author analyses this anti-liberal democracy and the government's motives for repackaging cultural heritage into a national ideology of Asian communitarianism. This book avoids the polarization that has tended to characterise texts on Asian governments. It neither concentrates on a history of authoritarian repression nor unequivocally praises the regime but critically examines its political success. As such it provides a new and balanced account to the student of Singapore politics.
A fascinating ethnographic study of the cultural politics of urban redevelopment in Kampung Serani, one Penang community, in the 1990s. Through interviews, newspaper reports, and other records, Goh considers changing notions of culture, ethnic identity, and urban space.
Singapore's successful public housing programme is a source of political legitimacy for the ruling People's Action Party. Beng-Huat Chua accounts for the success of public housing in Singapore and draws out lessons for other nations. Housing in Singapore, he explains in this incisive analysis, is seen neither as a consumer good (as in the US) nor as a social right (as in the social democracies of Europe). The author goes on to look at the ways in which Singapore's planners have dealt with the problems of creating communities in a modern urban environment. He concludes that the success of the public housing programme has done much for Singapore.
The story of Dr Baey Lian Peck should be well known, but it is not. Not even among Singaporeans, and especially not among the young. This tells us a lot about a Singapore caught in pathological haste and prone towards ignoring values that do not add to the financial bottom line. The innovativeness of Dr Baey did not only make him a very wealthy man before he was forty, it also made him an indispensable actor in the implementation of urgently constructed national policies. Political leaders such as Dr Toh Chin Chye, Lim Kim San, Chua Sian Chin and Dr Goh Keng Swee picked him to solve pressing problems such as skyrocketing inflation in the early 1970s, the crisis in prisoner ward in the late 1970s, and the drug addiction epidemic in that same latter period. His one condition for taking on public positions was that he should not be paid. It was exactly this independent trait that made him so highly effective. This book tells his amazing life story, taking us into a surprising world where the qualities that make a good entrepreneur are exactly what make a good public servant … as long as he remains unbound by the bureaucracy. “Dr Baey has left us and future generations a reservoir of knowledge, experience and expertise in his book which are derived from the major projects and programmes that he helped set up, nurture and run. We cannot dismiss them as just history. There are invaluable lessons to be gained. Sometimes we need to look at the past to understand the present and future. More importantly, he comes across as a strong and inspiring role model in service to the nation.” - K.V. Veloo, pioneer in Probation and Aftercare who set up SANA (Aftercare) Counselling Service, and Prison Welfare Service. Ooi Kee Beng is Senior Fellow at the
All new medicines and devices undergo early phase trials to assess, interpret and better understand their efficacy, tolerability and safety. An Introduction to Statistics in Early Phase Trials describes the practical design and analysis of these important early phase clinical trials and provides the crucial statistical basis for their interpretation. It clearly and concisely provides an overview of the most common types of trials undertaken in early phase clinical research and explains the different methodologies used. The impact of statistical technologies on clinical development and the statistical and methodological basis for making clinical and investment decisions are also explained. Conveys key ideas in a concise manner understandable by non-statisticians Explains how to optimise designs in a constrained or fixed resource setting Discusses decision making criteria at the end of Phase II trials Highlights practical day-to-day issues and reporting of early phase trials An Introduction to Statistics in Early Phase Trials is an essential guide for all researchers working in early phase clinical trial development, from clinical pharmacologists and pharmacokineticists through to clinical investigators and medical statisticians. It is also a valuable reference for teachers and students of pharmaceutical medicine learning about the design and analysis of clinical trials.
“. . . The fullest and most comprehensive ethnography of the Baba community in Malaysia. . . . The author is a meticulous ethnographer, and provides three chapters of richly detailed information on Baba kinship and marriage practices, ancestor worship, Chinese folk religion and festivals and a variety of Baba social patterns and organizations. . . . This is certainly a necessary and pleasurable reading materials for scholars of Malaysia, and for those interested in ethnicity more generally.” Professor Judith Nagata, Pacific Affairs 62(2), 1989. Based on a long-term ethnographic study, the new edition of this book provides a comprehensive description of Baba culture and identity in Melaka, Malaysia. Tan Chee-Beng’s landmark study analyses the term Baba, the development of Baba society, their distribution in Melaka and overt features of identity, the Baba Malay dialect, customs and religion, kinship and social interactions – all of which tie in to changes in Baba identity. By discussing cultural change and ethnic identification of a Chinese Peranakan community in Malaysia, the reader can gain a more complete understanding of this unique minority group within a minority in a rapidly changing Malaysian context.
Over the past two decades, ISEAS has compiled abridged articles that analyse key aspects of Southeast Asia's development and the ASEAN process. The ASEAN Reader was published in 1992 just as the Cold War ended, while The Second ASEAN Reader came in 2003 in the wake of the 1997 Asian crisis and the September 11 attacks in 2001. The past decade has not been spared its share of intense changes, with the rise of China and India bringing new challenges to the region's power equation, and the impact of the 2008 global financial crisis. Despite this, the momentum towards an integrated ASEAN community has been maintained. The articles in The Third ASEAN Reader study the trends and events of recent years, and discuss the immediate future of Southeast Asia.
One of the cliches that Singaporeans hold most dear is that their lives are a pursuit of the five c's: cash, cars, condominiums, credit cards, and club memberships. Over the last thirty years, Singaporeans have become accustomed to ever-increasing levels of consumption. Singapore's PAP government has 'delivered the goods', and this is recognized as a prime reason for its legitimacy. But what is the culture of this consumption? What does shopping say about Singapore society?
East Asian pop culture can be seen as an integrated cultural economy emerging from the rise of Japanese and Korean pop culture as an influential force in the distribution and reception networks of Chinese language pop culture embedded in the ethnic Chinese diaspora. Taking Singapore as a locus of pan-Asian Chineseness, Chua Beng Huat provides detailed analysis of the fragmented reception process of transcultural audiences and the processes of audiences’ formation and exercise of consumer power and engagement with national politics. In an era where exercise of military power is increasingly restrained, pop culture has become an important component of soft power diplomacy and transcultural collaborations in a region that is still haunted by colonization and violence. The author notes that the aspirations behind national governments' efforts to use popular culture is limited by the fragmented nature of audiences who respond differently to the same products; by the danger of backlash from other members of the importing country's population that do not consume the popular culture products in question; and by the efforts of the primary consuming country, the People's Republic of China to shape products through co-production strategies and other indirect modes of intervention.
Based on long-term ethnographic study, this is the first comprehensive work on the Chinese popular religion in Malaysia. It analyses temples and communities in historical and contemporary perspective, the diversity of deities and Chinese speech groups, religious specialists and temple services, the communal significance of the Hungry Ghosts Festival, the relationship between religion and philanthropy as seen through the lens of such Chinese religious organization as shantang (benevolent halls) and Dejiao (Moral Uplifting Societies), as well as the development and transformation of Taoist Religion. Highly informative, this concise book contributes to an understanding of Chinese migration and settlement, political economy and religion, religion and identity politics as well the significance of religion to both individuals and communities.
The Third International Symposium on Large Spatial Databases (SSD '93) was held at the National University of Singapore in June 1993. The previous meetings of the series were at Sanata Barbara (1989) and Zurich (1991). The meetings are planned as a forum for researchers and practitioners specializing in database theory for and advanced applications of Spatial Information Systems. This volume constitutes the proceedings of the symposium. It contains 25 selected papersand three keynotes papers: "Spatial data management in database systems: research directions" (W. Kim), "From extensible databases to interoperability between multiple databases and GIS applications" (H.-J. Schek), and "The SEQUOIA 2000 project" (M. Stonebraker). The selectedpapers are collected into sections on: data modeling, spatial indexing, indexing mechanisms, handling of raster and vector data, spatial database systems, topology, storage management, query retrieval,knowledge engineering in SDS, and 3-dimensional data handling.
With the collapse of European socialism in the late 1980s, ascendancy of the liberal capitalist democracy and individual self-interest became prevalent in the West. In contrast, many polities in Asia, both by tradition and choice, have explicitly adopted communitarianism as a national ideology, for example Confucianism in Korea, Hong Kong and Japan, Islam in Malaysia and the Panca Sila in Indonesia. Here, communitarianism arguably informs public policies and political practices and the concept of the 'social' in terms of responsibilities and collective welfare is preserved. Communitarian Politics in Asia examines instances in southeast and east Asian countries where communitarianism is both articulated as national ideology and embedded as the ethos of social life and assesses the relative merits of a set of practices in their respective local political context. The book not only augments existing international debate on liberalism and communitarianism but also provides empirical examples of communitarian political practices that will substantiate and/or refute conceptual points, such as redistributive justice and costs to individuals, in this ongoing debate.
This Palgrave Pivot examines why racialism is so persistent and the challenges it poses to the functioning of democracy and the attainment of national integration. It introduces an evolutionary psychology framework, which explains human innate potential to identify with and defend one’s group, but argues that racial dislike and conflicts are provoked by racial ideologies and the politics of ethnicity. By comparing the politics of race in a number of countries, including Malaysia and the United States, this book argues that attachment to one’s ethnic and religious identities does not hinder ethnic harmony. It is necessary to manage the issues of race and religion as well as promoting conviviality and cosmopolitanism for pursuing the ideal of common humanity and for maintaining a stable and meaningful democracy. This book concludes that democracy, as practiced, has some major weaknesses; as an ideal, it is still the best form of government to pursue.
The Little Handbook of Mindfulness is a comprehensive guidebook featuring 239 guided mindfulness exercises on the four foundations of mindfulness: body, feelings, mind, and thoughts. Written to help readers alleviate stress and suffering by unleashing the power of presence in their lives, the book guides readers to find peace and purpose in every moment, discover their inner sanctuary, and build a compassionate world one moment at a time. It provides readers with a wide range of mindfulness exercises, from basic tasks such as smiling to a cashier, being mindful of rain or while sweeping the floor, to more advanced exercises like sitting with difficult emotions, delving into the depths of the body at a quantum level, and practicing the art of dying without a dier.
The idea of this book is to establish a new scientific discipline, “noology,” under which a set of fundamental principles are proposed for the characterization of both naturally occurring and artificial intelligent systems. The methodology adopted in Principles of Noology for the characterization of intelligent systems, or “noological systems,” is a computational one, much like that of AI. Many AI devices such as predicate logic representations, search mechanisms, heuristics, and computational learning mechanisms are employed but they are recast in a totally new framework for the characterization of noological systems. The computational approach in this book provides a quantitative and high resolution understanding of noological processes, and at the same time the principles and methodologies formulated are directly implementable in AI systems. In contrast to traditional AI that ignores motivational and affective processes, under the paradigm of noology, motivational and affective processes are central to the functioning of noological systems and their roles in noological processes are elucidated in detailed computational terms. In addition, a number of novel representational and learning mechanisms are proposed, and ample examples and computer simulations are provided to show their applications. These include rapid effective causal learning (a novel learning mechanism that allows an AI/noological system to learn causality with a small number of training instances), learning of scripts that enables knowledge chunking and rapid problem solving, and learning of heuristics that further accelerates problem solving. Semantic grounding allows an AI/noological system to “truly understand” the meaning of the knowledge it encodes. This issue is extensively explored. This is a highly informative book providing novel and deep insights into intelligent systems which is particularly relevant to both researchers and students of AI and the cognitive sciences.
The first book on Ko-tai, a new theatre form. It gives a good factual account of the origins, setting, context, and the mechanics of the organization of Ko-tai theatre. Included are complete translations of comic skits, photographs, calender of Ko-tai events in Penang, and a glossary.
Governments, local authorities, school leaders, and teachers all over the world want to improve the educational attainment and participation of all students, and to minimise any systematic differences in outcomes for social and economic groups. A particular concern is for those students from backgrounds that may objectively disadvantage them at school and beyond. However, considerable effort and money is currently being wasted on policies, practices and interventions that have very little hope of success, and that may indeed endanger the progress that is being made otherwise. The poor quality of much education research evidence, coupled with an unwillingness among users of evidence to discriminate appropriately between what we know and do not know, means that opportunities are being missed. At a time of reduced public spending it is important that proposed interventions are both effective and efficient. Overcoming Disadvantage in Education is unique in the way that it: Shows where the solutions to underachievement and poverty lie combines primary(new), secondary (official) and published (review) evidence distinguishes between those possible causes of underachievement that are largely fixed for individuals, and those that are modifiable. There are evidence-informed ways forward in handling under-achievement and increasing social justice in education. This book shows which the more likely approaches are, and where further work could yield further benefits. This book will be a key text for students, developing academic researchers and supervisors in the social sciences, and for those research users charged with improving educational outcomes.
The Trials of Evidence-based Education explores the promise, limitations and opportunities of evidence-based policy and practice as the attention of funders moves from a sole focus on attainment outcomes to political concern about character-building and wider educational impacts. The results and implications of over 20 studies conducted by the authors are combined with large number of studies from systematic reviews, and their implications are spelled out for the research community, policy-makers, schools wanting to run their own evaluations and practitioners using evidence in this well-structured and thoughtful text.
For a whole generation of Malaysians, no proper closure to the traumas of the racial riots of May 13, 1969 has been possible. But then came March 8, 2008 The surprising results of the General Election on that special day have started eclipsing the fears linked for so long to that spectral night forty years ago. All the three researchers from ISEAS who each authored separate chapters for this book were in different parts of Malaysia monitoring its 12th General Election during the thirteen days of campaigning. Their analyses provide new insights into the phenomenon that Malaysians now simply refer to as "March 8." Ooi Kee Beng scrutinizes in detail the electoral campaign in the state of Penang, Johan Saravanamuttu studies the case of Kelantan state and the elections in general, while Lee Hock Guan examines changes in the voting pattern in the Klang Valley.
This study of Cameroon captures, with fascinating detail and insight, the growing disaffection with the sterile rhetoric of nation-building that has characterised much of postcolonial African politics. It focuses on the resistance of Anglophone Cameroonians to nationhood, which is being pursued to the detriment of minority identities.
Malaysian Cinema in the New Millennium offers a new approach to the study of multiculturalism in cinema by analysing how a new wave of filmmakers champion cultural diversity using cosmopolitan themes. Adrian Lee offers a new inquiry of Malaysian cinema that examines how the ‘Malaysian Digital Indies’ (MDI) have in recent years repositioned Malaysian cinema within the global arena. The book shines a new light on how politics and socioeconomics have influenced new forms and genres of the post-2000s generation of filmmakers, and provides a clear picture of the interactions between commercial cinema and politics and socioeconomics in the first two decades of the new millennium. It also assesses how the MDI movement was successful in creating a transnational cinema by displacing and deterritorialising itself from the context of the national, and illustrates how MDI functions as a site for questioning and proposing a new national identity in the era of advanced global capitalism and new Islamisation. Covering all these interrelated topics, Lee’s book is a pioneering and comprehensive work in the study of Malaysian cinema in the recent decades. ‘Lee is well versed in theories of transnational and postcolonial studies and provides detailed and knowledgeable information about this period of filmmaking in Malaysia. I believe this book will make a valuable contribution to the studies of film in Southeast Asia.’ —Olivia Khoo, Monash University, Australia ‘The author comprehensively discusses the rise of Malaysian Digital Indies (MDI) in post-2000 Malaysia, the revival of form and aesthetics in comparison to mainstream films, the MDI’s emergence in the Malaysian context, and finally the MDI’s incorporation into the mainstream films.’ —Nunna Prasad, Abu Dhabi University, United Arab Emirates
Around the world, governments, charities, and other bodies are concerned with improving education, especially for the lowest-attaining and most disadvantaged students. Making Schools Better for Disadvantaged Students presents detailed research into how poverty affects student segregation and underachievement in schools. It contains the first ever large-scale evaluation of how funding can best be used to lower the poverty attainment gap for disadvantaged students. Drawing on a wealth of empirical research from England, India, and Pakistan as well as worldwide reviews of relevant studies, the book presents high-quality evidence on the impact of funding policy initiatives, such as the Pupil Premium funding in England, and the many variations of similar schemes worldwide. It analyses education measures which have been put in place and discusses ways in which these can be used efficiently and fairly to allocate funding to students who are persistently at risk of underachievement. The book is unique in synthesising many forms of evidence from around the world and finding a definition of educational disadvantage that can be used fairly across different contexts. Offering significant implications for ways to improve educational outcomes for disadvantaged students, the book will be essential reading for students of education policy, sociology of education and educational practices, and all researchers, school leaders, and policy-makers working in this area.
Real Estate and Taxation in Singapore provides a multi-disciplinary approach to the subject for Singapore real estate and tax aficionados. The book helps the reader to navigate the complex world of real estate taxation by taking them through the various changes in the Singapore real estate market over the years, as well as the property development and investment life cycle from acquisition and development, to investment and ownership, to disposal.The book primarily focuses on tax issues — income tax, stamp duty, property tax and goods and services tax — faced by property developers and investors in Singapore. It further explains the tax and non-tax aspects of topics relating to the Master Plan, development charge and differential premium, the real estate market cooling measures, as well as real estate investment trusts and funds.It is an all-in-one, 'must-have' reference book for professionals, policy-makers, academia, students and the general public who are interested in the field of real estate and taxation.
Mindfulness is a ticket to go home. It is a ticket to a place where our heart is. It can bring us to a place beyond the limits of our mind. The place is our source, our origin, our root. When we arrive, we feel completely peaceful and truly relaxed. We dont have to do anything. We just be, resting in the nature of our mind, like having a psychological holiday, seeing things as they are, free from conceptualization, judgment, duality. In Mindfulness and Care of the Dying, the author shares his knowledge and experience of mindfulness based on the original teachings of mindfulness from the Satipatthana Sutta and his own research on mindfulness-based supportive therapy. The author hopes to provide a simple manual for medical students, doctors, nurses, and family caregivers to practice mindfulness in their day-to-day life and their work of caring.
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