Ageing populations have gradually become a major concern in many industrialised countries over the past fifty years, drawing the attention of both politics and science. The target of a raft of health and social policies, older people are often identified as a specific, and vulnerable, population. At the same time, ageing has become a specialisation in many disciplines - medicine, sociology, psychology, to name but three – and a discipline of its own: gerontology.This book questions...

The supportive role of urban spaces in active aging is explored on a world scale in this unique resource, using the WHO’s Age-Friendly Cities and Community model. Case studies from the U.S., Canada, Australia, Hong Kong, and elsewhere demonstrate how the model translates to fit diverse social, political, and economic realities across cultures and continents, ways age-friendly programs promote senior empowerment, and how their value can be effectively assessed. Age-friendly criteria for com...

Scholars and governments recognize the importance of policy development and implementation for population health, but there is a lack of systematic theoretical and conceptual development in the health field to address the issue. Health Promotion and the Policy Process is the first book to take an in-depth look at the theoretical advances in the political sciences, including discussing the significance of political economy and sociology, which so far have made little progress in he...

This book is the first of its kind – a global overview of extant research on ethics in small and medium sized enterprises. While vast amounts of corporate money, government policy and media time are directed at the social and ethical activities of large corporations, small businesses don’t generally attract the spotlight. This is wildly inappropriate, however, since upward of 90% of private businesses are small or medium sized. This book goes some way to helping us understand the social an...

Socio-legal researchers increasingly recognise the need to employ a wide variety of methods in studying law and legal phenomena, and the need to be informed by an understanding of debates about theory and method in mainstream social science. The papers in this volume illustrate how a range of topics, including EU law, ombudsmen, judges, lawyers, Shariah Councils and the quality assurance industry can be researched from a socio-legal perspective. The objective of the collection is to show h...

Making policy is what governments do, but there are some fascinating and hotly debated issues associated with how government decisions get made in the interests of the people. The concept and practice of evidence-based policy-making insists that properly developed public policy draws on the best available evidence. This book considers how governments in Canada have historically interacted with research and what directions these interactions may take in the future. The goal of government maki...

Political journalism is often under fire. Conventional wisdom and much scholarly research suggest that journalists are cynics and political pundits. Political news is void of substance and overly focused on strategy and persons. Citizens do not learn from the news, are politically cynical, and are dissatisfied with the media. This book challenges these assumptions, which are often based on single-country studies with limited empirical observations about the relation between news production...

Child protection is one of the most high profile and challenging areas of social work, as well as one where children’s lives and family life are seen to be at stake. Vital as child protection work is, this book argues that there is a pressing need for change in the understanding and consequent organization of child protection in many English speaking countries.The authors present compelling evidence from around the globe demonstrating that systems across the Western world are faili...

This collection of essays and reflections starts from an analysis of the purposes of foreign language teaching and argues that this should include educational objectives which are ultimately similar to those of education for citizenship. It does so by a journey through reflections on what is possible and desirable in the classroom and how language teaching has a specific role in education systems which have long had, and often still have, the purpose of encouraging young people to identify...

Social pedagogy is an innovative discipline that supports children's upbringing and overall development by focusing on the child as a whole person. It has been described as where education and care meet or as 'education in its broadest sense'.This book provides a comprehensive overview of the theory, principles and practice of social pedagogy and the profession of social pedagogue. With chapters from leading international contributors, it outlines the roots of social pedagogy and i...

Health Promotion Settings combines the theoretical discourse of the settings approach, covering a wide range of fundamental principles, concepts and policy issues, with real life examples of settings, including workplaces, schools, neighbourhood, cities and prisons. Frameworks and processes that are actively shaping health promotion in settings in the 21st Century are documented and the ideas and research covered will provide a vital set of indicators for those who promote health in settin...

This Critical Perspectives on Language Teaching Materials brings together a collection of critical voices on the subject of language teaching materials for use in English, French, Spanish, German and Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) classrooms.