Search results for "Proa"
showing 10 items of 1834 documents
The Early Bird gets the Word
2019
Success in an increasingly globalized world sets requirements for versatile communication skills and understanding about other cultures. One of the keys to success is versatile language skills, on which the European Commission spoke out as early as in 1995, recommending that every European citizen should learn two foreign languages in addition to their mother tongue. Now, more than twenty years later, the launch of early A1 language teaching that is to begin in the first grade in Finland, in January 2020, is a significant step towards this goal. Studies show that early foreign language learning needs to be carefully carried out in order to achieve positive effects and the effects that have …
Longitudinal evidence for an emotion-action lag on desire: The role of emotional understanding
2021
Abstract Many previous studies have found that children understand much earlier what a character who has a false belief will do than what a character will feel. This gap between the understanding of action and emotion is known as the belief-emotion lag and to this day there is no convincing explanation as to why it happens. There are also no studies that have explored whether this same gap occurs in the understanding of desire. This longitudinal study had a twofold objective: to explore the existence of a lag between the prediction of action and emotion based on desire, and to search for the role that specific emotions could have in children’s answers. To this end, we administered the Test …
Language Education Policies and Early Childhood Education
2020
This chapter discusses the importance of different types of early language education in the public system according to national policy in two geopolitical contexts: Continental Northern Europe and the UK. We define early language education policy as the language policies in early childhood education (ECE) including planning, practices, and ideologies related to the teaching and learning of languages. We present a variety of theoretical approaches and discuss their applicability to the field of early language education research. These approaches include traditional top-down policy implementation models as well as more dynamic and ecological theoretical approaches. Following that, we look at …
ESA's sentinel missions in support of Earth system science
2012
Abstract The spatial and temporal characteristics of the new Sentinel missions, primarily designed to provide routine multidisciplinary observations for operational services, are also very suitable for addressing some of the challenges associated with advancing Earth System sciences. The Sentinels are ensuring long-term observational commitment and will operate a range of instruments with different spectral bands and spatial resolutions with global coverage and high revisit times. The complexity of Earth System models has been increasing gradually and most simulations of future climate and Earth system evolution are based on coupled models that include aspects of physics, bio/geo-chemistry,…
Fungi and Bacteria in Indoor Cultural Heritage Environments: Microbial-related Risks for Artworks and Human Health
2016
Cultural heritage constitutive materials can provide excellent substrates for microbial colonization, highly influenced by thermo-hygrometric parameters. In cultural heritage-related environments, a detrimental microbial load may be present both on manufacts surface and in the aerosol. In this study, bacterial and fungal colonisation has been investigated in three Sicilian confined environments (archive, cave and hypogea), each with peculiar structures and different thermo-hygrometric parameters. Particular attention has been paid to microorganisms able to induce artifacts biodeterioration and to release biological particles in the aerosol (spores, cellular debrides, toxins and allergens) p…
Composition of families and subjective economic well-being: an application to Italian context
2011
Using Italian data on Income and Living Conditions for the year 2005, the paper explores empirically whether the determinants of subjective economic well-being (SEW) differ (or not) in four representative typologies of households. By means of a Partial Proportional Ordered Logit Model the subjective economic well-being – proxied by the capacity of households to make ends meet – has been explored. Results highlight the variables acting on SEW, common to each typology, are related both to economic status (specifically, the capacity to pay taxes and to afford housing, clothes and holiday expenditures) and to socio-demographic status (specifically, the work-status and the highest level of educa…
Emotions in Economic Decision Making: A Multidisciplinary Approach
2013
AbstractAccording to classical and neoclassical economics, decisions are made based on information and cost-benefit analysis. In reality, the decision making process is much more complex than previously thought, because it also involves psychological factors. Decision making is interdisciplinary, researched by psychologists, sociologists, economists, philosophers, neuroscientists and others. These fields have distinctive and common concepts about decision making. The aim of this paper is to identify what role emotions play in the economic decision making process. The paper focuses on describing and explaining the interconnection of sciences, such as economics, psychology and neuroscience, b…
Dominant and emerging approaches in the study of higher education policy change
2012
The purpose of the article is to analyse recent literature on higher education policy change. Based on the review, three different approaches are distinguished: structural, actor and agency. In the structural approach the dynamic of policy change originates in well-established structures. The actor approach focuses on either individual or institutional actors as the drivers of policy change. The agency approach understands higher education policy change as an interactive process between various actors and domains within transient structures. We will also present two emerging, alternative approaches: actor-network theory, which takes interaction as a starting point and proposes that no organ…
Defamilisation, Dedomestication and Care Policy: Comparing Childcare Service Provisions of Welfare States
2011
PurposeThis paper aims to use perspectives from both mainstream and feminist welfare state research in drafting a conceptual approach for social care research. This approach is then applied empirically to a comparative analysis of childcare provisions of 15 OECD countries.Design/methodology/approachThe concept of dedomestication is developed from a discussion on the notions of decommodification and defamilisation, and it is defined as the degree to which social care policies make it possible for people to participate in society and social life outside their homes and families. In the empirical part of the paper, dedomestication of childcare service provisions of 15 welfare states is measure…
Romanian Households Dealing with Precariousness: A life-course approach
2016
This paper addresses the main pathways through which households avoid slipping into poverty in Romania by employing a life-course approach. Recent researches on social stratification found that in every country we can delineate a particular social layer composed of households living just above the poverty threshold, whose members struggle to reach a more secure prosperity while facing constant threats of downward mobility. Drawing on recent precarious prosperity research, and based on in-depth interviews carried out in 2013 with 25 households situated in between poverty and prosperity from a Romanian city (Cluj-Napoca), we use a life-course approach in order to account for the main routes i…