Mainly Theory

Melanie Klein Today, Volume 1 is the first of two volumes of collected essays devoted to developments in psychoanalysis based on the work of Melanie Klein. The papers are arranged into four groups: the analysis of psychotic patients, projective identification, on thinking, and pathalogical organisation.

Melanie Klein Today, Volume 1 is the first of two volumes of collected essays devoted to developments in psychoanalysis based on the work of Melanie Klein. The papers are arranged into four groups: the analysis of psychotic patients, projective identification, on thinking, and pathalogical organisation.

The themes of the different papers in this book are related to five major areas of research. First, the book presents the work on a large-scale assessment in vocational and occupational education and training. Reason was the work of Frank Achtenhagen and his colleagues on the preparation of a VET-PISA which started in 2004 which has now become more and more a concrete program. The contributions to this part of the book contain a project description and profound presentations and discussions of measurement and evaluation problems. It reflects also the work of Achtenhagen with respect to item response theory, measurement and testing. The second part of this book presents a unique endeavour of promoting VET research: The Swiss Federal Office for Professional Education and Technology (OPET) initiated a program of Leading Houses of VET which are dedicated to different important research topics. This program might serve as example for comparable approaches in other countries. The third part highlights central issues of research on learning processes, curriculum theory and the use of technology. Here the work of Achtenhagen on competence-profile modelling, competence measurement and instructional and curriculum designing is touched. The fourth part stresses social and emotional learning as important aspects of VET learning. The fifth part considers the political and institutional dimensions of VET research which have to be taken into account when an international large-scale assessment of VET shall be getting started. Achtenhagen’s work on learning at work, leaning in economics and learning under the conditions of institutional modelling are discussed. The whole book is a collection of central issues around a field that is not yet taken enough into consideration in educational research, but pushed and supported by Frank Achtenhagen: VET research. He belongs to the founding fathers of it, and this is why precisely the book reflects new trends and new concepts with respect to the question “What can we, educational psychologists and educational researchers, learn from a rich and central research field.”

"..carefully and thoughtfully written and prepared with, in my opinion, just the right amount of detail included...will certainly be a primary source that I shall turn to." Proceedings of the Edinburgh Mathematical Society

Sociological explanations of racism tend to concentrate on the structures and dynamics of modern life that facilitate discrimination and hierarchies of inequality. In doing so, they often fail to address why racial hatred arises (as opposed to how it arises) as well as to explain why it can be so visceral and explosive in character. Bringing together sociological perspectives with psychoanalytic concepts and tools, this text offers a clear, accessible and thought-provoking synthesis of varieties of theory, with the aim of clarifying the complex character of racism, discrimination and social exclusion in the contemporary world.

This book offers multiple interconnected perspectives on the largely untapped potential of elementary number theory for mathematics education: its formal and cognitive nature, its relation to arithmetic and algebra, its accessibility, its utility and intrinsic merits, to name just a few. Its purpose is to promote explication and critical dialogue about these issues within the international mathematics education community. The studies comprise a variety of pedagogical and research orientations by an international group of researchers that, collectively, make a compelling case for the relevance and importance of number theory in mathematics education in both pre K-16 settings and mathematics teacher education. Topics variously engaged include: *understanding particular concepts related to numerical structure and number theory; *elaborating on the historical and psychological relevance of number theory in concept development; *attaining a smooth transition and extension from pattern recognition to formative principles; *appreciating the aesthetics of number structure; *exploring its suitability in terms of making connections leading to aha! insights and reaching toward the learner's affective domain; *reexamining previously constructed knowledge from a novel angle; *investigating connections between technique and theory; *utilizing computers and calculators as pedagogical tools; and *generally illuminating the role number theory concepts could play in developing mathematical knowledge and reasoning in students and teachers. Overall, the chapters of this book highlight number theory-related topics as a stepping-stone from arithmetic toward generalization and algebraic formalism, and as a means for providing intuitively grounded meanings of numbers, variables, functions, and proofs. Number Theory in Mathematics Education: Perspectives and Prospects is of interest to researchers, teacher educators, and students in the field of mathematics education, and is well suited as a text for upper-level mathematics education courses.

This book explores developments in psychoanalytic field theory internationally, and their relevance for therapeutic theory and practice. The roots of psychoanalytic field theory can be traced back to the work of Kurt Lewin, and it has taken particular shape in the hands of the Barangers, Bion and Ferro. The book's focus is on developments in field theory post-Bion ('Post-Bionian Field Theory') in Italy, with contributions from Brazil, Serbia and the USA, in the form of chapters by Boffito, Civitarese, Fagundes, Levine, Mazzacane, Mojović, Morgan-Jones and Snell and Penna and Hopper. Among the themes the book explores are the transformative potentials of play and the centrality of dreaming. The book is informed by a psychoanalysis not so much of decoding and archeological uncovering as one of being and becoming, within a shared ‘field’ in which therapist and patient are partners in creating, exploring and developing. The chapter by Mojovíc and the commentary by Penna and Hopper extend the use of field theory: in other historical and geographical developments field theory and group analysis have productively been brought together, notably in Argentina where the two are most closely linked. This book will be essential reading for students and scholars of Psychology and Psychotherapy interested in field theory and contemporary psychoanalysis. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of European Journal of Psychotherapy and Counselling.

Object relations theory has caused a fundamental reorientation of psychodynamic thought. In Object Relations Theory and Practice, Dr. David E. Scharff acclimates readers to the language and culture of this therapeutic perspective and provides carefully selected excerpts from seminal theorists as well as explanations of their thinking and clinical experience. He offers readers an unparalleled resource for understanding object relations psychotherapy and theory and applying it to the practice of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. The book's sequence establishes the centrality of relationships in this theory: the internalization of experience with parents, splitting, projective identification, the role of the relationship between mother and young child in development, and transference and countertransference in the therapeutic action of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. This book will introduce students to the basics, to the widening scope of object relations theory, and to its application to psychoanalysis and individual, group, and family psychotherapy.