Alan Clarke

ICT has been formally identified as an essential life skill. This text provides teachers and trainers with the skills to develop successful ICT learning programmes in line with the new ICT Skill for Life Standard. It focuses on improving the quality of provision through extending the range of teaching and learning strategies, meeting individual needs while using participative methods, and motivating the learner. All aspects of a successful ICT programme are covered, from how to assess learners at the start of a course to ways of enhancing teachers' and trainers' professional development.

Tackling some of the most important ideas in child psychology and human development, this volume presents key theories from Ann and Alan Clarke's work in this field.

Tackling some of the most important ideas in child psychology and human development, Human Resilience presents key theories from Ann and Alan Clarke's pioneering work in this field. The Clarkes discuss major interacting influences on development, including genetic and environmental effects, chance events and the tendency for people to influence their environments in ways that reinforce their personal characteristics. In particular, they address various issues surrounding IQ inheritance and outline factors affecting the success of several intervention programmes, including fostering and adoption.The emerging importance of resilience as a fundamental human characteristic makes this book of great significance to psychologists, social workers and students. Anyone working with disadvantaged children and those with learning disabilities will be interested in Human Resilience's practical implications: how resilience can be improved both by personal characteristics such as self-esteem, problem-solving ability or sociability, interacting with external support.

This important book challenges the widely held assumption that early experience has a disproportionate effect on later development. Drawing from over forty years of rigorous empirical research and theoretical enquiry, Ann and Alan Clarke argue that the effects of early experiences are just the first steps in an ongoing and complex life path, on which the shaping or re-shaping of development can occur in any period.The evidence they present for the resilience of children and the interaction of early and subsequent experience clarifies and advances the ancient nature - nurture debate. This debate underpins current developments and approaches in fields as diverse as education, psychology, social care and sociology.The Clarkes' findings have enormous practical implications for professionals working with disadvantaged children and adults. They show the value of interventions with and outside the family, and the potential for positive environments to create lasting change at any stage of life. Early Experience and the Life Path will illuminate the practice of psychologists, psychiatrists, social care professionals and teachers, and anyone working with children who have experience of adversity.

Providing students and practitioners with a comprehensive introduction to evaluation research, this book shows how social research methods and methodologies can be applied in a variety of evaluation contexts. The author: - illustrates the contribution both quantitative and qualitative methods can make to evaluation; - stresses the important part played by theory in the evaluation enterprise; - introduces some of the conceptual, methodological and practical problems encountered when undertaking this type of applied research, especially in the areas of criminal justice, health care and education.

Providing students and practitioners with a comprehensive introduction to evaluation research, this book shows how social research methods and methodologies can be applied in a variety of evaluation contexts. The author: - illustrates the contribution both quantitative and qualitative methods can make to evaluation; - stresses the important part played by theory in the evaluation enterprise; - introduces some of the conceptual, methodological and practical problems encountered when undertaking this type of applied research, especially in the areas of criminal justice, health care and education.