How and why is silence used interculturally? Approaching the phenomenon of silence from multiple perspectives, this book shows how silence is used, perceived and at times misinterpreted in intercultural communication.
Positive thinking can help you realize your goals, but for most people, it's a skill that has be learned and practiced regularly. This book uses expert tips, clear text, and hard-working illustrations to show you how to assess your thinking patterns and change your negative perceptions in order to live a confident, fulfilled life.
This book is written specifically for teachers-in-training which will clarify the 'big picture' of monitoring and assessment and makes the crucial distinctions in this large (and still taken-for-granted) field. There has been a huge effort over the last decade to bolster external, summative assessment (ie SATs) which has distorted teachers' perceptions of the potential of good formative assessment to raise achievement.
In the present book, Pauline Phemister argues against traditional Anglo-American interpretations of Leibniz as an idealist who conceives ultimate reality as a plurality of mind-like immaterial beings and for whom physical bodies are ultimately unreal and our perceptions of them illusory.
Re-reading the texts without the prior assumption of idealism allows the more material aspects of Leibniz's metaphysics to emerge. Leibniz is found to advance a synthesis of idealism and materialism. His ontology posits indivisible, living, animal-like corporeal substances as the real metaphysical constituents of the universe; his epistemology combines sense-experience and reason; and his ethics fuses confused perceptions and insensible appetites with distinct perceptions and rational choice. In the light of his sustained commitment to the reality of bodies, Phemister re-examines his dynamics, the doctrine of pre-established harmony and his views on freedom. The image of Leibniz as a rationalist philosopher who values activity and reason over passivity and sense-experience is replaced by the one of a philosopher who recognises that, in the created world, there can only be activity if there is also passivity; minds, souls and forms if there is also matter; good if there is evil; perfection if there is imperfection.
