Books published by Open University Press

There are a variety of statistical techniques used to analyse quantitative data that masters students, advanced undergraduates and researchers in the social sciences are expected to be able to understand and undertake. This book explains these techniques, when it is appropriate to use them, how to carry them out and how to write up the results.

This comprehensive book is an essential read, intended to support the numerous modules that cover this theme and striving to encourage readers to become critical, questioning practitioners in the LLS.

On Becoming an Innovative University Teacher shows readers how to plan and run innovative activities to engage their students in effective reflective learning.

In the rapidly maturing profession of counselling, this book's sensitivity to time as a precious resource, clients' perceptions, evidence-based guidelines and integration of some of the best thinking from several counselling models make it an ideal core text for beginners and reflective practitioners.

Social theory is central to the disciplines of sociology, cultural studies, criminology, and media studies. Treating theory as a variety of visual work, and with the help of diagrams and quotations, this book provides an introduction to different ways of practicing social theory. It is for students and researchers in sociology and related fields.

Central government has established regulatory frameworks to control medical education and practice at various levels. This book provides critical thinking concerning the educational basis for these frameworks.

Offers an examination of prisons - how they function, what they achieve, and their historical and political context. This book describes how prisons developed into their present form. It looks at who is sent to prison and what happens to them while they are there. It explains how the prison system and staff in England and Wales are organised.

This collection of ground-breaking work by practitioners at the forefront of contemporary body psychotherapy enriches the whole therapy world. It explores the leading edge of theory and practice, including Neuroscientific contributions, Movement patterns and infant development, and Embodied-Relational Therapy.

Disability Studies is an arena of critical debate addressing controversial issues concerning, not just the meaning of disability, but the nature of society, dominant values, quality of life, and even the right to live. This book, written specifically to raise questions and stimulate debate, covers a wide range of specific and substantive issues.

This book provides guidelines for developing a collective biography project and demonstrates how these guidelines emerged from and were shaped by projects on such topics as subjectivity, power, agency, reflexivity, literacy, gender, and neoliberalism at work.

This major text for Education Studies students provides a critical a critical analysis of key issues encourage students' thinking about education in the broadest terms.

This book explores the social practice of literacy, numeracy and language and its implications for teaching and learning adult basic skills. Leading international experts argue that literacy, numeracy and language are more than just a set of skills or techniques, but are shaped by the social and cultural context within which they are taking place.

It is one thing to be poor in a society of producers and universal employment; it is quite a different thing to be poor in a society of consumers. This book considers how effective different ways of fighting poverty and relieving its hardships are. It features discussion of work on redundancy, disposability and exclusion.

This book explores how young children learn to draw and draw to learn, at home and school. It provides support for practitioners in developing a pedagogy of drawing in Art and Design and across the curriculum and provide advice for parents about how to make sense of their children's drawings.

To understand how society works, we must take account of children as well as adults, otherwise our explanation omits an important social group. This book argues that we should start from the children's own accounts to show how the organisation of social relations provides an explanation for their social position.

Explores need and emotion in relation to what patients bring to therapy and what subsequently facilitates effective engagement. This book presents the thought of differing therapeutic schools together in contemporary models of integrative psychotherapy which draw upon the transpersonal, postmodern and poststructural.

Locates narrative and fictional methods within the traditions of education research and explains the processes of composing narrative and fictional research.

"Interventions and Techniques".

Family members are often intimately involved in the care of dying people and themselves require support through both their experience of palliative care and bereavement. Suitable for psychosocial care in oncology, hospice or palliative care and grief work, this book describes a model of family care and how to go about it.

The aim of this book is to help the reader gain a deeper understanding of the encounter between patient and doctor by examining it from a number of different points of view.

Managing in a climate of continuous change and uncertainty has turned attention to the role of managerial cognition. This title explores the nature of cognition in organizations and focuses upon: the behaviour and characteristics of top management teams; organizational learning and memory; and, distributed cognition and information markets.

Prosser and Trigwell argue that the question to how university teachers can improve the quality of student learning lies in determining how students perceive their unique learning situations. Their book outlines the key principles underlying successful teaching and learning in higher education, and is a key resource for all university teachers.

This book introduces the critical concepts and debates that are shaping the emerging field of game studies. Exploring games in the context of cultural studies and media studies, it analyses computer games as the most popular contemporary form of new media production and consumption.

This book uses in-depth case studies to examines the relationship between advanced study on higher education courses and professional practice. It explores contributions made by research on practice to professional development.

A practical guide to identifying and supporting young children who may be gifted or talented. This title explains how teachers and parents can promote the children's emotional and social adjustment, including ways to enhance self-esteem and support their autonomy. It is for parents and anyone working with or caring for a gifted or talented child.

This book provides students with a step-by-step guide to the simplest non-parametric tests through to more complex analysis of variance designs. There are clear summaries in progress boxes and questions for the student to answer in order to be sure that they have understood what they have read.

Shows how the skills which underpin counselling practice are directly transferable to effective social work practice. This book discusses skills with reference to social work knowledge and values illustrating how, when used competently, contextually and sensitively they can appropriately underpin good social work practice.

Details the common approaches to social simulation, to provide social scientists with an appreciation of the literature and allow those with some programming skills to create their own simulations. This book presents the techniques of building computer simulations to assist understanding of social and economic issues and problems.

"Funding Health Care".

The term 'moral panic' is frequently applied to sudden outbreaks of concern about social problems. This work critically evaluates the usefulness of moral panic models for understanding how politicians, the public and pressure groups come to recognise apparent new threats to the social order, and also scrutinizes the role of the media.