Digital library
Textbooks, references and open learning resources.
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Graduate Research Methods in Social Work
Matt DeCarlo; Cory Cummings; Kate Agnelli · Open Social Work Education · 2021
We designed our book to help graduate social work students through every step of the research process, from conceptualization to dissemination. Our textbook centers cultural humility, information literacy, pragmatism, and an equal emphasis on quantitative and qualitative methods. It includes extensive content on literature reviews, cultural bias and respectfulness, and qualitative methods, in contrast to traditionally used commercial textbooks in social work research. Our author team spans across academic, public, and nonprofit social work research. We love research, and we endeavored through our book to make research more engaging, less painful, and easier to understand. Our textbook exercises direct students to apply content as they are reading the book to an original research project. By breaking it down step-by-step, writing in approachable language, as well as using stories from our life, practice, and research experience, our textbook helps professors overcome students’ research methods anxiety and antipathy. If you decide to adopt our resource, we ask that you complete this short Adopter’s Survey that helps us keep track of our community impact. You can also contact profmattdecarlo@gmail.com for a student workbook, homework assignments, slideshows, a draft bank of quiz questions, and a course calendar.
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Principles of Social Psychology
Rajiv Jhangiani; Hammond Tarry; Charles Stangor · BCcampus · 2014
Helping students organize their thinking about social psychology at a conceptual level.
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Digging into Archaeology: A Brief OER Introduction to Archaeology with Activities
Amanda Paskey; AnnMarie Cisneros · Academic Senate for California Community Colleges · 2020
This book is intended for use in a variety of introductory archaeology settings, such as in lectures and lab courses. This text can complement an existing traditional text or completely replace a standard text. It can be used for its activities or as a study resource. When we wrote this text, we designed the chapters to be brief, providing concise and to-the-point information. This book is not intended to replace lectures or direct instruction from an instructor; rather, it supports learning in a variety of settings and formats. The book can be printed in whole, read digitally, or used piecemeal in either format. However you use this text, we hope that you find it serves as an instructive learning tool and that you dig archaeology as much as we do!
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Child Growth and Development
Jennifer Paris; Antoinette Ricardo; Dawn Rymond; Alexa Johnson · College of the Canyons · 2018
Welcome to Child Growth and Development. This text is a presentation of how and why children grow, develop, and learn. We will look at how we change physically over time from conception through adolescence. We examine cognitive change, or how our ability to think and remember changes over the first 20 years or so of life. And we will look at how our emotions, psychological state, and social relationships change throughout childhood and adolescence.
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Child, Family, and Community
Rebecca Laff; Wendy Ruiz · College of the Canyons · 2019
Over the years researchers have found the necessity to develop theories of behavior that are specific to family settings. These theories have been developed by people with a variety of areas of emphasis, from family therapists to gerontologists to child development specialists. In this chapter we will briefly discuss six such theories: Bioecological Model, Family Systems, Functionalism, Conflict Theory, Symbolic Interactionism, and Psychological Perspectives.
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Contemporary Families: An Equity Lens
Elizabeth Pearce · Open Oregon Educational Resources · 2025
This universally accessible text provides students with a foundational understanding of the changing experiences and needs of contemporary families in the United States. It emphasizes the multi-directional influence of social structure as well as the impacts of difference, power, and oppression. Using an intersectional lens and placing the diversity of families at its core, the text prepares students with a range of majors and career paths to use their sociological imaginations, identify privilege and oppression, practice inclusion and take part in increasing equity for families, whether at the professional level, the personal level or both.Resources for students and instructors include chapter learning objectives, key terms with definitions, chapter activities, and reflective questions for application and discussion. In addition, instructors have access to chapter questionnaires for formative assessment, larger summative assignments, and a crosswalk to identify the location of specific topics.
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General Psychology for Honors Students
Kate Votaw · University of Missouri - St. Louis · 2020
What are the most effective methods to study for a test? What are the meanings of dreams? How do illusions work? With whom are you most likely to fall in love? These are just a few of the questions that have been asked by psychologists since the birth of the field as an area of scientific research in the 1870’s. This text surveys the basic concepts, theories, and pivotal findings over the past 100 years in the science of Psychology, with special emphasis on contemporary concepts and findings focused on the relation of the brain to normal and pathological behaviors. Psychology has long evolved past the psychodynamic influence to include biological, social, learning, motivational, and developmental perspectives, to name a few. Contemporary psychologists go beyond philosophical or anecdotal speculation and rely on empirical evidence to inform their conclusions. Similarly, readers will push beyond pre-existing schemas and misconceptions of the field of psychology to an understanding of contemporary quantitative research methods as they are used to predict and test human behavior.
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The American LGBTQ Rights Movement: An Introduction
Kyle Morgan; Meg Rodriguez · Humboldt State University Press · 2020
The American LGBTQ Rights Movement: An Introduction is a peer-reviewed chronological survey of the LGBTQ fight for equal rights from the turn of the 20th century to the early 21st century. Illustrated with historical photographs, the book beautifully reveals the heroic people and key events that shaped the American LGBTQ rights movement. The book includes personal narratives to capture the lived experience from each era, as well as details of essential organizations, texts, and court cases that defined LGBTQ activism and advocacy.
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Attenuated Democracy: A Critical Introduction to U.S. Government and Politics
David Hubert · Salt Lake Community College · 2020
The U.S. political system suffers from endemic design flaws and is notable for the way that a small subset of Americans—whose interests often don’t align with those of the vast majority of the population—wields disproportionate power. Absent organized and persistent action on the part of ordinary Americans, the system tends to serve the already powerful. That’s why this text is called Attenuated Democracy. To attenuate something is to make it weak or thin. Democracy in America has been thin from the beginning and continues to be so despite some notable progress in voting rights. As political scientists Benjamin Page and Martin Gilens wrote, “The essence of democracy is not just having reasonably satisfactory policies; the essence of democracy is popular control of government, with each citizen having an equal voice.” (1) Since this is likely to be your only college-level course on the American political system, it is important to point out the structural weaknesses of our system and the thin nature of our democracy. Whenever you get the chance—in the voting booth, in your job, perhaps if you hold elected office—I encourage you to do something about America’s attenuated democracy.
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International Relations Theory
Stephen McGlinchey; Rosie Walters; Christian Scheinpflug · E-International Relations · 2017
This book is designed as a foundational entry point to International Relations theory – structured to condense the most important information into the smallest space and present that information in an accessible manner. The first half of the book covers the theories that are most commonly taught in undergraduate programmes. The book then expands to present emerging approaches and offer wider perspectives. Each chapter sets out the basics of a theory whilst also applying it to a real-world event or issue, creating a lively, readable and relevant guide that will help students to see not only what theories are – but why they matter.
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Scientific Inquiry in Social Work
Matthew DeCarlo · Open Social Work Education · 2018
As an introductory textbook for social work students studying research methods, this book guides students through the process of creating a research project. Students will learn how to discover a researchable topic that is interesting to them, examine scholarly literature, formulate a proper research question, design a quantitative or qualitative study to answer their question, carry out the design, interpret quantitative or qualitative results, and disseminate their findings to a variety of audiences. Examples are drawn from the author's practice and research experience, as well as topical articles from the literature. There are ancillary materials available for this book.
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Intercultural Learning: Critical preparation for international student travel
Peter Jones; Debra Miles; Narayan Gopalkrishnan · UTS ePRESS · 2018
Intercultural learning: Critical preparation for international student travel aims to take students beyond practical preparation, to equip them with a critical lens through which to view and understand their international experiences. The book leads students toward a deeper understanding of culture and cultural difference through an exploration of challenging concepts such as imperialism, racism, privilege and intercultural practice. As an adjunct to traditional approaches, the book adds a significant and valuable dimension to the process of preparing students for international study, increasing the potential for meaningful and transformative learning experiences.
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Personality Theory in a Cultural Context
Mark Kelland · OpenStax CNX · 2015
When you first think of personality, what comes to mind? When we refer to certain people as being “personalities,” we usually mean they are famous, people like movie stars or your favorite band. When we describe a person as having “lots of personality,” we usually mean they are outgoing and fun-loving, the kind of person we like to spend time with. But does this tell us anything about personality itself? Although we may think we have an understanding of what personality is, professional psychologists always seek to move beyond what people think they know in order to determine what is actually real or at least as close to real as we can come. In the pursuit of truly understanding personality, however, many personality theorists seem to have been focused on a particularly Western cultural approach that owes much of its history to the pioneering work of Sigmund Freud.
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Lifespan Development: A Psychological Perspective
Martha Lally; Suzanne Valentine-French · Martha Lally, Suzanne Valentine-French · 2022
Developmental Psychology, also known as Human Development or Lifespan Development, is the scientific study of ways in which people change, as well as stay the same, from conception to death. You will no doubt discover in the course of studying that the field examines change across a broad range of topics. These include physical and other psychophysiological processes, cognition, language, and psychosocial development, including the impact of family and peers.
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The Meaning of Love
Richard Garlikov · Alabama Open Publishing House at Troy University · 2017
This book explores the philosophical views on the meaning of love. The text explores a variety of topics used to define love, including attraction, relationship satisfaction, emotional, and ethical considerations. The author takes a rational, logical, analytic, and scrutinizing look at experiences and other forms of literature on the subject of love.
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Global Women's Issues: Women in the World Today, extended version
Janni Aragon; Mariel Miller · BCcampus · 2012
We cannot solve global challenges unless women participate fully in efforts to find solutions. Female participation in the private sector is a crucial economic driver for societies worldwide. Economic security benefits every facet of a woman's life, with positive effects on the health, education and vitality of families. Learn about women who are changing their societies for the better. This book is based on the twelve critical areas of concern identified in the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action at the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995: The burden of poverty on women, unequal access to education and training, inequalities and inadequacies in and unequal access to health care and related services, violence against women, the effects of armed or other kinds of conflict on women, including those living under foreign occupation, inequality in economic structures and policies, inequality between men and women in the sharing of power and decision-making at all levels, insufficient mechanisms at all levels to promote the advancement of women, lack of respect for and inadequate promotion and protection of the human rights of women, stereotyping of women and inequality in women's access to and participation in all communication systems, especially in the media, gender inequalities in the management of natural resources and in the safeguarding of the environment, and persistent discrimination against and violation of the rights of the girl child. This extended version of Global Women's Issues: Women in the World Today includes, for each chapter, a summary, key words, multiple choice questions, discussion questions, essay questions, and a list of additional resources. Copies of the original book are also available in Arabic, Portuguese, and Spanish.
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British Columbia in a Global Context
BCcampus · 2014
This first year Geography textbook takes a holistic approach to Geography by incorporating elements of physical, human and regional geography, as well as bringing in methods and perspectives from spatial information science.. This textbook applies a fundamental geographical approach to understanding our globally changing world by looking at local processes which are linked to larger global processes and events. The textbook includes numerous case studies specific to British Columbia as well as a number of suggested service learning activities. Over the course of four days in June, 2014, 5 faculty members from across British Columbia supported by a facilitator, librarian, researcher, illustrator, programmer and instructional designer, created this book. This involved drawing on our own research, teaching and experience and working with the team to put it all together into an online format; one which would be accessible to students and educators alike. Beyond the unique way in which this book was created in a Book Sprint process, there are other elements of this book that make it unique. First, it takes a holistic approach to first year Geography, incorporating elements of Physical, Human, and Regional Geography, as well as bringing in methods and perspectives from Spatial Information Science. Pedagogically, this book incorporates elements of service learning and suggested service learning activities recognizing that the study of Geography is deeply connected to the communities we live in. Many of the suggestions for service learning are illustrated through the use of case studies from across BC. The book is aimed at a a first year or introductory Geography student, and would be suitable for a first year Geography course on BC.
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Research Methods in Psychology
Rajiv Jhangiani; I-Chant Chiang · BCcampus · 2015
The present adaptation constitutes the second Canadian edition and was co-authored by Rajiv S. Jhangiani (Kwantlen Polytechnic University) and I-Chant A. Chiang (Quest University Canada) and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Revisions include the following: Chapter 1: Added a description of the “Many Labs Replication Project,” added a reference to the Neurobonkers website, and embedded videos about open access publishing, driver distraction, two types of empirical studies, and the use of evidence to evaluate the world around us.Chapter 2: Updated the exemplar study in the chapter overview, added relevant examples and descriptions of contemporary studies, provided a link to an interactive visualization for correlations, added a description of double-blind peer review, added a figure to illustrate a spurious correlation, and embedded videos about how to develop a good research topic, searching the PsycINFO database, using Google Scholar, and how to read an academic paper.Chapter 3: Added in LaCour ethical violation. Revised chapter headings and order to reflect TCPS-2 moral principles.Chapter 4: Added in difference between laws and effects and theoretical framework.Chapter 5: Added fuller descriptions of the levels of measurement, added a table to summarize the levels of measurement, added a fuller description of the MMPI, removed the discussion of the IAT, and added descriptions of concurrent, predictive, and convergent validity.Chapter 6: Added in construct validity, statistical validity, mundane realism, psychological realism, Latin Square Design. Updated references.Chapter 7: Added in mixed-design studies and fuller discussion of qualitative-quantitative debate.Chapter 8: Added an exercise to sketch the 8 possible results of a 2 x 2 factorial experiment.Chapter 9: Added information about Canadian Election Studies, more references, specific guidelines about order and open-ended questions, and rating
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Introduction to Psychology
Jennifer Walinga · BCcampus · 2010
This book is designed to help students organize their thinking about psychology at a conceptual level. The focus on behaviour and empiricism has produced a text that is better organized, has fewer chapters, and is somewhat shorter than many of the leading books. The beginning of each section includes learning objectives; throughout the body of each section are key terms in bold followed by their definitions in italics; key takeaways, and exercises and critical thinking activities end each section.
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Immigrant and Refugee Families
Jaime Ballard; Elizabeth Wieling; Catherine Solheim; Lekie Dwanyen · University of Minnesota Libraries Publishing · 2016
Immigrant and Refugee Families: Global Perspectives on Displacement and Resettlement Experiences offers an interdisciplinary perspective on immigrant and refugee families' challenges and resilience across multiple domains, including economic, political, health, and human rights. This new edition has been revised and updated from the original 2016 edition. Co-edited with equal contribution by Jaime Ballard, Elizabeth Wieling, Catherine Solheim, and Lekie Dwanyen