A Practical Guide to Critical Thinking. Deciding What to Do and Believe

To stay ahead of the competition, today?s organizations must invest in ongoing training that continuously improves their employees? knowledge and skills. A Practical Guide to Training and Development is a comprehensive resource that offers a theoretical, strategic, and practical foundation of the entire training process. The book outlines a step-by-step approach for assessing, designing, delivering and evaluating training.

Autism is in the public spotlight now more than ever as new research and information appears almost daily. Although in many ways this is a positive development it also presents challenges to families and practitioners who want to keep up with the latest developments and are left to sift through new information by themselves to see what is credible and relevant for them.Each of us needs a personal research assistant who can determine which information we need to pay attention to and let us know how it might affect our daily work and the children we are living with or serve. Since we each don’t have our own research assistants on staff, I am delighted to recommend this wonderful book by Fred Volkmar and Lisa Wiesner. Both of these talented professional leaders have combined their scientific skills and understanding of the field with great practical experience and ideas about how research can be translated into clinical practice. The result is a book that provides the best and most comprehensive information about recent scientific developments and a splendid practical guide for how they are being implemented and what we are learning in the process. The issues are presented in all of their complexity but translated into language that is clear, direct, and easy to follow. The format also lends itself to understanding the complex issues and their implications through excellent charts, question and answer sections, and chapters that vary from describing diagnostic issues to stating very specifically how to expand and evaluate the services one is receiving. The comprehensive references and lists of additional resources also add greatly to the overall package. As a professional dedicated to understanding scientific advances and helping families and teachers to utilize them most effectively, I am very pleased to have an ally like this book available. I am very grateful to the authors for providing a very credible, practical, and relevant addition to our field to help the many advocates and family practitioners to better understand the exciting new developments and how they can be implemented in our day to day work. Those taking the time to read through this superb volume will find it time well spent that pays back dividends in many different ways. —FOREWORD by Gary B. Mesibov, Ph.D., Professor and Director of TEACCH, Treatment and Education of Autistic and Related Communication Handicapped Children University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

This book is designed to be a quick guide to European Union law and explains how it may be used for practical effect. It is written in a clear style for practitioners who are in a hurry to master the subject, and contains precedents of the kinds of documents they may have to prepare. It explains the basic law, the basic concepts, the procedure and the jargon in a way that lawyers new to the subject will find easy to understand. It will give them the answers they need fast. Throughout, there is extensive reference to case law. The new edition has been revised to take into account the 1997 Amsterdam Treaty, which consolidated and renumbered the articles of the Union Treaty and incorporated the Social Charter. It also covers recent case law and changes to competition law.

In the United Kingdom, adjudication is available as a right for parties to a construction contract, following the enactment of the Housing Grants Construction and Regeneration Act 1996. In general, within a comparatively short period of time, parties in dispute will have a decision from an adjudicator, which, except in limited circumstances, the courts will enforce. Adjudication has become the number one method of dispute resolution in the construction industry. The short timescale means that a party needs to know what to do, when to do it and be able to check that the other party and the adjudicator are following the right steps. A Practical Guide to Construction Adjudication gives parties the necessary information to achieve this. It provides a straightforward overview of the process and procedure of adjudication by reference to legislation and case law, augmented with practical guidance including suggestions on what to do or not to do, drafting tips and checklists. Separate chapters for Scotland and Northern Ireland identify and explain the differences in procedure and judicial interpretation between those jurisdictions and England and Wales, and further detailed explanations of the adjudication regimes in Australia, Ireland, Malaysia, New Zealand and Singapore are included. Each of the chapters on jurisdictions outside England and Wales has been written by senior experts in those jurisdictions to ensure the content is accurate and insightful. There are a range of helpful appendices including a bank of model form adjudication documents and tabulated detailed comparisons of the Scheme for Construction Contracts, the other major adjudication rules, the major adjudicator nominating bodies and the UK and international regimes. Readers will particularly appreciate the most comprehensive index of adjudication cases available, sorted into 260 subject headings providing immediate access to all the reported cases on any adjudication topic.

Process Design: Making It Work helps process consultants, managers, facilitators, coaches, organizational development consultants?and anyone else who works with groups?to set up and deliver dynamic, creative process designs. Filled with illustrative cases, examples, and templates, this step-by-step resource is an invaluable aid when creating customized agendas and designs for situations ranging from basic meetings to complex, multiphased processes.

A Practical Guide to Needs Assessment, Third Edition For fifteen years, A Practical Guide to Needs Assessment has been the go-to text for those who are seeking useful, systematic approaches to needs assessment. Needs assessment is the first step in training, performance improvement, and community development projects. This thoroughly revised and updated edition contains a treasury of resources including a toolkit of ready-to-use templates and job aids that you can customize for your own use. Illustrative case studies and tips show how to assess needs for individuals, teams, organizations, government agencies, and communities. This book combines a how-to text and reference tool for trainers, performance improvement professionals, and students. Managers and community leaders use it to get to the root of their learning and performance problems, make effective decisions, and obtain support for their most pressing issues. Updates to the third edition include: Links to online resources, including a needs assessment book that you can download for free, ethical guidelines, and vendors who assess individual, group and organizational needs. A new chapter on the complex needs assessment approach with new toolkit forms. A summary of the recent advances in our knowledge about learning, training, and performance that you can use to quickly prepare for client meetings. Guidelines on workforce surveys, such as employee engagement surveys. An Instructor’s Guide that contains discussion questions, assessments materials, and new exercises for each chapter. You can use this book to quickly access up-to-date information on the fundamentals of needs assessment including current models, theories, and resources. You can also learn how to manage and report a needs assessment project and access professional ethical guidelines. Learn five approaches to needs assessment: knowledge and skills analysis, job and task analysis, competency-based needs assessment, strategic needs assessment, and complex needs assessment.

Presenting the first book that provides HR professionals with a context for understanding the importance of doing a proper job analysis together with a step-by-step guide to conducting such an analysis. This unique guide contains a series of eight ready-to-use templates that provide the basis for conducting job analyses for eight different levels of job families, from the entry-level to the senior manager/executive.

Supporting a Physiologic Approach to Pregnancy and Birth: A Practical Guide provides an overview of current evidence and a range of practical suggestions to promote physiologic birth within the United States healthcare system. Presenting the latest evidence available on practical approaches and minimal interventions, this book looks into clinic exam rooms and hospital labor units to investigate the possibilities for improving the pregnancy and labor experience. Contributors discuss recent research and other published information and present a range of ideas, tools, and solutions for maternity care clinicians, including midwives, nurses, physicians, and other members of the perinatal team. An invaluable resource, Supporting a Physiologic Approach to Pregnancy and Birth is a must-have practical guide for those involved in all aspects of pregnancy and birth.

Inspired by the author's need for practical guidance in the processes of data analysis, A Practical Guide to Scientific Data Analysis has been written as a statistical companion for the working scientist. This handbook of data analysis with worked examples focuses on the application of mathematical and statistical techniques and the interpretation of their results. Covering the most common statistical methods for examining and exploring relationships in data, the text includes extensive examples from a variety of scientific disciplines. The chapters are organised logically, from planning an experiment, through examining and displaying the data, to constructing quantitative models. Each chapter is intended to stand alone so that casual users can refer to the section that is most appropriate to their problem. Written by a highly qualified and internationally respected author this text: Presents statistics for the non-statistician Explains a variety of methods to extract information from data Describes the application of statistical methods to the design of “performance chemicals” Emphasises the application of statistical techniques and the interpretation of their results Of practical use to chemists, biochemists, pharmacists, biologists and researchers from many other scientific disciplines in both industry and academia.