Between 1970 and 1975 Jon Swain, the English journalist portrayed in David Puttnam's film, The Killing Fields, lived in the lands of the Mekong river. This is his account of those years, and the way in which the tumultuous events affected his perceptions of life and death as Europe never could. He also describes the beauty of the Mekong landscape - the villages along its banks, surrounded by mangoes, bananas and coconuts, and the exquisite women, the odours of opium, and the regio...

This is a clear introduction to the methodological and philosophical debates in the field of education research. It sets out the key ideas, questions, and dilemmas which inform all research and then, through the careful use of case studies and practical advice from experienced researchers, grounds them in the specific concerns of education and educational studies.Written by experienced academics and teachers the book links broad philosophical principles with practical strategies fo...

This open access book explores young children’s lives in their later years at primary school, from their own point of view. It focuses on how girls and boys experience life in their informal peer group and explores the dynamics of friendships and social hierarchies, identities and how time is spent outside of lessons, including the use of social media. The author interrogates how children make meanings: who they think they are, what it means to be a girl or a boy, and what forms of feminin...

Best known for his academy award-winning role as Dith Pran in "The Killing Fields", for Haing Ngor his greatest performance was not in Hollywood but in the rice paddies and labour camps of war-torn Cambodia. Here, in his memoir of life under the Khmer Rouge, is a searing account of a country's descent into hell. His was a world of war slaves and execution squads, of senseless brutality and mind-numbing torture; where families ceased to be and only a very special love could soar above the s...

A veteran journalist presents "an epic account of the worst famine in history . . . a landmark in the Chinese people's own efforts to confront their history" (Ian Johnson, The New York Review of Books).An estimated thirty-six million Chinese men, women, and children starved to death during China's Great Leap Forward in the late 1950s and early '60s. One of the greatest tragedies of the twentieth century, the famine is poorly understood, and in China is stil...

The "definitive" (Los Angeles Times), award-winning history of Cambodia and Pol Pot's rise to power, tracing the country's modern origins to the human rights abuses that reshaped it foreverAward-winning journalist Elizabeth Becker started covering Cambodia in 1973 for The Washington Post, when the country was perceived as little more than a footnote to the Vietnam War. Then, with the rise of the Khmer Rouge in 1975 came the closing of the border a...

Chanrithy Him felt compelled to tell of surviving life under the Khmer Rouge in a way "worthy of the suffering which I endured as a child."In the Cambodian proverb, "when broken glass floats" is the time when evil triumphs over good. That time began in 1975, when the Khmer Rouge took power in Cambodia and the Him family began their trek through the hell of the "killing fields." In a mesmerizing story, Him vividly recounts a Cambodia where rudimentary labor camps are the norm and te...

This new edition of Karen O’Reilly’s popular Ethnographic Methods provides a comprehensive and accessible introduction to the technical, practical and philosophical issues that arise when employing traditional and innovative research methods in relation to human agents.Using a wide range of case studies and source material to illustrate the dilemmas and resolutions that an ethnographic researcher may encounter, this textbook guides the reader from the initial design and pl...

Do we have a literacy crisis?Fierce debates in the media over how to teach children to read and write have reached new heights in recent years. The intensity of the debates is not surprising as literacy education matters to everyone, but there is collateral damage. Public confidence in literacy teachers has been undermined and many believe we have a literacy crisis in our schools.The Literacy Wars explains the reasons for the often bitter disagreements between the ...

The unremitting explosion of reality television across the schedules has become a sustainable global phenomenon generating considerable popular and political fervour.The zeal with which television executives seize on the easily replicated formats is matched equally by the eagerness of audiences to offer themselves up as television participants for others to watch and criticise. But how do we react to so many people breaking down, fronting up, tearing apart, dominating, empathising,...

The theories and analyses of post-structural thinkers such as Michel Foucault can seem a long way from practice in early childhood services. In recent years, however, many early childhood researchers and practitioners have found this work important and this fascinating book brings together a range of research and case-studies showing how teachers and researchers have brought post-structuralism to the classroom. The book covers such issues as:becoming post-structurally reflect...

Bodies and Boundaries of UK Bear Spaces is an exploration of the spaces of the UK’s Bear community – and the people who are in them.The book details a wealth of existing writing and scholarship on Bears – both historical and contemporary – and uses new empirical research to demonstrate and explain the complexity of ‘Bear’ in the present-day UK. Moving beyond a focus on masculine attitudes, it emphasises the importance of bodily appearance for Bear communities while also de...