Beyond Fragmentation assembles a unique team of expert practitioners and leading scholars to explore and advance the study of cross-fertilization among international courts and tribunals. Using an inter-disciplinary and multi-method approach, contributors analyse how international courts and tribunals interact and why it matters in practice. After a thorough review of prior assessments of cross-fertilization and fragmentation, the editors offer a new take on competition and cooperation across courts and tribunals, exploring both substantive and procedural elements as well as the diverse agents of cross fertilization. Contributors engage with procedural issues, identifying a “procedural cross-fertilization pull” and why and how procedure is converging in international courts and tribunals. Case studies on the convergence in the law of the sea and at the European Court of Human Rights provide contrasting experiences of substantive cross-fertilization. The volume also identifies a variety of agents of cross-fertilization, including judges, litigants, counsel, and international organizations.

In this book, leading scholars pull together some of the most recent research on the key themes of Caribbean history: slavery, the transition to freedom, colonialism, and decolonization. Although all parts of the Caribbean experienced these phases, the manner in which they did so differed significantly, in part because of their distinct imperial histories. Contemporary fragmentation and insularity have led to significant variations in the region's historiography. The contributors examine the divergent historiographical and methodological developments in the British, French, Spanish, and Dutch Caribbean. By addressing these four linguistic areas of the Caribbean, they aim to overcome the traditional differences imposed by language and in the process to explore hotly debated subjects and new directions in Caribbean scholarship.

There is great diversity in teacher education systems and approaches to learning and teaching practice across Europe, even though the practical everyday problems of the various national education systems may be very similar. Against this background, in the field of research on didactics, learning and teaching it is important to overcome fragmentation and to find common ground. In this book the editors demonstrate how far we have come over recent years in advancing research in the field which has the ultimate aim of improving learning and teaching. The editors recognise the diverging national and local practices as a starting point in searching for common ground and in creating shared understandings. The book is organised in six parts with 26 chapters in which the authors examine whether there is a paradigmatic shift from teaching to learning, take a closer look at various teacher education models and their empirical basis, discuss the importance of subject didactics, curriculum work and lesson planning, and analyse the impact of Information and Communication Technologies on didactical design. Finally, they relate the empirical findings to theory construction and offer proposals to further advance this vital field by increasing levels of international co-operation.

The public sector may be considered as a highly fragmented and at the same time enormously interconnected system. Resources are dispersed among a huge variety of actors and entities and these affect each other in many unexpected ways. This book analyses the apparently paradoxical occurrence of simultaneous fragmentation and interconnectivity within the public domain and reflects on its consequences for public governance and management. It discusses and assesses strategies to create connective capacities from different policy domains and countries and offers new insights in the complexity of public governance. About the Editors: Menno Fenger is associate professor in public administration at Erasmus University Rotterdam. He has published widely on issues of public governance and implementation, specifically in the area of social policies. Victor Bekkers is professor of public administration at Erasmus University Rotterdam and academic director of the Center for Public Innovation. He specializes in the impact of information and communication technology, including social media, on public governance. He is the author of numerous books and articles on this topic.

Beyond Standards highlights the structural conditions that have undermined the success of the standards movement and challenges us to confront them. The book offers an impassioned argument about the ways that our decentralized educational systems undermine the pursuit of educational equity and excellence. Morgan Polikoff applies a wide array of quantitative and qualitative data to provide a pointed critique of the US educational system. He addresses why standards have failed, whether standards-based reform can be salvaged, and what we can do to improve teaching and learning at scale across America's 13,000 school districts. Polikoff argues that no amount of tinkering can fix standards. Rather, we need to tackle the big, structural issues, such as decentralization. The author identifies curriculum reform as a high-leverage strategy for making meaningful progress at scale and emphasizes that states need to play a greater role in evaluating and recommending high-quality curriculum materials. Beyond Standards proposes a new, progressive vision that emphasizes the central role of states in challenging the antiquated, segregating structures that have thwarted educational improvement.

This book explores the effects of institutional fragmentation in international human rights law, by comparing the rights jurisprudence of three human rights courts and bodies, namely the European Court for Human Rights, the Inter-American Court for Human Rights and the Human Rights Committee. Contributions cover the areas of freedom of expression (journalism and the media), right to privacy, freedom of assembly and freedom of association (political parties), and measure the extent of fragmentation of human rights protection. Moreover, the volume argues that, while the conflict of laws approach, favoured by the International Law Commission, might work in avoiding outright conflict in obligation, in practice it is not an approach that presents a viable research agenda when it comes to understanding the causes and consequences of institutional fragmentation. This is especially evident in areas like international human rights, where the possibility of a silent drift between the jurisprudence of the three courts is a real possibility. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Nordic Journal of Human Rights.