This book addresses the point of intersection between cognition, metacognition, and culture in learning and teaching Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM). We explore theoretical background and cutting-edge research about how various forms of cognitive and metacognitive instruction may enhance learning and thinking in STEM classrooms from K-12 to university and in different cultures and countries. Over the past several years, STEM education research has witnessed rapid growth, attracting considerable interest among scholars and educators. The book provides an updated collection of studies about cognition, metacognition and culture in the four STEM domains. The field of research, cognition and metacognition in STEM education still suffers from ambiguity in meanings of key concepts that various researchers use. This book is organized according to a unique manner: Each chapter features one of the four STEM domains and one of the three themes—cognition, metacognition, and culture—and defines key concepts. This matrix-type organization opens a new path to knowledge in STEM education and facilitates its understanding. The discussion at the end of the book integrates these definitions for analyzing and mapping the STEM education research. Chapter 4 is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com

Provides a comprehensive introduction to theoretical and applied issues relating to the global banking industry. The text is organised into four main Sections: Introduction to Banking; Central Banking and Bank Regulation; Issues in Bank Management and Comparative Banking Markets. Over recent years there has been a lack of a comprehensive yet accessible textbook that deals with a broad spectrum of introductory banking issues. This text fills that gap. This book is suitable for all undergraduate students taking courses in banking. It is also great background reading for postgraduate students.

The present stage of the human civilization is the e-society, which is build over the achievements obtained by the development of the information and communication technologies. It affects everyone, from ordinary mobile phone users to designers of high quality industrial products, and every human activity, from taking medical care to improving the state governing. The science community working in computer sciences and informatics is therefore under constant challenge; it has to solve the new appeared theoretical problem as well as to find new practical solutions. The fourth ICT Innovations Conference, held in September 2012 in Ohrid, Macedonia, was one of the several world-wide forums where academics, professionals and practitioners presented their last scientific results and development applications in the fields of high performance and parallel computing, bioinformatics, human computer interaction, security and cryptography, computer and mobile networks, neural networks, cloud computing, process verification, improving medical care, improving quality of services, web technologies, hardware implementations, cultural implication. In this book the best 37 ranked articles are presented.