Estudos da criança e pesquisa com crianças: nuances luso-brasileiras acerca dos desafios éticos e metodológicos

O presente artigo discute as maneiras como os Estudos da Criança colaboram com as novas formas de se pensarem as crianças e as infâncias, afirmando que os conceitos de criança como ator social, como sujeito com direitos, participativo e com voz, passam a ter uma visibilidade significativa na pesquisa com crianças, nos discursos acadêmicos e também em muitas práticas sociais com crianças. Questionamos ao longo do texto alguns aspectos que têm vindo a merecer uma atenção acrescida nos últimos tempos, nomeadamente os relacionados com os preceitos éticos que envolvem a pesquisa com crianças tentando pensar de que modo podem concretizar-se numa ética viável e significativa para as crianças, nas pesquisas com crianças desenvolvidas no Brasil e em Portugal. Fechamos o texto com a convicção de que somente ouvindo e escutando o que as crianças tem a nos dizer sobre os seus modos de vida poderemos acrescentar ao conhecimento sobre a infância elementos inovadores e respeitadores da imagem da criança como sujeito ativo de direitos. Somente desta forma conseguiremos enfrentar as exigências de colocar em discussão todo e qualquer direito das crianças na pesquisa em debates mais extensos de ampliação da cidadania.

Se tu eliminares o conto de fadas da realidade eu sou contra ti: disse Kahn

Dissertação de mestrado integrado em Arquitetura (área de especialização em Cultura Arquitetónica)

O ecrã da (hiper) televisão: novos olhares a partir das emissões dedicadas ao Euro 2012 na TV portuguesa

Dando continuidade a uma série de estudos já realizados no âmbito do projecto de investigação em que se insere, o presente trabalho questiona a evolução do ecrã televisivo como dispositivo supostamente convergente. Contrariando uma tendência discursiva dominante, quer na esfera dos media quer na própria produção académica sobre o medium televisivo, clarificam-se aqui alguns dos desenvolvimentos teóricos mais significativos, resultantes dos anos de trabalho que este projecto de investigação já tem. Propõe-se, pois, uma distinção conceptual entre o ecrã prometido pela cultura da convergência, que designamos como ecrã convergente, e o ecrã verdadeiramente resiliente da instituição-televisão, o ecrã centrípeto, que ainda obedece aos princípios de sequência e fluxo enunciados por Raymond Williams nos anos 1970.

Inteligência como dispositivo de poder

O objetivo do presente estudo, é compreender a inscrição individual e social de discursos usados por alunas, em diferentes posições de classe social, para explicar os seus sucessos académicos. Foram entrevistadas 19 alunas portuguesas do 11º ano de escolaridade provenientes das classes trabalhadora e alta, com elevado rendimento académico. A Análise Foucaudiana do Discurso aponta para a importância da posição de classe na construção dos sujeitos relativamente à sua conceção de inteligência e ao sucesso escolar. A inteligência funciona assim como um dispositivo de poder que regula as relações entre sujeitos de diferentes classes sociais.

Intervention program on adolescent’s creativity representations and academic motivation

Creativity and its promotion are widespread concerns in education. However, few efforts have been made to implement intervention programs designed to promote creativity and other related aspects (e.g., academic motivation). The Future Problem Solving Program International (FPSPI), aimed for training creativity representations and creative problem solving skills in young people, has been one of the most implemented programs. This intervention’s materials and activities were adapted for Portuguese students, and a longitudinal study was conducted. The program was implemented during four months, in weekly sessions, by thirteen teachers. Teachers received previous training for the program and during the program’s implementation. Intervention participants included 77 Basic and Secondary Education students, and control participants included 78 equivalent students. Pretest-posttest measures of academic motivation and creativity representations were collected. Results suggest a significant increase, in the intervention group, in motivation and the appropriate representations of creativity. Practical implications and future research perspectives are presented.

School governance and academic excellence: the representations of distinguished students in an annual award of excellence

Within a research project on «academic excellence in the state school», this paper is a contribution to the sociological reflection on the cultural and organisational characteristics of the school and its relationship with the academic success of students. The data we present stem from a case study underway at a secondary school in the north of Portugal, referring to the universe of students that since 2003 have distinguished themselves for achieving grades equal to or greater than 18 (on a scale of 0 to 20) and have thus been included in the school’s Framework of Excellence. From a contextual approach to this educational practice, we focused on the cultural characteristics of the school/subject as analytical support for the study of school and non-school dimensions in their mutual connections. To this end, we used the information from document analysis and data collected from a questionnaire survey administered to more than two-thirds of the students included in the above-mentioned Framework of Excellence. Subsequently, we will use the data from this survey to understand the extent to which academic excellence is perceived as an indivisible social construction of the school’s political and organisational matrix, particularly in terms of the educational and teaching guidelines adopted by the management body. We will conclude by questioning the meaning of the school’s management policies regarding the emphasis on educational outcomes, with particular focus on the representations of excellent students in the processes of school leadership, teaching organisation, school merit and justice.

Why should we expect worlds to collide? - Exploratory reflections departing from a case study analysis of “Jornal de Notícias” (Portugal)

As 2008 came to a close the avalanche of discourse on the demise of newspapers (and traditional media in general) grew to such an extent that consideration of any alternative scenario became almost difficult to utter. Academic articles, conferences, newspaper and magazine features were abundantly produced on thematic variations which went from ‘The End of Newspapers’ to ‘The End of Journalism’ (testing these expressions in a popular search engine we can easily get in excess of 23 thousand references for the first one and over 290 thousand references for the second one and there is even a dedicated ‘Newspaper Death Watch’ site with constant updates). The broad assumption of this production – particularly the one that identifies one possibility with the other – revolves around notions like the collapse of rigid business models, the breakdown of producer/user fidelity/trust, and the failings of a self-centred and entrenched professional (the journalist). The present seems to be enunciated as a ‘the end of days’ period, with images of irrevocable perdition funnelling our reasoning towards one single possible outcome – the imperious necessity of complete reinvention, not necessarily with the same agents.

Gender, sex and sexuality in two open access communication journals published in Portugal: a critical overview of current discursive practices

The links between gender, sex and sexuality and their relevance are theoretically and politically problematic (Richardson, 2007). One of the difficulties in understanding their interconnections is that these terms are often used differently and ambiguously by different authors (and even by the same authors). This article reports the results of an analysis of the articles published in open access communication journals with known impact factor, edited in Portugal and published between 2005 and 2012. The diverse conceptualisations of those three basic concepts and of their (inter)relationships within communication research are identified. The complexity and the intricate (and often implicit) nature of both the meanings of these categories and their relationships underlie and justify our attention and further research. What the findings suggest about the current communication research into gender issues published in the two journals surveyed is that the ‘Gender differences discourse’ (Sunderland, 2004) is the most pervasive discourse (also) in academic practice. Additionally, they show that gender and sex are mainly taken for a fact, not a question that is worth being studied. The editors of these journals, as well as the scholars submitting manuscripts, need to be more aware of the traditional nature of the theoretical and methodological choices that they make regarding gender- and sex-related issues, as well as of the relative lack of attention to sexuality as a research subject.

Media(ted) discourse and society: rethinking the framework of critical discourse analysis

The analysis of journalistic discourse and its social embeddedness has known significant advances in the last two decades, especially due to the emergence and development of Critical Discourse Analysis. However, three important aspects remain under-researched: the time plane in discourse analysis, the discursive strategies of social actors, and the extra- and supra-textual effects of mediated discourse. Firstly, understanding the biography of public matters requires a longitudinal examination of mediated texts and their social contexts but most forms of analysis of journalistic discourse do not account for the time sequence of texts and its implications. Secondly, as the media representation of social issues is, to a large extent, a function of the discursive construction of events, problems and positions by social actors, the discursive strategies that they employ in a variety of arenas and channels ‘‘before’’ and ‘‘after’’ journalistic texts need to be examined. Thirdly, the fact that many of the modes of operation of discourse are extra- or supra-textual calls for a consideration of various social processes ‘‘outside’’ the text. This paper aims to produce a theoretical and methodological contribution to the integration of these issues in discourse analysis by proposing a framework that combines a textual dimension with a contextual one