Inclusão digital: a inserção das tecnologias informacionais nas escolas públicas da RMNatal

This study aims to determine the influence of Digital Inclusion in school performance of students from public high school in the metropolitan area of Natal, through the use of computers in a pedagogical and Internet use.Throughout the paper we try to answer the question: The pedagogical use of computers connected to the Internet contributes to improving the academic performance of students in public schools in the RMNatal? To answer the research question, we focus on the database INEP on the infrastructure of schools and the bank rates of school performance. For both technical procedures performed to obtain the relationship between Internet and School Performance. Then the School Settings have been configured for Digital Inclusion and made crosses with the approval rates, distortion and failure. The survey results indicate that according to the classification established in: Included in School Settings, School Settings deficit, Adverse Environments School and School Settings Deleted, which has prevailed in the metropolitan area of Natal are the schools that are provided outside.

Família, aluno e professor: as forças tipológicas da educação básica na região metropolitana de Natal

This work was developed in the research line: "The habitus of study: builder of a new reality in the basic education of metropolitan area Natal" which is being developed with the support of CAPES by the Centre for Education. Acts, especially the problem of academic performance of students in basic education of the public in the Metropolitan Region of Natal (RMN). Thus, the aim of this paper is to construct a typology of students in the 9th year of basic education, attending the public schools (state or municipal) of MRN, 2009, and assess, according to these profiles, what personal characteristics student and their families: economic, social and cultural capital as well as teaching practices create environments capable of favoring a good educational development as measured by the performance obtained in the assessments in mathematics and English language. The data used were provided through the microdata Brazil Exam 2009 held by INEP. We used the methods Grade of Membership (GoM) for construction of profiles relevance of students according to the characteristics already mentioned. With these profiles was verified, which were effectively generating good performance in school curriculum components evaluated. The findings indicate that students belonging to the profile considered good environment, able to achieve better school performance both in Portuguese as in Mathematics, compared to the extreme profiles and adverse deficit

Qualidade do gasto público em educação para os municípios da região metropolitana de Natal-2007

The aim of this thesis is to evaluate the quality of public spending on education for the municipalities of the Metropolitan Region of Natal (RMN) in 2009 by use of two theories: The Theory of Welfare (Welfare State) and the Public Choice Theory (TEP), both important to understand the relationship between education and economics. The study also uses principles of microeconomics and public sector economics to get a better idea of the role of education in economy and society. It describes the development of the educational policy in Brazil from 1988 to the Federal Constitution of 2010, following the major changes in basic education during each government. The characteristics of the RMN municipalities were illustrated with socioeconomic indicators, while educational indicators were used to characterize each municipality regarding education. The model used in this study was developed by Bertê, Brunet and Borges, the data was collected on the back of the School Census 2009 and the Brazil Exam 2009 and it was processed quantitavely in the Information System on Public Budgets in Education (SIOPE) by use of the statistical method called standardized score of the normal cumulative distribution function. The quality of public spending on education is the result of the relation between performance indicator ratio and expense ratio. For the qualitative analysis of results, the criteria of efficiency, efficacy and effectiveness were used. The study found that municipalities with higher expenses showed a worse quality of spending and failed to convert the expenditure incurred into performance, thus confirming ineffectiveness

Tendências de sucesso no percurso acadêmico do alunado na UFRN

Enter the University and remain in it is a challenge for all students who leave high school and enter this level. The aspiration for a graduation occur by several factors, which have decisive impact on the personal lives of individuals who acquire training in higher education, both as regards the professional capacities as economic opportunity. There are several possible trajectories to get into a college. Students can be classified by their success or failure in performance due to multiple intervening factors that interact among themselves. The purpose of this work is to identify and characterize the factors that reveal trends of success and failure in academic performance of UFRN students. From this general goal, broke out the following specific objectives: to analyze the problems of expanding access to and restructuring of higher education in Brazil and UFRN; explicit definitions of success and failure in higher education; identify national trends and international help to determine the success and failure of students in UFRN. Therefore, we conducted an extensive literature review on the subject and analyzed secondary data from official national, regional and local statistical sources on the subject. In the delimitation of the data, the research population refers to students who entered the UFRN through the vestibular, in the years 2000 to 2010, and who attended at least one (1) semester. In the light of the analysis, the theoretical framework interpretation and the investigative data, it was possible to identify the major factors that affect the categories of success and failure in this university, which highlight the following: the policies adopted by UFRN have provided access mechanisms and student assistance policies, trying to supply the needs of students for them to have a good academic performance, or success in their courses; in addition, the chosen focus of analysis showed that, within the same area, there is not significant difference in the performance of students coming from less favored social and educational contexts, which does not occur when analyzing the success rates between students from different areas of knowledge. The trajectory of interpretative analysis of the results presented in this paper enables to raise points of discussion in various forums and higher councils in order to increase the academic indices of its students. It also enables to promote strategies of guidance and student support for that he persists in his choice

Aplicando análise de envoltória de dados -DEA à avaliação de desempenho acadêmico: um estudo em programas de pós-graduação em engenharia mecânica e produção no Brasil

This Master of Science Thesis deals with applying DEA (Data Envelopment Analysis) to the academic performance evaluation of graduate programs in Brazil, exploring it on a Mechanical and Production Engineering Program 2001-2003 data. The data used is that of the national assessment carried by CAPES, the governmental body in charge for graduate program assessment and certification. It is used the CCR output oriented DEA model, the CCR-Output with Assurance Region, and Window Analysis. The main findings are first that the CCR has the concerning problem of zero values of weights of outputs that is not appropriate in a sense that a graduate program has the higher efficiency score zeroing some output (e.g., number of academic papers published). Secondly, the Assurance Region method proved useful. Third, the Window Analysis also gave some light to the consistency of the performance in the time frame analysed. Also, the analysis results in the understanding that the Mechanics and Production Engineering should not be assessed jointly like currently applied by CAPES and rather should be assessed in its own field separately. Finally, the result of the DEA analysis showed some serious inconsistencies with the CAPES method. Graduate programs considered excellent has got low performance score and vice versa. This Thesis provides a strong argument in order to use DEA at least as a complimentary methodology for graduate program performance evaluation in Brazil

Avaliação do padrão do ciclo sono-vigília e a cognição em estudantes de medicina com diferentes esquemas de horários de aulas

The sleep patterns of students entering the university, is accompanied by many factors that can lead to changes in sleep habits, such as academic demands, new social opportunities, reduced parental care and irregular teaching schedules. The irregular pattern of sleep-wake cycle is usually accompanied by several daytime consequences, for example, reduced levels of motivation, performance, concentration, alertness and mood as well as increased fatigue and sleepiness.Thus, there are numerous reasons to support the fact that these students may suffer damage in their academic performance. The aim of this study was to evaluate the sleep-wake cycle (SWC) and cognition in medical students with different schemes teaching schedules. One group started classes at 08am, while the other started at 07am. We analyzed the data from 88 volunteers, 39 from each group. However, only those who participated in both stages of the study (n = 78) underwent cognitive testing. For subjective evaluation of the SWC was used questionnaires to check the quality of sleep, chronotype, daytime sleepiness and sleep habits. For objective evaluation was used actigraphy. For cognitive assessment was used the test MoCA (Montreal Cognitive Assessment). The results indicate that the group has class earlier had a greater irregularity of the SWC and a worse performance in cognitive testing. There was a difference between the schedules the week and weekend in the subjective variables, bedtime, wake up and sleep duration in both groups. The objective variables, time in bed showed difference between the schedules the week and weekend to the group started class at 08am and the variables bedtime, get up time, actual sleep time, time in bed and wake bouts in the class at 07am. In the cognitive test, there were differences between the groups in overall score and in the areas of executive function and memory recall. Thus, it is suggested that the class starting time may cause irregularity of the SWC and the irregularity may cause mild cognitive impairment. Moreover, cognitive testing MoCA was sensitive to detect differences among students, although the difference between the schedules is small

Rendimento acadêmico e sua relação com os estilos de personalidade de estudantes universitários

One of the Psychology challenges, especially among the assessment and educational areas, is to understand and predict individual differences. In this context, this research aimed to verify the personality styles of students with high and low academic performance. The study included 236 university students from Petrolina-PE and Juazeiro-BA campus of the UNIVASF (Universidade Federal do Vale do São Francisco). They were uniformly distributed in four disciplines (medicine, psychology, administration and civil engineering), 10 students from each semester (five highest scores average students and five lowest scores average students) took place of the sample. The Millon Index Personality Styles (MIPS) was applied to analyze the personality/behavioral styles of the students. The MIPS is a 180 dichotomous (true/false) item scale. It was also developed and applied a questionnaire about the students characteristics and their academic information. Descriptive and central tendency statistics analysis (mean, standard deviation, frequency and percentage) were done to provide sample information. Then we performed a Mann-Whitney test in the overall sample and in each course and a factorial ANOVA. The results suggest that the university population is heterogeneous and there are significant differences (p <0.05) between the personality styles of students with high and low academic performance, when analyzing the overall sample and in courses of different areas of knowledge. Students of Medicine who have higher performance as personality styles prevalent the conformism and compliance, while students with lower income in this course, the styles are: innovation and discrepancy. Psychology students with higher income are more systematic and lower income students to score significantly on accommodation. The civil engineering students of the two groups differed only in personality style intuition, being such a style more characteristic of higher income students. Students of Management with higher yield stand out more in the style of the doubt and lower yields in these styles: individual, reflection and discrepancy. This study is correlational, but had an exploratory nature because there are no studies about this relationship in Brazil. Therefore, it provided a better understanding of the action characteristics of students with high and low academic performance. Further studies using the Big Five Personality Factors instruments are required because it is the most used model in understanding the influence of personality on students performance. This way, the relation between personality and academic performance will be better discussed. Otherwise, it will be possible to compare with the existing studies in the area

Utilizando comitês de classificadores para predição de rendimento escolar

Educational Data Mining is an application domain in artificial intelligence area that has been extensively explored nowadays. Technological advances and in particular, the increasing use of virtual learning environments have allowed the generation of considerable amounts of data to be investigated. Among the activities to be treated in this context exists the prediction of school performance of the students, which can be accomplished through the use of machine learning techniques. Such techniques may be used for student’s classification in predefined labels. One of the strategies to apply these techniques consists in their combination to design multi-classifier systems, which efficiency can be proven by results achieved in other studies conducted in several areas, such as medicine, commerce and biometrics. The data used in the experiments were obtained from the interactions between students in one of the most used virtual learning environments called Moodle. In this context, this paper presents the results of several experiments that include the use of specific multi-classifier systems systems, called ensembles, aiming to reach better results in school performance prediction that is, searching for highest accuracy percentage in the student’s classification. Therefore, this paper presents a significant exploration of educational data and it shows analyzes of relevant results about these experiments.

Pressão de sono e perfil acadêmico de estudante de medicina do 1º período da UFRN

Academic demands, new social context, new routines and decrease of the parental control, are factors that may influence the sleep pattern of freshman students at the University. Medical students from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte (UFRN) have a full-time course, subjects with high-level content, and, at the first semester, classes begin at 7 a.m. This group composed by young adults who still suffering with delayed sleep phase, common in adolescence, indicating that this class schedule can be inappropriate at this age. The reduction of nocturnal sleep during school days, and the attempt to recover sleep on free days – social jet lag (JLS), suggests that in the first semester, students suffer from high sleep pressure. High sleep pressure may reflect on cognitive tasks and performance. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between sleep pressure and the academic profile of medical students from the first semester of UFRN, characterizing this population socio-demographically and investigating possible impacts on therestactivity rhytm and academic performance. A sample of 88 students, healthy men and women awswered the following questionnaires: Pittsburgh Sleep Quality (PSQI), Epworth Sleepiness Scale (ESS), Horne & Ostberg Chronotype (HO), Munich Chronotype (MCTQ) and “Health and Sleep” adapted. Actigraphy was used during 14 days to make actogramas and obtain non-parametric variables of the rest-activity rhythm and the grades of the morning schedule were used as academic performance. The JLS was used as a measure of sleep pressure. Statistics significance level was 95%. The population was sociodemographic homogeneous. Most students have healthy lifestyle, practice physical activity, use car to go to the university and take between 15 and 30 minutes for this route. Regarding CSV, most were classify as intermediate (38.6%) and evening (32%) chronotypes, needs to nap during the week, suffer daytime sleepiness and have poor sleep quality. 83% of the sample has at least 1h JLS, which led us to divide into two groups: Group <2h JLS (N = 44) and Group ≥ 2h JLS (N = 44). The groups have differences only in chronotype, showing that most evening individuals have more JLS, however, no differences were found in relation to sociodemographic aspect, rest-activity rhythm or academic performance. The homogeneity of the sample was limited to compare the groups, however, is alarming that students already present in the first half: JLG, poor sleep quality and excessive daytime sleepiness, which can be accentuated through the university years, with the emergence of night shifts and increased academic demand. Interventionsaddressingthe importance of good sleep habits and the change of the class start time are strategies aimed to improve student’s health.

A Naturalistic Assessment of the Organization of Children’s Memories Predicts Cognitive Functioning and Reading Ability

To explore the relationship between memory and early school performance, we used graph theory to investigate memory reports from 76 children aged 6–8 years. The reports comprised autobiographical memories of events days to years past, and memories of novel images reported immediately after encoding. We also measured intelligence quotient (IQ) and theory of mind (ToM). Reading and Mathematics were assessed before classes began (December 2013), around the time of report collection (June 2014), and at the end of the academic year (December 2014). IQ and ToM correlated positively with word diversity and word-to-word connectivity, and negatively with word recurrence. Connectivity correlated positively with Reading in June 2014 as well as December 2014, even after adjusting for IQ and ToM. To our knowledge, this is the first study demonstrating a link between the structure of children’s memories and their cognitive or academic performance.

A Naturalistic Assessment of the Organization of Children’s Memories Predicts Cognitive Functioning and Reading Ability

To explore the relationship between memory and early school performance, we used graph theory to investigate memory reports from 76 children aged 6–8 years. The reports comprised autobiographical memories of events days to years past, and memories of novel images reported immediately after encoding. We also measured intelligence quotient (IQ) and theory of mind (ToM). Reading and Mathematics were assessed before classes began (December 2013), around the time of report collection (June 2014), and at the end of the academic year (December 2014). IQ and ToM correlated positively with word diversity and word-to-word connectivity, and negatively with word recurrence. Connectivity correlated positively with Reading in June 2014 as well as December 2014, even after adjusting for IQ and ToM. To our knowledge, this is the first study demonstrating a link between the structure of children’s memories and their cognitive or academic performance.