Vocabulário técnico e formação dos profissionais da área têxtil: necessidade, elaboração e avaliação de um dicionário de terminologia do vestuário

This research work deals with the compilation of a dictionary on clothing terminology intended to be used as a pedagogic tool as part of the teaching and learning process in the Textile Engineering Course at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte. The main terms were selected and assessed by a team of textile teachers and students with the objective to be structured as a conceptual body of information on the following sub-areas of clothing terminology: materials (fabrics and trimmings) and products (garments). This research comprises three main steps: (a) characterization and understanding of the technical vocabulary in the clothing area as well as the identification of a pedagogic demand for a dictionary on clothing terminology, clearly expressed by the textile lecturers and students involved in the assessment of the need and validation of this project development; (b) a proposal for a specific methodology for the compilation of the dictionary which could help the communication process in the lecturing of clothing terminology and (c) based on the terminological principles and the technique of focal groups the dictionary was assessed. The technique of focal groups was used in the first step. In the second step the technique used was that of the terminological methodology adapted to the teaching approach in the Textile Course. In the third step the technique of focal groups was again utilized. It was observed that the main concern of lecturers and students is the lack of a standardized vocabulary, which renders difficult the communication process in both the teaching and learning activities as well as the professional ones in the textile industries. Various aspects, which can overlap, cause this lack of standardization. The main ones pointed out by the study team in the focal groups are: usage of regional words or expressions, usage of foreign words or expressions, analogies, and the low level of formal education, mainly among the industry workers. Another aspect to be considered is the lack of textile literature written in the Portuguese language of Brazil. This evidence shows the importance of a clothing terminology dictionary which will benefit both the education and professional activties in this field of knowledge. This dictionary will also give a substantial contribution to terminological standardization in our research field. With view to fulfill this demand, a dictionary of clothing terminology was compiled with 760 main entries, according to the modern practice in terminology with the necessary modifications concerning our needs. The result of the dictionary assessment was very assertive regarding its structure, contents and possible use in various contexts. The team work emphasized their contribution to the standardization process of the terms that proved to be one of the most important and difficult aspects of this researh work. The significance of this structured terminological dictionary was confirmed by the focal group participants relating to its use for teaching and learning activities, as a reference book, as a source of technical information and also as a tool for pedagogic studies and planning, as well as a significant collaboration to the pedagogic practices in the textile engineering course at University or any other educational institution. Besides, this dictionary can also be used to supply information within the textile field. We are aware that the present work will not exhaust the objectives of this research due to its limitations in opposition to the vast complexity demanded by the compilation of a complete work including all the areas and sub-areas of textile engineering. However, it is an important source for dissemination of concepts on the field of clothing terminology and a tool to effective standardization of the terms used in this subject field

Satisfação do paciente com a fisioterapia :tradução, adequação cultura e validação de um instrumento de medida

The measurement of patient satisfaction can provide information about the success of the care provider in reaching the values and meeting the expectations of the patient. The purpose of this study was to translate into the Portuguese language and to culturally customize to the Brazilian population the instrument to measure patient satisfaction with physical therapy elaborated by Goldstein et al. The study sample was made up of 279 patients who were undergoing physical therapy treatment at 39 different private clinics in a middle-sized town in northeastern Brazil. For the translation of the survey instrument, the back-translation technique was employed, in association with the bilingual method. The reliability and validity of the Brazilian version of the instrument were both assessed. Reliability analysis, carried out with the computation of Cronbach alpha coefficients, showed that the measures obtained with the instrument have a high degree of internal consistency. The aspects dealing with the patient therapist relationship are the most important predictors of satisfaction, followed by those dealing with courtesy, privacy, and practical aspects such as efficiency of the facility in the patient admissions process, setting up of appointments, and waiting time in waiting room. Items dealing with aspects such as location of the facility and availability of parking facilities may underestimate the reliability of the instrument. This study translated, culturally customized, and validated an instrument to measure patient satisfaction with physical therapy originally developed in English. By so doing, this study has made this instrument available to the Brazilian society, and it has rendered it a useful parameter that can be utilized in our country in the field of physical therapy

Ser professor de português: o que dizem os discursos reguladores, os alunos e os professores no contexto da formação inicial (UMINHO/Portugal e UFRN/Brasil)

The constitution of being a teacher of Portuguese occurs in a dynamic process involving various factors, such as the requirements of regulatory documents, the context of teacher formation, and the configuration of current society, per se. This study is aimed at reflecting on the initial formation of teachers of Portuguese and on official documents that face this formation, raising the following questions: (1) what does it mean to be a Portuguese teacher? (2) what is the vision of the subjects (teachers and students) involved with the formation of teaching the Portuguese Language? (3) how do these individuals deal with official documents? and (4) how do these subjects discourses relate? To understand the context of the formative processes and the knowledge inherent in them, first we take the studies of Garcia (1999) and Tardif (2002) as a theoretical framework, and to understand and interpret the utterances of the interviewees, we were grounded in the writing of Bakhtin (2003), for whom the object of the Humanities, the sciences of man, is the text, since man is, by nature, an expressive being. We situate this study in the framework of qualitative research. It is a multiple case study that focuses on two contexts: formation of teachers of Portuguese at the University of Minho, Portugal, and the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil. The data that make up the research corpus come from documents elaborated by the Ministries of Education of Portugal and Brazil and were adopted by the two teacher formation institutions cited, from individual interviews involving eight trainer teachers (four from each university), and from two group-interviews (one in each institution), done with students in training. Our analysis is divided into three stages: first, document analysis; second, analysis of the discourse of the teachers in both contexts studied; and, third, analysis of the speech of the students in training. It is noteworthy that our purpose in this research was not to come out with a definition like being a teacher of Portuguese is X, but we are interested, above all, in discussing the issues surrounding initial formation, seeking different points of view, and hearing voices coming from different social positions for better understanding our object of study. Our analysis reveals that the initial formation of teachers of Portuguese, both in Portugal and Brazil, occurs in a complex way, under the influence of various factors, including: (a) difficulties in having the individuals involved adapt to the demands of regulatory agencies; (b) students and teachers adequacy to the organizational model of the post-secondary institution; (c) teachers difficulties to deal with the learning problems of students who have limited schooling basis and come from distinct socioeconomic realities; (d) a search for the establishment of methodologies for teaching and learning the Portuguese Language more adequate to reality; and (e) a search for a definition of professional knowledge needed for the teaching practice

Reconhecimento de voz através de unidades menores do que a palavra, utilizando Wavelet Packet e SVM, em uma nova estrutura hierárquica de decisão

The automatic speech recognition by machine has been the target of researchers in the past five decades. In this period have been numerous advances, such as in the field of recognition of isolated words (commands), which has very high rates of recognition, currently. However, we are still far from developing a system that could have a performance similar to the human being (automatic continuous speech recognition). One of the great challenges of searches for continuous speech recognition is the large amount of pattern. The modern languages such as English, French, Spanish and Portuguese have approximately 500,000 words or patterns to be identified. The purpose of this study is to use smaller units than the word such as phonemes, syllables and difones units as the basis for the speech recognition, aiming to recognize any words without necessarily using them. The main goal is to reduce the restriction imposed by the excessive amount of patterns. In order to validate this proposal, the system was tested in the isolated word recognition in dependent-case. The phonemes characteristics of the Brazil s Portuguese language were used to developed the hierarchy decision system. These decisions are made through the use of neural networks SVM (Support Vector Machines). The main speech features used were obtained from the Wavelet Packet Transform. The descriptors MFCC (Mel-Frequency Cepstral Coefficient) are also used in this work. It was concluded that the method proposed in this work, showed good results in the steps of recognition of vowels, consonants (syllables) and words when compared with other existing methods in literature

Linguagem e argumentação na produção escrita de vestibulandos

In this study, we analyzed the argumentative processes of written texts produced by UERN (Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte) vestibulandos : (students who apply for University Entrance Examinations in Brazil). It has as its corpus twenty compositions by such students. These compositions, collected in UFRN COMPERVE (Permanent Commission of vestibular examinations) and written in 2005 examination, were selected in a random way. The theoretical support is based on Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca (1999; 2002), Reboul (2004), Bakhtin (1992), Faraco (2003), Platão e Fiorim (2003) e Geraldi (1997), and other scholars. The work aimed to investigate how vestibulandos make use of argumentative techniques in order to construct their arguments in the vestibular examination. In the analysis of the corpus we considered that the used argumentative techniques, the relationship with the thesis, the sense effects students wanted to produce and the type of the required speech. It showed that in the, discourse construction of argumentative texts, students made use, with more frequency, of the following argumentative techniques: pragmatic arguments, arguments of the definition, comparison arguments, division arguments, example arguments, argument of the model and authority arguments as means to support their theses. However it was not carried out in a conventional way, reason why it leads us to believe that schools, as part of human activity, responsible for education and for the insert of learners in the literate world, have a fundamental role concerning the offer of conditions, so that, the teaching of Portuguese Language leads students to a systematic and explicit preparation of the knowledge, regarding the social and functions of the language, as well as of the strategies of the construction of argumentative texts. This can lead learners to develop communicative competence and to feel more confident when working with text production

A transitividade na conversação: uma abordagem funcional centrada no uso

This work investigates the phenomenon of transitivity in the conversation. We examined the behavior of complements in Brazilian Portuguese speech, and then compared the results with previous researches in the English language by Thompson and Hopper (2001) and in the Spanish language by Vázques (2004). In Brazil, there are no researches that treat this phenomenon in the discursive conversation, for that reason it justifies and reveals the importance of this research that aims to answer questions related to the transitivity of ordinary conversations. Thus, we describe, explain and analize the transitivity based on concrete linguistic data, provided by native speakers of Portuguese language, specifically, spontaneous talk of people from Natal-RN. We have used as theoretical assumptions the Functional Linguistics usage-based (LFCU), which gathers academics of North-American Functional Linguistics, inspired by Chafe (1979), Hopper and Thompson (1980), Thompson and Hopper (2001), Givón (2001), Bybee (2010), Traugott (2009, 2011), among others, as well as Cognitive Linguistics, presented by Langacker (1987), Taylor (1995), Tomasello (1998) and Goldberg(1995), among others. This data consists in conversations extracted from the corpus Banco Conversacional de Natal (FURTADO DA CUNHA). The results obtained from this work confirm the assertions defined by prior conducted studies on the transitivity in the conversation. The research showed that these three idioms, Spanish, Portuguese and English, despite the differences, they present a uniform behavior regarding their transitivity in the conversation. We intend, by this work, to contribute, in some way, to the comprehension of the focused linguistic phenomenon, likewise to build a finer scenario around of the transitivity in the Brasilian Portuguese

A aula de português no ensino médio: o ensino que se deseja, o ensino que se faz

Settled within the realm of a problematization towards teaching and learning the Portuguese language, this study aims to investigate the way how the Portuguese Language discipline is dealt with in Secondary School. We propose specifically to analyze the orientations of the official documents concerning the educator practice, examining the way the PCNEM proposal is approached in the didactic book, identifying the treatment given to language questions, analyzing the way the teacher uses the didactic book and verifying the relations between the official approach and the pedagogical practice. The analysis takes into account the several discourses concerning school literacy, considering the various political-educational instances which institutionalize the teaching of the mother tongue - where we locate the teaching that is wanted . In what teachers and students say in their activities and concerning them - the realm of the teaching that is performed - we presuppose that there are signs of the principles - or conceptions - that orientate what they understand by language, teaching and learning. Such evidences are considered within the interrelation of the enunciative places where this literacy is promoted: the public policies concerning education - focusing the language questions - the academic researches about those questions, the educator formation and capacitation and the very school practices in the complexity of their discoursive inter-subjectivity. The principles - or conceptions - are pursued in what is said (or not) about what is done (or not) in the classroom when dealing with the Portuguese Language. The corpus is made up of oral and written texts produced in Portuguese classes in the Secondary School at a public school in the city of Natal, Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil. Situated in the realm of Applied Linguistics, the research is conducted in a qualitative and interpretative perspective, following the ethnography of communication procedures and the contributions of the Functional Linguistics. In the observations, language conceptions were discerned, among others, besides beliefs and representations where the theoretical and practical aspects, professional roles, expectations and uncertainties were diluted.

O ensino da língua portuguesa na televisão: uma análise através do programa afinando a língua

The present dissertation aims to an approach of the teaching of Portuguese language on television, trying to find how possible is the contribution of this communication media in the sense to give a higher classroom dynamism and to excite the students for that subject. The TV show Afinando a Língua (roughly, putting the language in tune ), a Canal Futura feature, have as one of these main purpose be shown on the classrooms as a tool that could enlarge the possibilities of a subject often took as particularly difficult. Blocked by the traditional grammatical teaching, the Portuguese lessons have been for years pictured as hermetic and far from the Brazilian speakers reality. So, people create myths around the language that earns adjectives as complicate and inaccessible and that Brazilians can t speak the Portuguese really good, because it only happens in Portugal, the original country of the language. These myths start exactly because the teaching orientation take their basis only on the standard language, in fact just one of the language variations by the way, anywhere in the world dictated by ancestral rules, once produced in Portugal. The regular school don t accept the Portuguese variation as a natural fact for a huge country as Brazil, with almost 190 million people, regarding it as a wrong way of talking. The repression that follows the students from the early school days make them repel the language supposedly learned at school. In fact, they normally face it as something unfamiliar, different from the language that they have use to learn at home, from the family and neighbors Instead of giving new possibilities for the language learning, the television, a powerful audiovisual device, only reinforces the idea that everyone, in any life situation, should talk the standard Portuguese, turning its back to the learning acquired much earlier that any person reach the school. This conservative attitude brings almost no changes, between the shows that try to teach the idiom and the traditional Portuguese lessons, wasting valuable tools that could lead to the possibility to open the classroom to the outside world, and to the wider knowledge of the differences from each Brazilian region culture, a positive attitude that could much enlarge the cultural and linguistic students universe

A construção medial no português do Brasil: usos no padrão reclamação digital

This thesis examines the medial construction of the Portuguese of Brazil (PB). It is a construction which describes a causative event in which a non-human subject participant is affected by an action that does not originate from itself. Thus, we are interested in investigating this type of construction, its specific characteristics, motivations and discursive context from its semantic- cognitive and discoursive - pragmatic functions. The research questions are: what is the prototypical structural configuration of the medial construction (MC) in the Portuguese of Brazil? What are its specific discoursive functions? What is the degree of MC transitivity based on the properties proposed by Hopper and Thompson (1980)? We assume that the medial construction has its own structure which particularizes its significant dimension, thus ensuring a certain distance between the one in charge of the event and the affected entity. The theoretical and methodological assumptions is founded on Usage-based Functional Linguistics (FURTADO DA CUNHA; BISPO; SILVA, 2013). It is a research of qualitative- interpretative nature that has prioritized the analysis of occurrences arising from texts produced by users of the Brazilian Portuguese language in effective communicative situation. The database for this study is electronic texts available on the website www.reclameaqui.com.br. The results revealed the existence of different configurations of the medial construction in the Brazilian Portuguese, having as prototypical the one formed by SN + V. From the morphosyntactic and semantic point of view, the construction expresses a subject affected by an action that does not part from itself. As for the pragmatic aspect, the construction expresses an event that seems to have the purpose to emphasize the affected argument and to ignore, intentionally or not, the agent or the causative, since it is irrelevant to the speaker/ listener in the contextual situation.

A intercompreensão em Línguas Românicas nas aulas de Espanhol: o que querem e o que podem essas línguas?

The official documents that guide the teaching and learning process of a Foreign Language in Brazil, Parâmetros Curriculares Nacionais de Língua Estrangeira, suggest a linguistic and intercultural communication as the main objective of teaching a foreign language inorderto contribute withareflexive formation of the students.Toachieve this goal, a Virtual Interchange was realized connecting distant places like Córdoba, in Argentina, and Natal in Brazil, between High School students through Moodle platform and Facebook. The Interchange is based in the Intercomprehension in Romance Languages(IC) guidelines, inthiscase between Portuguese and Spanish, according to which every student speaks their own language and makes an effort to comprehend the others througha collaborative process thatgo es beyond the limits of mere linguistic objectives and favors the students’ reality acceptance before the diversity. This qualitative study with thno graphic characteristic stries to know whe ther differentiate projects can increase students’ interest to learn the target language. It was also set as an aim of this study to develop the intercultural competence of our students and foster the respect for different cultures. In the case of Argentinian and Brazilian students, wetried to promote reflection about social representation trying to destroy stereotypes between both groups. As methodological resources, we used interviews, questionnaires and intercomprehension activities during the Project, as well as a participant observation of the interactions betweenthe students of both countries.Webe lieve tobe contributing towards the integral formation ofth student asacriticalcitizenthatthinksa bouttheir posture before the world, which is one of the formal education aims according to Parâmetros Curriculares Nacionais. Our theoretical foundation is based on Intercomprehension in Romance Languages (IC) as a plurilingualism didactics, (JAMET AND SPIŢĂ 2010; ARAÚJO AND SÁ et al., 2003; CAPUCHO, 2010; ANDRADE etal.,2003), some the oriesaboutinter culturalisman didentity(Vallespir, 1999;DUARTE&SANCHES,2004; REVUZ,1998;SILVA,2000;CHAUÍ2006; SERRANI-INFANTE 1998), motivation and second language learning (DECI & RYAN, 1985; DÖRNYEI AND OTTÓ, 1998; DÖRNYEI, 2000, 2001; 2011) and Significant Learning Theory (AUSUBEL, 1968). The results show an increase of students’ motivation when in contact with the target language through dynamic activities in an IC context. Moreover, we noticed that a deeper thinking aboutthe Argentinian culture helped to deconstruct previous cultural representation.

Olimpíada de Língua Portuguesa: ressignificação de práticas de leitura e escrita

The search for new meanings in the basic education teaching-learning process has caused the development of public policies for mother language teaching, such as the Portuguese Language Olympics (OLP). To contribute to this search, this intervention project has as object of study reading and writing practices developed in the OLP through the educational model arising from literacy projects (TINOCO, 2008). In working towards, the general aim of reframing reading and writing practices through the PLO, developed from the teaching model that comes of literacy projects, we established three specific objectives: a) reflect on a national writing contest; b) to realign conceptual and methodological the Portuguese classes of the 7th grade school due to the developed project; c) to improve the reading and writing practices of the students in 7th grade of school where we operate. Therefore, we base ourselves in the history of Portuguese teaching in Brazil (SOARES, 2002; GERALDI, 2008), the dialogical conception of language (BAKHTIN, VOLOCHÍNOV [1929] 2009; SOARES, 1998; FARACO, 2009) in Literacy Studies (KLEIMAN, 2001, 2005, 2006; TINOCO, 2008; OLIVEIRA; TINOCO; SANTOS, 2011; STREET, 2014), the learning community concept (AFONSO, 2001), in studies of retextualization (OLIVEIRA, 2005; MARCUSCHI, 2010), gender discursive literary memories (CLARA; ALTENFELDER; ALMEIDA, 20--), in written evidence (POSSENTI, 2002) and Textual Linguistics (MARCUSCHI, 2008; ANTUNES, 2009; KOCH, 2011; SILVA [et. al.], 2013). Methodologically, this qualitative research (LÜDKE; ANDRÉ, 1986; ANDRÉ, 2005) is anchored in Applied Linguistics (MOITA LOPES, 1996). This research was supporting by students in the 7th grade, teachers, management team and parents, as well as people outside of school community. The instruments used for the generation of data were semi-structured interview, students‟ texts, audio recordings and video, photos, OLP material (teacher's book, a collection of texts and CD-ROM). The data generated allowed us to establish the following categories of analysis in relation to the texts produced: authorship, in formativeness, discursive progression, compositional structure, content, style, and language aspects. In addition, throughout the project, the collaborators have produced texts of various genres: oral interview and written request letter, legal, literary memories, oral and experience report. Also experienced a local award and participated in a national competition. They produced a video and a book with stories and student authorship of illustrations. The results achieved show that the literacy project developed also allowed macro changes: reading and writing practices, once considered strictly school studied, they were transformed into broader social practices, through which various literacy agents were able to collaboratively act. In short, they experienced writing practices that go beyond the classroom and the teacher-student relationship.

Práticas de letramento digital de professores em formação: demandas, saberes e impactos

Over the last decades, the digital inclusion public policies have significantly invested in the purchase of hardwares and softwares in order to offer technology to the Brazilian public teaching institutions, specifically computers and broadband Internet. However, the teachers education to handle these artefacts is put away, even though there is some demand from the information society. With that, this dissertation chooses as an object of study the digital literacy practices performed by 38 (thirty-eight) teachers in initial and continuous education by means of the extension course Literacies and technologies: portuguese language teaching and cyberculture demands. In this direction, we aim at investigating the digital literacy practices of developing teachers in three specific moments: before, while and after this extension action with the intent to (i) delineate the digital literacy practices performed by the collaborators before the formative action; (ii) to narrate the literacy events made possible by the extension course; (iii) to investigate the contributions of the education course to the collaborators teaching practice. We sought theoretical contributions in the literacy studies (BAYNHAM, 1995; KLEIMAN, 1995; HAMILTON; BARTON; IVANIC, 2000), specifically when it comes to digital literacy (COPE, KALANTZIS, 2000; BUZATO, 2001, 2007, 2009; SNYDER, 2002, 2008; LANKSHEAR & KNOBEL, 2002, 2008) and teacher education (PERRENOUD, 2000; SILVA, 2001). Methodologically, this virtual ethnography study (KOZINETS, 1997; HINE, 2000) is inserted into the field of Applied Linguistics and adopts a quali-quantitative research approach (NUNAN, 1992; DÖRNYEI, 2006). The data analysis permitted to evidentiate that (i) before the course, the digital literacy practices focused on the personal and academic dimensions of their realities at the expense of the professional dimension; (ii) during the extension action, the teachers collaboratively took part in the hybrid study sessions, which had a pedagogical focus on the use of ICTs, accomplishing the use of digital literacy practices - unknown before that; (iii) after the course, the attitude of the collaborator teachers concerning the use of ICTs on their regular professional basis had changed, once those teachers started to effectively make use of them, promoting social visibility to what was produced in the school. We also observed that teachers in initial education acted as more experienced peers in collaborative learning process, offering support scaffolding (VYGOTSKY, 1978; BRUNER, 1985) to teachers in continuous education. This occurred because of the undergraduates actualize digital literacy practices were more sophisticated, besides the fact being integrate generation Y (PRENSKY, 2001)

A prática docente de Myriam Coeli na década de 1960

The present work has as objective to reconstitute the biographical profile and pedagogical practices of the teacher Myriam Coeli de Araújo Dantas da Silveira, in the Professionalizing scholl of the Federal Net of the Rio Grande do Norte, in the 60 s years. The choice of the period is justified by being this the time of important changes in the Education, as an example we have the implementation of the Law of Lines of direction and Bases of the National Education, the 4.024/1961. This teacher contributed for the formation of the potiguar s society scholar, acting in the press, the journalism and the teaching, activity that I analyzed in this study. How the pedagogical practices of her had happened in the 60 s years? This question guided the research and, in the search to answer it I used as source the Public Archive of the Rio grande do Norte, the Historical and Geographic Institute of the Rio grande do Norte, the periodicals of the time, photographs, sketch books of Myriam Coeli and interviews with familiar, former-pupils and contemporaries of this master. I verified that her performance always was based in the educational changes lived deeply for her, carrying through a series of activities in the school as: elaboration of the annual program of Portuguese Language, organization of literary competitions and an practice based on the effective norms without leaving to unite respect and the understanding for the pupils. Of this form, the analysis is not summarized only to the practices of a teacher, but the configuration, in part, of the Rio Grande do Norte educational history in a determined period, the 60 s years

Custo social de oportunidade na trajetória de acesso ao ensino superior: o caso dos ingressantes na UFRN nos vestibulares de 2006 a 2010

Access is a problem of higher education in Brazil that has existed since the formalization of this has occurred since the installation of the Portuguese court in Brazil in 1808. Only 10% of young people between 18 and 24 years of age attending this level of education in 2000, arriving in 2010 just 15%, far from that determined the National Education Plan in 2001, triple that percentage by the year 2010. In addition, a majority of seats of public HEIs is populated by students from the private network, especially in high-demand courses. In this context, this study aims to identify the costs related to the trajectories of students who were successful in the vestibular UFRN editions from 2006 to 2010. Presents an overview of higher education in Brazil, a brief history of vestibular, as well as new forms of access, and some of the policies to expand such access, highlighting the argument Inclusion UFRN. Focusing on the theme of the paper presents the concepts of opportunity costs and social. After collecting data through a questionnaire and consultation of databases COMPERVE was developed to search for a descriptive and analytical, with the participation of 3,995 students, of whom 1642 (41.1%) had completed secondary education in schools public, and 2,078 (52%) in private schools. The profile indicates that 90% are single, about 50% are 21 years of age, are white and female. In the course of preparation for college entrance exams, 80% chose the course during or after completion of the last year of high school, and almost 70% said they had started preparing at that time. Findings related to the costs involved with this preparation indicate that, in most cases there were school fees and disbursements and workshops, and the purchase of books and other materials, with parents primarily responsible for this cost, the amount disbursed each month was up $ 300 for 64% of respondents and only 7% of them exceeded $ 1,000, the major non-financial costs were characterized by the following resignations: job opportunities (24%) or temporary work (20%) courses of languages (26%), leisure activities (48%), leisure travel (43%), and parties and / or shows (54%). Of social investments by the government, stand out in the tax waiver scholarships for study in private institutions, grant exemption from the registration fee of vestibular, the preparatory courses UFRN, and seminars by COMPERVE / UFRN with networks of high school. From the junction of the opportunity costs (private costs) and social costs (public costs), a new concept: the social opportunity cost, which measures the combined efforts of families and government to finance the opportunity to access higher education of an individual. This concept can and should be incorporated as a strategic vector for the sake of democratic university, which reflects the social model that is sought

Literatura de monteiro lobato no ensino de ciências

Advocating education as a humanizing task, the humanizing function of literature and the importance of scientific education, this paper proposes linking Science and Literature in Science Teaching using two specific books of Monteiro Lobato in the final series of elementary school level. Adopting the action research methodology, an interdisciplinary approach, we used the books A Reforma da Natureza and Serões de Dona Benta in two classes (8th and 9th) at Escola Estadual Professor José Mamede, located in the town of Tibau do Sul, Rio Grande do Norte. The readings were performed in Portuguese Language s course and the scientific content were discussed in Science´s classrooms. The book A Reforma da Natureza permitted to approach issues related to the environment, while the use of Serões de Dona Benta showed particularly its effectiveness in questioning the concepts of matter, mass, weight and some questions about the Nature of Science (NOS). In general, the analysis of results shows that the readings of these two books permitted interaction and dialogicity in the classroom, as well as indicates the potential of these books in contextualing and questioning the scientific content contained in it. We advise, however, the need for the science teacher be aware of the conceptual mistakes present in literary works, avoiding erroneous learning and reinforcement of alternative conceptions