O gênero joke em atividades de inglês: uma proposta intercultural de ensino-aprendizagem para o ensino médio

Our research has arisen from the interest of aligning English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classroom practice to current discussions in the ambit of learning and teaching Foreign Languages (FLs). Because of the need to integrate the linguistic development to the development of notions clung to the practice of citizenship, we have adopted a cultural perspective. We have noticed jokes as a fertile ground for discussing cultural aspects in classroom. Considering such factors, our research question is: how to explore cultural aspects in jokes for the elaboration of EFL activities which aim for the development of intercultural competence and interaction? Therefore, our general goal is to explore cultural aspects in jokes for the elaboration of EFL teaching and learning activities and our specific goals are: (I) to study official suggestions (LDB, 1996; PCNEM, 2000; PCN+EM, 2002; OCEM, 2006) regarding culture at foreign languages teaching and learning, (II) to select 05 (five) jokes and analyze them focusing on their cultural aspects, (III) to identify possible interpretations for jokes; (IV) to elaborate EFL activities which grant a privilege to jokes cultural aspects. This investigation is descriptive and documental and relies on qualitative paradigm (CHIZZOTTI, 2010; FLICK, 2009; CHAROUX, 2006; BOGDAN; BIKLEN, 1994; 1992). The corpus is constituted by jokes taken from Internet sites and by official documents (LDB, 1996; PCNEM, 1998; PCN+EM, 2000; OCEM, 2006). For the elaboration of activities we have chosen a weaker version of Content-based instruction (CBI), in which contents are cultural aspects in jokes and we have undertaken a reflection on methods, approaches and perspectives, among which there are notions about post-method and CBI, which talk to EFL learning and teaching. For theoretical support we have some discussions about FL methods and approaches (BELL, 2003; KUMARAVADIVELU, 2003; WESCHE; SKEHAN, 2002; PRABHU, 1990), a cultural perspective (KRAMSCH, 1998, 1996, 1993; BYRAM; FENG, 2004), some works in Linguistics about jokes (POSSENTI, 2010, 1998; CHIARO, 1992); notions about implicit (MAINGUENEAU, 2004, 1996; CHARAUDEAU; MAINGUENEAU, 2012) and about ambiguity (KEMPSON, 1977; CHARAUDEAU; MAINGUENEAU, 2012; TRASK, 2011), having the adoption of such categories emerged from the analyzes of some jokes

Trans-cultural aspects of social anxiety disorder and related conditions: a Brazilian case series and a review of international clinical studies

Cross-cultural studies have much to teach clinicians and researchers alike about psychopathology in general and about social anxiety disorder (SAD) in particular. Unfortunately, little is known about the degree and the mechanisms through which cultural environment may influence clinical manifestations of SAD. OBJECTIVE: Our objective was to identify culture-related clinical patterns in SAD and related disorders. METHODS: We described socio-demographic and clinical characteristics of a sample of 62 adult outpatients with SAD seen at a university clinic for anxiety and depressive disorders in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and compared them with those reported in clinical samples from North America, Europe, Asia and Oceania identified through a systematic review in Medline, PsychINFO, and LILACS. RESULTS: Our comparison of trans-cultural features of SAD lends partial support to Heimberg's (1997) contention that the majority of socio-demographic features and symptoms of this disorder are relatively independent of geographic and cultural differences. CONCLUSION: Patients with SAD were almost universally characterized by: 1) a predominance of males in clinical samples; 2) early onset of the disorder; 3) high educational attainment; and 4) great frequency of comorbidities.

Epidemiology and Anthropology: an integrated approach dealing with bio-socio-cultural aspects as strategy for the control of endemic diseases

The control of endemic diseases has not attained the desired level of effectiveness in spite of the use of modern efficient thecnologies. The classic interventionist approach for the control of schistosomiasis is centered on systemic control of the snail hosts combined to large scale medical treatment and is usually carried out without social preocupation due to the assisted communities. It is easy to understand the interest and the ethical compromise of public health research while producing studies in which the biological and social determinants as well as the cultural components should be considered and also encompass the historical dimensions and symbolic representations. In face of the recent political decision in favor of decentralizations of health administration to municipal level, we suggest, in the present paper, an integrated approach for the epidemiological diagnosis of an endemic situation at local level. Theoretical and methodological aspects from both, epidemiology and anthropology are discussed. Epidemiological methods can be used to detect the dependent variables (those related to the human infection) and the independent variables (demographic, economic, sanitary and social). Another methodological approach of anthropological /etnographic nature can be conducted in order to make an articulation of the knowledge on the various dimensions or determinant levels of the disease. Mutual comprehension, between researchers and the people under investigation, on the dynamic transmission process would be relevant for a joint construction, at local level, of programmed actions for the control of endemic diseases. This would extend reflections on the health/disease process as a whole.

Becoming skilled: The cultural and corporeal geographies of teaching and learning Thai Yoga massage

This paper explores the process of learning an embodied knowledge using the work of Dreyfus and Deleuze. Although geographers have begun to acknowledge the role of embodied knowledges in social life, there have been few in-depth case studies of how these skills are learned. This paper offers a case study of Thai Yoga massage (TYM), a ‘complementary and alternative therapy’ which is growing in popularity in the United Kingdom. Having outlined the case study, the paper explores the cultural geographies of the formalisation, documentation and contestation of the set of techniques that have come to cohere in the UK as TYM. The paper then interrogates the messy corporeal geographies of learning a skill, and briefly considers how more advanced practitioners experience their skilled practice.

The role of self-teaching in learning orthographic and semantic aspects of new words

This study explores how children learn the meaning (semantics) and spelling patterns (orthography) of novel words encountered in story context. English-speaking children (N = 88) aged 7 to 8 years read 8 stories and each story contained 1 novel word repeated 4 times. Semantic cues were provided by the story context such that children could infer the meaning of the word (specific context) or the category that the word belonged to (general context). Following story reading, posttests indicated that children showed reliable semantic and orthographic learning. Decoding was the strongest predictor of orthographic learning, indicating that self-teaching via phonological recoding was important for this aspect of word learning. In contrast, oral vocabulary emerged as the strongest predictor of semantic learning.

Translation, Communication and 'Learning' : Experiences from teaching a master program in Viet Nam

In Vietnam, as in other Asian countries, co-operation with foreign universities plays an important role for the development of higher education. This paper is based on personal experiences from teaching a Swedish Master Programme in Education Science at Vietnam National University in Hanoi. Using theories developed by Lev Vygotsky and Donald Schon, the programme is explored as an inter-cultural learning process. Three aspects are focused upon. Firstly, the fact that communication between students and teachers is conducted with the help of translators who support both teachers and students in their attempt to understand and make themselves understood. Secondly, the expressed need to connect the ideas and techniques which are studied in the programme to the students´ professional worlds. Thirdly, the need to construct a framework wherein the students can inquire into their own situations and to encourage them to try new and more productive ways to deal with problems they are confronted with.

Na 1 Nachlass Max Horkheimer, 695 - "The Collapse of German Democracy and the Expansion of National Socialism", "Cultural Aspects of National Socialism" u.a. (p. IX 169.1a - IX 170.1-4)

"The Collapse of German Democracy and the Expansion of National Socialism" (1940):; 1. Darstellung des Forschungsprojekts (15.9.1940), b. Typoskript mit handschriftlichen Korrekturen, 78 Blatt; 2. "Research work on recent trends in the history of ideas (parts of the Research project on the Collapse of German Democracy would be included)". Als Memorandum zur Eröffnung zur Eröffnung einer Zweigstelle des Instituts in Los Angeles (12.12.1940): a) Typoskript, 2 Blatt, b) Teilstück, Typoskript mit handschriftlichen Korrekturen, 1 Blatt, c) Teilstück, Typoskript mit handschriftlichen Korrekturen, 1 Blatt, d) Teilstück, Typoskript, 1 Blatt, e) Teilstück, Typoskript, 1 Blatt, f) Entwurf, Typoskript mit handschriftlichen Korrekturen und Manuskript, 3 Blatt; 3. University of California, Los Angeles: 2 Briefe (Abschrift) von Max Horkheimer, o.O., 1940, 2 Briefe (Abschrift) an Max Horkheimer, 1940, 2 Blatt; A.R.L. Gurland: "Survey of Structural Changes in the German Economy, 1933 to 1939. Technological Bases and Organizational Forms of the National Socialist Economic System". Typoskript mit handschriftlichen Korrekturen unter anderem von Theodor W. Adorno, 48 Blatt (formal nicht identisch mit "Technological Trends and Economic Structure under National Socialism", Studies in Philosophy and Social Science, Bd. IX, 1941, S. 226ff.); "Cultural Aspects of National Socialism. A Research Project" (1941):; 1. Institute of Social Research: Mitteilung über das Forschungsprojekt und das 'Supplementary Statement', Typoskript, englisch, 4 Blatt; 2. Supplementary Statement to the Research Project, a) Typoskript, 14.4.1941, 63 Blatt, b) Typoskript, 12.4.1941, mit handschriftlichen Korrekturen, 35 Blatt; 3. "Cultural Aspects of National Socialism. A Research Project" (24.2.1941), a) als Typoskript vervielfältigt, 54 Blatt, b) Typoskript mit handschriftlichen Korrekturen, 34 Blatt, c) Fassung Januar 1941, Typoskript mit handschriftlichen Korrekturen, 40 Blatt; 4. Inhaltsverzeichnisse, mit handschriftlichen Korrekturen, 3 Blatt;

Between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean : the late bronze age around the Tagus estuary (Portugal) : economic, social and cultural aspects

This paper deals with the importance, quantity and diversity of Late Bronze Age sites known around the Tagus estuary. The material culture points out to the existence of cultural stimuli from very different origins: from the Iberian Peninsula inner, the North Atlantic and the Mediterranean basin, related to the social organization and the economy of the populations that inhabited this region between the XIII century BC and the IX century BC, according to the available radiocarbon data. These populations interacted with the first Phoenicians that arrived to the region at the end of this period, after episodic relations of trading with their antecedents, from Central Mediterranean region.

Learning from errors: Psychological, relational, and cultural aspects

Although errors might foster learning, they can also be perceived as something to avoid if they are associated with negative consequences (e.g., receiving a bad grade or being mocked by classmates). Such adverse perceptions may trigger negative emotions and error-avoidance attitudes, limiting the possibility to use errors for learning. These students’ reactions may be influenced by relational and cultural aspects of errors that characterise the learning environment. Accordingly, the main aim of this research was to investigate whether relational and cultural characteristics associated with errors affect psychological mechanisms triggered by making mistakes. In the theoretical part, we described the role of errors in learning using an integrated multilevel (i.e., psychological, relational, and cultural levels of analysis) approach. Then, we presented three studies that analysed how cultural and relational error-related variables affect psychological aspects. The studies adopted a specific empirical methodology (i.e., qualitative, experimental, and correlational) and investigated different samples (i.e., teachers, primary school pupils and middle school students). Findings of study one (cultural level) highlighted errors acquire different meanings that are associated with different teachers’ error-handling strategies (e.g., supporting or penalising errors). Study two (relational level) demonstrated that teachers’ supportive error-handling strategies promote students’ perceptions of being in a positive error climate. Findings of study three (relational and psychological level) showed that positive error climate foster students’ adaptive reactions towards errors and learning outcomes. Overall, our findings indicated that different variables influence students’ learning from errors process and teachers play an important role in conveying specific meanings of errors during learning activities, dealing with students’ mistakes supportively, and establishing an error-friendly classroom environment.

The “FRA wheel” as a teaching tool to elaborate on the identity aspects of physics and mathematics as disciplines in interdisciplinary contexts

This thesis project is framed in the research field of Physics Education and aims to contribute to the reflection on the importance of disciplinary identities in addressing interdisciplinarity through the lens of the Nature of Science (NOS). In particular, the study focuses on the module on the parabola and parabolic motion, which was designed within the EU project IDENTITIES. The project aims to design modules to innovate pre-service teacher education according to contemporary challenges, focusing on interdisciplinarity in curricular and STEM topics (especially between physics, mathematics and computer science). The modules are designed according to a model of disciplines and interdisciplinarity that the project IDENTITIES has been elaborating on two main theoretical frameworks: the Family Resemblance Approach (FRA), reconceptualized for the Nature of science (Erduran & Dagher, 2014), and the boundary crossing and boundary objects framework by Akkerman and Bakker (2011). The main aim of the thesis is to explore the impact of this interdisciplinary model in the specific case of the implementation of the parabola and parabolic motion module in a context of preservice teacher education. To reach this purpose, we have analyzed some data collected during the implementation in order to investigate, in particular, the role of the FRA as a learning tool to: a) elaborate on the concept of “discipline”, within the broader problem to define interdisciplinarity; b) compare the epistemic core of physics and mathematics; c) develop epistemic skills and interdisciplinary competences in student-teachers. The analysis of the data led us to recognize three different roles played by the FRA: FRA as epistemological activator, FRA as scaffolding for reasoning and navigating (inhabiting) the complexity, and FRA as lens to investigate the relationship between physics and mathematics in the historical case.