Dimensões do êxito de egressos de escolas públicas no processo seletivo para o cursos de medicina da UFPE

Garantir a oferta de uma educação de qualidade nas escolas públicas de estados e municípios é um grande desafio a ser enfrentado pelo Brasil. Em se tratando da aprovação nos vestibulares para cursos superiores prestigiados socialmente, o êxito de egressos dessas instituições é difícil em qualquer universidade. Esta investigação, de natureza qualitativa articula dados quantitativos para fundamentar as discussões acerca dos fatores que explicam a aprovação desses estudantes no processo seletivo para o curso de medicina da Universidade Federal de Pernambuco [UFPE]. A fim de se realizar o estudo de caso em questão, utilizamos três instrumentos de recolha: o questionário, contendo informações pessoais e dados da formação educacional dos três egressos e de seus familiares; a entrevista semiestruturada, onde os três estudantes e seus pais tiveram a possibilidade de discorrer sobre os temas propostos; e a história de vida, através da qual um dos sujeitos retratou todo o conjunto da experiência vivida. Todo o material foi comparado e relacionado durante a análise por meio da triangulação de dados. Os nossos resultados confirmam os achados de outros trabalhos do gênero quando apontam que melhorar a qualidade da Educação Básica é essencial para que o Brasil avance na formação de mão de obra, mas, diferencia-se de alguns deles, quando sugere que, em relação aos candidatos que tentam ingressar no curso de medicina, tão importantes quanto o interesse e a mobilização do estudante e de seus pais em relação aos estudos são os investimentos em serviços de apoio pedagógico e psicológico, tanto aqueles prestados pelas escolas quanto os que são realizados em locais especializados [dependendo do caso].

Teachers as researchers and teachers as software developers: how use-case analysis helps build better educational software

A series of government initiatives has raised both the profile of ICT in the curriculum and the expectation that high quality teaching and learning resources will be accessible across electronic networks. In order for e-learning resources such as websites to have the maximum educational impact, teachers need to be involved in their design and development. Use-case analysis provides a means of defining user requirements and other constraints in such a way that software developers can produce e-learning resources which reflect teachers' professional knowledge and support their classroom practice. It has some features in common with the participatory action research used to develop other aspects of classroom practice. Two case-studies are presented: one involves the development of an on-line resource centred on transcripts of original historical documents; the other describes how 'Learning how to Learn', a major, distributed research project funded under the ESRC Teaching and Learning Research Programme is using use-case analysis to develop web resources and services.

Introducing matrix management within a children's services setting - personal reflections

This article reflects on the introduction of ‘matrix management’ arrangements for an Educational Psychology Service (EPS) within a Children’s Service Directorate of a Local Authority (LA). It seeks to demonstrate critical self-awareness, consider relevant literature with a view to bringing insights to processes and outcomes, and offers recommendations regarding the use of matrix management. The report arises from an East Midland’s LA initiative: ALICSE − Advanced Leadership in an Integrated Children’s Service Environment. Through a literature review and personal reflection, the authors consider the following: possible tensions within the development of matrix management arrangements; whether matrix management is a prerequisite within complex organizational systems; and whether competing professional cultures may contribute barriers to creating complementary and collegiate working. The authors briefly consider some research paradigms, notably ethnographic approaches, soft systems methodology, activity theory and appreciative inquiry. These provide an analytic framework for the project and inform this iterative process of collaborative inquiry. Whilst these models help illuminate otherwise hidden processes, none have been implemented following full research methodologies, reflecting the messy reality of local authority working within dynamic organizational structures and shrinking budgets. Nevertheless, this article offers an honest reflection of organizational change within a children’s services environment.

Educational inclusiveness through Ludic engagement and digital creativity

This paper describes an approach to teaching and learning that combines elements of ludic engagement, gamification and digital creativity in order to make the learning of a serious subject a fun, interactive and inclusive experience for students regardless of their gender, age, culture, experience or any disabilities that they may have. This approach has been successfully used to teach software engineering to first year students but could in principle be transferred to any subject or discipline.

The determinants of inward foreign direct investment in business services across European regions

The determinants of inward foreign direct investment in business services across European regions, Regional Studies. The role of forward linkages with manufacturing sectors and other service sectors as attractors of business services foreign direct investment (FDI) is studied at the regional level. Using data on 146 NUTS-2 regions, it is found that regions specialized in those (manufacturing) sectors that are high potential users of business services attract more FDI in the business services than other regions. Results are robust to the inclusion of the traditional determinants of foreign investments at the regional level as well as to controls for spatial dependence. The results suggest that regional policies aimed at attracting foreign investors in the business service industry might prove ineffective in the absence of a pre-existing local intermediate demand

The use of ICT by adults with learning disabilities in day and residential services

The use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) by adults with learning disabilities has been positively promoted over the past decade. More recently, policy statements and guidance from the UK government have underlined the importance of ICT for adults with learning disabilities specifically, as well as for the population in general, through the potential it offers for social inclusion. The aim of the present study was to provide a picture of how ICT is currently being used within one organisation providing specialist services for adults with learning disabilities and more specifically to provide a picture of its use in promoting community participation. Nine day and 14 residential services were visited as part of a qualitative study to answer three main questions: What kinds of computer programs are being used? What are they being used for? Does this differ between day and residential services? Computers and digital cameras were used for a wide range of activities and ‘mainstream’ programs were used more widely than those developed for specific user groups. In day services, ICT was often embedded in wider projects and activities, whilst use in houses was based around leisure interests. In both contexts, ICT was being used to facilitate communication, although this was more linked to within-service activities, rather than those external to service provision.

NAVET's Boxes - an Evaluation of the Post-Visit Loan Service at a Science Centre in Borås

Many pedagogues believe science centres to be a good complement to the more formal school teaching. For a visit to a science centre to be as educational as possible, there is a need for pre-visit information of some sort, a guided visit, and post-visit work. Many science centres offer loan services of different kinds. At Navet, a science centre in Borås, teachers can borrow boxes with experiments connected to the different themes they provide. The experiments are supposed to be a continuation of the visit and help settle the knowledge gained during the visit. This thesis is an evaluation of how the boxes function in the schools, and what the teachers think of them. The study was conducted through questionnaires and interviews with both teachers and the staff at Navet. The results of the study are very positive. Many teachers have been involved with Navet from the very beginning and they see a visit to Navet as an integrated part of their teaching. Some boxes work better than others and some might need clearer information, but overall the teachers see the boxes as timesavers, as a way to vary their teaching more easily, and as a help for teachers not specialized in mathematics and science.

Building a Learning Architecture : e-Learning and e-Services

With the rapid advancement of the webtechnology, more and more educationalresources, including software applications forteaching/learning methods, are available acrossthe web, which enables learners to access thelearning materials and use various ways oflearning at any time and any place. Moreover,various web-based teaching/learning approacheshave been developed during the last decade toenhance the capability of both educators andlearners. Particularly, researchers from bothcomputer science and education are workingtogether, collaboratively focusing ondevelopment of pedagogically enablingtechnologies which are believed to improve theinfrastructure of education systems andprocesses, including curriculum developmentmodels, teaching/learning methods, managementof educational resources, systematic organizationof communication and dissemination ofknowledge and skills required by and adapted tousers. Despite of its fast development, however,there are still great gaps between learningintentions, organization of supporting resources,management of educational structures,knowledge points to be learned and interknowledgepoint relationships such as prerequisites,assessment of learning outcomes, andtechnical and pedagogic approaches. Moreconcretely, the issues have been widelyaddressed in literature include a) availability andusefulness of resources, b) smooth integration ofvarious resources and their presentation, c)learners’ requirements and supposed learningoutcomes, d) automation of learning process interms of its schedule and interaction, and e)customization of the resources and agilemanagement of the learning services for deliveryas well as necessary human interferences.Considering these problems and bearing in mindthe advanced web technology of which weshould make full use, in this report we willaddress the following two aspects of systematicarchitecture of learning/teaching systems: 1)learning objects – a semantic description andorganization of learning resources using the webservice models and methods, and 2) learningservices discovery and learning goals match foreducational coordination and learning serviceplanning.

Meeting the Standards: An Analysis of Eight Grade Educational Assesment Test Scores in Maine

This paper examines the impact of socioeconomic factors on eighth grade achievement test scores in the face of federal and state initiatives for educational reform in Maine. We use student-level data over a five year period to provide a framework for understanding the policy implications of these initiatives. We model performance on standardized tests using a seemingly unrelated regressions approach and then determine the likelihood of meeting the standards defined by the adequate yearly progress requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act and Maine Learning Results initiatives. Our results indicate that the key factors influencing a student’s test scores include the education of a student’s parents, special services received for learning disabilities, and alternative measures of academic achievement.

RWater – A Cyber Enabled Tool For Hydrologic Modeling And Analysis

Existing distributed hydrologic models are complex and computationally demanding for using as a rapid-forecasting policy-decision tool, or even as a class-room educational tool. In addition, platform dependence, specific input/output data structures and non-dynamic data-interaction with pluggable software components inside the existing proprietary frameworks make these models restrictive only to the specialized user groups. RWater is a web-based hydrologic analysis and modeling framework that utilizes the commonly used R software within the HUBzero cyber infrastructure of Purdue University. RWater is designed as an integrated framework for distributed hydrologic simulation, along with subsequent parameter optimization and visualization schemes. RWater provides platform independent web-based interface, flexible data integration capacity, grid-based simulations, and user-extensibility. RWater uses RStudio to simulate hydrologic processes on raster based data obtained through conventional GIS pre-processing. The program integrates Shuffled Complex Evolution (SCE) algorithm for parameter optimization. Moreover, RWater enables users to produce different descriptive statistics and visualization of the outputs at different temporal resolutions. The applicability of RWater will be demonstrated by application on two watersheds in Indiana for multiple rainfall events.

Three essays on local demand for public services

Local provision of public services has the positive effect of increasing the efficiency because each locality has its idiosyncrasies that determine a particular demand for public services. This dissertation addresses different aspects of the local demand for public goods and services and their relationship with political incentives. The text is divided in three essays. The first essay aims to test the existence of yardstick competition in education spending using panel data from Brazilian municipalities. The essay estimates two-regime spatial Durbin models with time and spatial fixed effects using maximum likelihood, where the regimes represent different electoral and educational accountability institutional settings. First, it is investigated whether the lame duck incumbents tend to engage in less strategic interaction as a result of the impossibility of reelection, which lowers the incentives for them to signal their type (good or bad) to the voters by mimicking their neighbors’ expenditures. Additionally, it is evaluated whether the lack of electorate support faced by the minority governments causes the incumbents to mimic the neighbors’ spending to a greater extent to increase their odds of reelection. Next, the essay estimates the effects of the institutional change introduced by the disclosure on April 2007 of the Basic Education Development Index (known as IDEB) and its goals on the strategic interaction at the municipality level. This institutional change potentially increased the incentives for incumbents to follow the national best practices in an attempt to signal their type to voters, thus reducing the importance of local information spillover. The same model is also tested using school inputs that are believed to improve students’ performance in place of education spending. The results show evidence for yardstick competition in education spending. Spatial auto-correlation is lower among the lame ducks and higher among the incumbents with minority support (a smaller vote margin). In addition, the institutional change introduced by the IDEB reduced the spatial interaction in education spending and input-setting, thus diminishing the importance of local information spillover. The second essay investigates the role played by the geographic distance between the poor and non-poor in the local demand for income redistribution. In particular, the study provides an empirical test of the geographically limited altruism model proposed in Pauly (1973), incorporating the possibility of participation costs associated with the provision of transfers (Van de Wale, 1998). First, the discussion is motivated by allowing for an “iceberg cost” of participation in the programs for the poor individuals in Pauly’s original model. Next, using data from the 2000 Brazilian Census and a panel of municipalities based on the National Household Sample Survey (PNAD) from 2001 to 2007, all the distance-related explanatory variables indicate that an increased proximity between poor and non-poor is associated with better targeting of the programs (demand for redistribution). For instance, a 1-hour increase in the time spent commuting by the poor reduces the targeting by 3.158 percentage points. This result is similar to that of Ashworth, Heyndels and Smolders (2002) but is definitely not due to the program leakages. To empirically disentangle participation costs and spatially restricted altruism effects, an additional test is conducted using unique panel data based on the 2004 and 2006 PNAD, which assess the number of benefits and the average benefit value received by beneficiaries. The estimates suggest that both cost and altruism play important roles in targeting determination in Brazil, and thus, in the determination of the demand for redistribution. Lastly, the results indicate that ‘size matters’; i.e., the budget for redistribution has a positive impact on targeting. The third essay aims to empirically test the validity of the median voter model for the Brazilian case. Information on municipalities are obtained from the Population Census and the Brazilian Supreme Electoral Court for the year 2000. First, the median voter demand for local public services is estimated. The bundles of services offered by reelection candidates are identified as the expenditures realized during incumbents’ first term in office. The assumption of perfect information of candidates concerning the median demand is relaxed and a weaker hypothesis, of rational expectation, is imposed. Thus, incumbents make mistakes about the median demand that are referred to as misperception errors. Thus, at a given point in time, incumbents can provide a bundle (given by the amount of expenditures per capita) that differs from median voter’s demand for public services by a multiplicative error term, which is included in the residuals of the demand equation. Next, it is estimated the impact of the module of this misperception error on the electoral performance of incumbents using a selection models. The result suggests that the median voter model is valid for the case of Brazilian municipalities.

Implementação da política de assistência social em Mossoró/RN : uma avaliação a partir dos centros de referência da assistência social

The current National Policy for Social Assistance (PNAS) is the instrument that regulates the organization and procedures of social-welfare actions. Developed and approved in 2004 since the Unified Social Assistance System (ITS) was crated in 2003, it reaffirms the democratic principles of the Social Assistance Organic Law (LOAS) focusing on the universalization of social rights and equality of rights when accessing the social-welfare system. In the SUAS point of view, the PNAS highlights the information, monitoring and evaluation fields for being the best way to assure the regulation, organization and control by the Federal Government paying attention to the principles of decentralization and participation. This political-institutional rearrangement occurs through the pact among all the three federal entities. The pact deals with the implementation of the task. It says that it has to be shared between the federal autonomous entities, established by dividing responsibilities. To the cities, considered as the smallest territorial unit of the federation and closer to the population, was given the primary responsibility, which is to feed and maintain the database of SUAS NETWORK and identify families living in situations of social vulnerability. In addition to these responsibilities, the cities that have full autonomy in the management of their actions, have the responsibility to organize the basic social protection and the special social protection, that using the Center of Social Assistance Reference (CRAS) and the Center of Specialized Social Assistance Reference (CREAS), are responsible for the provision of programs, projects and services that strengthen the family and community; that promote people who are able to enjoy the benefits of the Continuing benefit of Provisions (BPC) and transfer of incomes; that hold the infringed rights on its territory; that maximize the protective role of families and strengthen its users organization. In Mossoró/RN, city classified as autonomous in the social assistance management, has five units of CRAS that, for being public utilities, are considered the main units of basic social protection, since they are responsible for the connection between the other institutions that compose the network of local social protection. Also known as Family House, the CRAS, among other programs and services, offers the Integral Attention to Families Program (PAIF), Juvenile ProJovem Program, socio-educational coexistence services programs, as well as sending people to other public policies and social-welfare services network, provides information, among others. In this large field, social workers are highlighted as keys to implement the policy of social assistance within the city, followed by psychologists and educators. They should be effective public employees, as a solution to ensure that the provision of the services are to be continued, provided to the population living around the units. However, what we can find here is inattention to the standard rules of social assistance, which not only undermines the quality of programs and services, but also the consolidation of policy on welfare as public policy of social rights

Inclusão da criança com deficiência na estratégia de saúde da família

The objective of analyze the shift of the working process of the ESF team in care of children with disabilities, from awareness-raising actions. It is a qualitative study, with the action-research method. Thirteen health professionals were involved from two teams of ESF unit area of the Unidade de Saúde da Família Dr. Chico Porto (UBSFCP) in Mossoró, from March to August 2011. Data were analyzed following the direction of freirean s thematic analysis. In the situational diagnosis of the current reality of CwD assistance in that UBSFCP, through participant observation and application of semi-structured interviews with professionals, we realize that despite these actions carry some assistance to the CwD, in practice few are used for inclusion and accessibility. The monitoring of the CwD is done through individual consultations by each team professional, home visits when possible, both ruled on the complaints and problems, with little solving in the used actions. Since the need for a change in the treatment model and training requirements as pointed out by professionals in the interview, then we decided to build the proposed of training suggested by the multidisciplinary team and put together collectively the achievement of this moment in all its phases. In the step of implementation (action), aspects related to the current situation in Brazil and Mossoró (Laws, policies and health care) for the CwD and CwD Assistance and their family in the ESF in the first two moments of the first training (action) were contemplate. On the second day we discussed the specialized care to CwD, contribution of the Handicapped Parents and Friends Association of Mossoró and in a second moment a workshop was held in which awareness for inclusion of CwD and actions of ESF were discussed. All these moments were discussed and collectively constructed. In the evaluation, we found that implementation (action) allowed to the professional the comprehension of new understandings about people with disabilities, on ways to include, guiding, caring, watching, and mainly to have a new vision on health assistance of the CwD, expanding assistance beyond clinical aspects and recognizing the educational aspects of the rights and duties of citizens and the inclusion of these children in the social spaces area. As difficulties, we face the need for some professionals to be absent to attend another job, solve personal problems, and little or no participation. Thus, during this action-research, the subjects were able to realize the importance of carrying out their practice to the quality of life for him and to the one they care

Breastfeeding knowledge and practice of health professionals in public health care services

Objetivou-se avaliar conhecimentos e práticas sobre aleitamento materno de profissionais que atendem lactentes em unidades de atenção básica, ou maternidades públicas, de município do interior paulista, Brasil. É estudo epidemiológico, sendo a população composta por 89 enfermeiros e médicos. Suas respostas a um questionário estruturado foram analisadas no total e segundo o local de trabalho, aplicando-se o teste de diferença de proporções (qui-quadrado), considerando-se p<0,05 como nível crítico. Como parâmetros de acertos foram consideradas as recomendações do Ministério da Saúde. As diferenças significativas para conhecimentos e práticas, segundo o local de trabalho, foram restritas a alguns aspectos, com resultados discretamente melhores dos escores médios de acertos dos profissionais das unidades de atenção básica. Independente do local de trabalho, verificou-se desempenho regular e ruim em diferentes aspectos estudados, indicando que possíveis intervenções para a capacitação nessa temática deverão incluir profissionais de todos os níveis de atenção à saúde.

The effectiveness of educational practice in diabetic foot: a view from Brazil

Background: The aim of the present study was to evaluate the prevention and self-inspection behavior of diabetic subjects with foot at ulcer risk, no previous episode, who participated in the routine visits and standardized education provided by the service and who received prescribed footwear. This evaluation was carried out using a questionnaire scoring from 0-10 (high scores reflect worse practice compliance).Results: 60 patients were studied (30 of each sex); mean age was 62 years, mean duration of the disease was 17 years. As for compliance, 90% showed a total score <= 5, only 8.7% regularly wore the footwear supplied; self foot inspection 65%, 28,3% with additional familiar inspection; creaming 77%; proper washing and drying 88%; proper cutting of toe nails 83%; no cuticle cutting 83%; routine shoe inspection 77%; no use of pumice stones or similar abrasive 70%; no barefoot walking 95%.Conclusion: the planned and multidisciplinary educational approach enabled high compliance of the ulcer prevention care needed in diabetic patients at risk for complications. In contrast, compliance observed for the use of footwear provided was extremely low, demonstrating that the issue of its acceptability should be further and carefully addressed. In countries of such vast dimensions as Brazil multidisciplinary educational approaches can and should be performed by the services providing care for patients with foot at risk for complications according to the reality of local scenarios. Furthermore, every educational program should assess the learning, results obtained and efficacy in the target population by use of an adequate evaluation system.