Corporal Punishment : A study about attitudes and opinions to corporal punishment and the connection to children’s rights in South Africa and Sweden

Corporal punishment is a worldwide problem. The purpose withthis thesis is to promote a constructive discussion about the problem andconnect this to children’s rights. This gives the possibility to start adiscussion about suggestions and measures to reduce the problem. Thetheory is that corporal punishment is used as a disciplinary method tochange behavior. Children’s rights is regulated by conventions and nationallaws. The method is to conduct an analysis with interpretations andcommentaries of the research materials from South Africa and Sweden.The conclusion is that those who are positive to corporal punishment thinksit is an efficient working method, and it is about children’s safety. Thosewho are negative have experienced that alternative methods works. Asuggestion is to involve children in the work with children’s rights andeducate them in human and children’s rights with focus on obligations andresponsibility.

A Story of English Language Learning – How Can Children’s Literature be Used in Teaching Vocabulary to Young English Language Learners? : - A Literature Review

This study aims to find research relating to the use of children’s literature to promote vocabulary development in young children, particularly English language learners in Sweden. The main questions address how (methods) children’s literature can be used and why (reasons) children’s literature is often recommended for the teaching of vocabulary to young learners. The study also aims to explore reasons against the use of children’s literature in vocabulary teaching found in previous research. A systematic literature review was carried out, including results from five empirical studies. The studies involved native speakers, second language learners and foreign language learners from various backgrounds. The results suggest that while research has shown children’s literature to be a good tool to use with young learners, careful lesson planning needs to be carried out. Direct instruction and scaffolding using pictures, technology and gestures is recommended. Hence, the teacher plays an important part for the vocabulary development using children’s literature in the classroom.

The power of literature : A literature review on the incorporation of children’s literature in the lower-elementary English as a Second- Language classroom.

The use of children’s literature in the English as a Second language (ESL) classroom is a widely used teaching method. This study aims to find research relating to the incorporation of children’s literature in the lower elementary English as a secondlanguage classroom. The main questions are how children’s literature can be used in the classroom and what potential benefits it has. A systematic literature review was carried out and research from six studies was included. The included studies, analyzed in this thesis, involved children aged 6-9, who are learning a second language. The results reveal multiple benefits with the use of children’s literature in the lower elementary ESL classroom, such as vocabulary gains, improved speaking and listening skills, increased motivation and better pronunciation. The results also present a few suggestions on how to incorporate the literature in the classroom, where reading aloud to the students appears to be the most common practice. It also appears common to have post-reading sessions that include discussions about what has been read.

Children’s Literature and English Teaching – Swedish Teachers’ Methods and Attitudes

This study investigates how primary school teachers of grades F-3 pupils in a number of sample schools in Sweden use children’s literature and other methods to enhance their teaching of English. The study explores the attitudes of these teachers’ to using English children’s literature as a teaching tool to promote language development in their pupils, focusing on vocabulary. An empirical questionnaire study was carried out including a total of twenty-three respondents from seven schools in a Stockholm suburb. The respondents are all working teachers with experience of teaching English to young learners, particularly in grades F-3. This study contributes with new knowledge about the often-recommended use of children’s literature as a method for teaching English to young learners, connecting international research with empirical data from the Swedish context. While the results suggest that the majority of the respondents are positive to using children’s literature in their teaching and regularly do so, many of them feel that it is somewhat difficult to find relevant materials to plan, implement and evaluate lessons within the allocated time-frame. Based on these results, further research about how to create more effective ways of using children’s literature as a method for English vocabulary teaching in Swedish schools is recommended.

English as a Second Language and Children’s literature : An empirical study on Swedish elementary school teachers’ methods and attitudes towards the use of children’s literature in the English classroom

Previous research has shown multiple benefits and challenges with the incorporation of children’s literature in the English as a Second language (ESL) classroom. In addition, the use of children’s literature in the lower elementary English classroom is recommended by the Swedish National Agency for Education. Consequently, the current study explores how teachers in Swedish elementary school teach ESL through children’s literature. This empirical study involves English teachers from seven schools in a small municipality in Sweden. The data has been collected through an Internet survey. The study also connects the results to previous international research, comparing Swedish and international research. The results suggest that even though there are many benefits of using children’s literature in the ESL classroom, the respondents seldom use these authentic texts, due to limited time and a narrow supply of literature, among other factors. However, despite these challenges, all of the teachers claim to use children’s literature by reading aloud in the classroom. Based on the results, further research exploring pupils’ thoughts in contrast to teachers would be beneficial. In addition, the majority of the participants expressed that they wanted more information on how to use children’s literature. Therefore, additional research relating to beneficial methods of teaching English through children’s literature, especially in Sweden, is recommended.

Learning Grammar : A study of upper secondary level students’ attitudes and beliefs concerning the learning of grammar

The communicative approach to language learning is widely taught in Western education, and yet its predecessor, the grammar-translation method, is still commonly employed in other parts of the world. In Sweden, the increasing popularity of the communicative approach is often justified by the high level of students’ communicative skills (Öhman, 2013). At the same time, students’ written texts and speech contain many grammatical errors (Öhman, 2013). Consequently, being aware of their tendency to produce grammatical errors, some students express beliefs regarding both the explicit and implicit learning of grammar (Sawir, 2005; Boroujeni, 2012). The objective of this thesis is to gain more knowledge regarding students’ beliefs concerning the learning of English grammar at the upper secondary level, in Sweden. With this purpose a survey was conducted in two schools in Sweden, where 49 upper-secondary English students participated. Qualitative and quantitative methods were applied to process the collected data. Despite some difference in the participants’ ages, there were many similarities in their attitudes towards the teaching and learning of grammar. The results show that the participants in both schools believe that only by applying both, explicit and implicit methods, can they obtain a high level of language proficiency. The results of this study can help teachers in planning different activities that enhance the students’ knowledge of grammar.

The ex-Ante non-optimality of the Dempster-Schafer updating rule for ambiguous beliefs

The most widely used updating rule for non-additive probalities is the Dempster-Schafer rule. Schmeidles and Gilboa have developed a model of decision making under uncertainty based on non-additive probabilities, and in their paper “Updating Ambiguos Beliefs” they justify the Dempster-Schafer rule based on a maximum likelihood procedure. This note shows in the context of Schmeidler-Gilboa preferences under uncertainty, that the Dempster-Schafer rule is in general not ex-ante optimal. This contrasts with Brown’s result that Bayes’ rule is ex-ante optimal for standard Savage preferences with additive probabilities.

Quantifying epistemic actions in human-computer interaction

As digital systems move away from traditional desktop setups, new interaction paradigms are emerging that better integrate with users’ realworld surroundings, and better support users’ individual needs. While promising, these modern interaction paradigms also present new challenges, such as a lack of paradigm-specific tools to systematically evaluate and fully understand their use. This dissertation tackles this issue by framing empirical studies of three novel digital systems in embodied cognition – an exciting new perspective in cognitive science where the body and its interactions with the physical world take a central role in human cognition. This is achieved by first, focusing the design of all these systems on a contemporary interaction paradigm that emphasizes physical interaction on tangible interaction, a contemporary interaction paradigm; and second, by comprehensively studying user performance in these systems through a set of novel performance metrics grounded on epistemic actions, a relatively well established and studied construct in the literature on embodied cognition. The first system presented in this dissertation is an augmented Four-in-a-row board game. Three different versions of the game were developed, based on three different interaction paradigms (tangible, touch and mouse), and a repeated measures study involving 36 participants measured the occurrence of three simple epistemic actions across these three interfaces. The results highlight the relevance of epistemic actions in such a task and suggest that the different interaction paradigms afford instantiation of these actions in different ways. Additionally, the tangible version of the system supports the most rapid execution of these actions, providing novel quantitative insights into the real benefits of tangible systems. The second system presented in this dissertation is a tangible tabletop scheduling application. Two studies with single and paired users provide several insights into the impact of epistemic actions on the user experience when these are performed outside of a system’s sensing boundaries. These insights are clustered by the form, size and location of ideal interface areas for such offline epistemic actions to occur, as well as how can physical tokens be designed to better support them. Finally, and based on the results obtained to this point, the last study presented in this dissertation directly addresses the lack of empirical tools to formally evaluate tangible interaction. It presents a video-coding framework grounded on a systematic literature review of 78 papers, and evaluates its value as metric through a 60 participant study performed across three different research laboratories. The results highlight the usefulness and power of epistemic actions as a performance metric for tangible systems. In sum, through the use of such novel metrics in each of the three studies presented, this dissertation provides a better understanding of the real impact and benefits of designing and developing systems that feature tangible interaction.

Educação - Corporeidade - Lazer: saber da experiência cultural em prelúdio

In the passage of life, the labyrinth of songs and corners are propitious ways for a better comprehension, perception and incorporation of learnings that emerge from our subjectiveness in a magic caught by senses. Eyesight, taste, hearing, touch and smell in communication with the world, put us in front of cultural diversities. The ludicity accumulated by experiences promote the flow of hilarious and concrete discoveries that express themselves in work and leisure demonstrations. Such reflections emerge indicators to the problematic construction centralized in the incorporation of cultural experience knowledge to the formation process and professional interventions in this rule and area. From this significant problematic, aiming to deepen studies, we favored leisure as field of investigative production in full expansion. This, for sure, was an exercise of qualification that guided us through meander of education and made us dip into studies about the corporeity. A research in which the scenery was painted and constructed with the complicity of the culture lived with shine, colors, rhythm and drummings of one of the most present cultural cycles: carnival. Recognized as a stimulant for beauty, participation, socialization, and helped us to enter in the essence of gestures and expressions of corporeity, to think, elaborate and socialize a critic-scientific knowledge which, appropriating from the rhythm of colors, of sounds, of tonalities, of senses and of meanings impregnated in the web of life. All these things seduced the researcher, making imagination flow amid ludic-creative dialogues with the imaginary of researchers creation and production in the rule and area of leisure, education and corporeity. Option that made us outline as objective to investigate and interpret how leisure teachers-researchers, from their studies, researches and interventions, locate and incorporate the knowledge from cultural experience to the formation process and intervention of professionals in this rule and in this area, emphasizing the contributions from this knowledge to fence and qualify this praxis. So, as living each cultural scenery, each epistemological contribution was feeding the production with images of the different versions of the Brazilian breedings, creating and raising expectations and new discoveries and newcomers. With the seriousness of a scientific study, we lived an xxiii academic experience with complex intensity, rigor and coherence, eliminating, step by step, the risks and limitations always present in a work of this magnitude. However, we weren t, even for one moment, alone. Our epistemic regard always maintained mediated by the principles of a methodological approach - the Etnomethodology, that while central guide provided us clues to unveil the lived world by our people-playful , in a universe of 15 members, that allowed themselves to comprehend, comment, analyze. This way, grasping the object in interactions arised and provoked by narrative interview, it was systematically dialected by (re) interpretation of images and formulations of people-playful, enriched by their beliefs, myths, conceptions and rituals inherent to knowledge from cultural experience, which each one attuned with Brazilian and international history, in a mixture of senses echoed from songs and tales. Inspired in drummings and percussions, clothing and choreographies of gestures and expressions, in mixtures produced in unit interactions in the multiplicity shown as necessary requests to the totality of life, with ludicity the rescue of the past, the conquest of present and the construction of future was the axle guide. This rich process of scientific creation made us realize that is possible qualify and empower the praxis in the rule and area of leisure incorporating the knowledge from cultural experience. What also becomes possible is the recuperation of objective revolutionaries and changing conditions of praxis itself with the view of strengthening and triggerment of vital elements in the rule and area of leisure. We also reaffirm that from this praxis emerge elements necessary to human formation in plenitude, by the appropriation of knowledge that guide the facing of challenges of a complex and plural world that valorize education, corporeity and leisure

Children’s rights in the digital age

The digital divide exacerbates inequalities in access to information and knowledge, making it more difficult to socialize with peers and limiting awareness of and the ability to use basic tools for life in society. Reducing this gap sets in motion virtuous synergies of social and cultural inclusion for children and adolescents, facilitating skills development and generating lifelong opportunities. Although the younger generations are connected digital natives, inequalities persist among socioeconomic groups, though these have been tempered by connectivity programmes in public schools in the region. The main article of this edition of Challenges uses current information to examine the progress made and the gaps that remain in this area. Providing children and adolescents with access is merely a first step. They then need to be protected from the risks associated with information and communications technologies (ICTs), which must be harnessed for purposes of meaningful learning, promoting uses that are more in line with the educational curriculum. Lastly, the article posits that connectivity policies must be linked to the fulfilment of children’s rights in the framework of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. As is customary, this issue also contains information on meetings and conferences held in the region during the year and recent publications in this field. Mention is also made of good practices from Peru in reducing gender gaps and a joint initiative between mobile operators and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) to protect children in the digital age. Viewpoints includes expert opinion on the potential of ICTs as tools that can facilitate the exercise of the rights of children and adolescents, but also lead to violations of these rights.

Crenças parentais quanto à mesada

A preocupação relacionada à socialização econômica da criança e a possível influência das práticas parentais neste processo têm fomentado pesquisas que contribuem para o entendimento de contextos culturais e sociais, ampliando a capacidade de compreensão dos comportamentos parentais e do desenvolvimento infantil. Conforme a literatura, os pais são os principais agentes de socialização para a alfabetização econômica das crianças. Mediante a prática de dar mesada a compreensão econômica dos filhos aumenta e por meio de recompensas e sanções, os pais instalam nos filhos suas crenças sobre economia. Apesar de este ser um tema vastamente estudado em outros países, no Brasil as pesquisas são poucas e abrangem apenas a classe média, desconsiderando a grande participação da pessoa da classe baixa na economia e na formação de futuros consumidores. Este estudo teve como objetivo investigar as crenças e práticas dos pais sobre a mesada. Fizeram parte da pesquisa 32 pais de renda média e baixa, com filhos entre 6 e 16 anos. Foi utilizada a técnica de grupo focal, mediante um guia de temas constituído por questões relevantes da literatura, como conceito e propósito da mesada, dentre outros. As discussões foram gravadas, transcritas e submetidas à análise dos dados, mediante um programa de computador para análise de dados textual denominado Alceste, versão 4.5, criado por Marx Reinert. Os resultados apontaram cinco classes que foram organizadas em três eixos temáticos. Nas classes associadas com o processo de utilização da mesada, encontrou-se uma busca dos pais de justificar o uso da mesada como estratégia educativa, ora servindo como instrumento de recompensa, ora como instrumento que fomenta maus hábitos. Foi identificado também que além da função educativa a mesada teve uma função socializadora, de integração e status social. Os conteúdos do tema história familiar acerca do orçamento mostraram relatos dos pais bastante distintos, em que ora remetiam a uma história familiar, principalmente a dos próprios pais, ora ao processo de negociação, na relação conjugal, do orçamento e dos gastos. Os pais discutiram assuntos relacionados a quem deve controlar as finanças da casa (homem ou mulher) e também se os filhos precisam saber como acontece o orçamento familiar. Verificou-se no terceiro eixo a existência de alguns fatores relacionados a componentes da definição de Mesada, como freqüência e regularidade, valor e necessidade dos filhos. As respostas também envolveram a quantia de dinheiro que se deve dar aos filhos e a justificativa dos pais para pararem de dar mesada aos filhos.