A importância dos Sistemas Aumentativos e Alternativos da Comunicação (SAAC), como estímulo da linguagem da criança no Jardim de Infância

A presente dissertação foi elaborada com a finalidade de procurar respostas e de atingir uma melhor compreensão sobre a aquisição e o domínio da linguagem da criança, em idade pré-escolar, bem como de aferir a importância de que os Sistemas Aumentativos e Alternativos da Comunicação (SAAC) se revestem enquanto estímulo para a mesma. Este fascínio e interesse por esta temática, foi potenciado pela experiência de ter lidado com uma criança que apresentava dificuldades a esse nível. Senti então a grande/premente necessidade de conhecer a função que a linguagem tem no desenvolvimento da criança, bem como familiarizar-me com ferramentas para desenvolver as aprendizagens, quer no contexto escolar, quer no dia-a-dia. Este trabalho pretende aferir o grau de conhecimento dos Educadores de Infância relativamente aos Sistemas Aumentativos e Alternativos da Linguagem (SAAL), utilizando, inquéritos por questionários como ferramenta de investigação para a obtenção de respostas, usando uma população alvo constituída por Educadores de Infância. A presente Dissertação está intimamente ligada à teoria, dado que esta contribui para a compreensão desta problemática, permitindo produzir ou verificar elementos do conhecimento no âmbito da mesma. Este documento encontra-se estruturado em duas áreas: a correspondente à fundamentação teórica e outra que diz respeito ao enquadramento empírico, onde será descrita a metodologia, feita a apresentação dos resultados e sua discussão, culminando com a conclusão, que apresenta propostas de trabalho futuras. Pretende-se com esta pesquisa e análise, ajudar a melhorar as práticas pedagógicas e a desenvolver precocemente a linguagem das crianças em ambiente de Jardim de Infância, bem como valorizar e tornar conhecidas as funcionalidades dos SAAC, podendo estes funcionarem como estimulantes e promotores de um melhor desenvolvimento da linguagem nas crianças de tenra idade.

Quatro pilares da educação para o século XXI : análise de sua aplicação em uma escola de Aracaju

Este estudo buscou investigar, a partir de entrevistas voltadas aos professores e diretores pedagógicos de uma escola de educação básica da rede privada da cidade de Aracaju – Sergipe – Brasil, se eles se aperceberam das mudanças ocorridas no mundo, no século XXI, no qual tivemos como variáveis a Globalização, a Tecnologia, Meio Ambiente, Informação e Mudanças na Educação. Tomando conhecimento dessas alterações, procurou-se analisar quais práticas foram adotadas para responder às novas demandas. Questionou-se sobre o que os atores educacionais estão a fazer para preparar o cidadão para o enfrentamento e adaptação a essas mudanças, ou seja, a aplicabilidade dos Quatro Pilares da Educação para o século XXI, tendo como reverência o Relatório Delors (1999). As entrevistas foram divididas em dois momentos: o primeiro considerou as cinco variáveis que caracterizam as mudanças ocorridas no mundo e que fomentaram questões sobre cada uma delas; o segundo, baseado nos pilares educacionais, levantou interrogações quanto à vivência deles na prática escolar. Ao analisar as entrevistas constatou-se que os entrevistados se aperceberam das mudanças no mundo: as fragilidades dos relacionamentos, o aumento da desigualdade social, os benefícios e malefícios das tecnologias, a discreta mudança de postura das empresas e Estado frente ao meio ambiente, o excesso de informações que temos recebido e a falta de capacidade de gerenciá-las e as políticas educativas. A essas mudanças, a Escola reage, considerando todos os saberes necessários para a Educação do século XXI, ou seja, os pilares propostos pela Unesco. A postura dessa Escola, perante as demandas, concretiza o discurso e colabora para a dissipação dessas práticas para outras escolas, o que responde de forma positiva à problemática levantada.

A Supervisão Pedagógica geradora de dinâmicas colaborativas entre professores de Matemática e Ciências Físico- Químicas

Numa escola que se encontra em transformação no sentido de se adaptar aos contextos sociais, culturais e políticos que a rodeiam, cabe aos professores serem agentes ativos na definição do caminho a percorrer, visando o aumento da qualidade educativa a proporcionar aos nossos jovens. O questionamento inerente à reflexão sobre o percurso profissional levou à identificação da situação problema e à formulação daquela que é a questão de partida deste trabalho: Como pode a supervisão pedagógica promover a troca de experiências e o trabalho colaborativo entre os docentes de Matemática e de Ciências Físico Químicas? Para dar resposta a esta questão, elaborámos o enquadramento teórico, orientado pelas palavras-chave e com recurso a autores de referência, no qual pretendemos salientar as principais investigações que conferem suporte às temáticas subjacentes: Cultura profissional docente, Supervisão pedagógica, Gestão curricular. Como o objetivo geral do trabalho de projeto é conceber um projeto de supervisão pedagógica que promova a troca de experiências e o trabalho colaborativo entre os professores de Matemática e de Ciências Físico Químicas, a terceira parte foi estruturada com base nos princípios subjacentes à metodologia de projeto. Recolhemos opiniões através de Inquéritos por Questionário, aplicados a todos os professores dos grupos disciplinares de Matemática e de Ciências Físico-Químicas. A análise dos questionários permitiu constatar que o que é prescrito na literatura especializada não parece ser posto em prática, verificando-se incongruências entre o que deve ser feito e o que é levado a cabo na prática, o que nos leva a salientar a necessidade de formação em supervisão e mais concretamente em trabalho colaborativo. É pois tendo por base o que aqui é referido que se propõe, como plano de intervenção, a realização de uma oficina de formação que, em primeiro lugar, seria destinada aos docentes de Matemática e de Ciências Físico Químicas, devendo posteriormente ser alargada a outros grupos disciplinares e a todos os departamentos.

Errors associated with the preparation of aseptic products in UK hospital pharmacies: lessons from the national aseptic error reporting scheme

Background Pharmacy aseptic units prepare and supply injectables to minimise risks. The UK National Aseptic Error Reporting Scheme has been collecting data on pharmacy compounding errors, including near-misses, since 2003. Objectives The cumulative reports from January 2004 to December 2007, inclusive, were analysed. Methods The different variables of product types, error types, staff making and detecting errors, stage errors detected, perceived contributory factors, and potential or actual outcomes were presented by cross-tabulation of data. Results A total of 4691 reports were submitted against an estimated 958 532 items made, returning 0.49% as the overall error rate. Most of the errors were detected before reaching patients, with only 24 detected during or after administration. The highest number of reports related to adult cytotoxic preparations (40%) and the most frequently recorded error was a labelling error (34.2%). Errors were mostly detected at first check in assembly area (46.6%). Individual staff error contributed most (78.1%) to overall errors, while errors with paediatric parenteral nutrition appeared to be blamed on low staff levels more than other products were. The majority of errors (68.6%) had no potential patient outcomes attached, while it appeared that paediatric cytotoxic products and paediatric parenteral nutrition were associated with greater levels of perceived patient harm. Conclusions The majority of reports were related to near-misses, and this study highlights scope for examining current arrangements for checking and releasing products, certainly for paediatric cytotoxic and paediatric parenteral nutrition preparations within aseptic units, but in the context of resource and capacity constraints.

The impact of a closed-loop electronic prescribing and administration system on prescribing errors, administration errors and staff time: a before-and-after study

Objectives: To assess the impact of a closed-loop electronic prescribing, automated dispensing, barcode patient identification and electronic medication administration record (EMAR) system on prescribing and administration errors, confirmation of patient identity before administration, and staff time. Design, setting and participants: Before-and-after study in a surgical ward of a teaching hospital, involving patients and staff of that ward. Intervention: Closed-loop electronic prescribing, automated dispensing, barcode patient identification and EMAR system. Main outcome measures: Percentage of new medication orders with a prescribing error, percentage of doses with medication administration errors (MAEs) and percentage given without checking patient identity. Time spent prescribing and providing a ward pharmacy service. Nursing time on medication tasks. Results: Prescribing errors were identified in 3.8% of 2450 medication orders pre-intervention and 2.0% of 2353 orders afterwards (p<0.001; χ2 test). MAEs occurred in 7.0% of 1473 non-intravenous doses pre-intervention and 4.3% of 1139 afterwards (p = 0.005; χ2 test). Patient identity was not checked for 82.6% of 1344 doses pre-intervention and 18.9% of 1291 afterwards (p<0.001; χ2 test). Medical staff required 15 s to prescribe a regular inpatient drug pre-intervention and 39 s afterwards (p = 0.03; t test). Time spent providing a ward pharmacy service increased from 68 min to 98 min each weekday (p = 0.001; t test); 22% of drug charts were unavailable pre-intervention. Time per drug administration round decreased from 50 min to 40 min (p = 0.006; t test); nursing time on medication tasks outside of drug rounds increased from 21.1% to 28.7% (p = 0.006; χ2 test). Conclusions: A closed-loop electronic prescribing, dispensing and barcode patient identification system reduced prescribing errors and MAEs, and increased confirmation of patient identity before administration. Time spent on medication-related tasks increased.

The impact of a closed-loop electronic prescribing and automated dispensing system on the ward pharmacist’s time and activities

Objective To assess the impact of a closed-loop electronic prescribing and automated dispensing system on the time spent providing a ward pharmacy service and the activities carried out. Setting Surgical ward, London teaching hospital. Method All data were collected two months pre- and one year post-intervention. First, the ward pharmacist recorded the time taken each day for four weeks. Second, an observational study was conducted over 10 weekdays, using two-dimensional work sampling, to identify the ward pharmacist's activities. Finally, medication orders were examined to identify pharmacists' endorsements that should have been, and were actually, made. Key findings Mean time to provide a weekday ward pharmacy service increased from 1 h 8 min to 1 h 38 min per day (P = 0.001; unpaired t-test). There were significant increases in time spent prescription monitoring, recommending changes in therapy/monitoring, giving advice or information, and non-productive time. There were decreases for supply, looking for charts and checking patients' own drugs. There was an increase in the amount of time spent with medical and pharmacy staff, and with 'self'. Seventy-eight per cent of patients' medication records could be assessed for endorsements pre- and 100% post-intervention. Endorsements were required for 390 (50%) of 787 medication orders pre-intervention and 190 (21%) of 897 afterwards (P < 0.0001; chi-square test). Endorsements were made for 214 (55%) of endorsement opportunities pre-intervention and 57 (30%) afterwards (P < 0.0001; chi-square test). Conclusion The intervention increased the overall time required to provide a ward pharmacy service and changed the types of activity undertaken. Contact time with medical and pharmacy staff increased. There was no significant change in time spent with patients. Fewer pharmacy endorsements were required post-intervention, but a lower percentage were actually made. The findings have important implications for the design, introduction and use of similar systems.

Time-based prospective memory in children with autism spectrum disorder

In this study, for the first time, prospective memory was investigated in 11 school-aged children with autism spectrum disorders and 11 matched neurotypical controls. A computerised time-based prospective memory task was embedded in a visuospatial working memory test and required participants to remember to respond to certain target times. Controls had significantly more correct prospective memory responses than the autism spectrum group. Moreover, controls checked the time more often and increased time-monitoring more steeply as the target times approached. These differences in time-checking may suggest that prospective memory in autism spectrum disorders is affected by reduced self-initiated processing as indicated by reduced task monitoring.

A comparative study of Java and C performance in two large-scale parallel applications

In the 1990s the Message Passing Interface Forum defined MPI bindings for Fortran, C, and C++. With the success of MPI these relatively conservative languages have continued to dominate in the parallel computing community. There are compelling arguments in favour of more modern languages like Java. These include portability, better runtime error checking, modularity, and multi-threading. But these arguments have not converted many HPC programmers, perhaps due to the scarcity of full-scale scientific Java codes, and the lack of evidence for performance competitive with C or Fortran. This paper tries to redress this situation by porting two scientific applications to Java. Both of these applications are parallelized using our thread-safe Java messaging system—MPJ Express. The first application is the Gadget-2 code, which is a massively parallel structure formation code for cosmological simulations. The second application uses the finite-domain time-difference method for simulations in the area of computational electromagnetics. We evaluate and compare the performance of the Java and C versions of these two scientific applications, and demonstrate that the Java codes can achieve performance comparable with legacy applications written in conventional HPC languages. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Neural network based control in food processing

A number of commonly encountered simple neural network types are discussed, with particular attention being paid to their applicability in automation and control when applied to food processing. In the first instance n-tuple networks are considered, these being particularly useful for high speed production checking operations. Subsequently backpropagation networks are discussed, these being useful both in a more familiar feedback control arrangement and also for such things as recipe prediction.

Behavioural expressions, imagery and perfectionism

Background: High levels of multidimensional perfectionism may be dysfunctional in their own right and can also impact on the maintenance and treatment of Axis I psychiatric disorders. Aims: This paper sought to describe the behavioural expressions and imagery associated with perfectionism in a non-clinical sample. Method: Participants (n=59) completed a newly developed questionnaire to assess behavioural expressions of perfectionism, and an adapted interview to assess perfectionism-related intrusive mental images. Results: The study found that those high in perfectionism took longer to complete tasks, experienced more checking and safety behaviour whilst carrying out tasks, and had greater trouble actually completing tasks compared to those low in perfectionism. In addition, those with higher levels of perfectionism experienced intrusive mental imagery, which was more distressing, harder to dismiss, and had more impact on behaviour than those with lower levels of perfectionism. Conclusions: This research provides an initial exploration of the specific behaviours and intrusive mental imagery associated with perfectionism. The new behavioural measure of perfectionism could prove useful clinically in the assessment of change; however, these findings are preliminary and warrant replication in a clinical sample in order to examine their treatment implications.

An experimental manipulation of responsibility in children: a test of the inflated responsibility model of obsessive-compulsive disorder

The objective of this study was to investigate whether Salkovskis (1985) inflated responsibility model of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) applied to children. In an experimental design, 81 children aged 9– 12 years were randomly allocated to three conditions: an inflated responsibility group, a moderate responsibility group, and a reduced responsibility group. In all groups children were asked to sort sweets according to whether or not they contained nuts. At baseline the groups did not differ on children’s self reported anxiety, depression, obsessive-compulsive symptoms or on inflated responsibility beliefs. The experimental manipulation successfully changed children’s perceptions of responsibility. During the sorting task time taken to complete the task, checking behaviours, hesitations, and anxiety were recorded. There was a significant effect of responsibility level on the behavioural variables of time taken, hesitations and check; as perceived responsibility increased children took longer to complete the task and checked and hesitated more often. There was no between-group difference in children’s self reported state anxiety. The results offer preliminary support for the link between inflated responsibility and increased checking behaviours in children and add to the small but growing literature suggesting that cognitive models of OCD may apply to children.

Social and environmental report assurance: some interview evidence

The steady growth of social and environmental reporting (SER) is being accompanied by an increase in social and environmental reporting assurance (SERA). The existing literature on SERA suggests that it is necessary to build credibility and trust among corporate stakeholders. Prior work has also found evidence of managerial and professional capture of SERA. In this paper, we present empirical evidence from interviews with corporate social responsibility representatives from 20 UK listed companies on whether they consider SERA to be necessary. We believe this to be the first research into SERA that uses an interview method. Our interviews revealed mixed feelings. Half of the respondents believed that external SERA would enhance credibility and trust which confirmed the prior literature. However, the other half believed that external SERA was not necessary, believing that internal assurance was sufficient. This was because they saw SERA as predominantly a managerial tool, useful for checking the efficiency of internal management control systems, rather than as a mechanism for enhancing corporate accountability to stakeholders and building credibility and trust. The potential for SERA to be a mechanism whereby greater dialogue is created between companies and their stakeholders on social and environmental issues is not being harnessed. This paper thus demonstrates a fundamental difference between the external prior normative literature and the managerial motivation in the SERA area.

Poverty-of-the-stimulus and SLA epistemology: considering L2 knowledge of aspectual phrasal semantics

Coupling a review of previous studies on the acquisition of grammatical aspects undertaken from contrasting paradigmatic views of second language acquisition (SLA) with new experimental data from L2 Portuguese, the present study contributes to this specific literature as well as general debates in L2 epistemology. We tested 31 adult English learners of L2 Portuguese across three experiments, examining the extent to which they had acquired the syntax and (subtle) semantics of grammatical aspect. Demonstrating that many individuals acquired target knowledge of what we contend is a poverty-of-the-stimulus semantic entailment related to the checking of aspectual features encoded in Portuguese preterit and imperfect morphology, namely, a [±accidental] distinction that obtains in a restricted subset of contexts, we conclude that UG-based approaches to SLA are in a better position to tap and gauge underlying morphosyntactic competence, since based on independent theoretical linguistic descriptions, they make falsifiable predictions that are amenable to empirical scrutiny, seek to describe and explain beyond performance, and can account for L2 convergence on poverty-of-the-stimulus knowledge as well as L2 variability/optionality.

Assessment for Learning in teaching English to Young Learners: teachers’ understanding, classroom practice and impact on interactions

It has been suggested that Assessment for Learning (AfL) plays a significant role in enhancing teaching and learning in mainstream educational contexts. However, little empirical evidence can support these claims. As AfL has been shown to be enacted predominantly through interactions in primary classes, there is a need to understand if it is appropriate, whether it can be efficiently used in teaching English to Young Learners (TEYL) and how it can facilitate learning in such a context. This emerging research focus gains currency especially in the light of SLA research, which suggests the important role of interactions in foreign language learning. This mixed-method, descriptive and exploratory study aims to investigate how teachers of learners aged 7-11 understand AfL; how they implement it; and the impact that such implementation could have on interactions which occur during lessons. The data were collected through lesson observations, scrutiny of school documents, semi-structured interviews and a focus group interview with teachers. The findings indicate that fitness for purpose guides the implementation of AfL in TEYL classrooms. Significantly, the study has revealed differences in the implementation of AfL between classes of 7-9 and 10-11 year olds within each of the three purposes (setting objectives and expectations; monitoring performance; and checking achievement) identified through the data. Another important finding of this study is the empirical evidence suggesting that the use of AfL could facilitate creating conditions conducive to learning in TEYL classes during collaborative and expert/novice interactions. The findings suggest that teachers’ understanding of AfL is largely aligned with the theoretical frameworks (Black & Wiliam, 2009; Swaffield, 2011) already available. However, they also demonstrate that there are TEYL specific characteristics. This research has important pedagogical implications and indicates a number of areas for further research.

Analysis of the distribution of the number of bidders in construction contract auctions

The number of bidders, N, involved in a construction procurement auction is known to have an important effect on the value of the lowest bid and the mark-up applied by bidders. In practice, for example, it is important for a bidder to have a good estimate of N when bidding for a current contract. One approach, instigated by Friedman in 1956, is to make such an estimate by statistical analysis and modelling. Since then, however, finding a suitable model for N has been an enduring problem for researchers and, despite intensive research activity in the subsequent 30 years, little progress has been made, due principally to the absence of new ideas and perspectives. The debate is resumed by checking old assumptions, providing new evidence relating to concomitant variables and proposing a new model. In doing this and in order to ensure universality, a novel approach is developed and tested by using a unique set of 12 construction tender databases from four continents. This shows the new model provides a significant advancement on previous versions. Several new research questions are also posed and other approaches identified for future study.