Escola ativa como semeadora de sonhos nas turmas multianuais: representações das(os) professoras(es) da microrregião de Mossoró-RN.

The issue of multi-classes in schools from the field and methodology for these classes is controversial and contentious, both in terms of teaching, monitoring and organizational, is the perspective of values, training and systematization of public policy. Why the strategy Methodological Active School facing those classes appeared as a significant and exciting topic of research. Thus, it was aimed to apprehend the social representations of active school by teachers (s) to understand the extent to which these representations influence the acceptance and use of the program strategies. Perceiving and analyzing also the various factors related to the management, monitoring and training needs of (the) teachers as alternatives to make this meaningful action. The study focused 112 teachers (s), which for over a year, worked in the program in six municipalities in the micro-region of Rio Grande do Norte / RN - Areia Branca, Baraúna, Grossos, Mossoró, Serra do Mel and Tibau. From this perspective relied on Social Representation Theory and the Theory of the Central Core, attending to the subjectivity of the object searched, inserted in the psychosocial field of knowledge, we opted for multi-methodological approach, using quantitative and qualitative techniques. However, the highlight was a projective technique Free Association of Words from the term Active School is .... The words were systematized by EVOC program, and also applied semi-structured interviews, focusing specific issues that led to trace the socio-demographic profile of (the) participants and wider issues about the object of study. The evocations, justifications and interviews provided the basis for the analysis of the content that followed the steps: formation of the corpus, the composition of the analysis and categorization. The results show the representations an attitude of acceptance and positive appraisal of the participants to the Active School Program. At the core, these representations are objectified around the words "action", "learning", "autonomy" and "interaction". Based on the premise that the representations have a duty to guide the practices and behavior, one can see that the positive attitude of the group favors a systematic methodology and acceptance of the program, but we must look at the changes in management, training, monitoring of (the) teachers (s) and support to schools.

Towards a profitable and sustainable future for grain growers: A professional development model for farm partners

Many Australian grain growers need to change their management approach to ensure their continued viability, but do not have the required knowledge and skills. Uptake of relevant education and training is poor, despite the positive correlation between learning, change and farm viability. As men are generally occupied with the operational aspects of the farm, much of the management role has been taken on by their partners, despite their lack of relevant formal qualifications. Professional development of farm partners therefore has the potential to improve the viability of grain growers. A model combining learning circles and action learning projects is proposed.

A reflexive course for Masters students to understand and plan their own continuing professional development

Continuing Professional Development (CPD) is seen as a vital part of a professional engineer’s career, by professional engineering institutions as well as individual engineers. Factors such as ever-changing workforce requirements and rapid technological change have resulted in engineers no longer being able to rely just on the skills they learnt at university or can pick up on the job; they must undergo a structured professional development with clear objectives to develop further professional knowledge, values and skills. This paper presents a course developed for students undertaking a Master of Engineering or Master of Project Management at the University of Queensland. This course was specifically designed to help students plan their continuing professional development, while developing professional skills such as communication, ethical reasoning, critical judgement and the need for sustainable development. The course utilised a work integrated learning pedagogy applied within a formal learning environment, and followed the competency based chartered membership program of Engineers Australia, the peak professional body of engineers in Australia. The course was developed and analysed using an action learning approach. The main research question was “Can extra teaching and learning activities be developed that will simulate workplace learning?” The students continually assessed and reflected upon their current competencies, skills and abilities, and planed for the future attainment of specific competencies which they identified as important to their future careers. Various evaluation methods, including surveys before and after the course, were used to evaluate the action learning intervention. It was found that the assessment developed for the course was one of the most important factors, not only in driving student learning, as is widely accepted, but also in changing the students’ understandings and acceptance of the need for continuous professional development. The students also felt that the knowledge, values and skills they developed would be beneficial for their future careers, as they were developed within the context of their own professional development, rather than to just get through the course. © 2005, American Society for Engineering Education

Innovation in leadership development

In the light of the financial crisis and the radically changed conditions in the market place, international leadership development is facing new demands. The Danish-based International Leadership Institute Mannaz has researched the new conditions in collaboration with the Institute of Executive Development in the United States. The research, conducted in 2008 and 2009, combines, in an innovative way, quantitative and qualitative inputs, from both current and future perspectives, from some 111 senior Corporate Executives, Heads of Human Resources and of Learning and Organisational Development in large international corporations headquartered in Europe and the United States; together with the thoughts of some 50 experienced practitioners involved in executive coaching as well as in designing, developing and facilitating leadership development programmes. Also we include a section summarising the key findings from recently published research from other leadership development surveys. Conclusions reveal that the crisis has propelled a long-awaited decline of the traditional classroom-based educational approach to leadership development. Instead, effective leadership development is suggested to build on experiential learning approaches rooted in real life, real time and allowing for more immediate impact and providing for considerably higher relevance and motivation. Coaching, leaders teaching leaders, stretch assignments, action learning, peer networking, customer insights and selective use of technology are seen as important contributors to the leadership development process going forward.

Challenges of Teaching Written Communication in the Cloud

Report published in the Proceedings of the National Conference on "Education and Research in the Information Society", Plovdiv, May, 2014

El Aprendizaje Cooperativo, un camino hacia la inclusión educativa

La atención a la diversidad se ha convertido en un elemento básico de los sistemas educativos de muchos países. Las respuestas educativas que se han desarrollado en las escuelas, aquellas que entienden la diversidad como un valor enriquecer dentro del proceso educativo, han dado lugar a modelos muy diferentes. A nivel internacional, hay un movimiento que defiende la necesidad de promover los modelos inclusivos, que entienden la diferencia como una oportunidad para aprender juntos, y sitúa la metodología como uno de los pilares básicos del proceso de enseñanza-aprendizaje. En este sentido, el aprendizaje basado en la cooperación se presenta como una propuesta alternativa para trabajar en la escuela. Diferentes investigaciones realizadas a lo lardo de los últimos años ponen en evidencia las importantes contribuciones del trabajo cooperativo para la adquisición de valores y actitudes que mejoran la convivencia al mismo tiempo que facilitan un mejor desarrollo personal para todo el alumnado. Nuestro trabajo en la escuela primaria y secundaria nos ha permitido reflexionar y recoger información sobre nuestra experiencia alrededor de la atención a la diversidad en el marco de una escola que pretende caminar a la inclusión. El artículo presenta una reflexión sobre las contribuciones del aprendizaje cooperativo dentro de una escuela que busca la inclusión de todos los chicos y las chicas, basándonos para ello en nuestras experiencias profesionales propias así como en el análisis y la interpretación de las contribuciones principales recogidas en la bibliografía nacional e internacional.

A consolidação da relação entre a teoria e a prática na construção da profissionalidade docente

Relatório de Estágio apresentado à Escola Superior de Educação de Paula Frassinetti para obtenção do grau de Mestre em Educação Pré-Escolar e Ensino do 1º Ciclo do Ensino Básico, Sob orientação Professora Doutora Brigite Carvalho da Silva | Mestre Maria Ivone Couto Monforte das Neves.

Entrepreneurship: a long way to go

Entrepreneurship education has emerged as one popular research domain in academic fields given its aim at enhancing and developing certain entrepreneurial qualities of undergraduates that change their state of behavior, even their entrepreneurial inclination and finally may result in the formation of new businesses as well as new job opportunities. This study attempts to investigate the Colombian student´s entrepreneurial qualities and the influence of entrepreneurial education during their studies.

Accounting education in an action-based learning environment: lessons learned

In the context of the Bologna Declaration a change is taking place in the teaching/learning paradigm. From teaching-centered education, which emphasizes the acquisition and transmission of knowledge, we now speak of learning-centered education, which is more demanding for students. This paradigm promotes a continuum of lifelong learning, where the individual needs to be able to handle knowledge, to select what is appropriate for a particular context, to learn permanently and to understand how to learn in new and rapidly changing situations. One attempt to face these challenges has been the experience of ISCAP regarding the teaching/learning of accounting in the course Managerial Simulation. This paper describes the process of teaching, learning and assessment in an action-based learning environment. After a brief general framework that focuses on education objectives, we report the strengths and limitations of this teaching/learning tool. We conclude with some lessons from the implementation of the project.

The Northern Ireland Action Plan for Learning Disability Nursing

The Northern Ireland Action Plan for Learning Disability Nursing

Embodying feminist research: learning from action research, political practices, diffractions and collective knowledge.

In the past three decades, feminists and critical theorists have discussed and argued the importance of deconstructing and problematizing social science research methodology in order to question normalized hierarchies concerning the production of knowledge and the status of truth claims. Nevertheless, often, these ideas have basically remained theoretical propositions not embodied in research practices. In fact there is very little published discussion about the difficulties and limits of their practical application. In this paper we introduce some interconnected reflections starting from two different but related experiences of embodying 'feminist activist research'. Our aim is to emphasise the importance of attending to process, making mistakes and learning during fieldwork, as well as experimenting with personalized forms of analysis, such as the construction of narratives and the story-telling process.

Embodying feminist research: learning from action research, political practices, diffractions and collective knowledge.

In the past three decades, feminists and critical theorists have discussed and argued the importance of deconstructing and problematizing social science research methodology in order to question normalized hierarchies concerning the production of knowledge and the status of truth claims. Nevertheless, often, these ideas have basically remained theoretical propositions not embodied in research practices. In fact there is very little published discussion about the difficulties and limits of their practical application. In this paper we introduce some interconnected reflections starting from two different but related experiences of embodying 'feminist activist research'. Our aim is to emphasise the importance of attending to process, making mistakes and learning during fieldwork, as well as experimenting with personalized forms of analysis, such as the construction of narratives and the story-telling process.

Learning analytics in practice: setting up a laboratory for action research at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya

Since its inception in 1994 as a purely online university, the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya(UOC) has been able to position itself among the main universities of the Catalan and Spanish university systems. Most of the students at the UOC (currently more than 60,000) are adults who have a profile that could hardly fit into the traditional university system, thus finding in the UOC an opportunity to start or continue their higher education grades, in a very innovative environment. The intensive use of ICT for both theteaching/learning processes and management allowsresearchers and practitioners to obtain data aboutwhat takes place in the UOC Virtual Campus, which is continuously being improved according to suchfindings.

Enhancing teaching and learning speech acts: action research of Japanese as a foreign language /

This action research observes a second year Japanese class at a university where foreign language courses are elective for undergraduate students. In this study, using the six strategies to teach Japanese speech acts that Ishihara and Cohen (2006) suggested, I conducted three classes and analyzed my teaching practice with a critical friend. These strategies assist learners toward the development of their understanding of the following Japanese speech acts and also keep the learners to use them in a manner appropriate to the context: (I) invitation and refusal; (2) compliments; and (3) asking for a permission. The aim of this research is not only to improve my instruction in relation to second language (L2) pragmatic development, but also to raise further questions and to develop future research. The findings are analyzed and the data derived from my journals, artifacts, students' work, observation sheets, interviews with my critical friend, and pretests and posttests are coded and presented. The analysis shows that (I) after my critical friend encouraged my study and my students gave me some positive comments after each lesson, I gained confidence in teaching the suggested speech acts; (2) teaching involved explaining concepts and strategies, creating the visual material (a video) showing the strategies, and explaining the relationship between the strategy and grammatical forms and samples of misusing the forms; (3) students' background and learning styles influenced lessons; and (4) pretest and posttests showed that the students' Icvel of their L2 appropriate pragmatics dramatically improved after each instruction. However, after careful observation, it was noted that some factors prevented students from producing the correct output even though they understood the speech act differences.

Dyscalculia : action plans for successful learning in mathematics.

Recurso basado en observaciones de niños con dificultades matemáticas y en métodos probados para ayudarlos. Pone ejemplos de problemas que los niños pueden encontrar con la manipulación de los números. Proporciona a los profesores orientación sobre cómo evitar la confusión de los alumnos y cómo guiarlos a través del currículo de matemáticas más complejas.