Monetary equilibrium with decentralized trade and learning

This paper analyzes the stability of monetary regimes in an economy where fiat money is endogenously created by the government, information about its value is imperfect, and learning is decentralized. We show that monetary stability depends crucially on the speed of information transmission in the economy. Our model generates a dynamic on the acceptability of fiat money that resembles historical accounts of the rise and eventual collapse of overissued paper money. It also provides an explanation of the fact that, despite its obvious advantages, the widespread use of fiat money is only a recent development.

Child labor and learning

This paper investigates the impact of working while in school on learning outcomes through the use of a unique micro panel dataset of Brazilian students. The potential endogeneity is addressed through the use of di erence-in-di erence and instrumental variable estimators. A negative e ect of working on learning outcomes in both math and Portuguese is found. The e ects of child work range from 3% to 8% of a standard deviation decline in test score which represents a loss of about a quarter to a half of a year of learning on average. We also explore the minimum legal age to entry in the labor market to induce an exogenous variation in child labor status. The results reinforce the detrimental e ects of child labor on learning. Additionally, it is found that this e ect is likely due to the interference of work with the time kids can devote to school and school work.

O ensino de empreendedorismo com fundamento na teoria effectuation

O objetivo desta pesquisa é compreender como professores ao redor do mundo ensinam empreendedorismo com fundamento na teoria effectuation. A pesquisa utiliza a metodologia de estudo de caso múltiplo para análise de cinco experiências em educação empreendedora em nível universitário, realizadas em cinco instituições de ensino de quatro países diferentes com intuito de compreender o contexto dessas experiências, a estrutura dos cursos, as metodologias de ensino utilizadas e as percepções de docentes e alunos sobre essas experiências. O estudo traz inicialmente um breve histórico sobre a evolução do ensino de empreendedorismo nos Estados Unidos e no Brasil. Ato contínuo, o estudo faz uma análise da evolução das perspectivas teóricas utilizadas para compreensão do fenômeno empreendedor e relaciona essas perspectivas às metodologias de ensino utilizadas para o ensino de empreendedorismo, com destaque para a recente discussão sobre a perspectiva do empreendedorismo como método. A teoria effectuation é apresentada em seguida e introduz seus os princípios norteadores e as teorias que deram origem à sua formulação. A análise dos casos resulta em contribuições teóricas referentes à estruturação de perguntas de pesquisa que relacionam a utilização da teoria effectuation no ensino de empreendedorismo ao aumento da intenção dos alunos em empreender e que analisam a influência da cultura e da formação dos alunos no processo de ensino e aprendizado. As contribuições práticas, por sua vez, referem-se à identificação do elemento integrador das metodologias de ensino de empreendedorismo com fundamento na teoria effectuation, da identificação de metodologias de ensino emergentes e da contribuição da teoria para o desenvolvimento do ensino de empreendedorismo no Brasil. Assim, os resultados desta pesquisa contribuem para aumentar o conhecimento existente sobre a utilização da teoria effectuation no ensino de empreendedorismo e sobre os efeitos dessa introdução, bem como por meio da formulação de perguntas de pesquisa para direcionamento de esforços de pesquisa futuros.

New challenges for international economic law teaching and research in México: Mexico’s outstanding waves of reforms

This position paper argues that at this time of Mexico’s ongoing big transformation, legal educators and researchers in Mexico need to pay greater attention to international economic law, and that a renewal and perhaps some re-orientation of the approach to teaching international economic law, could provide significant contributions to and shape and support both the objectives and outcomes of reform in Mexico. International Economic Law courses and research can be made more useful, not only for students themselves, but also for their contribution towards the role that academics, lawyers, and other epistemic communities need to play in the political, economic and social evolution that is accelerating in Mexico.

É ensinando que se aprende: um estudo sobre o ensino de projeto no Curso de Arquitetura e Urbanismo da Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte (CAU UFRN)

You cannot teach architectonic design, but only learn it. This sentence was, during some decades, especially during the modernism, the starting point, adopted by several architectonic design professors, when they had to approach their subject. An attitude that, some years ago, was reviewed and fighted by area s experts. This paper join this criticism, and try to add something to the pre-existing discussion, analyzing with the case-study method all the subjects related with architectonic design of the Architecture and Urbanism degree, at Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte CAU/UFRN . The aim is to identify and analyze the teaching methodologies used by the professors and their effects related to the students. To reach this purpose four different methods were used: i) Professors interviews; ii) Different forms submitted to students and professors; iii) Daily practice s observation, developed during classes; iv) Documents analysis about the degree (historical development and subjects) and about the subjects themselves (summaries, table of contents and planning). Studying the results, it was possible to underline that, in spite of the efforts of some of the professors to find a way to teach with more appropriate educational and pedagogic bases, some of the teaching methodologies, criticized in articles dealing with the matter, were still used. With regard to these, the research pointed out some suggestions that could help to improve the teaching and learning process, joining professors and students that are the most important subjects of the teaching activity. Developing the idea living in the paper s title Teaching and learning , it s now clear that only the practice, through the improvement of the pedagogic techniques, together with critical analysis can help the professors to reach a relationship level, regarding the teaching and learning process, as that described in the epigraph s text, into which teaching and learning, can t be done only by one of the process subject, but must be lived by both of them: professors and students

Ser professor de português: o que dizem os discursos reguladores, os alunos e os professores no contexto da formação inicial (UMINHO/Portugal e UFRN/Brasil)

The constitution of being a teacher of Portuguese occurs in a dynamic process involving various factors, such as the requirements of regulatory documents, the context of teacher formation, and the configuration of current society, per se. This study is aimed at reflecting on the initial formation of teachers of Portuguese and on official documents that face this formation, raising the following questions: (1) what does it mean to be a Portuguese teacher? (2) what is the vision of the subjects (teachers and students) involved with the formation of teaching the Portuguese Language? (3) how do these individuals deal with official documents? and (4) how do these subjects discourses relate? To understand the context of the formative processes and the knowledge inherent in them, first we take the studies of Garcia (1999) and Tardif (2002) as a theoretical framework, and to understand and interpret the utterances of the interviewees, we were grounded in the writing of Bakhtin (2003), for whom the object of the Humanities, the sciences of man, is the text, since man is, by nature, an expressive being. We situate this study in the framework of qualitative research. It is a multiple case study that focuses on two contexts: formation of teachers of Portuguese at the University of Minho, Portugal, and the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil. The data that make up the research corpus come from documents elaborated by the Ministries of Education of Portugal and Brazil and were adopted by the two teacher formation institutions cited, from individual interviews involving eight trainer teachers (four from each university), and from two group-interviews (one in each institution), done with students in training. Our analysis is divided into three stages: first, document analysis; second, analysis of the discourse of the teachers in both contexts studied; and, third, analysis of the speech of the students in training. It is noteworthy that our purpose in this research was not to come out with a definition like being a teacher of Portuguese is X, but we are interested, above all, in discussing the issues surrounding initial formation, seeking different points of view, and hearing voices coming from different social positions for better understanding our object of study. Our analysis reveals that the initial formation of teachers of Portuguese, both in Portugal and Brazil, occurs in a complex way, under the influence of various factors, including: (a) difficulties in having the individuals involved adapt to the demands of regulatory agencies; (b) students and teachers adequacy to the organizational model of the post-secondary institution; (c) teachers difficulties to deal with the learning problems of students who have limited schooling basis and come from distinct socioeconomic realities; (d) a search for the establishment of methodologies for teaching and learning the Portuguese Language more adequate to reality; and (e) a search for a definition of professional knowledge needed for the teaching practice

O projeto politico pedagógico de enfermagem e o sistema único de saúde: a visão de discentes

This research aims to analyze, in the view of students, the pedagogic project of undergraduate nursing course, of UFRN, and its articulation with the SUS, in an attempt to understand the issues that permeate the teaching and learning of nursing. This is a qualitative study that used the focus group technique as a tool to collect empirical data. There were three meetings, where we had the collaboration of 23 graduating students from the eighth period of the semester 2009.1. For the analysis of information, we use a theoretical framework based on curriculum guidelines and basic principles of the SUS, making the analogy of the results with the metaphor of Greek mythology, Ariadne's thread, in dialogue with authors who discuss education as a transformative practice. Thus, the texture of the yarn was built of five thematic fields: joint the pedagogic project with the SUS; the teaching/service and theory/practice relation; interdisciplinarity or transdisciplinarity; didactic/methodological and relational approaches; and co-participation of students in the pedagogic project. According to the discussions, we find many difficulties in the teaching and learning process of undergraduate nursing in UFRN to strengthen the SUS, including: dislocation of educational institutions with services, professionals, managers and community; dichotomy between theory and practice; reality of services as a learning field and working process in health; posture adopted by professionals, teachers and other subjects included in the process of health education; decontextualization and fragmentation of teaching with the practice in health and nursing; excessive use of very illustrative methodologies, but little problem-solving; difficult and precarious situation in the relations between teachers and between teachers/students, regarding the acceptance of differences; absence of participation of students in the evaluation process and conduct of the educational project in progress. In this sense, we understand the need an auto-reflexive act of teaching and conducting collective pedagogical course with a view to achieving the SUS. Thus, it is necessary to support practices motivated by the polyphonic dialogue and the exercise of symbiosis and autopoiesis of subjects/actors jointly responsible for the ongoing process of learning for life.

Mapa de Conteúdos e Mapa de Dependências:Ferramentas Pedagógicas para uma Metodologia de Planejamento baseada em Objetivos Educacionais e sua Implementação em um Ambiente Virtual de Aprendizagem

Furthered mainly by new technologies, the expansion of distance education has created a demand for tools and methodologies to enhance teaching techniques based on proven pedagogical theories. Such methodologies must also be applied in the so-called Virtual Learning Environments. The aim of this work is to present a planning methodology based on known pedagogical theories which contributes to the incorporation of assessment in the process of teaching and learning. With this in mind, the pertinent literature was reviewed in order to identify the key pedagogical concepts needed to the definition of this methodology and a descriptive approach was used to establish current relations between this conceptual framework and distance education. As a result of this procedure, the Contents Map and the Dependence Map were specified and implemented, two teaching tools that promote the planning of a course by taking into account assessment still in this early stage. Inserted on Moodle, the developed tools were tested in a course of distance learning for practical observation of the involved concepts. It could be verified that the methodology proposed by the above-mentioned tools is in fact helpful in course planning and in strengthening educational assessment, placing the student as central element in the process of teaching and learning

A newly recognized syndrome of marfanoid habitus; Long face; Hypotelorism; Long, thin nose; Long, thin hands and feet; and a specific pattern of language and learning disabilities

Here, we report on a newly recognized syndrome in a Brazilian family with three affected women, who had a Marfanoid habitus; long face; hypotelorism; long, thin nose; long, thin hands and feet; and language and learning disabilities. The disorder is compatible with autosomal dominant inheritance. (C) 2007 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

Participatory design in the project of virtual learning environment of histology

This present article describes a research on the development, under the approach of participatory design, a virtual teaching-learning of Histology in which students and teachers participated actively in all stages of development of the educational environment. We postulates that the development of virtual learning environment of Histology, through the Participatory Design approach, contributes to greater acceptance and use by students and that the adoption of virtual environment for teaching and learning by teachers is a determining factor of use by students

A gestão da inclusão escolar na rede municipal de São Paulo: algumas considerações sobre o Programa Inclui

Para análise da questão da gestão política do processo de inclusão escolar, este artigo aborda o movimento da rede municipal de São Paulo em direção à uma escola inclusiva através da oferta de respostas educativas aos alunos com necessidades educacionais especiais. Assim, descreve o Programa Inclui, em andamento na rede municipal de ensino, que busca organizar, através de projetos, a construção e consolidação de um sistema inclusivo, na perspectiva de estar articulado com as práticas e ações político-pedagógicas que ocorrem desde a educação infantil ao ensino médio e se concentra nas ações necessárias para o atendimento às necessidades educacionais especiais para que se garanta a desejável relação entre educação comum e especial no enfrentamento das dificuldades do processo de ensino e aprendizagem daqueles que precisam de recursos, técnicas, metodologias diferenciadas para que sua trajetória escolar esteja garantida, no cotidiano, assim como está garantida no aspecto legal.

A multimedia environment for supporting the teaching of robotics systems

This paper aims at describing an educational system for teaching and learning robotic systems. Multimedia resources were used to construct a virtual laboratory where users are able to use functionalities of a virtual robotic arm, by moving and clicking the mouse without caring about the detailed internal robot operation. Moreover through the multimedia system the user can interact with a real robot arm. The engineering students are the target public of the developed system. With its contents and interactive capabilities, it has been used as a support to the traditional face-to-face classes on the subject of robotics.. In the paper it is first introduced the metaphor of Virtual Laboratory used in the system. Next, it is described the Graphical and Multimedia Environment approach: an interactive graphic user interface with a 3D environment for simulation. Design and implementation issues of the real-time interactive multimedia learning system, which supports the W3C SMIL standard for presenting the real-time multimedia teaching material, are described. Finally, some preliminary conclusions and possible future works from this research are presented.

Power law distribution in education: Effect of economical, teaching, and study conditions in university entrance examination

We studied the statistical distribution of student's performance, which is measured through their marks, in university entrance examination (Vestibular) of UNESP (Universidade Estadual Paulista) with respect to (i) period of study - day versus night period (ii) teaching conditions - private versus public school (iii) economical conditions - high versus low family income. We observed long ubiquitous power law tails in physical and biological sciences in all cases. The mean value increases with better study conditions followed by better teaching and economical conditions. In humanities, the distribution is close to normal distribution with very small tail. This indicates that these power law tails in science subjects axe due to the nature of the subjects themselves. Further and better study, teaching and economical conditions axe more important for physical and biological sciences in comparison to humanities at this level of study. We explain these statistical distributions through Gradually Truncated Power law distributions. We discuss the possible reason for this peculiar behavior.

Teaching robotics systems in a multimedia environment

This paper describes the development of a multimedia educational system to teach and learn robotic systems. Multimedia resources have been used to build a virtual laboratory where users are able to utilize functions of a robotic arm, by moving and clicking the mouse without worrying about the detailed robot internal operation. The multimedia system is integrated with a real robotic arm, which was also developed at the university. Through robotic topic presentations and interactive capabilities provided by this system and its tools, students can devote themselves on the learning process just as they do in the traditional face-to-face classes. and the target public of this system are the engineering students themselves.