Simulation of economic benefits achieved by water quality improvement for recreational and professional users, within the SPICOSSA SSA (SPICOSSA System Approach) 11 - Guadiana estuary ecosystem sic

Dissertação de Mestrado, Gestão da Água e da Costa, Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia, Universidade do Algarve, 2010

Interculturalidade : caminhos para a transformação

Relatório de estágio de mestrado, Ciências da Educação (Educação Intercultural), Universidade de Lisboa, Instituto de Educação, 2013

Student’s Engagement in School: Conceptualization and relations with Personal Variables and Academic Performance

This article reviews the literature regarding Student’s Engagement in School (SES), its relationship with personal variables, as well as with academic performance. Although SES’ conceptualization may vary across studies, there is general agreement concerning the multidimensional nature of this construct, encompassing three dimensions – cognitive, affective and behavioural. It is seen as an antecedent of several required outcomes, at academic level, but also as a valorous construct itself, both as mediator and product. More particularly, this concept has been the focus of debate concerning academic success and school dropout. There can also be found a significant number of studies which suggest that personal (self-efficacy, self-concept), as well as contextual (peers, school, family) factors are related with school engagement; additionally, the lack of engagement is linked with low academic performance, behavioural problems and school dropout. Thus, Student’s Engagement in School is perceived as a potentially effective response to the problems affecting schools and their students, and an aspect to be considered in preventing problematic patterns related to scholary contexts.

Legal, Ethical and Professional Issues

The chapter addresses the professional, legal and ethical issues associated with medicines management and the role of the nurse. To ensure safe practice it is imperative safeguards are recognised and applied; therefore pertinent legislative frameworks, policy and professional regulation are discussed. Safeguarding patients when administering prescribed medicines means the nurse must have up-to-date knowledge and skill and a key aspect of this is to ensure consent to treatment from the service user is secured; for this reason drawing on relevant legislation, the consensual process is reviewed. Not infrequently medicine management provokes ethical and legal challenges for the health care professional; these demand reflection and careful consideration; consequently in this chapter legal and ethical parameters and professional boundaries are appraised.

Linking Research and Teaching: an Applied Soft Systems Methodology Case Study

This paper links research and teaching through an applied Soft Systems Methodology case study. The case study focuses on the redevelopment of a Research and Professional Skills module to provide support for international postgraduate students through the use of formative feedback with the aim of increasing academic research skills and confidence. The stages of the Soft Systems Methodology were used as a structure for the redevelopment of module content and assessment. It proved to be a valuable tool for identifying complex issues, a basis for discussion and debate from which an enhanced understanding was gained and a successful solution implemented together with a case study that could be utilised for teaching Soft Systems Methodology concepts. Changes to the module were very successful and resulted in significantly higher grades and a higher pass rate.

A Global Portrait of Counselling Psychologists’ Characteristics, Perspectives, and Professional Behaviors

Counselling psychologists in eight countries (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, South Korea, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, and the United States) responded to survey questions that focused on their demographics as well as their professional identities, roles, settings and activities. As well, they were asked about satisfaction with the specialty and the extent to which they endorsed 10 core counselling psychology values. This article reports those results, focusing both on areas in which there were between-country similarities as well as on those for which there were differences. These data provide is a snapshot of counselling psychology globally and establish a foundation for the other articles in this special issue of the journal.

Reducing social and environmental impacts of urban freight transport: a review of some major cities

This paper reviews the options available to policy makers in their efforts to reduce the negative impacts of urban freight transport. After providing a summary of the categories of negative impacts that can be targeted together with the specific policy initiatives available, it reviews the actions taken by policy makers across in cities within four countries (UK, Japan, the Netherlands and France). In the case of the UK and Japan attention is focused on a single city as an exemplar of some of the developments. In the case of the Netherlands and France the discussion is wider.

Ulster PD Scheme: Using e-portfolios and professional conversations to evidence recognition claims

Vicky Davies and Sarah Maguire are Professional Development Managers at the University of Ulster. They have many years of experience in delivering and assessing Higher Education Academy claims for recognition via accredited provision for new teaching staff and post-graduate students. More recently they led the development of the University of Ulster’s Professional Development Scheme http://www.ulster.ac.uk/centrehep/pds/ . The core elements of the PD Scheme are the production of an e-portfolio and an assessed professional conversation. This workshop will explore the learning they have acquired through developing this process and piloting it with applicants. You will have the opportunity to discuss this and to identify any transferability to your own practice.

Values in middle childhood: Social and genetic contributions

Theories of value development often identify adolescence as the period for value formation, and cultural and familial factors as the sources for value priorities. However, recent research suggests that value priorities can be observed as early as in middle childhood, and several studies, including one on preadolescents (Knafo & Spinath, 2011), have suggested a genetic contribution to individual differences in values. In the current study, 174 pairs of monozygotic and dizygotic 7-year old Israeli twins completed the Picture-Based Value Survey for Children (PBVS–C; Döring et al., 2010). We replicated basic patterns of relations between value priorities and variables of socialisation – gender, religiosity, and socioeconomic status– that have been found in studies with adults. Most important, values of Self-transcendence, Self-enhancement, and Conservation, were found to be significantly affected by genetic factors (29%, 47% and 31% respectively), as well as non-shared environment (71%, 53% and 69% respectively). Openness to change values, in contrast, were found to be unaffected by genetic factors at this age and were influenced by shared (19%) and non-shared (81%) environment. These findings support the recent view that values are formed at earlier ages than had been assumed previously, and they further our understanding of the genetic and environmental factors involved in value formation at young ages.

Perspetivas dos professores do ensino básico e secundário face ao desempenho da profissão: perplexidades e desafios

Dissertação apresentada à Escola Superior de Educação de Lisboa para obtenção de grau de mestre em Ciências da Educação, especialidade Supervisão em Educação

A qualidade de vida dos profissionais de saúde mental

Os profissionais de saúde mental são o principal instrumento de intervenção nesta área considerada como prioridade de Saúde Pública e estão sujeitos a desgaste emocional e stress, que pode afetar negativamente a sua qualidade de vida. Com este estudo pretende-se avaliar a perceção do estado de saúde e da qualidade de vida relacionada com a saúde nos profissionais de saúde mental. Para responder ao objetivo traçado optou-se por realizar um estudo observacional analítico transversal, com abordagem quantitativa. Foi utilizado o SF36v2 como instrumento genérico de avaliação da Qualidade de Vida, que já se encontra validado para a população portuguesa, complementado por um questionário socioprofissional. A recolha de dados decorreu online, de 28 de Janeiro a 30 de Abril de 2013. A amostra foi constituída por 201 profissionais de saúde mental de Portugal Continental. Os profissionais de saúde mental que integraram a amostra revelaram pior perceção do estado de saúde e qualidade de vida, quando comparados com os valores de referência para a população portuguesa com nível de instrução alto. Em termos de domínios do instrumento, piores resultados foram encontrados para todos eles com exceção do domínio Saúde Mental. A avaliação da qualidade de vida dos profissionais de saúde mental possibilita a implementação alterações no funcionamento dos serviços de saúde mental, nomeadamente de programas de gestão de stress, de estratégias de coping e de competências de interação e comunicação entre os profissionais, podendo contribuir para uma melhoria na prestação dos cuidados de saúde aos utentes.

LSP communication in a digital age: the outcomes of teaching and learning in tertiary education

This paper discusses the changes brought by the communication revolution in teaching and learning in the scope of LSP. Its aim is to provide an insight on how teaching which was bi-dimensional, turned into a multidimensional system, gathering other complementary resources that have transformed, in a incredibly short time, the ways we receive share and store information, for instance as professionals, and keep in touch with our peers. The increasing rise of electronic publications, the incredible boom of social and professional networks, search engines, blogs, list servs, forums, e-mail blasts, Facebook pages, YouTube contents, Tweets and Apps, have twisted the way information is conveyed. Classes ceased to be predictable and have been empowered by digital platforms, innumerous and different data repositories (TILDE, IATE, LINGUEE, and so many other terminological data banks) that have definitely transformed the academic world in general and tertiary education in particular. There is a bulk of information to be digested by students, who are no longer passive but instead responsible and active for their academic outcomes. The question is whether they possess the tools to select only what is accurate and important for a certain subject or assignment, due to that overflow? Due to the reduction of the number of course years in most degrees, after the implementation of Bologna and the shrinking of the curricula contents, have students the possibility of developing critical thinking? Both teaching and learning rely on digital resources to improve the speed of the spreading of knowledge. But have those changes been effective to promote really communication? Furthermore, with the increasing Apps that have already been developed and will continue to appear for learning foreign languages, for translation among others, will the students feel the need of learning them once they have those Apps. These are some the questions we would like to discuss in our paper.

A DCAP for the social and solidarity economy

This article presents a work-in-progress version of a Dublin Core Application Profile (DCAP) developed to serve the Social and Solidarity Economy (SSE). Studies revealed that this community is interested in implementing both internal interoperability between their Web platforms to build a global SSE e-marketplace, and external interoperability among their Web platforms and external ones. The Dublin Core Application Profile for Social and Solidarity Economy (DCAP-SSE) serves this purpose. SSE organisations are submerged in the market economy but they have specificities not taken into account in this economy. The DCAP-SSE integrates terms from well-known metadata schemas, Resource Description Framework (RDF) vocabularies or ontologies, in order to enhance interoperability and take advantage of the benefits of the Linked Open Data ecosystem. It also integrates terms from the new essglobal RDF vocabulary which was created with the goal to respond to the SSE-specific needs. The DCAP-SSE also integrates five new Vocabulary Encoding Schemes to be used with DCAP-SSE properties. The DCAP development was based on a method for the development of application profiles (Me4MAP). We believe that this article has an educational value since it presents the idea that it is important to base DCAP developments on a method. This article shows the main results of applying such a method.