Literacy Practices in and out of School in Karagwe : The case of primary school literacy education in rural Tanzania

This study has investigated the question of relation between literacy practices in and out of school in rural Tanzania. By using the perspective of linguistic anthropology, literacy practices in five villages in Karagwe district in the northwest of Tanzania have been analysed. The outcome may be used as a basis for educational planning and literacy programs. The analysis has revealed an intimate relation between language, literacy and power. In Karagwe, traditional élites have drawn on literacy to construct and reconstruct their authority, while new élites, such as individual women and some young people have been able to use literacy as one tool to get access to power. The study has also revealed a high level of bilingualism and a high emphasis on education in the area, which prove a potential for future education in the area. At the same time discontinuity in language use, mainly caused by stigmatisation of what is perceived as local and traditional, such as the mother-tongue of the majority of the children, and the high status accrued to all that is perceived as Western, has turned out to constitute a great obstacle for pupils’ learning. The use of ethnographic perspectives has enabled comparisons between interactional patterns in schools and outside school. This has revealed communicative patterns in school that hinder pupils’ learning, while the same patterns in other discourses reinforce learning. By using ethnography, relations between explicit and implicit language ideologies and their impact in educational contexts may be revealed. This knowledge may then be used to make educational plans and literacy programmes more relevant and efficient, not only in poor post-colonial settings such as Tanzania, but also elsewhere, such as in Western settings.

Manifesta och latenta ideologier om lärande inom svensk spelmansrörelse under 1920-talet

The purpose of this article was to illuminate existing educational ideologies in the Swedish fiddler movement (Spelmansrörelsen) 1923-1927. This period was characterized by the organization and to some extent institutionalization of Swedish folk music. Furthermore, the purpose was to discuss the results in relation to the folk music education of today. The empirical data was taken from the journal Hembygden, which was a magazine for scholars, enthusiasts and practitioners of folk music. Theoretically, the study was based on a concept of ideology developed by Sven-Eric Liedman: in every time there are two basic forms of identifiable ideology, manifest and latent. From the empirical material as a whole (around 900 articles), a selection was made to find articles dealing with aspects of learning among the fiddlers (33 articles). After content analysis the following themes were generated: Fiddlers’ repertoire, Fiddlers’ masters, Rooms for learning, Learning formation. The writers in Hembygden often emphasized the autodidactic aspects of learning and especially the importance of learning by ear. This manifest ideology of authenticity presumed that learning directly from another fiddler by playing together was to prefer to formal schooling. In spite of a tendency towards more ensemble playing, the folk music education of today in Sweden is characterized by a similar retrospective ideology as in the 1920s.

Change through Tradition in the Work of 'Zulu Sofola Rehearsal Presentation Outline

This paper highlights the struggle Nigerian playwright 'Zulu Sofola underwent to impart her message. She attempted to confront gender oppression through tradition without contradicting herself in her play, 'Wedlock of the Gods.' ‘Zulu Sofola wrote commentaries about social problems and the influence of Western culture. Her goal was to maintain a traditional framework in the face of encroaching Western perspectives. She advocated enacting change through tradition, irrespective of Western ideologies about change. Sofola focused on gender oppression as a social problem. She intended to address gender oppression rooted in tradition by teaching traditional customs to her audience in order for audiences to make informed and progressive decisions about what to change within traditional practices. Thus, her traditionalist approach to change requires cognizance and recognition of tradition as an initial step. Sofola argued against the influences of Westernization that shift the focus of change from confronting customs through tradition to confronting customs through Western ideology.

Relação entre produtividade total dos fatores e investimento em capital fixo para a economia brasileira

O presente trabalho utiliza a teoria do crescimento econômico a fim de analisar a relação das taxas de investimento em capital fixo e a evolução da produtividade total dos fatores no Brasil a partir de 1950 ate 2005. A partir de pesquisas bibliográficas abordam-se os estudos de Romer, Arrow, Pires, Solow se apresenta conceitos como o “learning by doing”, “spillovers” e decomposição da produtividade a fim de embasar teoricamente o estudo. As pesquisas apontam a importância da variável eficiência sobre a produtividade total dos fatores no caso brasileiro, principalmente durante os anos de incidência de inflação elevada. A metodologia aplicada no trabalho se utiliza dos dados coletados junto ao IPEAdata e Pen World Tables para formação bruta de capital fixo, produto interno bruto e dados populacionais para o cálculo da produtividade total dos fatores seguindo a metodologia proposta por Solow. Utilizam-se os dados calculados para se extrair uma relação matemática entre a produtividade total dos fatores e ao nível de estoque de capital físico. O estudo comprova a relação entre a produtividade e o investimento em capital físico, também fica demonstrada a grande importância da eficiência sobre a produtividade no caso brasileiro.

Exames curriculares e resultados educacionais: uma análise do exame nacional do ensino médio

Esta dissertação avalia os efeitos do Exame Nacional do Ensino Médio (ENEM) sobre o ensino médio brasileiro. Esta avaliação baseia-se na teoria de que exames curriculares com a qualidade de gerar conseqüências diretas sobre os alunos, como no caso do ENEM, são capazes de influenciar positivamente o aprendizado dos alunos por dois canais: por aumento de seu esforço e pela pressão que exercem sobre professores e diretores. O presente trabalho avalia especificamente o segundo canal, sobre o qual o ENEM deve atuar por meio da divulgação ao público das notas médias por escola em todo o país. Neste sentido, estima-se o efeito da divulgação das notas do ENEM sobre os seguintes resultados educacionais: proficiência em Matemática e Língua Portuguesa no Saeb, alocação de insumos escolares e comportamento dos professores. Para tanto, dois métodos são propostos: i) diferenças em diferenças, utilizando dados dos Saeb de 2005 – um ano antes do início da divulgação – e 2007 – um ano após a primeira publicação – e ii) regressão com descontinuidade, explorando o fato de haver uma regra estrita para entrada da escola na divulgação – ter ao menos 10 concluintes do ensino médio participando do ENEM. Os resultados mostram que o fato uma escola ter seu resultado médio no ENEM divulgado não parece influenciar o desempenho de seus alunos nem a quantidade de seus insumos escolares, por nenhum dos métodos propostos. O método de diferenças em diferenças aponta ainda que os professores de escolas submetidas ao tratamento dessa divulgação parecem ter maior enfoque em atividades voltadas a resolução de exercícios e fixação de regras gramaticais, reação que é interpretada por parte da literatura como adversa. Estes últimos resultados, no entanto, podem estar refletindo apenas tendências temporais preexistentes e não um efeito de tratamento legítimo. Conclui-se então que o ENEM não deve estar servindo como indutor de melhorias dos resultados educacionais via pressão dos alunos do ensino médio. Porém, é possível levantar a hipótese de que este tipo de efeito ainda pode ser captado em prazos mais longos ou para grupos de escolas diferentes das usadas na análise.

Career concerns: a human capital perspective

We introduce human capital accumulation, in the form of learning by doing, in a life cycle model of career concerns and analyze how human capital acquisition a ects implicit incentives for performance. We show that standard results from the career concerns literature can be reversed in the presence of human capital accumulation. Namely, implicit incentives need not decrease over time and may decrease with the degree of uncertainty about an individual's talent. Furthermore, increasing the pre-cision of output measurement can weaken rather than strengthen implicit incentives. Overall, our results contribute to shed new light on the ability of markets to discipline moral hazard in the absence of explicit contracts linking pay to performance.

Terapia ocupacional em ação interdisciplinar: jogos educativo-nutricionais na prevenção da obesidade infantil

The inter-subjectivity is the answer in the search for the solution of complex problems, which concerns interfaces of knowledge, respecting their borders. This paradigm is essential in the author's work. So, the search on screen is based on this perspective, by using inter-subject groups of work conduced by professionals of Computer Science, Social Communication, Architecture and Urbanism, Pedagogy, Psicopegagogy, Nutritional Science, Endocrinology, Occupational Therapy and Nursing, it was also part of this group an 8 year old child, daughter of one of the professional who took part of the group. This thesis aims to present the course of investigation developed, analyzing the action of inter-subject Occupational Therapy and Nutrition on the promotion of learning nutritional concepts through educative-nutritional games in order to prevent child's obesity in an educative context. The research was analytic, interventionist and almost experimental. It took place in a public school in Fortaleza, Ceará, Brazil, between August and December 2004. It was selected a sample non-probabilistic, by convenience, of 200 children, born from 1994 to 1996. It was selected almost nonprobabilistically, by convenience, 200 children born between 1994 and 1996. To analyze the results it was used a triangulation, associated by quantitative and qualitative approaches. The basis collect happened through games specially manufactured to these research- video-games, board games, memory games, puzzles, scramble, searching words and iterative basics. There were semi-structured interviews, direct and structured observations and focus in-groups. It was noticed the efficiency of educativenutritional games in the learning process, which lead to a changing of attitude towards the eating choices. These games gave similar results in relation to the compared variations preferences, experience and attitudes, theses attitudes were observed through the game; and the categories to compare the possibility of learning by playing, the fantasy in the learning process, learning concepts of nutritional education and the need of help in the learning process (mediation). It was proved that educativenutritional games could be used to teach nutritional concepts, in an inter-subjective action of Occupational Therapy and Nutrition in schools. The simultaneous application of these games lead to the optimization of child s learning process. It should be emphasized the need of studies about the adaptation of tools used in a child s Nutritional Education, with the help of inter-subjective action. Because just one subject, in a fractionated way can give an answer to complex problems and help to a change of the reality with effectiveness and resolution

A dimensão espacial e o proceder pedagógico

This research was conducted at the Post Graduate Program in Education at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte. It had the aim to understand the spatial conception associated with the pedagogical action. It promoted a historical-scientific approach to concepts of space to emphasize the spatiality from the geographical and educational theoretical referential. In it empiria situated in a university student universe, has utilized a quantitative measuring instrument as a subsidy to a qualitative dialogical analysis. It showed a synthetic framework arising from the interaction and the reflection focused into problems, challenges and potential of a pedagogical vision that considers the spatiality of teaching education. It seeks to promote delineations of paths pedagogical to a integrate approach of heterotopic space conception, as a necessary critical condition to the appropriation of social reality without doing the epistemological dichotomy, enhancing it signification to the learning academic teaching ambience; as well the scientific and teaching formation in the geography course

Aprendizado por Reforço com Valores deInfluência em Sistemas Multi-Agente

We propose a new paradigm for collective learning in multi-agent systems (MAS) as a solution to the problem in which several agents acting over the same environment must learn how to perform tasks, simultaneously, based on feedbacks given by each one of the other agents. We introduce the proposed paradigm in the form of a reinforcement learning algorithm, nominating it as reinforcement learning with influence values. While learning by rewards, each agent evaluates the relation between the current state and/or action executed at this state (actual believe) together with the reward obtained after all agents that are interacting perform their actions. The reward is a result of the interference of others. The agent considers the opinions of all its colleagues in order to attempt to change the values of its states and/or actions. The idea is that the system, as a whole, must reach an equilibrium, where all agents get satisfied with the obtained results. This means that the values of the state/actions pairs match the reward obtained by each agent. This dynamical way of setting the values for states and/or actions makes this new reinforcement learning paradigm the first to include, naturally, the fact that the presence of other agents in the environment turns it a dynamical model. As a direct result, we implicitly include the internal state, the actions and the rewards obtained by all the other agents in the internal state of each agent. This makes our proposal the first complete solution to the conceptual problem that rises when applying reinforcement learning in multi-agent systems, which is caused by the difference existent between the environment and agent models. With basis on the proposed model, we create the IVQ-learning algorithm that is exhaustive tested in repetitive games with two, three and four agents and in stochastic games that need cooperation and in games that need collaboration. This algorithm shows to be a good option for obtaining solutions that guarantee convergence to the Nash optimum equilibrium in cooperative problems. Experiments performed clear shows that the proposed paradigm is theoretical and experimentally superior to the traditional approaches. Yet, with the creation of this new paradigm the set of reinforcement learning applications in MAS grows up. That is, besides the possibility of applying the algorithm in traditional learning problems in MAS, as for example coordination of tasks in multi-robot systems, it is possible to apply reinforcement learning in problems that are essentially collaborative

Contribuições para a análise de sinais neuronais e biomédicos

Following the new tendency of interdisciplinarity of modern science, a new field called neuroengineering has come to light in the last decades. After 2000, scientific journals and conferences all around the world have been created on this theme. The present work comprises three different subareas related to neuroengineering and electrical engineering: neural stimulation; theoretical and computational neuroscience; and neuronal signal processing; as well as biomedical engineering. The research can be divided in three parts: (i) A new method of neuronal photostimulation was developed based on the use of caged compounds. Using the inhibitory neurotransmitter GABA caged by a ruthenium complex it was possible to block neuronal population activity using a laser pulse. The obtained results were evaluated by Wavelet analysis and tested by non-parametric statistics. (ii) A mathematical method was created to identify neuronal assemblies. Neuronal assemblies were proposed as the basis of learning by Donald Hebb remain the most accepted theory for neuronal representation of external stimuli. Using the Marcenko-Pastur law of eigenvalue distribution it was possible to detect neuronal assemblies and to compute their activity with high temporal resolution. The application of the method in real electrophysiological data revealed that neurons from the neocortex and hippocampus can be part of the same assembly, and that neurons can participate in multiple assemblies. (iii) A new method of automatic classification of heart beats was developed, which does not rely on a data base for training and is not specialized in specific pathologies. The method is based on Wavelet decomposition and normality measures of random variables. Throughout, the results presented in the three fields of knowledge represent qualification in neural and biomedical engineering

Estratégias baseadas em aprendizado para coordenação de uma frota de robôs em tarefas cooperativas

In multi-robot systems, both control architecture and work strategy represent a challenge for researchers. It is important to have a robust architecture that can be easily adapted to requirement changes. It is also important that work strategy allows robots to complete tasks efficiently, considering that robots interact directly in environments with humans. In this context, this work explores two approaches for robot soccer team coordination for cooperative tasks development. Both approaches are based on a combination of imitation learning and reinforcement learning. Thus, in the first approach was developed a control architecture, a fuzzy inference engine for recognizing situations in robot soccer games, a software for narration of robot soccer games based on the inference engine and the implementation of learning by imitation from observation and analysis of others robotic teams. Moreover, state abstraction was efficiently implemented in reinforcement learning applied to the robot soccer standard problem. Finally, reinforcement learning was implemented in a form where actions are explored only in some states (for example, states where an specialist robot system used them) differently to the traditional form, where actions have to be tested in all states. In the second approach reinforcement learning was implemented with function approximation, for which an algorithm called RBF-Sarsa($lambda$) was created. In both approaches batch reinforcement learning algorithms were implemented and imitation learning was used as a seed for reinforcement learning. Moreover, learning from robotic teams controlled by humans was explored. The proposal in this work had revealed efficient in the robot soccer standard problem and, when implemented in other robotics systems, they will allow that these robotics systems can efficiently and effectively develop assigned tasks. These approaches will give high adaptation capabilities to requirements and environment changes.

Construção e aplicação de uma sequência didática para o ensino de trigonometria usando software geogebra

The present study aims to analyze the potentialities and limitations of GeoGebra software on what concerns trigonometry s teaching and learning processes. Taking the present resources of public school from the state of Rio Grande do Norte, the research intends to answer the following question: Could we use the current conditions of public school and the Geogebra software to optimize the trigonometry s learning and teaching processes situation? . To make it a possible to answer the question above, a module of investigative activities was created and applied. The methodological intervention was made among second year High School students from a public school in Natal, RN. The theoretical reference of Mathematics Didactics was taken was a base, adopting the conceptions of Borba and Penteado (2001), Valente (1999) and Zulatto (2002, 2007) about the use of Information Technology (IT) on Mathematics classrooms. In order to create the investigative activities helped us to understand how the students make their constructions and their visual perception through the process of dragging images on the computer screen. Furthermore, the activities done with the GeoGebra software s resources facilitate the resolution of trigonometry situations

Forma/ação do professor de Matemática e suas concepções de mundo e de conhecimento

Esta pesquisa busca trabalhar com diferentes concepções de mundo e de conhecimento, investigando a articulação entre o sentido que elas possuem para os professores de Matemática e suas concepções de ensino e de Educação. O estudo gira em torno de discussões que ocorreram em um curso de extensão para professores de Matemática. Esse curso tratou de concepções de mundo e de conhecimento, relacionando-as com diferentes regiões do saber, como Matemática, Física, Ecologia e Artes, focando a transição entre a concepção de mundo da Época Moderna para a concepção de mundo que vem se construindo na denominada Época Pós-moderna ou Contemporânea. A meta é compreender o sentido que aquelas concepções têm para os professores e destacar possíveis momentos de metacompreensão sobre a articulação entre essas concepções e sua prática docente. A metodologia utilizada é qualitativa, de uma perspectiva fenomenológica.

O registro escrito da nasalidade em crianças de educação infantil

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)