Critical practice and the public pedagogy of environmental and conservation media

Natural History filmmaking has a long history but the generic boundaries between it and environmental and conservation filmmaking are blurred. Nature, environment and animal imagery has been a mainstay of television, campaigning organisations and conservation bodies from Greenpeace to the Sierra Club, with vibrant images being used effectively on posters, leaflets and postcards, and in coffee table books, media releases, short films and viral emails to educate and inform the general public. However, critics suggest that wildlife film and photography frequently convey a false image of the state of the world’s flora and fauna. The environmental educator David Orr once remarked that all education is environmental education, and it is possible to see all image-based communication in the same way. The Media, Animal Conservation and Environmental Education has contributions from filmmakers, photographers, researchers and academics from across the globe. It explores the various ways in which film, television and video are, and can be, used by conservationists and educators to encourage both a greater awareness of environmental and conservation issues, and practical action designed to help endangered species. This book is based on a special issue of the journal Environmental Education Research.

Mobile note taking:investigating the efficacy of mobile text entry

When designing interaction techniques for mobile devices we must ensure users are able to safely navigate through their physical environment while interacting with their mobile device. Non-speech audio has proven effective at improving interaction on mobile devices by allowing users to maintain visual focus on environmental navigation while presenting information to them via their audio channel. The research described here builds on this to create an audio-enhanced single-stroke-based text entry facility that demands as little visual resource as possible. An evaluation of the system demonstrated that users were more aware of their errors when dynamically guided by audio-feedback. The study also highlighted the effect of handwriting style and mobility on text entry; designers of handwriting recognizers and of applications involving mobile note taking can use this fundamental knowledge to further develop their systems to better support the mobility of mobile text entry.

Engineering education research - the UK perspective at a time of change

Engineering education in the United Kingdom is at the point of embarking upon an interesting journey into uncharted waters. At no point in the past have there been so many drivers for change and so many opportunities for the development of engineering pedagogy. This paper will look at how Engineering Education Research (EER) has developed within the UK and what differentiates it from the many small scale practitioner interventions, perhaps without a clear research question or with little evaluation, which are presented at numerous staff development sessions, workshops and conferences. From this position some examples of current projects will be described, outcomes of funding opportunities will be summarised and the benefits of collaboration with other disciplines illustrated. In this study, I will account for how the design of task structure according to variation theory, as well as the probe-ware technology, make the laws of force and motion visible and learnable and, especially, in the lab studied make Newton's third law visible and learnable. I will also, as a comparison, include data from a mechanics lab that use the same probe-ware technology and deal with the same topics in mechanics, but uses a differently designed task structure. I will argue that the lower achievements on the FMCE-test in this latter case can be attributed to these differences in task structure in the lab instructions. According to my analysis, the necessary pattern of variation is not included in the design. I will also present a microanalysis of 15 hours collected from engineering students' activities in a lab about impulse and collisions based on video recordings of student's activities in a lab about impulse and collisions. The important object of learning in this lab is the development of an understanding of Newton's third law. The approach analysing students interaction using video data is inspired by ethnomethodology and conversation analysis, i.e. I will focus on students practical, contingent and embodied inquiry in the setting of the lab. I argue that my result corroborates variation theory and show this theory can be used as a 'tool' for designing labs as well as for analysing labs and lab instructions. Thus my results have implications outside the domain of this study and have implications for understanding critical features for student learning in labs. Engineering higher education is well used to change. As technology develops the abilities expected by employers of graduates expand, yet our understanding of how to make informed decisions about learning and teaching strategies does not without a conscious effort to do so. With the numerous demands of academic life, we often fail to acknowledge our incomplete understanding of how our students learn within our discipline. The journey facing engineering education in the UK is being driven by two classes of driver. Firstly there are those which we have been working to expand our understanding of, such as retention and employability, and secondly the new challenges such as substantial changes to funding systems allied with an increase in student expectations. Only through continued research can priorities be identified, addressed and a coherent and strong voice for informed change be heard within the wider engineering education community. This new position makes it even more important that through EER we acquire the knowledge and understanding needed to make informed decisions regarding approaches to teaching, curriculum design and measures to promote effective student learning. This then raises the question 'how does EER function within a diverse academic community?' Within an existing community of academics interested in taking meaningful steps towards understanding the ongoing challenges of engineering education a Special Interest Group (SIG) has formed in the UK. The formation of this group has itself been part of the rapidly changing environment through its facilitation by the Higher Education Academy's Engineering Subject Centre, an entity which through the Academy's current restructuring will no longer exist as a discrete Centre dedicated to supporting engineering academics. The aims of this group, the activities it is currently undertaking and how it expects to network and collaborate with the global EER community will be reported in this paper. This will include explanation of how the group has identified barriers to the progress of EER and how it is seeking, through a series of activities, to facilitate recognition and growth of EER both within the UK and with our valued international colleagues.

The effects of the outdoor experiential ropes course on perceived team performance

The purpose of this quasi-experimental study was to explore the perceived effects of the Ropes Course on the performance of intact work teams. The dependent variable, team performance, was measured by the Team Performance Assessment, a 20 question inventory. The Ropes Course, the independent variable, was an outdoor experiential training program presently marketed as a highly effective team building training program. Issues the team addressed in the highly emotional and physical environment were purported to transfer back to the work environment and act as a catalyst for change The Ropes Course in this study consisted of a day long series of outdoor mental, emotional and physical exercises addressing the issues of goal-setting, role expectations, accountability, trust, respect, communication, problem-solving and decision-making. The 68 subjects, 37 in the treatment group and 31 in the control were employees of a large international financial institution. They were not chosen by random selection. The work teams' managers recognized a need to improve team morale, performance and functioning due to corporate reengineering and downsizing resulting in team members' job losses. Control teams were partially matched to the treatment teams on the basis of professional composition and similar job descriptions. The pretest of the Team Performance Assessment was given the morning of the Ropes Course treatment and the posttest was given three to five weeks later. The control teams received the pretests and posttests at about the same time intervals at their work location but received no Ropes Course treatment. The treatment teams' scores and the control teams' scores were statistically compared using the Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) and the Multivariate Analysis of Covariance (MANCOVA) at the .05 level of significance. The statistical analysis revealed a significant difference between the control and experimental teams after the team building Ropes Course training as measured by the Team Performance Assessment (Gilbert, 1996). ^

Environment, culture, and medicinal plant knowledge in an indigenous Amazonian community

Diminishing cultural and biological diversity is a current global crisis. Tropical forests and indigenous peoples are adversely affected by social and environmental changes caused by global political and economic systems. The purpose of this thesis was to investigate environmental and livelihood challenges as well as medicinal plant knowledge in a Yagua village in the Peruvian Amazon. Indigenous peoples’ relationships with the environment is an important topic in environmental anthropology, and traditional botanical knowledge is an integral component of ethnobotany. Political ecology provides a useful theoretical perspective for understanding the economic and political dimensions of environmental and social conditions. This research utilized a variety of ethnographic, ethnobotanical, and community-involved methods. Findings include data and analyses about the community’s culture, subsistence and natural resource needs, organizations and institutions, and medicinal plant use. The conclusion discusses the case study in terms of the disciplinary framework and offers suggestions for research and application.

Experiential hospitality environments: The roles of the interior architectural features in affording meanings of place

People’s authentic sense of place is being overshadowed by less authentic experiences referred to as placelessness. Consequently, a demand for experiential interior environments has surfaced. Experiential environmental and place attachment theories suggested that the relationships between self, others, and the environment are what encourage users in creating meaningful authentic experiences. This qualitative study explored the roles of the experiential interior architectural features in affording users of hospitality environments higher-level needs, such as meanings of place. For the case study, ten participants stayed at a hotel for two nights. Participants were given a guided list of ten facets of an experience, which was insidiously structured by both experiential environmental and place attachment theories. The participants used photographs to document each of the facets on the guided list. The photos were then used during the photo elicitation interviews, which evoked additional qualitative information. Participants identified specific interior architectural features and described them using the themes associated to place attachment theories. The findings revealed that the interior architectural features might enrich the meanings a person associates with a given place. Possibly affording users higher-level needs. As a result, if an experiential interior environment allows users to foster relationships between self, others, and the physical environment, they may experience more authentic experiences and give more meanings to a place.

The contribution of higher education to economic *development in a globalized environment

Amidst concerns about achieving high levels of technology to remain competitive in the global market without compromising economic development, national economies are experiencing a high demand for human capital. As higher education is assumed to be the main source of human capital, this analysis focused on a more specific and less explored area of the generally accepted idea that higher education contributes to economic growth. The purpose of this study, therefore, was to find whether higher education also contributes to economic development, and whether that contribution is more substantial in a globalized context. ^ Consequently, a multiple linear regression analysis was conducted to support with statistical significance the answer to the research question: Does higher education contributes to economic development in the context of globalization? The information analyzed was obtained from historical data of 91 selected countries, and the period of time of the study was 10 years (1990–2000). Some variables, however, were lagged back 5, 10 or 15 years along a 15-year timeframe (1975–1990). The resulting comparative static model was based on the Cobb-Douglas production function and the Solow model to specify economic growth as a function of physical capital, labor, technology, and productivity. Then, formal education, economic development, and globalization were added to the equation. ^ The findings of this study supported the assumption that the independent contribution of the changes in higher education completion and globalization to changes in economic growth is more substantial than the contribution of their interaction. The results also suggested that changes in higher and secondary education completion contribute much more to changes in economic growth in less developed countries than in their more developed counterparts. ^ As a conclusion, based on the results of this study, I proposed the implementation of public policy in less developed countries to promote and expand adequate secondary and higher education systems with the purpose of helping in the achievement of economic development. I also recommended further research efforts on this topic to emphasize the contribution of education to the economy, mainly in less developed countries. ^

Advanced Placement and American education: A Foucauldian analysis of the Advanced Placement Program of the college board

Advanced Placement is a series of courses and tests designed to determine mastery over introductory college material. It has become part of the American educational system. The changing conception of AP was examined using critical theory to determine what led to a view of continual success. The study utilized David Armstrong's variation of Michel Foucault's critical theory to construct an analytical framework. Black and Ubbes' data gathering techniques and Braun and Clark's data analysis were utilized as the analytical framework. Data included 1135 documents: 641 journal articles, 421 newspaper articles and 82 government documents. ^ The study revealed three historical ruptures correlated to three themes containing subthemes. The first rupture was the Sputnik launch in 1958. Its correlated theme was AP leading to school reform with subthemes of AP as reform for able students and AP's gaining of acceptance from secondary schools and higher education. The second rupture was the Nation at Risk report published in 1983. Its correlated theme was AP's shift in emphasis from the exam to the course with the subthemes of AP as a course, a shift in AP's target population, using AP courses to promote equity, and AP courses modifying curricula. The passage of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 was the third rupture. Its correlated theme was AP as a means to narrow the achievement gap with the subthemes of AP as a college preparatory program and the shifting of AP to an open access program. ^ The themes revealed a perception that progressively integrated the program into American education. The AP program changed emphasis from tests to curriculum, and is seen as the nation's premier academic program to promote reform and prepare students for college. It has become a major source of income for the College Board. In effect, AP has become an agent of privatization, spurring other private entities into competition for government funding. The change and growth of the program over the past 57 years resulted in a deep integration into American education. As such the program remains an intrinsic part of the system and continues to evolve within American education. ^

Environment, Culture, and Medicinal Plant Knowledge in an Indigenous Amazonian Community

Diminishing cultural and biological diversity is a current global crisis. Tropical forests and indigenous peoples are adversely affected by social and environmental changes caused by global political and economic systems. The purpose of this thesis was to investigate environmental and livelihood challenges as well as medicinal plant knowledge in a Yagua village in the Peruvian Amazon. Indigenous peoples’ relationships with the environment is an important topic in environmental anthropology, and traditional botanical knowledge is an integral component of ethnobotany. Political ecology provides a useful theoretical perspective for understanding the economic and political dimensions of environmental and social conditions. This research utilized a variety of ethnographic, ethnobotanical, and community-involved methods. Findings include data and analyses about the community’s culture, subsistence and natural resource needs, organizations and institutions, and medicinal plant use. The conclusion discusses the case study in terms of the disciplinary framework and offers suggestions for research and application.

Enhancing physical therapy students' attitudes toward telecommunication technology by using a demonstration model

The purpose of this study was to assess and enhance the attitudes and knowledge of physical therapy students toward telecommunication technology. A questionnaire was given to appraise the attitudes and knowledge of 156 physical therapy students toward telecommunication technology. The intervention was a one hour presentation on applications relevant to physical therapy practice. The majority of students expressed interest in telecommunication before the presentation, and felt that expanded use of telecommunication was important to the profession. However, only a minority of students demonstrated knowledge about specific medical telecommunication applications. The post-intervention questionnaire showed the presentation to be effective in changing students' attitudes toward telecommunication, and increasing their knowledge relevant to the practice of physical therapy. If physical therapy curricula were to include exposure to telecommunication, perhaps physical therapists will be more inclined to use the technology in the future.

A docência na educação infantil: representações sociais dos professores cursistas do proinfantil do Estado do Rio Grande do Norte sobre o trabalho docente

The overall objective of this research is to identify and analyze social representations of (the) teachers(the) Ranciere the Initial Training Program for Teachers in Office in Early Childhood Education - PROINFANTIL - UFRN/MEC on the teaching work, seeking to identify their constituent elements and understand the dynamics of your organization. We assume that these teachers work fundamentally, in the institutions of Early Childhood Education, with knowledge of common sense and related cultural inherent to be/do professor in the design of education guardian/giving handouts to ensure the physical integrity of children, causing a rift between the caring and educating. From this general objective, we elected as specific objectives: identify the social, economic and cultural backgrounds of these (the) teachers (sa); identify what is teaching work for them (the) as well as identify which the psychosocial implications driven by RS on teaching work that point to tensions between the training and the exercise teacher as activity profissional.Como theoretical foundation we opted for Social Representations Theory of Moscovici (2003), Jodelet (2001); Specificities of the teaching Work in Early Childhood Education: Kramer (2002; 2006); OliveiraFormosinho (2007); Zilma de Oliveira (2007), Teacher Training: Ramalho, Nunez and Galthier (2003) and Tardif and Lessard (2008), content Analysis: Bardin (2004). As methodological procedure, we chose the Central Nucleus theory, developed by Jean Claude Abric (2000). Contributed to the scope of this objective the 171 teachers (the) that concluded the Proinfantil NBs to participate of TALP with justifications. The corpus arising from evocations around the words suggested by Carlos Chagas Foundation: give classrooms, teacher, pupil and added the word Child Education, were subjected to a treatment with the aid of the EVOC software (2000), identifying the central nucleus. The results indicate the words more evoked and significant: Planning, child care, educating, and play. Indicating that for these (the) teachers (the) the teaching work in Early Childhood Education must have a systematic pedagogical to educate children. These words correspond to the specificity of being/doing teaching in Early Childhood Education. However, the data shows that it is a job with different characteristics of the teaching work in other stages of education

Correspondências científicas como uma relação didática entre história e ensino de matemática: o exemplo das cartas de Euler a uma princesa da Alemanha

Lettres àune Princesse d'Allemagne sur divers sujets de physique et de philosophie (Letters to a Princess of Germany on various topics of physics and philosophy) is the work taken as an object of study of this thesis. It is a literary success written in the eighteenth century by the Swiss mathematician and physicist Leonhard Paul Euler (1707-1783) in order to meet a request from the Prussian king, Frederick II, the Great (1712-1786) to accept to guide the intellectual education of his niece, the young princess Anhalt-Dessau (1745-1808). The method of teaching and learning through letters elected to the education of the German monarch resulted in a collection of 234 matches in which Euler theory is about music, Philosophy, Mechanics, Optics, Astronomy, Theology and Ethics among others. The research seeks to point out mathematical content contained in this reference work based on the exploitation and adaptation of original historical works as an articulator of development activities for teaching mathematics in basic education and in accordance with the National Curriculum Parameters of Mathematics (NCP) work. The general objective point out the limits and didactic potential of Lettres à une Princesse d'Allemagne sur divers sujets de physique et de philosophie as a source of support for teachers of basic education in developing activities for teaching mathematics. The discussions raised point to concrete possibilities of entanglement between the extracted mathematical content of the bulge of the work with current teaching methodologies from resizing the use of letters according to Freire's pedagogical perspective of the correspondence, and especially the use of new communication channels in the century XXI, both aimed at dialogue and approximation between those who write and those who read.

A questão ambiental nos cursos de graduação em Educação Física no estado do Rio Grande do Norte

Environmental education started to be discussed since the intensification of the human activity, as a consequence of the industrial revolution. In Brazil, the proposal has gained attention due to the National Environmental Policy, which suggested inserting environmental education in all education levels and later as a crosscutting topic pervading the contents offered in all courses, according to the National Curricula Parameters. Faced with such a challenge, this work aimed to identify how environmental concerns is being considered in physical education licentiate courses at Rio Grande do Norte. For this purpose, we have adopted a descriptive method starting from interviews with coordinators of six institutions offering a physical education licentiate degree (UFRN, UNI-RN, UNIFACEX, FANEC, and UERN – Mossoró and Pau dos Ferros Campi), the application of a questionnaire with 30% of graduating students in the second half of 2015, and observations from the pedagogical projects and syllabi of the institutions that have provided such documents. Results have pointed out the acknowledgement of students and coordinators on the importance of addressing environmental concerns in physical education. However, coordinators and students contradict each other in all investigated institutions. According to the coordinators, environmental education effectively is in some courses of the curriculum as a mandatory requirement from the Brazilian National Ministry of Education. Nonetheless, in practice, most graduating students have no knowledge about environmental education in their courses, stating that they do not have training suited to meet these concerns. When requested to exemplify how they would deal with environmental education, a fragile education to address this topic in their future workspaces was revealed, showing uncritical activities. Despite the obligatoriness in the educational context already exists for decades and the importance of this topic revealed in the speeches of professionals, environmental education is still shy in physical education curricula and education courses, thereby showing the need of a curricular restructuration and a new understanding on this topic, as well as making it to be more present in the daily activities of the future teachers who should take it into consideration in their classes.

A questão ambiental nos cursos de graduação em Educação Física no estado do Rio Grande do Norte

Environmental education started to be discussed since the intensification of the human activity, as a consequence of the industrial revolution. In Brazil, the proposal has gained attention due to the National Environmental Policy, which suggested inserting environmental education in all education levels and later as a crosscutting topic pervading the contents offered in all courses, according to the National Curricula Parameters. Faced with such a challenge, this work aimed to identify how environmental concerns is being considered in physical education licentiate courses at Rio Grande do Norte. For this purpose, we have adopted a descriptive method starting from interviews with coordinators of six institutions offering a physical education licentiate degree (UFRN, UNI-RN, UNIFACEX, FANEC, and UERN – Mossoró and Pau dos Ferros Campi), the application of a questionnaire with 30% of graduating students in the second half of 2015, and observations from the pedagogical projects and syllabi of the institutions that have provided such documents. Results have pointed out the acknowledgement of students and coordinators on the importance of addressing environmental concerns in physical education. However, coordinators and students contradict each other in all investigated institutions. According to the coordinators, environmental education effectively is in some courses of the curriculum as a mandatory requirement from the Brazilian National Ministry of Education. Nonetheless, in practice, most graduating students have no knowledge about environmental education in their courses, stating that they do not have training suited to meet these concerns. When requested to exemplify how they would deal with environmental education, a fragile education to address this topic in their future workspaces was revealed, showing uncritical activities. Despite the obligatoriness in the educational context already exists for decades and the importance of this topic revealed in the speeches of professionals, environmental education is still shy in physical education curricula and education courses, thereby showing the need of a curricular restructuration and a new understanding on this topic, as well as making it to be more present in the daily activities of the future teachers who should take it into consideration in their classes.

Ensino colaborativo e educação física: contribuições à inclusão escolar

In Brazil, special education public is a challenge to all teachers, especially to Physical Education ones. Among others, it encompasses students with disabilities, students with intellectual giftedness, and students with pervasive developmental disorder. Besides posing challenges, the inclusion process causes worry and generates debates on problems that impede the full partaking of such pupils in schooling practices related to physical education. This thesis presents a research that focused on these matters by means of co-working involving the researcher and the Physical Education teacher in regular classrooms following co-teaching perspective. The starting point of the research is the following question: what contributions co-working involving Physical Education teacher and researcher may provide to people with disabilities and to Physical Education teacher in regular schools attended by students who are the special education’s target? The research aimed at discussing and analyzing the development of such co-working activity involving the researcher and Physical Education teacher. It followed co-teaching perspective and was put into practice in a public school in Uberlândia, state of Minas Gerais. Participant qualitative approach, which recognizes relations between social sciences and intervention in social reality, was the methodological choice to develop the research in three phases: 1) making the research; 2) intervening in social reality; 3) assessing/diagnosing it. Strategies to gather data included semi structured interview, questionnaire, participant observation, and group interview. Data come, above all, from oral accounts as well as from the work by the group of participants of the research, which means, researcher, Physical Education teacher who works at regular schools and three teachers who deal with AEE (Atendimento Educacional Especial), a special educational teaching program. The concept of inclusion is discussed accordingly to authors such as Miranda (2001), Mantoan (2001), Duarte and Santos (2003), Mittler (2003), Rodrigues (2006), and Bueno (2008). The conception of co-working is developed in the light of studies by Capellini (2004) and Mendes (2009), among others. Results point out not only initial conditions of anguish, doubts and hardships, but also a will to debate difficulties Physical Education teachers face in their daily pedagogical activities at school. Likewise, results showed that teachers who took part in the research are interested in continuing their training in connection with co-teaching as strategy to teach physical education at inclusive schools.