A virtual agent to sustaining children's engagement in language learning

In this thesis we aimed to explore the potential of gamification - defined as “the use of game elements in non-game contexts” [30] - in increasing children's (aged 5 to 6) engagement with the task. This is mainly due to the fact that our world is living a technological era, and videogames are an example of this engagement by being able to maintain children’s (and adults) engagement for hours straight. For the purpose of limiting complexity, we only addressed the feedback element by introducing it with an anthropomorphic virtual agent (human-like aspect), because research shows that virtual agents (VA’s) can influence behavioural change [17], or even induce emotions on humans both through the use of feedback provided and their facial expressions, which can interpreted in the same way as of humans’ [2]. By pairing the VA with the gamification concept, we wanted to 1) create a VA that is likely to be well-received by children (appearance and behaviour), and 2) have the immediate feedback that games have, so we can give children an assessment of their actions in real-time, as opposed to waiting for feedback from someone (traditional teaching), and with this give students more chances to succeed [32, 43]. Our final system consisted on a virtual environment, where children formed words that corresponded to a given image. In order to measure the impact that the VA had on engagement, the system was developed in two versions: one version of the system was limited to provide a simple feedback environment, where the VA provided feedback, by responding with simple phrases (i.e. “correct” or “incorrect”); for the second version, the VA had a more complex approach where it tried to encourage children to complete the word – a motivational feedback - even when they weren’t succeeding. Lastly we conducted a field study with two groups of children, where one group tested the version with the simple feedback, and the other group tested the ‘motivational’ version of the system. We used a quantitative approach to analyze the collected data that measured the engagement, based on the number of tasks (words) completed and time spent with system. The results of the evaluation showed that the use of motivational feedback may carry a positive effect on engaging children.

Relatos y Redes de Política Pública de Niñez en Colombia 1991 - 2014

El presente estudio describe los cambios en la políticas públicas de niñez en Colombia entre 1991 y 2014, mediante el análisis tanto de las narrativas y contranarrativas de política gestadas en este periodo de tiempo, como de los factores que propiciaron la conformación de una red de política pública y el posterior desarrollo de diversos modos de interacción entre los grupos de actores identificados. Parte esta investigación de situar antecedentes y factores relevantes que permiten contrastar, por un lado, contenidos y perspectivas entre diferentes periodos de tiempo, y por otro lado, el número, tipo, y dinámica de relaciones entre los diversos actores involucrados en este campo antes de 1991, y posterior a este año hasta 2014. En síntesis, a través de los hallazgos y análisis realizados se busca no solo plantear qué se transformó entre 1991 y 2014 respecto a la construcción de la niñez como referente de políticas públicas, sino también, cómo se gestó esta transformación, con el fin de proveer elementos que permitan comprender principalmente los énfasis y las variaciones que han tenido las políticas públicas de niñez en el país, pero también, algunas continuidades por periodos más específicos de tiempo.

El rol de las redes de apoyo transnacional en la evolución del régimen de trata de personas en la región del mekong, 2004-2015

Con el fin de la unipolaridad no sólo se fortalecieron mecanismos de gobernanza global como los Regímenes Internacionales, sino también se fortalecieron actores no estatales. A pesar de la importancia que tomaron estos dos elementos aún no existe una teoría que explique exhaustivamente la relación que existe entre ellos. Es por lo anterior que, la investigación busca responder de qué manera el rol de las Redes de Apoyo Transnacional ha incidido en la evolución del régimen de tráfico de personas en la Región del Mekong. Asimismo tiene como objetivo comprender las relación entre el Régimen y las Redes de Apoyo Transnacional a través de la formulación de un caso de estudio basado en metodologías cualitativas, específicamente, en el análisis teórico-constructivista y el análisis de contenido de documentos producidos por actores estatales y no estatales.

Representaciones sociales y prácticas de actividad física en docentes de educación física, localidad de Suba UPZ 71

Debido a la problemática del sedentarismo e inactividad física en edad escolar y sus implicaciones en la aparición de enfermedades crónicas no transmisibles, surge un interés por realizar análisis cualitativos que tengan en cuenta los contextos sociales en los que se da esta problemática, con el objetivo de conocer, desde los actores inmersos en las comunidades, cómo se está llevando a cabo y cómo se entiende la actividad física; por tanto, se planteó en esta investigación un diseño narrativo en el cual se indagó, por medio de entrevistas a profundidad, acerca de las representaciones sociales y prácticas de actividad física que desarrollan 9 docentes de educación física pertenecientes a 3 colegios distritales de la Unidad de Planeamiento Zonal Tibabuyes, en la localidad de Suba en Bogotá, Colombia. Resultados: Los docentes entienden la actividad física como todo tipo de movimiento humano, así mismo, se evidencia que las prácticas deportivas son las que predominan en el ámbito escolar. En relación con las condiciones sociales, se encontró que el aspecto familiar es un limitante para el desarrollo de las prácticas físicas del estudiante. Las políticas escolares y distritales le restan importancia a las clases de educación física en el currículo escolar y la inseguridad, debido al consumo de sustancias psicoactivas en el sector, deteriora los espacios deportivos y recreativos como parques y zonas verdes.

Transportation of Children in Ground Ambulances: Professionals' Knowledge and Safety Measures

Background: The transport of children in ground ambulances is a rarely studied topic worldwide. The ambulance vehicle is a unique and complex environment with particular challenges for the safe, correct and effective transportation of patients. Unlike the well developed and readily available guidelines on the safe transportation of a child in motor vehicles, there is a lack on consistent specifications for transporting children in ambulances. Nurses are called daily to transfer children to hospitals or other care centers, so safe transport practices should be a major concern. Purpose: to know which are the safety precautions and specific measures used in the transport of children in ground ambulances by nurses and firefighters and to identify what knowledge these professionals had about safe modes of children transportation in ground ambulances. Methods: In this context, an exploratory - descriptive study and quantitative analysis was conducted. A questionnaire was completed by 135 nurses and firefighters / ambulance crew based on 4 possible children transport scenarios proposed by the NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) and covered 5 different children´s age groups (new born children, 1 to 12 months; 1 to 3 years old; 4 to 7 years old and 8 to 12 years old). Results: The main results showed a variety of safety measures used by the professionals and a significant difference between their actual mode of transportation and the mode they consider to be the ideal considering security goals. In addition, findings showed that achieved scores related to what ambulance crews do in the considered scenarios reflect mostly satisfactory levels of transportation rather than optimum levels of safety, according to NHTSA recommendations. Variables as gender, educational qualifications, occupational group and local where professionals work seem to influence the transport options. Female professionals and nurses from pediatric units appear to do a safer transportation of children in ground ambulances than other professionals. Conclusion: Several professionals refereed unawareness of the safest transportation options for children in ambulances and did not to know the existence of specific recommendations for this type of transportation. The dispersion of the results suggests the need for investment in professional training and further regulation for this type of transportation.

Social competence and emotional comprehension: How are they related in children?

The developmental progression of emotional competence in childhood provides a robust evidence for its relation to social competence and important adjustment outcomes. This study aimed to analyze how this association is established in middle childhood. For this purpose, we tested 182 Portuguese children aged between 8 and 11 years, of 3rd and 4th grades, in public schools. Firstly, for assessing social competence we used an instrument directed to children using critical social situations within the relationships with peers in the school context - Socially in Action-Peers (SAp) (Rocha, Candeias & Lopes da Silva, 2012); children were assessed by three sources: themselves, their peers and their teacher. Secondly, we assessed children’s emotional understanding, individually, with the Test of Emotion Comprehension (Pons & Harris, 2002; Pons, Harris & Rosnay, 2004). Relations between social competence levels (in a composite score and using self, peers and teachers’ scores) and emotional comprehension components (comprehension of the recognition of emotions, based on facial expressions; external emotional causes; contribute of desire to emotion; emotions based on belief; memory influence under emotional state evaluation; possibility of emotional regulation; possibility of hiding an emotional state; having mixed emotions; contribution of morality to emotion experience) were investigated by means of two SSA (Similarity Structure Analysis) - a Multidimensional Scaling procedure and the external variable as points technique. In the first structural analysis (SSA) we will consider self, peers and teachers’ scores on Social Competence as content variables and TEC as external variable; in the second SSA we will consider TEC components as content variables and Social Competence in their different levels as external variable. The implications of these MDS procedures in order to better understand how social competence and emotional comprehension are related in children is discussed, as well as the repercussions of these findings for social competence and emotional understanding assessment and intervention in childhood is examined.

Sexual-i-hablando, las representaciones sociales de las estudiantes de Educación Preescolar en relación con la Educación para la Sexualidad

Recibido 22 de noviembre 2006 • Aprobado 14 de marzo 2007  La presente investigación aborda las representaciones que tienen las estudiantes de la carrera de Educación Preescolar de la División de Educación Básica (DEB), sobre el curso Educación para la Sexualidad, impartido en el IV nivel del Bachillerato, a partir de la información que tienen las estudiantes sobre la sexualidad y de las expectativas respecto a su práctica profesional en las aulas preescolares sobre la educación para la sexualidad, con el fin de reflexionar acerca del impacto en los niveles pedagógico y subjetivo de la propuesta metodológica y de contenidos. También, se sugieren estrategias didácticas áulicas y la consecuente incorporación de éstas de parte de las y los estudiantes en su práctica profesional. La metodología utilizada, desde el enfoque cualitativo, consideró adecuada la realización de entrevistas en profundidad, así como de relatos inducidos que dieran cuenta de las vivencias en torno a la educación para la sexualidad las dudas, temores, práctica docente y las estrategias para abordar la temática, entre otros. La investigación obtuvo como resultados una propuesta en contenidos y método para este curso. Además, una Prueba de Oraciones Incompletas (TOI), diseñado para conocer la información general que manejan las y los estudiantes que se matriculan en él, respecto de: la sexualidad, educación para la sexualidad, la sexualidad de las mujeres, la sexualidad de mujeres adolescentes, la sexualidad de las niñas, la sexualidad de los varones, sexualidad de varones adolescentes y la sexualidad de los niños.

Performing inclusion and exclusion in the peer group. Children's social organization and peer socializing practices in the classroom

This PhD thesis investigates children’s peer practices in two primary schools in Italy, focusing on the ordinary and the Italian L2 classroom. The study is informed by the paradigm of language socialization and considers peer interactions as a ‘double opportunity space’, allowing both children’s co-construction of their social organization and children’s sociolinguistic development. These two foci of attention are explored on the basis of children’s social interaction and of the verbal, embodied, and material resources that children agentively deploy during their mundane activities in the peer group. The study is based on a video ethnography that lasted nine months. Approximately 30 hours of classroom interactions were video-recorded, transcribed, and analyzed with an approach that combines the micro-analytic instruments of Conversation Analysis and the use of ethnographic information. Three main social phenomena were selected for analysis: (a) children’s enactment of the role of the teacher, (b) children’s reproduction of must-formatted rules, and (c) children’s argumentative strategies during peer conflict. The analysis highlights the centrality of the institutional frame for children’s peer interactions in the classroom. Moreover, the study illustrates that children socialize their classmates to the linguistic, social, and moral expectations of the context in and through various practices. Notably, these practices are also germane to the local negotiation of children’s social organization and hierarchy. Therefore, the thesis underlines that children’s peer interactions are both a resource for children’s sociolinguistic development and a potentially problematic locus where social exclusion is constructed and brought to bear. These insights are relevant for teachers’ professional practice. Children’s peer interactions are a resource that can be integrated in everyday didactics. Nevertheless, the role of the teacher in supervising and steering children’s peer practices appears crucial: an acritical view of children’s autonomous work, often implied in teaching methods such as peer tutoring, needs to be problematized.

Children’s socialization, involved parenting, and the construction of the family-school partnership in everyday family interactions: a study on parent-assisted homework as a morally dense educational arena

This study investigates an activity that takes place at the intersection between family and school and plays a key role in the building of the family-school partnership largely promoted by education policies: parent-assisted homework. Even though this topic is not new in pedagogical research, what is innovative about this study is the focus on naturally occurring parent-child conversations during homework. Adopting a phenomenological approach to the study of educational events and relying on conversation analysis, the present study analyzes 62 video-recorded sessions of parent-assisted homework collected in 19 Italian families with children aged 6-10 years old (i.e., attending primary school). The analysis of parent-child interactions reveals that parent-assisted homework is not only a site for formal learning but also and primarily a morally dense educational arena. Through the ‘small talks’ that accompany the completion of homework exercises, parents and children evoke and co-construct moral ideologies concerning topics as diverse as learning, school rules and standards, ‘good, involved parenting’, the family-school partnership, children’s autonomy, virtue, time management, and the organization of knowledge and authority in interaction. By taking part in everyday homework interactions, children are educated to culture-specific ethical systems and socialized into morally competent members of their communities, while parents implement the family-school partnership and comply with the model of “involved parent” proposed by pedagogical research and policies. Providing empirical evidence for the moral and educational relevance of ordinary family talk, this study contributes to pedagogical research on family life and promotes parents’ reflexivity about their mundane interactive activities.

Holocaust postmemory in contemporary anglophone children's literature

This dissertation discusses contemporary Anglophone children’s literature representing the Holocaust and it claims that, through the reading of historical novels, children can acquire a specific kind of postmemory, which I call ‘attitudinal postmemory’. The works analyzed have been written by ‘non-related’ authors, meaning writers who are not witnesses nor their descendants. Attitudinal postmemory is based on the readers’ establishment of a personal-emotional link with the Holocaust by means of narrative empathy towards the characters; it is an ‘active’ kind of memory because it will hopefully convert into an informed, respectful attitude towards peers that opposes the Nazi ideology. The dissertation is structured into two main parts. Part One provides an overview of the origins and development of Holocaust memory in Western countries. Chapter 1 introduces two major historiographical-literary debates and the following chapter discusses three main issues concerning the representation of the Holocaust (naming, the need to represent, and the ‘right to’ represent) while considering the forms and genres traditionally used and considered ‘appropriate’. Focusing on the scope of literary narratives, Chapter 3 explains how the presence of a personal-emotional link is essential to acquire Holocaust postmemory and, in particular, attitudinal postmemory. The criteria adopted with regard to the case studies are described in Chapter 4. Part Two discusses the process of interweaving historical truth with fiction and how historical fiction helps child readers acquire attitudinal postmemory. After a brief overview of the genre in Chapter 5, Chapter 6 probes how it is possible to meet the two main expectations of historical fiction while avoiding a disrespectful stance towards the Holocaust. Chapter 7 discusses the idea of empathy and some issues in the representation of Nazi evil, while Chapter 8 offers a comparative analysis of the case studies proposed, including authors from the UK, Ireland, Australia, and the USA.

Lives apart? Experiences of transnational motherhood by Georgian labour migrants to Italy and their children

International labour migration processes of the last decades saw increasing numbers of solo female migrants employed in the developed countries. Many of these women were mothers who left their children in the sending countries and thus gave rise to a controversial phenomenon of transnational motherhood. The present thesis is based on the first empirical study of intergenerational narratives of mothers, Georgian labour migrants to Italy, and their children, left behind in Georgia. Mothers’ international labour migration is a challenge to the traditional ideology of motherhood. Although unconsciously migrant mothers often adhere to “alternative”, “rational”, future-oriented model(s) of parenting, they continue to live their experiences in the framework of traditional understandings of motherhood, which appears to be unequipped to “frame” transnational motherhood as, from its point of view, mothers’ choice to leave their children is reprehensible, yet transnational mothers’ physical absence is not an equivalent of “leaving” their children. Informants’ narratives strongly suggest that long periods of physical separation did not jeopardize bonds between mothers and children in transnational families. While informants’ selection bias is probable, the mother-child bond was not “broken” and the very essence of motherhood remained intact. Many forms of mothers’ and children’s online co-presence were documented during the interviews. Interviews also prove that the Internet cannot be considered a solution to the problem of family separation, experienced painfully by both mothers and children: it may reduce the pain caused by separation, but cannot be a substitute for mothers’ physical absence from their families. Despite the pain caused by separation, mothers’ emigration appeared to be the right decision made for the good of the family. Interviewed mothers almost univocally reported readiness to “keep going on”, and continue working in emigration to help their children until physically able to do so, because, as they put it, “motherhood never ends”.

La nuova tv dei ragazzi. Uno sguardo alla children’s television del digitale terrestre italiano

La presente tesi si propone di analizzare l'offerta per bambini e ragazzi italiana successivamente l'introduzione del digitale terrestre. Si inizia introducendo la letteratura riguardante la Children's Television: i suoi maggiori studiosi, le teorie dietro di essa, i suoi rapporti con gli stakeholders, lo Stato, la scuola e il suo stesso pubblico. Si prosegue osservando i cambiamenti avvenuti nel panorama mediatico e nella vita dei minori con la tecnologia digitale, guardando nello specifico come il servizio pubblico della Rai e la sua rivale commerciale Mediaset abbiano adattato la propria offerta e i propri paradigmi alle nuove possibilità. L'ultimo capitolo concerne gli ultimi due anni di pandemia e l'ulteriore modifica dell'offerta per far fronte all'emergenza sanitaria.

Genetic Predictors Of Long-term Response To Growth Hormone (gh) Therapy In Children With Gh Deficiency And Turner Syndrome: The Influence Of A Socs2 Polymorphism.

There is great interindividual variability in the response to GH therapy. Ascertaining genetic factors can improve the accuracy of growth response predictions. Suppressor of cytokine signaling (SOCS)-2 is an intracellular negative regulator of GH receptor (GHR) signaling. The objective of the study was to assess the influence of a SOCS2 polymorphism (rs3782415) and its interactive effect with GHR exon 3 and -202 A/C IGFBP3 (rs2854744) polymorphisms on adult height of patients treated with recombinant human GH (rhGH). Genotypes were correlated with adult height data of 65 Turner syndrome (TS) and 47 GH deficiency (GHD) patients treated with rhGH, by multiple linear regressions. Generalized multifactor dimensionality reduction was used to evaluate gene-gene interactions. Baseline clinical data were indistinguishable among patients with different genotypes. Adult height SD scores of patients with at least one SOCS2 single-nucleotide polymorphism rs3782415-C were 0.7 higher than those homozygous for the T allele (P < .001). SOCS2 (P = .003), GHR-exon 3 (P= .016) and -202 A/C IGFBP3 (P = .013) polymorphisms, together with clinical factors accounted for 58% of the variability in adult height and 82% of the total height SD score gain. Patients harboring any two negative genotypes in these three different loci (homozygosity for SOCS2 T allele; the GHR exon 3 full-length allele and/or the -202C-IGFBP3 allele) were more likely to achieve an adult height at the lower quartile (odds ratio of 13.3; 95% confidence interval of 3.2-54.2, P = .0001). The SOCS2 polymorphism (rs3782415) has an influence on the adult height of children with TS and GHD after long-term rhGH therapy. Polymorphisms located in GHR, IGFBP3, and SOCS2 loci have an influence on the growth outcomes of TS and GHD patients treated with rhGH. The use of these genetic markers could identify among rhGH-treated patients those who are genetically predisposed to have less favorable outcomes.

[food Insecurity In Brazilian Families With Children Under Five Years Of Age].

This article analyzes food insecurity and hunger in Brazilian families with children under five years of age. This was a nationally representative cross-sectional study using data from the National Demographic and Health Survey on Women and Children (PNDS-2006), in which the outcome variable was moderate to severe food insecurity, measured by the Brazilian Food Insecurity Scale (EBIA). Prevalence estimates and prevalence ratios were generated with 95% confidence intervals. The results showed a high prevalence of moderate to severe food insecurity, concentrated in the North and Northeast regions (30.7%), in economic classes D and E (34%), and in beneficiaries of conditional cash transfer programs (36.5%). Multivariate analysis showed that the socioeconomic relative risks (beneficiaries of conditional cash transfers), regional relative risks (North and Northeast regions), and economic relative risks (classes D and E) were 1.8, 2.0 and 2.4, respectively. Aggregation of the three risks showed 48% of families with moderate to severe food insecurity, meaning that adults and children were going hungry during the three months preceding the survey.

Respiratory Viruses Are Continuously Detected In Children With Chronic Tonsillitis Throughout The Year.

To evaluate the oscillations on the viral detection in adenotonsillar tissues from patients with chronic adenotonsillar diseases as an indicia of the presence of persistent viral infections or acute subclinical infections. Cross-sectional prospective study. Tertiary hospital. The fluctuations of respiratory virus detection were compared to the major climatic variables during a two-year period using adenoids and palatine tonsils from 172 children with adenotonsillar hypertrophy and clinical evidence of obstructive sleep apnoea syndrome or recurrent adenotonsillitis, without symptoms of acute respiratory infection (ARI), by TaqMan real-time PCR. The rate of detection of at least one respiratory virus in adenotonsillar tissue was 87%. The most frequently detected viruses were human adenovirus in 52.8%, human enterovirus in 47.2%, human rhinovirus in 33.8%, human bocavirus in 31.1%, human metapneumovirus in 18.3% and human respiratory syncytial virus in 17.2%. Although increased detection of human enterovirus occurred in summer/autumn months, and there were summer nadirs of human respiratory syncytial virus in both years of the study, there was no obvious viral seasonality in contrast to reports with ARI patients in many regions of the world. Respiratory viruses are continuously highly detected during whole year, and without any clinical symptomatology, indicating that viral genome of some virus can persist in lymphoepithelial tissues of the upper respiratory tract.