Management audit, hiring and training custody and care staff in adult correctional centers, Illinois Dept. of Corrections.

Cover title.

Exploration of portuguese-bengal cultural heritage throught museological studies

The Portuguese came to Bengal in the early 16th century for trading. Between 1575 and 1600, they established many colonies on the banks of river Ganga, like Chinsura, Hooghly (Porto Pequeno), Satagaon, Gopalpur and Bandel, covering the eastern part of India. During their stay, Portuguese built many churches, schools and charitable institutions. Churches of Augustinians and Jesuits became popular tourist destinations until today. Although by the 18th century, the Portuguese presence had almost disappeared from Bengal with the emergence of British imperialism, the 500 years old (approx.) Portuguese culture is still living in modern Bengal, in the form of tangible and intangible heritage. Traces of the Portuguese impact could be seen in Bengali language, literature, folk-tales, folksongs, cuisines, agriculture, religion, cinema and trade. Some of these are included in the academic curriculum of history at school, college and university levels. In this context, research has been undertaken in the past and is still ongoing in several universities. However, heritage studies under a museological point of view have not yet been initiated at the university level. Though Goa, Panaji, Calicut, Chennai and Nagapattanam were the Portuguese centers for long periods and research has been conducted there along with the establishment of some museums,

"Knock, knock! Is it english or portuguese sign language?"

A presente investigação mostra a importância do contacto de crianças muito jovens com línguas estrangeiras. Este trabalho concentra-se na tentativa de investigar, numa abordagem plurilingue, com enfoque para a Língua Inglesa e a Língua Gestual Portuguesa, a sensibilização de um grupo de alunos do 1º Ciclo do Ensino Básico para uma língua diferente da sua língua materna. Nesta pesquisa, adotou-se uma postura de investigação-ação, apoiando-se com grande particularidade numa metodologia qualitativa e com menor relevância numa metodologia quantitativa, onde os alunos, através das várias atividades que desenvolveram foram adquirindo diferentes competências nas duas línguas. Isto permitiu aos alunos despertarem todas as suas potencialidades para a aprendizagem destas duas línguas (Língua Inglesa e Língua Gestual Portuguesa), tendo como ponto de partida a sua sensibilização e a aprendizagem de alguns vocábulos. Acreditamos que esta abordagem plurilíngue poderá auxiliar os alunos no desenvolvimento de habilidades linguísticas, cognitivas e pessoais tais como: a intercompreensão, o conhecimento de características específicas de diferentes línguas existentes em seu redor, a comparação linguística entre elas, a sua compreensão lexical, e por fim a competência em relacionar as línguas a culturas, e acima de tudo, o respeito e valorização da diversidade linguística e cultural. Foram utilizadas nas aulas atividades de nível de compreensão e produção oral, num processo de sensibilização e aprendizagem de alguns vocábulos destas línguas, sendo que os resultados foram posteriormente analisados, através de grelhas de observação das atividades, de dois inquéritos por questionário e fotos. Das observações e conclusões retiradas desta análise, confirmou-se que a sensibilização quanto à Língua Inglesa assim como quanto à Língua Gestual Portuguesa promove o desenvolvimento da criança, assim como a valorização da respetiva diversidade linguística e cultural.

Recent educational changes at higher educational level in Pakistan: English language teachers' perceptions and practices

Higher Education Institutes (HEIs) of any country could be a source of providing professionals to the country in many fields. By doing so, HEIs could play a pivotal role in the economic growth of the country. In Pakistan, it seems that, in the wake of this realization, steps have been taken to reform Higher Education. Drawing on the Triple I model of educational change covering Initiation, Implementation and Institutionalization (Fullan, 2007) this study focuses on the planning and implementation of reforms in the Education system of Pakistan at higher education level that have been introduced by the Higher Education Commission (HEC) since its inception in 2002. Kennedy’s model of hierarchical subsystems affecting innovation and Chin and Benne’s (1985) description of strategies for implementing change also provided guidelines for analyzing the changes in education in the country to highlight the role that the authorities expect the language teacher to play in the process of implementing these changes. A qualitative method is followed in this study to gather data from English language teachers at three universities of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan. A questionnaire was developed to look into the perceptions of English language teachers regarding the impact of these reforms. This was followed up by interviews. Responses from 28 teachers were received through questionnaire out of which 9 teachers were interviewed for detailed analysis of their perceptions. Thematic Content analysis was used to analyze and interpret the data. Some of the most significant changes that the respondents reported knowledge of included the introduction of Semester System, extending the Bachelors degree to four years from two years, promotion of research culture, and increased teachers’ autonomy in classroom practices. Implications of these reforms for English teachers’ professional development were also explored. The data indicate that the teachers generally have a positive attitude towards the changes. However, the data also show concerns that teachers have about the practical effectiveness of these changes in improving English language teaching and learning in Pakistani Universities. Some of the areas of concern are worries regarding resources, the assessment system, the number of qualified teachers, and instability in the educational policy. They are concerned about the training facilities and quality of the professional training available to them. Moreover, they report that training opportunities for their professional development are not available to all the teachers equally. Despite the HEC claims of providing regular training opportunities, the majority of the teachers did not receive any formal training in the last three years, while some teachers were able to access these opportunities multiple times. Through the recent reforms HEC has empowered the teachers in conducting the learning/teacher processes but this extra power has reduced their accountability and they can exercise these powers without any check on them. This empowerment is limited to the classroom and there appears to be no or minimal involvement in decision making at the top level of policy making. Such lack of involvement in the policy decisions seems to be generating a lack of sense of ownership among the teachers (Fullan 2003a:6). Although Quality Enhancement Cells have been developed in the universities to assure the desired quality of education, they might need a more active role to contribute in achieving the level of enhancement in education expected from them. Based on the perceptions of the respondents of this study and the review of the relevant literature, it is argued that it is unlikely for the reforms to be institutionalized if teachers are not given the right kind of awareness at the initiation stage and are not prepared at the implementation stage to cope with the challenge of a complex process. The teachers participating in this study, in general, have positive and enthusiastic attitudes towards most of the changes, in spite of some reservations. It could also be interesting to see if the power centers of the Pakistani Higher Education appreciate this enthusiasm and channel it for a strong Higher Education system in the country.

How teachers' perceptions affect the academic and language assessment of immigrant children

Recent research evidences inconsistencies in teachers' practice regarding skills assessment of L2 students. Scientific evidence supports that less experienced teachers have lower orientation toward multiple task-tests for non-native students. Research questions: Whether school teachers as having different teaching training and unequal teaching experience with non-native students perceive differently a four-skills scale. Purpose of the study: This study intends to analyse the importance degree between the four skills/tasks: reading, writing, speaking and listening, in the perspective of school teachers. Method: 77 teachers, aged 32-62, with (and without) experience in teaching and adapting materials for immigrant students, divided into six groups according to their scientific domain. Assessment tools included a scale for judgement of four academic tasks adapted from the original “Inventory of Undergraduate and Graduate Level: Reading, Writing, Speaking and Listening Tasks (Rosenfeld, Leung & Ottman, 2001). Main Findings: 1) different degrees of importance attributed by teachers on tasks that should be included in academic and language test for immigrant students; 2) perceptions of teachers are determined by predictors in this order: scientific domain, experience with multicultural classes and lower prediction from teaching service and age; 3) different results between american and portuguese samples answering the same questionnaire.

Reabilitação psicomotora em contexto da saúde mental de adultos no centro de atividades ocupacionais, Casa do Sol do Centro de Apoio Social do Pisão, Santa Casa da Misericórdia de Cascais

O presente relatório refere-se às atividades, do estágio inserido no Ramo de Aprofundamento de Competências Profissionais do Segundo Ciclo, desenvolvidas no âmbito da Reabilitação Psicomotora em Saúde Mental. Estas práticas de estágio foram realizadas no Centro de Atividades Ocupacionais (CAO) – Casa Do Sol e no Centro de Apoio Social do Pisão (CASP). A Intervenção no CAO e no CASP foi dirigida a indivíduos adultos com perturbação psiquiátrica, de ambos os sexos, residentes e/ou utentes destes centros. Esta intervenção foi constituída pelas seguintes quatro etapas: 1ª Observação informal das aulas de expressão corporal, dos momentos de refeições, dos ateliês de carpintaria, jardinagem, artes plásticas e culinária; 2ª Reabilitação / Intervenção psicomotora (duração aproximada de 6 meses); 3ª Avaliação formal de alguns casos utilizando instrumentos de avaliação nomeadamente a Bateria Psicomotora de Vítor da Fonseca (BPM) e a Escala do Comportamento Adaptativo Verão Portuguesa de Sofia Santos e Pedro Morato (ECAP). 4ª Elaboração e Ajustamento do Plano Terapêutico.

A supervised machine learning method for word sense disambiguation of Portuguese nouns

Dissertação de Mestrado, Ciências da Linguagem, Faculdade de Ciências Humanas e Sociais, Universidade do Algarve, 2010

Training and Updating of Education Boards in Indigenous Schools of Rural Areas: Strengthening Local Education Management

Education management in the schools of indigenous rural areas faces a number of difficulties to implement and comply with the guidelines and requirements of the laws related to budgetary management of resources allocated to Education or Administrative Boards. In addition to being located in scattered rural areas, far from the municipal heads and regional offices of the Ministry of Public Education, one of the main obstacles is that all regulations, laws and guidelines are written in Spanish, and there is people, in this indigenous rural communities, who do not speak, write, read or understand this language. This puts them at an enormous disadvantage, which has a direct impact on the indigenous children’s right to education.

DEAF INDIVIDUALS USERS OF SIGN LANGUAGE LEARNING PORTUGUESE: THE ANALYSIS OF PRACTICAL CLASSES

This essay shows the report of a series of searches that deal the acquisition of a first and a second language by deaf children, in inclusive contexts. Due to hearing deprivation, and for not having a whole acoustic duct, deaf people end up not acquiring naturally the language that is common for Brazilians in general. Among the searches carried out, those that deal the written expression of deaf undergraduates, whose path in the acquisition of the language(s) did not follow the model prescribed by current theoreticians. The search shows that the analyzed students did not acquire sign language as first language in the first phase of childhood and Portuguese as second language, contradicting the bilingual model adopted in Brazil

FOR A SOCIOINTERACIONIST CONCEPTION OF LANGUAGE: GUIDELINES FOR THE TEACHING OF PORTUGUESE

The text displayed here makes considerations around the social interaction conception of language and, based on that, understands it as a fundament for didactic and methodological approaches of language teaching and, similarly, relates it to social practices, which means understanding the interactions as fundamental for the process of development and learning of the human being. To do so, this text goes back to Vygotsky, according to whom the relationships of interaction are favorable to the development of language, as the beginning and the development of cognition are charged upon language and social interactions. We discussed language – which is conceived as a historical fact and the result of collective actions that men developed in working processes along history – through a theoretical standpoint.

COLLABORATIVE ACTION RESEARCH AND THE IMPACT ON TRAINING TEACHER IN COLLABORATION WITH A TEACHER IN SERVICE

This paper presents partial results of a collaborative action research conducted in a public school in Cruz Alta, Rio Grande do Sul, with a training teacher, a teacher in service and a third year high school class. The collaborative action research, adopted methodology, is considered an alternative way to provide the opportunity for upgrading of in service and in training teachers (Burns 1999). The purpose was to create opportunities for all the participants assimilate a reading in English approach and the language as a sociocultural mediator. From this perspective, reading workshops were developed, whose purpose was to prepare training and in-service teachers for critical-reflexive practice of the classroom, emphasizing the importance of education that addresses cultural aspects of the English language. It was found, once again, that the collaborative work promotes reflection and hence improvements in teaching and learning, which can be significant, considering the lack of actions inspired by research aimed at public English language education in Brazil (CELANI, 2009).

DICT IN THE FOREIGN LANGUAGE CLASSROOM: CHALLENGES IN ITS APPROPRIATION BY BEGINNER-LEVEL TEACHERS IN TRAINING

Our work is primarily concerned with the challenges involved in the appropriation of DICT by beginner-level participants of the Institutional Program for Scholarships for Initiation in Teaching in Brazil. Although the current generation of beginner-level undergraduate students may be seen as “digital natives”, their use of digital technologies, however frequent, takes place only outside the school environment. The technology skills which they acquire in their daily lives are not transposed to the classroom when they find themselves in the position of teachers. It is still challenging to understand their difficulties in appropriating technology to educational purposes, since educational agents seem all to agree on how important digital technologies are in school, while failing to put it to actual classroom use, and while simply providing access to digital technology is far from sufficient. These skills should be understood and applied in schools by meaningful teaching practice, which should go beyond the mere instrumental use of technology. Therefore, we here focus on the process of elaboration of digital technologies assisted teaching practices in the foreign language classroom. Our corpus is composed of classroom activities and classroom interventions, elaborated and staged by beginner-level teachers in training, who are the project participants, during the course of a school year. These activities comprise the development of an intervention project, which consists of an activity plan, its critical discussion, its application and further reflection.

Transitioning students to work through authentic employment-based training in an Australian senior secondary VET program.

A common challenge among OECD countries has been the development of education and training pathways that accommodate student needs and interests at the upper secondary level (OECD, 2000). The introduction of trade-focussed Australian Technical Colleges (ATCs) has met with mixed response. The ATCs aim to create a supported transition from school to work through dual pathway programs enabling students to follow a trade career while completing their upper secondary studies. There has been little explicit examination of the effectiveness of such senior secondary school arrangements. Using one such Australian Technical College as a case-study, this paper investigates the perceptions of the employers and students who were associated with the college. Using mixed-methods consisting of quantitative perception surveys and focus interviews, the results of this study show that students and employers are very satisfied with the College and illustrate that students have made significant gains in relating their learning to the workplace and everyday life.

Getting skilled for education, training and employment : Indigenous Cultural Knowledges and mainstream knowledges of mathematics

This abstract is a preliminary discussion of the importance of blending of Indigenous cultural knowledges with mainstream knowledges of mathematics for supporting Indigenous young people. This import is emphasised in the documents Preparing the Ground for Partnership (Priest, 2005), The Indigenous Education Strategic Directions 2008–2011 (Department of Education, Training and the Arts, 2007) and the National Goals for Indigenous Education (Department of Education, Employment and Work Relations, 2008). These documents highlight the contextualising of literacy and numeracy to students’ community and culture (see Priest, 2005). Here, Community describes “a culture that is oriented primarily towards the needs of the group. Martin Nakata (2007) describes contextualising to culture as about that which already exists, that is, Torres Strait Islander community, cultural context and home languages (Nakata, 2007, p. 2). Continuing, Ezeife (2002) cites Hollins (1996) in stating that Indigenous people belong to “high-context culture groups” (p. 185). That is, “high-context cultures are characterized by a holistic (top-down) approach to information processing in which meaning is “extracted” from the environment and the situation. Low-context cultures use a linear, sequential building block (bottom-up) approach to information processing in which meaning is constructed” (p.185). In this regard, students who use holistic thought processing are more likely to be disadvantaged in mainstream mathematics classrooms. This is because Westernised mathematics is presented as broken into parts with limited connections made between concepts and with the students’ culture. It potentially conflicts with how they learn. If this is to change the curriculum needs to be made more culture-sensitive and community orientated so that students know and understand what they are learning and for what purposes.