Delivering educational value: evaluation of The Corporate International Master's Program by its stakeholders

Over the past decade, the number and diversity of executive education (EE) programs have continued to grow (BusinessWeek, 2006). With the proliferation of EE programs come the challenges of evaluating the overall quality of such programs. What makes a valuable EE program to the companies that purchase them, to the universities that manage them, and to the participants that learn from them? The present research focuses on key factors that have served to determine the value of EE programs, and apply these criteria to evaluate the quality of a new EE program: The Corporate International Master’s (CIM) program. The CIM program was launched in the fall of 2013. Hence, the present research will focus on evaluating the CIM program in its first year of operations. It is my hope that this research will inform the optimization and future development of the CIM program.

Supply chain turbulence: the impact of a mid-range event in multi-tier, multi-dimension supply chains

Nota: A autora agradece à Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP) pela concessão de bolsa de estudos para o desenvolvimento deste projeto de pesquisa.

Defining student participation and empowerment in higher education

Customer participation has been studied for decades; however, it gained a postmodern perspective around the year 2000. Customers have become co-creators of personalized experiences, moving from the audience to the stage. In the educational context, students must take responsibility for their learning process and participate in the production of the service. This changing is providing opportunities and challenges for higher education institutions (HEIs) to redefine their relationship with stakeholders, especially with students. This study is based on the service dominant logic (SDL) perspective because students are assumed to take the role of co-creators of knowledge in the educational setting. The research uses adapted frameworks and concepts applied in organizational, knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS) and also medical studies to advance the understanding of value co-creation in the HEI context. The current study addresses a lack of research in the higher education context focusing on defining students’ participation and students’ empowerment in higher education context. An empirical investigation was developed with traditional schools in Brazil. This investigation allowed the description of the constructs in the specific context. The description of student participation in HEIs context reflects the relevance of three dimensions – information sharing, personal interaction and responsible behavior. In the Brazilian context, responsible behavior is the weakest dimension in the construct, because the responsibilities are unbalanced between students and professors. The main reasons identified for this unbalanced relation were cultural issues and local regulation. Student empowerment was described as composed by four dimensions – meaningfulness, competence, impact and choice; however, one of them – choice – was identified as the weakest dimension, facing cultural and bureaucratic barriers for implementation in the Brazilian educational context. Moreover, interviewees spontaneously cited the idea of trust in the faculty as an important antecedent of student participation that must be considered when analyzing student participation and empowerment mechanisms. An additional contribution was the proposal of a theory-based framework for understanding the service dominant logic perspective in the HEI context, in which student participation and student empowerment were explored as mechanisms leading to positive student behavior toward institution.

Which strategies can an educational business, such as a kindergarten in Germany, develop to foster employee engagement?

Which strategies can an educational business, such as a Kindergarten in Germany, develop to foster employee engagement? The goal of this master thesis is to identify effective and viable measures to engage employees, that could be potentially implemented in a Kindergarten in Germany. The literature concerning the notion of employee engagement is so inconsistent that even studies about the subject fail to find one common definition and have to acknowledge the variety of existing definitions (IES, 2014, p.52-53). This reflects the youth of the concept, which has only been partially studied by academics and practitioners in recent years. The literature gap about employee engagement concerns many aspects, among which small companies and educational businesses, in particular those focusing on early child development. Considering the low levels of employee engagement in Germany combined with the absence of studies on educational organizations focusing in early child development this master thesis studies engagement in German Kindergärten(s). This master thesis is divided in two parts consisting of a literature review and a case study. The literature review allows to follow the evolution of the concept along the years, while the case study focuses on assessing employee engagement in Montessori Kindergärten(s) in Munich & elaborating potential measures to increase engagement levels. Double sided research was undertaken for this case study. On the one hand a quantitative research was performed, through a survey, in order to uncover which strategies would be viable to foster employee engagement. On the other hand a qualitative research was undertaken, consisting in an internship in a Kindergarten, in order to shed light on how to do so. Findings in the quantitative research indicate overall engagement levels average to low. Results related to specific statements bring out the originality of the educational sector, which is in some aspects intrinsically engaging, similarly to the medical field (Seijts & Crim, 2006). Furthermore low engagement levels led to a conversely high number of positives responses to potential engagement strategies suggesting their potential effectiveness. Findings in the qualitative research are coherent with qualitative results and complement them

La dimension personelle dans la formation des enseignants de l'enseignement de base du 1er cycle à Madère

Orientador Louis Marmoz

Entre ecos e narcisos: estudo de caso sobre a prática teatral com adolescentes como atividade extracurricular numa escola de nível médio

This masters thesis discusses the studying and the teaching of drama and its implications among teenagers of the contemporary world. This paper also analyses an extracurricular project entitled Drama in the development of citizenship , which was carried out in the public state school Berilo Wanderley in Natal/RN, between 1999 and 2005 with high school students. It comprises a case study that aimed at understanding how and why they chose to take drama classes outside of the school curriculum and even after they graduated, some of them never left the school project and even started participating in the cultural and artistic context of the city of Natal quite actively, both as part of an audience as well as on artistic, political, social and pedagogical performance. The project was high significant for its participants, for the school and for the community, by creating a sense of recognition of the relevance of the pedagogical and artistic production in the public school, as it managed to yield knowledge that helped students to understand the values of group work, sharing information, collaborative assessment and, most of all, to engender actions of protagonism by the teenagers themselves within their social environments. The empirical process developed is placed in a contemporary historical context where educational paradigms shifts occur, and where categories of youth empowerment and protagonism are fundamental to the educational process in the 21st century. The objective of this study is to reflect upon the pedagogical dimension of drama classes for teenagers, aiming at providing further discussions on the role of acting classes in the construction of the personality among youngsters, thus hoping to contribute to other teaching practices, including drama and other subjects of general education

Fractal dimension and anisotropy of soil CO2 emission in a mechanically harvested sugarcane production area

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)

Fazer a ponte para a escola de todos(as)

The purpose of this study is to understand what are the matrix elements in which everyday activities of social author/authors, actor/actors and actress/actresses are embedded, in order to carry out the Escola da Ponte s political and pedagogic process (PPP). Thus, the object of this study is to reflect on an experience developed in a public school supported by the Portuguese State within the scenario of institutions that are committed to building up a school of the people by investing in democratization and community participation in their management process. The methodological course of action was targeted at the presuppositions of qualitative research (WOODS, 1999; BURGESS, 1997; MILLS, 1982; OLIVEIRA, 1998; BOGDAN and BIKLEN, 1994; MACEDO, 2000; CASAL, 1996; GEERTZ, 2000), with data collected from random word association (MACHADO and CARVALHO, 2003), the discourse of the interviewed (KAUFMANN, 1996; SILVA, 2006; 2002), observation notes and documents (ELIAS, 1997). Based on a multiple reference and theoretical framework, the investigation revealed elements that are construed as the raw material and pillars supporting the bridge of a school of the people, as well as the self-organization of the school community which emerges as a dimension that binds together all the elements and brings new arrangements into the school dynamics by moving from the individual to the society (DUPUY, 1990). Along this line, the central argument is that in the short and long run the public school quality does not spring from macro educational policies, nor from ephemeral mass-production programs, projects or governmental policies, but from the intent of the professionals working there in becoming authors and characters in the process of building up and carrying out the PPP. The Project has been conceived in the light of the needs and intentionality of the community whose support comes from the participation and social control held by the students families and the community s power to force to action public administration central agencies aiming at having the State fulfill its responsibilities

A formação do professor em diferentes espaços socializadores: um olhar sobre os alunos do curso Pedagogia da Terra da UFRN

This work is an analysis about the teacher's formation starting from certain aspects of its culture. It is supposed that the teacher is constituted in an individual that acts starting from singular aspects, in an individual point of view, but at the same time it interacts with other individuals in an environment strongly marked by the culture. Those two dimensions are representatives of the socio-cultural characteristics and they can be seen in the perspective of the individual and collective identity. Based on those presuppositions we chose, as reference, four environment of formation: the family, the school, the work and the Movement of the Rural Workers Without-Soil/MST (MST: The without-soil-ones in Portuguese) observing as the teachers refers to those environment highlighting, mostly, the formative aspects stood out. The individuals researched are teachers involved in the education of settled communities, who are students of the Earth Pedagogy course of the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte/UFFRN. For our analyses, we used narrative texts, written by the teachers, as conclusion of the discipline History of the Brazilian Education in which they tell their life histories. The speeches show as the environments of reference influence in their world conceptions, attitudes and values that not just mix in an individual dimension, but also collective. The research make us reflect about the possibility to think on the educational action starting from that understanding of wide formation considering the present elements in the courses of teacher's life

O sindicato como espaço de construção da profissão docente

This work examines the connection Syndicate/teachers profession trying to unveil the important role taken over by the Syndical movement in the process of professionalization of the militant teachers. For that, it describes and analyses the historical course of three Syndicates representatives of the teachers category Associação dos Professores Licenciados da Bahia APLB; Sindicato dos Trabalhadores em Educação de Pernambuco SINTEPE; Sindicato dos Servidores Municipais de Petrolina SINDSEMP acting in the micro-region of the San Francisco Valley, especially, in the municipalities of Juazeiro Bahia , and of Petrolina Pernambuco. It concentrates its interests on the contribution of the Syndicates for the professional development of these teachers in this region analysing the aspects related to emerging conflicts into the Syndical organization, to the attitude of these entities before the educational reality to their reinvindicative struggles to the formative dimension of the group actions. This study tries to answer the following questions: How has this syndical movement of teachers of state school of S. Francisco Valley been characterized? How do their actions reflect in the formation and professionalization of the teachers? Do teachers recognize the syndicate as a constructive space for the teaching profession? The methodological trajectory was directed through a qualitative approach of an etnomethodological character, using instruments for the understanding of this reality, The treatment of the data was based on the interpretative analysis of the speeches present in documents and through answers of the interviwees, having as a reference in this analysis the theoretical studies about syndicalism and the teacher professionalization. For a conceptual construction of this work it was studied these two categories from their genesis, from the social historical evolution of their concepts and the up to date discussions that give explanations about the teachers syndical movement and about the process of teachers professionalization. As thesis of this study it was defended the idea of that the teachers syndicates have contributed expressively in the process of the construction of the teacher profession of the militant teachers of this in the micro-region of the S. Francisco Valley. Once the teachers participate actively in this movement promoted by the syndical entities, the teachers develop the critical sense of the educational realty; improve their formation and reinvindicate from the State this condition as a Right; fight for better conditions in the work; reinvindicate the salary valuation and, try to construct an image of teacher basing on a professional model. The contribution of the Syndicate in the process of teachers profissionalization, is more evident in its external dimension that chacterizes the profissionalism, on the related aspects: to the forms of participation in the definition and the management of the educational politics; to the political struggles for the achievements of the professional status, to the recognition and of his eventual valuation. The syndical actions have repercussions with less intensity in the inside dimension that defines the profissionality, in the related aspects: to the administratation of the pedagogical processes in schools and in the classroom; to the acquisition of branches of knowledges; to the epistemological criticism of the acquirements mobilized in the teaching; the curricular question to the mediation that make possible the learning at school and in the classroom

A (re)significação conceptual nas práticas colaborativas com professores do Ensino Fundamental

The work objectified to apprehend the degree of the teachers' concept concerning the territory concept and to intervene with situations of critical reflections to accompany and to analyze the process of conceptual elaboration. It contemplates on the (new)meaning of knowledge and (new)elaboration of the concept in study done inside a pedagogic intervention. The Municipal School Dr. Julio Senna - Ceará-Mirim/RN and six (6) teacher-collaborators that taught in the 3rd and 4th grades of the fundamental teaching, constitutes the empiric field of the research. Its theoretical-methodological contributions are built in the studies of Vigotski (2000a, 2000b and 2001) on the formation process and development of concepts; in the methodology colaborate (Ibiapina (2004), Bartomé (1986), Kemmis and Mctaggart (1988), Arnal, Del Ricon and Latorre (1992), Pepper and Ghedin (2002), among others) and in the critical-reflexive conception of the Geography (Soares Júnior (2000 and 1994), Silva (1998), Raffestin (1993), Santos (1994), Felipe (1998), among others). The accomplishment of the work presupposed starting from the reflections on the following subjects: which the teachers' understanding in the school space concerning the territory concept? How does happen the process of conceptual construction territory for the teachers? The analysis of the teachers' previous knowledge on the concept in study, evidenced that its apprehensions on the attributes of the referred concept went mentioned the to light of the perceptible dimension of the real-concrete relationships of the reality linked to the degree of the spontaneous concepts and followed by the ideas of the traditional, humanistic and cultural geographical conceptions (positivism and phenomenology), restricting the territory meaning the notion of State-Nation and place of the men's dwelling. In the intervention process, it was verified to real possibility of the acquisition of indispensable scientific concepts to the process of (new)meaning conceptual of geographical knowledge through the continuous practice of the educational formation, when it was evidenced that the teacher-collaborators acquired high degrees of attributions of the significance of the territory concept to the they elaborate generalizations by means of analyses and syntheses of the concept-attribute (essential and multiples) of the reference conceptual in study

O sindicato como espaço de construção da Profissão Docente

This work examines the connection Syndicate/teachers profession trying to unveil the important role taken over by the Syndical movement in the process of professionalization of the militant teachers. For that, it describes and analyses the historical course of three Syndicates representatives of the teachers category Associação dos Professores Licenciados da Bahia APLB; Sindicato dos Trabalhadores em Educação de Pernambuco SINTEPE; Sindicato dos Servidores Municipais de Petrolina SINDSEMP acting in the micro-region of the San Francisco Valley, especially, in the municipalities of Juazeiro Bahia , and of Petrolina Pernambuco. It concentrates its interests on the contribution of the Syndicates for the professional development of these teachers in this region analysing the aspects related to emerging conflicts into the Syndical organization, to the attitude of these entities before the educational reality to their reinvindicative struggles to the formative dimension of the group actions. This study tries to answer the following questions: How has this syndical movement of teachers of state school of S. Francisco Valley been characterized? How do their actions reflect in the formation and professionalization of the teachers? Do teachers recognize the syndicate as a constructive space for the teaching profession? The methodological trajectory was directed through a qualitative approach of an etnomethodological character, using instruments for the understanding of this reality, The treatment of the data was based on the interpretative analysis of the speeches present in documents and through answers of the interviwees, having as a reference in this analysis the theoretical studies about syndicalism and the teacher professionalization. For a conceptual construction of this work it was studied these two categories from their genesis, from the social historical evolution of their concepts and the up to date discussions that give explanations about the teachers syndical movement and about the process of teachers professionalization. As thesis of this study it was defended the idea of that the teachers syndicates have contributed expressively in the process of the construction of the teacher profession of the militant teachers of this in the micro-region of the S. Francisco Valley. Once the teachers participate actively in this movement promoted by the syndical entities, the teachers develop the critical sense of the educational realty; improve their formation and reinvindicate from the State this condition as a Right; fight for better conditions in the work; reinvindicate the salary valuation and, try to construct an image of teacher basing on a professional model. The contribution of the Syndicate in the process of teachers profissionalization, is more evident in its external dimension that chacterizes the profissionalism, on the related aspects: to the forms of participation in the definition and the management of the educational politics; to the political struggles for the achievements of the professional status, to the recognition and of his eventual valuation. The syndical actions have repercussions with less intensity in the inside dimension that defines the profissionality, in the related aspects: to the administratation of the pedagogical processes in schools and in the classroom; to the acquisition of branches of knowledges; to the epistemological criticism of the acquirements mobilized in the teaching; the curricular question to the mediation that make possible the learning at school and in the classroom

Praxiologia, representação social de menopausa e práticas educativas de enfermeiras na estratégia saúde da família

This research, whose theme is related to climacteric, aims to know the social representation of menopause developed by the nurses working for Estratégia Saúde da Família (Family Health Strategy) in João Pessoa PB, as well as identifying its structure and verifying the way it interferes with the assistance and educational practices to the climacterial user. In the theoretical level, it is based on a model that articulates the social representations theory, the central nucleus complementary theory and the central concepts of Pierre Bourdieu s praxiology: habitus, cultural capital, social field and symbolic power. A hundred and forty-seven female nurses who work for Estratégia Saúde da Família (Family Health Strategy) in João Pessoa (PB) took part in this research, and the data collection period was from February 2008 to March 2009. As to the methods and techniques, we used the method to determine the central nucleus based on the free association of words, a questionnaire to identify certain regularities that constitute the nurses habitus, and the semi-structured interview to explore opinions and attitudes when facing assistance situations and educational practices and to collect other relevant information. The data analysis was developed, when referring to the free associations, with the help of the EVOC software, which is a group of articulated programs which carry out the statistical analysis of the evocations and the identification of the possible elements of both the central nucleus and the peripheral system of the social representation. As to the questionnaire, we used the descriptive statistical analysis and the analysis of correlation between the variables. The interviews were submitted to a categorical analysis of the content. The EVOC result indicated that the cognition hormone was the only element of the central nucleus of the social representation of menopause. Due to its symbolic value and structuring power, this central nucleus ensures the strict and, at the same time, flexible character of the representational content. The analysis of the social advancement, of some fundamental features of the group habitus, as well as the analysis of its insertion in the health field and of the attitudinal opinions and dispositions concerning the assistance given to the climacterial user, and the analysis of the pedagogical dimension of this assistance, all these analyses lead to the conclusion that the nurses who took part in this research share a social representation of the menopause resulting from the association of different technical and scientific knowledge. These derive from the biomedical pattern as well as from hegemonic values which disqualify old age and overvalue youth, from pedagogical conceptions arising from patterns that are presently regarded as authoritative and old-fashioned and from cultural references (responsible for the semantic variations concerning the central nucleus) which are specific to the subgroups the nurses belong to. This research enables the creation of opportunities for discussion between active nurses working for Estratégia Saúde da Família, and the nurses who are teachers at institutions of higher education, aiming at linking theory to practice, so that they can find ways of thinking about the climacteric and working, in a more comprehensive way, with users who are experiencing this stage of life