Assessing student perceptions and comprehension of climate change in portuguese higher education institutions

The higher education system has a critical role to play in educating environmentally aware and participant citizens about global climate change. Yet, few studies have focused on higher education students’ knowledge and attitudes about this issue. This study aims to contribute to a comprehensive understanding of views and attitudes about climate change issues, across the postgraduate student population in three universities—the on Campus University of Porto and University of Coimbra, and the distance learning Universidade Aberta, Portugal. We surveyed university students and graduates from three master programs in environmental sciences targeting their knowledge, attitudes and behaviour on climate change issues, and their views of the role that their master degree had on it. A majority of the respondents believed that climate change is factual, and is largely human-induced; and a majority expressed concerns about climate change. Still, the surveyed students hold some misconceptions about basic causes and consequences of climate change. Further research is necessary to comprehend the university postgraduate students’ population, so that curricula programs can be adapted to grant consensus on scientific knowledge about climate change, and an active engagement of the graduate citizens, as part of the solution for climate change problems.

Evolución morfosintáctica en las lenguas chibchas

Es una descripción de fenómenos evolutivos en la caracterización morfosintáctica de las lenguas boruca, teribe y guaymí, todas de la familia chibcha. Del boruca se estudia la dimensión témporo-aspectual y su evolución a un sistema aspectual en sustitución de uno temporal. El teribe presenta un caso de morfologización en sus relaciones gramaticales derivado del análisis del orden de las palabras. En el guaimí, se da la reorganización como resultado un nuevo patrón de relaciones fundamentales que sigue un esquema de nominativo marcado, en su variante costarricense.A series of evolutive phenomena are described regarding the morphosyntactic characterization of the Chibchan languages Boruca, Teribe and Guaymí. The Boruca case analyzes the temporo-aspectual dimension and its evolution from a temporal system towards an aspectual one. Teribe is examined from the perspective of the morphologization of its grammatical relations derived from an analysis of word order. The Guaymí study shows a reorganization yielding a system of a marked nominative in the fundamental relations of the language, in its Costa Rican variant.

Notas sobre la lengua guaymí en Costa Rica

Como aproximación panorámica al estudio actual del guaymí, una de las lenguas de la familia chibcha, es un análisis introductorio de los rasgos gramaticales y tipológicos generales de esa lengua. Previa información de índole antropológica e histórico-cultural, se exponen en forma analítica aspectos sintácticos, sobre la frase verbal, el morfema de negación, el de reflexivización, los sujetos dativos, los objetos directos. Señala algunas tareas pendientes, que suponen un estudio más pormenorizado y extendido.Providing a panoramic view of the present studies of the Guaymí language, one of the Chibchan languages, this is an introductory analysis of the general grammatical and typological features of that language. First, information is given on anthropological, historical and cultural aspects. Then syntactic features are described for the verb phrase, the morpheme for negation, reflexive forms, dative subjects and direct objects. Mention is made of pending tasks requiring a broader and more detailed study.

Étude des relations entre productivité et polysémie dans les processus de formation de mots : le cas de l’espagnol

Ce mémoire s’intéresse aux processus de formation de mots. Nous postulons que les notions de productivité et de polysémie guident les locuteurs dans la sélection des procédés de formation de mots. Afin de vérifier notre hypothèse, nous avons porté nos observations sur un répertoire de mots suffixés de l’espagnol, le « Diccionario de los sufijos de la lengua española (DISULE) » de Faitelson-Weiser (2010, cf. www.sufijos.lli.ulaval.ca ). Nous avons évalué les degrés de productivité et de polysémie de chaque segment identifié comme étant un suffixe. Nous avons ensuite mis en relation les valeurs obtenues pour chacune des propriétés. Cette démarche, que nous avons testée, reconnaît le morphème comme unité d’analyse, ce qui se correspond au modèle grammatical Item et arrangement (Hockett, 1954). Bien que le résultat de nos analyses ne nous permette pas d’établir des corrélations fortes entre les deux variables pour l’ensemble des suffixes, lorsque nous délimitons des contextes de concurrence spécifiques, nous pouvons constater que les relations entre productivité et polysémie suivent des patrons spécifiques à ceux-ci. En outre, nous remarquons que le modèle adopté est plus efficace dans la description de la polysémie que pour expliquer la productivité; ce qui nous amène à nous questionner sur la pertinence de l’opposition établie entre mot et morphème en tant qu’unités d’analyse. Nous concluons que les deux notions sont essentielles en morphologie.

MICHIGAN TEACHER EXCELLENCE PROGRAM: PERSONAL EXPERIENCES AND IMPACT

This report is a summary of the effects of the Michigan Teacher Excellence Program (MITEP) on me as a science educator. The first chapter is a report of an action research project jointly authored with two other science teachers participating in the MITEP program titled “Station Activities and Misconceptions in the Chemistry Classroom.” The second chapter is a reflective essay evaluating the impacts of the MITEP experience on my teaching skills and practice, knowledge of science education and science education research, and leadership skills. The most significant impacts were a dramatic increase in my earth science content knowledge, a deeper understanding of inquiry-based teaching methods, and an expanded professional network of science educators.

The Planned and the Emergent: An Alternative Model of Learning and Literacy

Within academic institutions, writing centers are uniquely situated, socially rich sites for exploring learning and literacy. I examine the work of the Michigan Tech Writing Center's UN 1002 World Cultures study teams primarily because student participants and Writing Center coaches are actively engaged in structuring their own learning and meaning-making processes. My research reveals that learning is closely linked to identity formation and leading the teams is an important component of the coaches' educational experiences. I argue that supporting this type of learning requires an expanded understanding of literacy and significant changes to how learning environments are conceptualized and developed. This ethnographic study draws on data collected from recordings and observations of one semester of team sessions, my own experiences as a team coach and UN 1002 teaching assistant, and interviews with Center coaches prior to their graduation. I argue that traditional forms of assessment and analysis emerging from individualized instruction models of learning cannot fully account for the dense configurations of social interactions identified in the Center's program. Instead, I view the Center as an open system and employ social theories of learning and literacy to uncover how the negotiation of meaning in one context influences and is influenced by structures and interactions within as well as beyond its boundaries. I focus on the program design, its enaction in practice, and how engagement in this type of writing center work influences coaches' learning trajectories. I conclude that, viewed as participation in a community of practice, the learning theory informing the program design supports identity formation —a key aspect of learning as argued by Etienne Wenger (1998). The findings of this study challenge misconceptions of peer learning both in writing centers and higher education that relegate peer tutoring to the role of support for individualized models of learning. Instead, this dissertation calls for consideration of new designs that incorporate peer learning as an integral component. Designing learning contexts that cultivate and support the formation of new identities is complex, involves a flexible and opportunistic design structure, and requires the availability of multiple forms of participation and connections across contexts.

MICHIGAN TEACHER EXCELLENCE PROGRAM: A LIFE-CHANGING EXPERIENCE

The first chapter consists of an action research report submitted by Rebecca Joyce, Kari Luckett, and Claudia Witt as part of the Action Research class taken through the Michigan Teacher Excellence Program (MiTEP) during the winter of 2013. The research involved the use of stations to address student misconceptions in urban high school chemistry classrooms. Chapter two contains a personal reflection on the MiTEP program and how it has affected teaching strategies/practices, personal confidence, and professional relationships.

Book review: Laurel Kamada, Hybrid Identities and Adolescent Girls: Being Half in Japan. Bristol: Multilingual Matters, 2010

Arguably, the catalyst for the best research studies using social analysis of discourse is personal ‘lived’ experience. This is certainly the case for Kamada, who, as a white American woman with a Japanese spouse, had to deal first hand with the racialization of her son. Like many other mixed-ethnic parents, she experienced the shock and disap-pointment of finding her child being racialized as ‘Chinese’ in America through peer group taunts, and constituted as gaijin (a foreigner) in his own homeland of Japan. As a member of an e-list of the (Japan) Bilingualism Special Interest Group (BSIG), Kamada learnt that other parents from the English-speaking foreign community in Japan had similar disturbing stories to tell of their mixed-ethnic children who, upon entering the Japanese school system, were mocked, bullied and marginalized by their peers. She men-tions a pervasive Japanese proverb which warns of diversity or difference getting squashed: ‘The nail that sticks up gets hammered down’. This imperative to conform to Japanese behavioural and discursive norms prompted Kamada’s quest to investigate the impact of ‘otherization’ on the identities of children of mixed parentage. In this fascinat-ing book, she shows that this pressure to conform is balanced by a corresponding cele-bration of ‘hybrid’ or mixed identities. The children in her study are also able to negotiate their identities positively as they come to terms with contradictory discursive notions of ‘Japaneseness’, ‘whiteness’ and ‘halfness/doubleness’.The discursive construction of identity has become a central concern amongst researchers across a wide range of academic disciplines within the humanities and the social sciences, and most existing work either concentrates on a specific identity cate-gory, such as gender, sexuality or national identity, or else offers a broader discussion of how identity is theorized. Kamada’s book is refreshing because it crosses the usual boundaries and offers divergent insights on identity in a number of ways. First, using the term ‘ethno-gendering’, she examines the ways in which six mixed-ethnic girls living in Japan accomplish and manage the relationship between their gender and ethnic ‘differ-ences’ from age 12 to 15. She analyses in close detail how their actions or displays within certain situated interactions might come into conflict with how they are seen or constituted by others. Second, Kamada’s study builds on contemporary writing on the benefits of hybridity where identities are fluid, flexible and indeterminate, and which contest the usual monolithic distinctions of gender, ethnicity, class, etc. Here, Kamada carves out an original space for her findings. While scholars have often investigated changing identities and language practices of young people who have been geographi-cally displaced and are newcomers to the local language, Kamada’s participants were all born and brought up in Japan, were fluent in Japanese and were relatively proficient in English. Third, the author refuses to conceptualize or theorize identity from a single given viewpoint in preference to others, but in postmodernist spirit draws upon multiple perspectives and frameworks of discourse analysis in order to create different forms of knowledge and understandings of her subject. Drawing on this ‘multi-perspectival’ approach, Kamada examines grammatical, lexical, rhetorical and interactional features from six extensive conversations, to show how her participants position their diverse identities in relation to their friends, to the researcher and to the outside world. Kamada’s study is driven by three clear aims. The first is to find out ‘whether there are any tensions and dilemmas in the ways adolescent girls of Japanese and “white” mixed parentage in Japan identify themselves in terms of ethnicity’. In Chapter 4, she shows how the girls indeed felt that they stood out as different and consequently experienced isolation, marginalization and bullying at school – although they were able to make better sense of this as they grew older, repositioning the bullies as pitiable. The second aim is to ask how, if at all, her participants celebrate their ethnicity, and furthermore, what kind of symbolic, linguistic and social capital they were able to claim for themselves on the basis of their hybrid identities. In Chapter 5, Kamada shows how the girls over time were able to constitute themselves as insiders while constituting ‘the Japanese’ as outsiders, and their network of mixed-ethnic friends was a key means to achieve this. In Chapter 6, the author develops this potential celebration of the girls’ mixed ethnicity by investigating the privileges they perceived it afforded them – for example, having the advantage of pos-sessing English proficiency and intercultural ‘savvy’ in a globalized world. Kamada’s third aim is to ask how her participants positioned themselves and performed their hybrid identities on the basis of their constituted appearance: that is, how the girls saw them-selves based on how they looked to others. In Chapter 7, the author shows that, while there are competing discourses at work, the girls are able to take up empowering positions within a discourse of ‘foreigner attractiveness’ or ‘a white-Western female beauty’ discourse, which provides them with a certain cachet among their Japanese peers. Throughout the book, Kamada adopts a highly self-reflexive perspective of her own position as author. For example, she interrogates the fact that she may have changed the lived reality of her six participants during the course of her research study. As the six girls, who were ‘best friends’, lived in different parts of the Morita region of Japan, she had to be proactive in organizing six separate ‘get-togethers’ through the course of her three-year study. She acknowledges that she did not collect ‘naturally occurring data’ but rather co-constructed opportunities for the girls to meet and talk on a regular basis. At these meetings, she encouraged the girls to discuss matters of identity, prompted by open-ended interview questions, by stimulus materials such as photos, articles and pic-tures, and by individual tasks such as drawing self-portraits. By giving her participants a platform in this way, Kamada not only elicited some very rich spoken data but also ‘helped in some way to shape the attitudes and self-images of the girls positively, in ways that might not have developed had these get-togethers not occurred’ (p. 221). While the data she gathers are indeed rich, it may well be asked whether there is a mismatch between the girls’ frank and engaging accounts of personal experience, and the social constructionist academic register in which these are later re-articulated. When Kamada writes, ‘Rina related how within the more narrow range of discourses that she had to draw on in her past, she was disempowered and marginalized’ (p. 118), we know that Rina’s actual words were very different. Would she really recognize, understand and agree with the reported speech of the researcher? This small omission of self-reflexivity apart – an omission which is true of most lin-guistic ethnography conducted today – Kamada has written a unique, engaging and thought-provoking book which offers a model to future discourse analysts investigating hybrid identities. The idea that speakers can draw upon competing discourses or reper-toires to constitute their identities in contrasting, creative and positive ways provides linguistic researchers with a clear orientation by which to analyse the contradictions of identity construction as they occur across time in different discursive contexts

Étude des relations entre productivité et polysémie dans les processus de formation de mots : le cas de l’espagnol

Ce mémoire s’intéresse aux processus de formation de mots. Nous postulons que les notions de productivité et de polysémie guident les locuteurs dans la sélection des procédés de formation de mots. Afin de vérifier notre hypothèse, nous avons porté nos observations sur un répertoire de mots suffixés de l’espagnol, le « Diccionario de los sufijos de la lengua española (DISULE) » de Faitelson-Weiser (2010, cf. www.sufijos.lli.ulaval.ca ). Nous avons évalué les degrés de productivité et de polysémie de chaque segment identifié comme étant un suffixe. Nous avons ensuite mis en relation les valeurs obtenues pour chacune des propriétés. Cette démarche, que nous avons testée, reconnaît le morphème comme unité d’analyse, ce qui se correspond au modèle grammatical Item et arrangement (Hockett, 1954). Bien que le résultat de nos analyses ne nous permette pas d’établir des corrélations fortes entre les deux variables pour l’ensemble des suffixes, lorsque nous délimitons des contextes de concurrence spécifiques, nous pouvons constater que les relations entre productivité et polysémie suivent des patrons spécifiques à ceux-ci. En outre, nous remarquons que le modèle adopté est plus efficace dans la description de la polysémie que pour expliquer la productivité; ce qui nous amène à nous questionner sur la pertinence de l’opposition établie entre mot et morphème en tant qu’unités d’analyse. Nous concluons que les deux notions sont essentielles en morphologie.

Socratic flipped classroom : What types of questions and tasks promote learning?

Socratic questioning stresses the importance of questioning for learning. Flipped Classroom pedagogy generates a need for effective questions and tasks in order to promote active learning. This paper describes a project aimed at finding out how different kinds of questions and tasks support students’ learning in a flipped classroom context. In this study, during the flipped courses, both the questions and tasks were distributed together with video recordings. Answers and solutions were presented and discussed in seminars, with approximately 10 participating students in each seminar. Information Systems students from three flipped classroom courses at three different levels were interviewed in focus groups about their perceptions of how different kinds of questions and tasks supported their learning process. The selected courses were organized differently, with various kinds of questions and tasks. Course one included open questions that were answered and presented at the seminar. Students also solved a task and presented the solution to the group. Course two included open questions and a task. Answers and solutions were discussed at the seminars where students also reviewed each other’s answers and solutions. Course three included online single- and multiple choice questions with real-time feedback. Answers were discussed at the seminar, with the focus on any misconceptions. In this paper we categorized the questions in accordance with Wilson (2016) as factual, convergent, divergent, evaluative, or a combination of these. In all, we found that any comprehensible question that initiates a dialogue, preferably with a set of Socratic questions, is perceived as promoting learning. This is why seminars that allow such questions and discussion are effective. We found no differences between the different kinds of Socratic questions. They were seen to promote learning so long as they made students reflect and problematize the questions. To conclude, we found that questions and tasks promote learning when they are answered and solved in a process that is characterized by comprehensibility, variation, repetition and activity.

The teaching of reading English in a foreign language in Libyan universities: methods and models

This study focuses on the learning and teaching of Reading in English as a Foreign Language (REFL), in Libya. The study draws on an action research process in which I sought to look critically at students and teachers of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) in Libya as they learned and taught REFL in four Libyan research sites. The Libyan EFL educational system is influenced by two main factors: the method of teaching the Holy-Quran and the long-time ban on teaching EFL by the former Libyan regime under Muammar Gaddafi. Both of these factors have affected the learning and teaching of REFL and I outline these contextual factors in the first chapter of the thesis. This investigation, and the exploration of the challenges that Libyan university students encounter in their REFL, is supported by attention to reading models. These models helped to provide an analytical framework and starting point for understanding the many processes involved in reading for meaning and in reading to satisfy teacher instructions. The theoretical framework I adopted was based, mainly and initially, on top-down, bottom-up, interactive and compensatory interactive models. I drew on these models with a view to understanding whether and how the processes of reading described in the models could be applied to the reading of EFL students and whether these models could help me to better understand what was going on in REFL. The diagnosis stage of the study provided initial data collected from four Libyan research sites with research tools including video-recorded classroom observations, semi-structured interviews with teachers before and after lesson observation, and think-aloud protocols (TAPs) with 24 students (six from each university) in which I examined their REFL reading behaviours and strategies. This stage indicated that the majority of students shared behaviours such as reading aloud, reading each word in the text, articulating the phonemes and syllables of words, or skipping words if they could not pronounce them. Overall this first stage indicated that alternative methods of teaching REFL were needed in order to encourage ‘reading for meaning’ that might be based on strategies related to eventual interactive reading models adapted for REFL. The second phase of this research project was an Intervention Phase involving two team-teaching sessions in one of the four stage one universities. In each session, I worked with the teacher of one group to introduce an alternative method of REFL. This method was based on teaching different reading strategies to encourage the students to work towards an eventual interactive way of reading for meaning. A focus group discussion and TAPs followed the lessons with six students in order to discuss the 'new' method. Next were two video-recorded classroom observations which were followed by an audio-recorded discussion with the teacher about these methods. Finally, I conducted a Skype interview with the class teacher at the end of the semester to discuss any changes he had made in his teaching or had observed in his students' reading with respect to reading behaviour strategies, and reactions and performance of the students as he continued to use the 'new' method. The results of the intervention stage indicate that the teacher, perhaps not surprisingly, can play an important role in adding to students’ knowledge and confidence and in improving their REFL strategies. For example, after the intervention stage, students began to think about the title, and to use their own background knowledge to comprehend the text. The students employed, also, linguistic strategies such as decoding and, above all, the students abandoned the behaviour of reading for pronunciation in favour of reading for meaning. Despite the apparent efficacy of the alternative method, there are, inevitably, limitations related to the small-scale nature of the study and the time I had available to conduct the research. There are challenges, too, related to the students’ first language, the idiosyncrasies of the English language, the teacher training and continuing professional development of teachers, and the continuing political instability of Libya. The students’ lack of vocabulary and their difficulties with grammatical functions such as phrasal and prepositional verbs, forms which do not exist in Arabic, mean that REFL will always be challenging. Given such constraints, the ‘new’ methods I trialled and propose for adoption can only go so far in addressing students’ difficulties in REFL. Overall, the study indicates that the Libyan educational system is underdeveloped and under resourced with respect to REFL. My data indicates that the teacher participants have received little to no professional developmental that could help them improve their teaching in REFL and skills in teaching EFL. These circumstances, along with the perennial problem of large but varying class sizes; student, teacher and assessment expectations; and limited and often poor quality resources, affect the way EFL students learn to read in English. Against this background, the thesis concludes by offering tentative conclusions; reflections on the study, including a discussion of its limitations, and possible recommendations designed to improve REFL learning and teaching in Libyan universities.

Alcances y limitaciones del tercer pilar de la doctrina de responsabilidad de proteger en la intervención militar de la crisis Libia (2011-2013)

El siguiente trabajo de investigación pretende analizar no solo la manera en la que la Intervención en la crisis Libia (2011-2013) se vio justificada a la luz de lo que establece la Doctrina de R2P, sino también investigar si logró cumplir con los objetivos de la misma. Con tal propósito, se evaluará si la intervención Militar Humanitaria por parte de la OTAN bajo la resolución 1973 del Consejo de Seguridad de la ONU, se justifica desde los objetivos que establece la Doctrina de Responsabilidad de Proteger y cumple parcialmente con los propósitos fundamentales de prevenir, reaccionar y reconstruir en la crisis Libia de 2011- 2013. El método que se utilizará para responder a la pregunta de este estudio de caso, será en su totalidad cualitativo, descriptivo y analítico. En lo que respecta a las fuentes, se usarán fuentes secundarias como artículos académicos y fuentes primarias provenientes de noticias de periódicos, revistas, resoluciones AG y del CS de la ONU.

Construções com SE apassivador/indeterminador

RESUMO No presente trabalho, realizamos um estudo sobre a sintaxe histórica da língua portuguesa, focalizando as construções com se apassivador/indeterminador. Partindo de uma concepção de língua histórica, considerada em sua dimensão sociolinguística (COSERIU, 1979a; LABOV, 1972, 1982), analisamos a situação de variação e mudança linguística por que passam tais construções na gramática do português arcaico. Para tanto, utilizamos quatro corpora, representativos da prosa literária e não-literária do português dos séculos XIII, XIV, XV e XVI. Paralelamente ao estudo linguístico deste sintaticismo no referido período, esboçamos também um estudo historiográfico recuperando as reflexões dedicadas ao tema das construções com se pelas tradições gramaticais portuguesa e brasileira, bem como pelos estudos filológicos e linguístico-históricos. ABSTRACT In this paper, we carry out a study on Portuguese historical syntax, focusing on the se constructions. Based on a conception of historical language, considered in its sociolinguistic dimension (COSERIU, 1979a; LABOV, 1972, 1982), we analyze linguistic variation and change which these constructions undergo in the grammar of Old Portuguese. We used four corpora, representative of literary and non-literary Portuguese prose of the of 13th, 14th, 15th and 16th centuries. Parallel to the syntactic study, we also outline a study recovering the reflections on the theme of the se constructions by Brazilian and Portuguese grammatical tradition, as well as by the philological and historical linguistic studies.

Some common fallacies about learning and teaching English as a Lingua Franca

Over the past decades, English language teachers have become familiar with several terms which attempt to describe the role of English as a language of international communication. Presently, the term English as a lingua franca (ELF) seems to be one of the most favoured and adopted to depict the global use of English in the 21st century. Basically, the concept of ELF im-plies cross-cultural, cross-linguistic interactions involving native and non-native speakers. Conse-quently, the ELF paradigm suggests some changes in the language classroom concerning teachers’ and students’ goals as far as native speaker norms and cultures are concerned. Based on Kachru’s (1992) fallacies, this article identifies thirteen misconceptions in ELT regarding learning and teach-ing English varieties and cultures, suggesting that an ethnocentred and linguacentred approach to English should be replaced by an ELF perspective which recognizes the diversity of communicative situations involving different native and non-native cultures and varieties of English

Londres et les Britanniques dans l’ancienne grammaticographie du Portugais comme langue étrangère (XVIIe- XIXe siècles)

Observant le corpus des grammaires de portugais langue étrangère, depuis la deuxième moitié du XVIIe siècle, nous constatons que Londres a été une capitale éditoriale du monde grammatical portugais et les Britanniques (étudiants et commerçants) un public cible privilégié. L’œuvre A Portuguez Grammar : or, Rules shewing the True and Perfect way to learn the said language (1662) – la première publication grammaticale connue de portugais langue étrangère – a été publiée à Londres, lors du mariage royal de l’infante portugaise Catherine de Bragance et Charles II d’Angleterre, afin de servir, selon son auteur, le militaire français Monsieur de la Molière : “a deux sortes de personne en Angleterre, aux gens de commerce (…) & aux gens de Cour” (“to two sorts of Persons in England : to people of Traffique and Commerce (…) And to Persons of the Court”). La production et la circulation de grammaires de portugais comme langue étrangère écrites en anglais et publiées à Londres continuent pendant les XVIIIe et XIXe siècles ; ville où ont été commercialisées et exportées des œuvres grammaticales portugaises comme celles de J. Castro (1731), António Vieira (1786), Richard Woodhouse (1815), Luís Francisco Midosi (1832), Alfred Elwes (1876), Charles Henry Wall (1882). Notre propos dans cette étude est, d’abord, d’analyser ce mouvement grammatical luso-britannique, notamment un ensemble de grammaires de portugais produites dans l’espace anglophone. De plus, nous estimons contribuer à l’étude des anciennes grammaires de portugais comme langue étrangère dans le cadre de l’historiographie linguistique canonique, partant du fait que ces œuvres font partie de l’historie de la grammaire des vernaculaires européens.