Experiences of African American male engineering students: a qualitative analysis

Prior to the 1970s, African Americans were essentially invisible in the science and engineering academic and professional communities (Babco, 2001a). The few who did earn degrees in these fields, obtained them primarily from historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs), and these institutions also served as the primary employer for these graduates in science and engineering (Hines, 1997; Babco, 2001a, 2001b). Since the 1970s, African Americans have made considerable progress, but still are not on a level playing field with White males in terms of opportunities for preparation of science and engineering careers or for employment and advancement in those careers. The purpose of this study was to explore second and third-year African American male engineering students’ perceptions and examine what experiences have contributed to their access to and persistence in engineering. A qualitative research design was employed to gather data necessary to answer the research questions. Eight second and third-year African American male engineering students from Research University (pseudonym) participated in interviews with the researcher. The data from the interviews was used to consider the themes that emerged from the participants. The findings from this study suggest that African American male engineering students at Research University have specific experiences that influence their persistence and academic achievement. Themes identified from the interview data include: (1) pre-college experiences; (2) participation in academic and social networks; (3) institutional programming and organizational support; (4) personal accountability and motivation; and (5) goals outside of engineering. As a result of this research, several future implications are highlighted. These include acknowledging the value of diversity, continued support through organizations, and increased knowledge of best practices.

New Directions in Commercial Secrecy and Encryption Protocols

Secure transmission of bulk data is of interest to many content providers. A commercially-viable distribution of content requires technology to prevent unauthorised access. Encryption tools are powerful, but have a performance cost. Without encryption, intercepted data may be illicitly duplicated and re-sold, or its commercial value diminished because its secrecy is lost. Two technical solutions make it possible to perform bulk transmissions while retaining security without too high a performance overhead. These are: 1. a) hierarchical encryption - the stronger the encryption, the harder it is to break but also the more computationally expensive it is. A hierarchical approach to key exchange means that simple and relatively weak encryption and keys are used to encrypt small chunks of data, for example 10 seconds of video. Each chunk has its own key. New keys for this bottom-level encryption are exchanged using a slightly stronger encryption, for example a whole-video key could govern the exchange of the 10-second chunk keys. At a higher level again, there could be daily or weekly keys, securing the exchange of whole-video keys, and at a yet higher level, a subscriber key could govern the exchange of weekly keys. At higher levels, the encryption becomes stronger but is used less frequently, so that the overall computational cost is minimal. The main observation is that the value of each encrypted item determines the strength of the key used to secure it. 2. b) non-symbolic fragmentation with signal diversity - communications are usually assumed to be sent over a single communications medium, and the data to have been encrypted and/or partitioned in whole-symbol packets. Network and path diversity break up a file or data stream into fragments which are then sent over many different channels, either in the same network or different networks. For example, a message could be transmitted partly over the phone network and partly via satellite. While TCP/IP does a similar thing in sending different packets over different paths, this is done for load-balancing purposes and is invisible to the end application. Network and path diversity deliberately introduce the same principle as a secure communications mechanism - an eavesdropper would need to intercept not just one transmission path but all paths used. Non-symbolic fragmentation of data is also introduced to further confuse any intercepted stream of data. This involves breaking up data into bit strings which are subsequently disordered prior to transmission. Even if all transmissions were intercepted, the cryptanalyst still needs to determine fragment boundaries and correctly order them. These two solutions depart from the usual idea of data encryption. Hierarchical encryption is an extension of the combined encryption of systems such as PGP but with the distinction that the strength of encryption at each level is determined by the "value" of the data being transmitted. Non- symbolic fragmentation suppresses or destroys bit patterns in the transmitted data in what is essentially a bit-level transposition cipher but with unpredictable irregularly-sized fragments. Both technologies have applications outside the commercial and can be used in conjunction with other forms of encryption, being functionally orthogonal.

Niños, niñas y adolescentes en acogimiento residencial: un análisis en función del género

En este trabajo se aborda, desde una perspectiva de género, la realidad de un colectivo relativamente numeroso de niños, niñas y adolescentes, pero que es invisible para la opinión pública. Se trata de los menores de edad que ha tenido que ser separados de su familia de origen y viven en centros y hogares de protección. Se describe la ubicación y funciones de estos recursos residenciales dentro del sistema de protección infantil, se exponen las estadísticas y se analizan las diferencias encontradas en función del género. Se encuentra que hay más chicos que chicas, y que sus estancias en estos recursos son además más largas. En cuanto a la adaptación durante la estancia en el recurso, las chicas obtienen mejores resultados, tanto en las variables de adaptación al recurso como a la escuela y a la configuración de redes de apoyo social. En cambio, cuando se comparan los datos referidos al proceso de transición a la vida adulta los resultados son mejores para los chicos. Estos hallazgos se discuten en relación con la investigación previa sobre el tema.

Participation Space Studies: a socio-technical exploration of activist and community groups’ use of online and offline spaces to support their work

Participation Space Studies explore eParticipation in the day-to-day activities of local, citizen-led groups, working to improve their communities. The focus is the relationship between activities and contexts. The concept of a participation space is introduced in order to reify online and offline contexts where people participate in democracy. Participation spaces include websites, blogs, email, social media presences, paper media, and physical spaces. They are understood as sociotechnical systems: assemblages of heterogeneous elements, with relevant histories and trajectories of development and use. This approach enables the parallel study of diverse spaces, on and offline. Participation spaces are investigated within three case studies, centred on interviews and participant observation. Each case concerns a community or activist group, in Scotland. The participation spaces are then modelled using a Socio-Technical Interaction Network (STIN) framework (Kling, McKim and King, 2003). The participation space concept effectively supports the parallel investigation of the diverse social and technical contexts of grassroots democracy and the relationship between the case-study groups and the technologies they use to support their work. Participants’ democratic participation is supported by online technologies, especially email, and they create online communities and networks around their goals. The studies illustrate the mutual shaping relationship between technology and democracy. Participants’ choice of technologies can be understood in spatial terms: boundaries, inhabitants, access, ownership, and cost. Participation spaces and infrastructures are used together and shared with other groups. Non-public online spaces, such as Facebook groups, are vital contexts for eParticipation; further, the majority of participants’ work is non-public, on and offline. It is informational, potentially invisible, work that supports public outputs. The groups involve people and influence events through emotional and symbolic impact, as well as rational argument. Images are powerful vehicles for this and digital images become an increasingly evident and important feature of participation spaces throughout the consecutively conducted case studies. Collaboration of diverse people via social media indicates that these spaces could be understood as boundary objects (Star and Griesemer, 1989). The Participation Space Studies draw from and contribute to eParticipation, social informatics, mediation, social shaping studies, and ethnographic studies of Internet use.

Aging and semantic integration in sentence processing: Testing the cognitive workload of wrap-up

The current study investigated the cognitive workload of sentence and clause wrap-up in younger and older readers. A large number of studies have demonstrated the presence of wrap-up effects, peaks in processing time at clause and sentence boundaries that some argue reflect attention to organizational and integrative semantic processes. However, the exact nature of these wrap-up effects is still not entirely clear, with some arguing that wrap-up is not related to processing difficulty, but rather is triggered by a low-level oculomotor response or the implicit monitoring of intonational contour. The notion that wrap-up effects are resource-demanding was directly tested by examining the degree to which sentence and clause wrap-up affects the parafoveal preview benefit. Older and younger adults read passages in which a target word N occurred in a sentence-internal, clause-final, or sentence-final position. A gaze-contingent boundary change paradigm was used in which, on some trials, a non-word preview of word N+1 was replaced by a target word once the eyes crossed an invisible boundary located between words N and N+1. All measures of reading time on word N were longer at clause and sentence boundaries than in the sentence-internal position. In the earliest measures of reading time, sentence and clause wrap-up showed evidence of reducing the magnitude of the preview benefit similarly for younger and older adults. However, this effect was moderated by age in gaze duration, such that older adults showed a complete reduction in the preview benefit in the sentence-final condition. Additionally, sentence and clause wrap-up were negatively associated with the preview benefit. Collectively, the findings from the current study suggest that wrap-up is cognitively demanding and may be less efficient with age, thus, resulting in a reduction of the parafoveal preview during normal reading.

Przestrzenne formy upamiętniania Zagłady

This book is a synthesizing reflection on the Holocaust commemoration, in which space becomes a starting point for discussion. The author understands space primarily as an amalgam of physical and social components, where various commemorative processes may occur. The first part of the book draws attention to the material aspect of space, which determines its character and function. Material culture has been a long ignored and depreciated dimension of human culture in the humanities and social sciences, because it was perceived as passive and fully controlled by human will, and therefore insignificant in the course of social and historical processes. An example of the Nazi system perfectly illustrates how important were the restrictions and prohibitions on the usage of mundane objects, and in general, the whole material culture in relation to macro and micro space management — the state, cities, neighborhoods and houses, but also parks and swimming pools, factories and offices or shops and theaters. The importance of things and space was also clearly visible in exploitative policies present in overcrowded ghettos and concentration and death camps. For this very reason, when we study spatial forms of Holocaust commemoration, it should be acknowledged that the first traces, proofs and mementoes of the murdered were their things. The first "monuments" showing the enormity of the destruction are thus primarily gigantic piles of objects — shoes, glasses, toys, clothes, suitcases, toothbrushes, etc., which together with the extensive camps’ space try to recall the scale of a crime impossible to understand or imagine. The first chapter shows the importance of introducing the material dimension in thinking about space and commemoration, and it ends with a question about one of the key concepts for the book, a monument, which can be understood as both object (singular or plural) and architecture (sculptures, buildings, highways). However, the term monument tends to be used rather in a later and traditional sense, as an architectural, figurative form commemorating the heroic deeds, carved in stone or cast in bronze. Therefore, the next chapter reconstructs this narrower line of thinking, together with a discussion about what form a monument commemorating a subject as delicate and sensitive as the Holocaust should take on. This leads to an idea of the counter-monument, the concept which was supposed to be the answer to the mentioned representational dilemma on the one hand, and which would disassociate it from the Nazi’s traditional monuments on the other hand. This chapter clarifies the counter-monument definition and explains the misunderstandings and confusions generated on the basis of this concept by following the dynamics of the new commemorative form and by investigating monuments from the ‘80s and ‘90s erected in Germany. In the next chapter, I examine various forms of the Holocaust commemoration in Berlin, a city famous for its bold, monumental, and even controversial projects. We find among them the entire spectrum of memorials – big, monumental, and abstract forms, like Peter Eisenman’s Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe or Daniel Liebeskind’s Jewish Museum Berlin; flat, invisible, and employing the idea of emptiness, like Christian Boltanski’s Missing House or Micha Ullman’s Book Burning Memorial; the dispersed and decentralized, like Renata Stih and Frieder Schnock’s Memory Places or Gunter Demnig’s Stumbling Blocks. I enrich descriptions of the monuments by signaling at this point their second, extended life, which manifests itself in the alternative modes of (mis)use, consisting of various social activities or artistic performances. The formal wealth of the outlined projects creates a wide panorama of possible solutions to the Holocaust commemoration problems. However, the discussions accompanying the building of monuments and their "future life" after realization emphasize the importance of the social component that permeates the biography of the monument, and therefore significantly influences its foreseen design. The book also addresses the relationship of space, place and memory in a specific situation, when commemoration is performed secretly or remains as unrealized potential. Although place is the most common space associated with memory, today the nature of this relationship changes, and is what indicates popularity and employment of such terms as Marc Augé’s non-places or Pierre Nora’s site of memory. I include and develop these concepts about space and memory in my reflections to describe qualitatively different phenomena occurring in Central and Eastern European countries. These are unsettling places in rural areas like glades or parking lots, markets and playgrounds in urban settings. I link them to the post-war time and modernization processes and call them sites of non-memory and non-sites of memory. Another part of the book deals with a completely different form of commemoration called Mystery of memory. Grodzka Gate - NN Theatre in Lublin initiated it in 2000 and as a form it situates itself closer to the art of theater than architecture. Real spaces and places of everyday interactions become a stage for these performances, such as the “Jewish town” in Lublin or the Majdanek concentration camp. The minimalist scenography modifies space and reveals its previously unseen dimensions, while the actors — residents and people especially related to places like survivors and Righteous Among the Nations — are involved in the course of the show thanks to various rituals and symbolic gestures. The performance should be distinguished from social actions, because it incorporates tools known from religious rituals and art, which together saturate the mystery of memory with an aura of uniqueness. The last discussed commemoration mode takes the form of exposition space. I examine an exhibition concerning the fate of the incarcerated children presented in one of the barracks of the Majdanek State Museum in Lublin. The Primer – Children in Majdanek Camp is unique for several reasons. First, because even though it is exhibited in the camp barrack, it uses a completely different filter to tell the story of the camp in comparison to the exhibitions in the rest of the barracks. For this reason, one experiences immersing oneself in all subsequent levels of space and narrative accompanying them – at first, in a general narrative about the camp, and later in a specifically arranged space marked by children’s experiences, their language and thinking, and hence formed in a way more accessible for younger visitors. Second, the exhibition resigns from didacticism and distancing descriptions, and takes an advantage of eyewitnesses and survivors’ testimonies instead. Third, the exhibition space evokes an aura of strangeness similar to a fairy tale or a dream. It is accomplished thanks to the arrangement of various, usually highly symbolic material objects, and by favoring the fragrance and phonic sensations, movement, while belittling visual stimulations. The exhibition creates an impression of a place open to thinking and experiencing, and functions as an asylum, a radically different form to its camp surrounding characterized by a more overwhelming and austere space.

Para um teatro anatómico: O impulso mental e o impulso corporal no trabalho do actor

O presente trabalho congrega, em si, o estabelecimento de uma ligação entre as áreas científica e artística, justificando o trabalho do actor com elementos inerentes à anatomia humana e aos progressos na ciência sobre o estudo do comportamento e cérebro humanos. A arte do actor é, neste estudo, vista como uma ciência de palco desenvolvida a partir do esqueleto e do corpo em vida, atentos aos impulsos psico-fisicos, prolongando a acção quotidiana na acção extra-quotidiana. Se na ciência a menor unidade, viva, do organismo humano é a célula, este estudo reclama o impulso como a unidade mínima do teatro e, por conseguinte, do trabalho de actor. Esta análise complementa-se, perspectivando a célula vivente como o núcleo da relação entre o invisível, como processo mental, e o visível como processo e manifestação física do trabalho do actor dentro e fora do palco. ABSTRACT; The present work congregates the creation of a connection between scientific and artistic areas, justifying the actor's work through characteristic elements of human anatomy and through the scientific advances on the study of the human brain and of human behaviour. ln this study, the actor's art, is viewed as a stage science based on the human skeleton and on the living body, both conscious of the psycho-physical impulses that extend everyday action to the extraordinary action. If in science the smallest living unit in the human body is the cell, then, this study argues that the impulse is the smallest unit in theater and therefore, of the actor's work. This analysis complements itself, envisaging the living cell as the core of the relationship between the invisible, as a mental process, and the visible, as a process of physical manifestation of the actor's work in(side) and out(side) of stage.

La valoración de los intangibles.

La abundancia y el crecimiento en la economía de hoy son dirigidos, en su mayor parte, por los activos intangibles. Lo anterior se debe principalmente porque las compañías han creado valor por medio del conocimiento y el desarrollo de ideas novedosas. Con la llegada de las nuevas tecnologías de información, la estructura de las empresas ha cambiado dramáticamente durante los últimos diez años y los activos representan hoy los activos principales de las corporaciones. La contribución de los intangibles en la economía del país es significativa, debido al desarrollo de nuevos productos por medio de ideas que surgen del capital intelectual de las empresas. Es sorprendente en los últimos años que el estudio de los intangibles ha despertado interés en universidades, en el sector del capital financiero y en el mundo empresarial y cobra trascendencia ya que constituyen una fuente de competitividad dentro de las entidades y el desarrollo de las mismas dentro de la economía. El éxito empresarial en su gran mayoría se basa en las instalaciones de producción, el capital financiero y la propiedad, sin embargo lo invisible y lo que no se toca, como las ideas y capital intelectual aportan éxito, desarrollo y crecimiento. Se valora - activos intangibles -, por ejemplo las relaciones con los proveedores, las marcas, las ideas, los procesos del negocio, la cultura corporativa, los conocimientos técnicos y la innovación. Pero desafortunadamente aunque la normativa contable ha realizado esfuerzos significativos para el registro, captura, medición y divulgación de los activos intangibles, hay ciertos intangibles que se escapan de los registros y que afectan el valor accionario de las entidades, forzando a los inversores, y a menudo también a los ejecutivos a actuar en la oscuridad, en el sentido que no poseen las herramientas adecuadas para la medición de intangibles. Las claves financieras tradicionales ya no son el único indicador para medir la importancia de una empresa, sino que en los últimos tiempos conceptos como "reputación corporativa", "capital intelectual" o "activos intangibles" acaparan el protagonismo en las principales tendencias dentro de la innovación en la gestión empresarial, los cuales se deben abordar por medio de la modelización y valuación. Los líderes empresariales de todo el mundo empiezan a utilizar los términos de forma habitual, considerándolos como una medida del éxito igual de importante que la evolución bursátil, los beneficios o la recuperación de la inversión. Durante los últimos años se observa un importante crecimiento en el empleo de los términos "activos intangibles" y "capital intelectual" para referirse a la información no financiera relativa a la estructura organizativa, formación del personal y proyectos de investigación y desarrollo, entre otros, y la investigación sobre ellos se ha configurado en una de las principales preocupaciones de los organismos reguladores, cuerpos emisores de normas y académicos. Dado que existe gran variedad de inversiones en intangibles no reconocidas por sus problemas de falta de identificación,reconocimiento y medida, las empresas cuentan con dos tipos de intangibles: los reconocidos de forma contable y las inversiones en intangibles que no son susceptibles de ser reflejadas como activos de la empresa. Éstas últimas sólo aparecerán en el caso de que sean adquiridas a un tercero en las transmisiones de negocios, recogiéndose bajo el nombre de Crédito Mercantil. No existe una definición generalmente aceptada de éstos, ya que la propia naturaleza de los intangibles es la que impide cualquier consenso relacionado con su definición. Así, en la actualidad, el campo de los activos intangibles constituye una materia controvertida, al existir un amplio debate acerca de los activos que deben considerarse de esa naturaleza. La mayor parte de las definiciones propuestas para la medición y valuación de intangibles parece estar de acuerdo en que son fuentes generadoras de probables beneficios futuros, carentes de sustancias físicas y controladas por la empresa. El reto actual para las entidades, es lograr "que los intangibles figuren en sus reportes financieros como un activo más en las compañías". Esta carencia de la información contribuye a un coste de capital más alto y produce grandes aumentos a las inversiones iniciales que se establecen al empezar los proyectos de inversión. Para nivelar la carencia de información, se propone a las compañías comunicar periódicamente, además de la información tradicional contable, la información cuantitativa y estandarizada más relevante a la cadena de valor de la compañía. La gran mayoría de las empresas en El Salvador, desconocen el valor que tienen sus conocimientos, el desarrollo de rutas, los procedimientos de control interno de cobro, cartera de clientes, las marcas, entre otros. Es importante identificar las cualidades de los activos intangibles, centrándose en su papel distintivo en el valor de creación y destacar los puntos más críticos referente a los intangibles: la necesidad de poner la información relevante a disposición de la sociedad.

The Architecture of Waste: Creating New Avenues for Public Engagement with Trash

The relationship between industry, waste, and urbanism is one fraught with problems across the United States and in particular American cities. The interrelated nature of these systems of flows is in critical need of re-evaluation. This thesis critiques the system of Municipal Solid Waste Management as it currently exists in American cities as a necessary yet undesirable ‘invisible infrastructure’. Industry and waste environments have been pushed to the periphery of urban environments, severing the relationship between the urban environment we inhabit and the one that is required to support the way we live. The flow of garbage from cities of high density to landscapes of waste has created a model of valuing waste as a linear system that separates input from output. This thesis aims to investigate ways that industry, waste, and urban ecologies can work to reinforce one another. The goal of this thesis is to repair the physical and mental separation of waste and public activity through architecture. This thesis will propose ways to tie urban waste infrastructure and public amenities together through the merging of architecture and landscape to create new avenues for public engagement with waste processes.

Integração dos imigrantes da República Democrática do Congo no Bairro Camama 1 em Luanda

Com o presente trabalho de investigação procurámos perceber os desafios ao nível social e económico que os imigrantes da República Democrática do Congo têm experimentado no seu processo de integração no Bairro Camama1, na cidade de Luanda, a forma como a sociedade angolana e o Estado Angolano lidam com a situação bem como as medidas tomadas para lidar com este fenómeno social crescente. O trabalho de campo foi realizado no bairro Camama 1 com a aplicação de um inquérito que combina questões abertas e fechadas e participaram no estudo 69 imigrantes da República Democrática do Congo. Os resultados da investigação levaram-nos a concluir que a integração dos imigrantes da RDC se faz essencialmente ao nível do sector económico ou seja, é sobretudo uma integração de carácter económico e não social. Apesar da interação com os angolanos e de estarem inseridos no mercado de emprego secundário, os imigrantes da RDC não estão registados como residentes do bairro e apresentam um estatuto jurídico precário o que lhes impossibilita a integração social: são invisíveis para a sociedade angolana.

Espaços museológicos contemporâneos: interações entre a dimensão visível e a dimensão invisível

Contemporary museum spaces Interactions between visible and invisible dimensions Abstract: It can be considered that the contemporary organization of the museum’s program is divided into two different dimensions. The first relates to the concepts of displaying, disclosing and exhibiting and consists in the exhibition and public reception spaces. The second dimension comprises reservations and the technical and administrative services of the museum. At the visitor’s eye’s, these two dimensions of the museum can be defined as visible and invisible. In this context, the present dissertation analyzes, from the architectural point of view, how both dimensions can interact and the way that invisible dimension can be unveiled; ESPAÇOS MUSEOLÓGICOS CONTEMPORÂNEOS Interações entre a dimensão visível e a dimensão invisível Resumo: Pode considerar-se que a organização contemporânea do programa do museu se divide em duas dimensões. A primeira relaciona-se com os conceitos de mostrar, revelar e expor e é constituída pelos espaços de exposição e de acolhimento ao público. A segunda dimensão compreende as reservas e os serviços técnicos e administrativos do museu. Ao olhar do visitante, estas duas dimensões do museu podem definir-se como visível e invisível. Neste contexto, a presente dissertação analisa, do ponto de vista arquitectónico, o modo como as duas dimensões podem interagir e de que forma a dimensão invisível pode ser revelada. palavras-chave: espaços museológicos; visibilidade; invisibilidade; experiência arquitectónica, articular, revelar.

(inter)FACE: A Study of Black Families Advocating for their Children’s Education

Black students are consistently overrepresented in categories of academic underachievement. Parent engagement has long been touted as an effective strategy for improving the educational outcomes of Black children. However, most parent engagement research reflects deficit based perspectives frame Black parents as problems that must be fixed or mitigated before they can positively contribute to their children’s education. Consequently, parent engagement research and frameworks ignore the perspectives of Black parents and the assets they use to participate effectively in parent engagement. In this case study, I draw on individual and focus group interview data, documents, and observations, to examine how fifteen Black families, collectively known as FACE: 1) define and participate in parental engagement, 2) experience barriers to and opportunities for engagement, and 3) experience benefits of engagement for their children and their own personal development. Guided by Black Feminist and Critical Race Theories, I show how Black families in this study used a myriad of engagement strategies to improve their children’s educational experiences which were invisible to schools and how they used school-sanctioned engagement activities to meet their own objectives. Ultimately, I argue that school-centered parent engagement frameworks and models are ineffective for empowering Black families and accounting for the essential ways that these families contribute to the well-being of their children. Based on my findings, I discuss implications for theory, practice and policy, and research, and make recommendations for a more family-centered approach to parent engagement.

Ecologías del aprendizaje en contextos rurales. El caso de la Universidad Rural Paulo Freire de la Serranía de Ronda

Ecologías del aprendizaje en contextos rurales. El caso de la Universidad Rural Paulo Freire de la Serranía de Ronda. Línea Estratégica de trabajo: Metodologías multimodales y participativas. 1. Introducción y objetivos El trabajo que presentamos forma parte del proyecto I+D+I “Ecologías del aprendizaje en contextos múltiples: análisis de proyectos de educación expandida y conformación de ciudadanía” financiado por MIMECO, España. El interés de este proyecto surge al considerar que buena parte de los procesos de aprendizaje relevante que activan un sentido de comunidad y ciudadanía, han venido resultando invisibles en los distintos espacios educativos y de formación del profesorado. En esta comunicación presentamos los planteamientos metodológicos que nos hacemos en uno de los contextos de esta investigación, que es el grupo que conforma la Asociación ‘Montaña y Desarrollo’ que entre sus iniciativas está la gestión y dinamización de la Universidad Rural Paulo Freire de la Serranía de Ronda. Nuestro propósito general es estudiar los mecanismos educativos que las personas y organizaciones ponen en juego a la hora de constituirse en sus grupos de interacción próxima: trabajo, familia, etc. Así mismo, como objetivos específicos para trabajar en en el mencionado contexto, destacamos - Revisar los marcos conceptuales que permitan comprender las prácticas de aprendizaje invisible y educación expandida representativas de alternativas ecologías del aprendizaje. - Generar narrativas visuales que evidencien el trabajo y los rasgos identitarios de la Asociación ‘Montaña y Desarrollo’. - Analizar los relatos de vida de las personas integrantes de esta experiencia (así como el relato colectivo), para la comprensión de la acción socio educativa en contextos rurales a través del diálogo de saberes, generación de prácticas democráticas y la participación colaborativa. - Generar espacios de diálogo con otras organizaciones, colectivos, personas… para la creación de redes y comunidades de aprendizaje. 2. Metodología. La metodología se sitúa en el paradigma cualitativo y se aborda desde el enfoque biográfico–narrativo (Rivas, 2009). Entender los fenómenos sociales desde la voz de los/as protagonistas, se sitúa como estrategia principal e indispensable en este proyecto. Para ello, tras previo acuerdo con el colectivo participante, recurrimos a la construcción de relatos de vidas y narrativas visuales como enfoque metodológico de base hacia la re-significación de cómo aprende y se aprende en el mencionado escenario de investigación. Para ello, acudimos a distintas estrategias tales como la entrevista, los grupos focales y de reflexión (que serán grabados en soportes audiovisuales), así como grupos mixtos para el desarrollo de interpretaciones, la co-contrucción de significados y el trabajo sobre los resultados parciales y finales. 3. Conclusiones. El entramado del aprendizaje ecológico y los procesos de construcción de ciudadanía son percibidos hoy como un aprendizaje invisible, informal, generativo o rizomático, fuera de los contextos educativos formales. Sin embargo, las posibilidades casi ilimitadas de comunicación abren el universo de otras formas de aprendizaje que pensamos contribuyen a los procesos de transformación personal y colectiva. Sobre esto, consideramos que la investigación educativa debe tener presente desde un enfoque metodológico, la incorporación de los sujetos como agentes clave en la toma de decisiones del proceso indagatorio y considerar la ampliación de las formas de aprendizaje hacia la participación, el componente emocional y corporal, la colaboración y la interconexión.

CAPÍTULO I: CAPITALISMO, DEMOCRACIA Y DESARROLLO: ENTRE EL REALISMO Y LA UTOPÍA

Adam Smith se maravilló con los resultados de la división del trabajo y del cambio desarrollado en una economía de mercado (el mecanismo de la “mano invisible”); pero llamó la atención sobre los límites a largo plazo del proceso capitalista de acumulación, que parecía imponer una tendencia a la baja de las ganancias.David Ricardo fue un firme defensor del libre comercio y propuso la teoría de las “ventajas comparativas”, pero avanzó el descubrimiento del fundamento económico de la lucha de clases, que él ubicó en la pugna distributiva por el “producto neto” y en la ley de los rendimientos decrecientes.John Stuart Mill realizó una síntesis sincrética de la Escuela clásica inglesa y del desarrollo capitalista hasta mediados del siglo XIX, pero incorporó en su marco conceptual la contradicción entre la producción y la distribución (la eficiencia y la equidad), y adelantó la teoría del “estado estacionario”.Karl Marx reconoció e incluso elogió, la “misión histórica civilizadora” del capitalismo y el gigantesco desarrollo de las fuerzas productivas que el mismo ha hecho posible, pero dedicó gran parte de su vida a demostrar científicamente los efectos autodestructivos sobre el ser humano y sobre la naturaleza que el capitalismo conlleva en sus entrañas.

The visibility/invisibility paradox of trust: Developing distributed educational leadership for online communities

A visibility/invisibility paradox of trust operates in the development of distributed educational leadership for online communities. If trust is to be established, the team-based informal ethos of online collaborative networked communities requires a different kind of leadership from that observed in more formal face-to-face positional hierarchies. Such leadership is more flexible and sophisticated, being capable of encompassing both ambiguity and agile response to change. Online educational leaders need to be partially invisible, delegating discretionary powers, to facilitate the effective distribution of leadership tasks in a highly trusting team-based culture. Yet, simultaneously, online communities are facilitated by the visibility and subtle control effected by expert leaders. This paradox: that leaders need to be both highly visible and invisible when appropriate, was derived during research on 'Trust and Leadership' and tested in the analysis of online community case study discussions using a pattern-matching process to measure conversational interactions. This paper argues that both leader visibility and invisibility are important for effective trusting collaboration in online distributed leadership. Advanced leadership responses to complex situations in online communities foster positive group interaction, mutual trust and effective decision-making, facilitated through the active distribution of tasks.