Space, place and race: Ethics in practice for educational research in ethnically diverse rural Australia

Research in Australia’s ethnically diverse rural and regional communities requires an approach that is informed by notions of space, place and culture, and which recognises race as a relational social construct mediated by social and political discourse and context, and prone to change overtime. This critical review examines how teacher education researchers connect culturally competent research and rural ethics with the view to improving education systems, addressing rural teacher workforce issues, informing the preparation of pre-service teachers, and, most importantly, ensuring that rural students have access to educational opportunities that are engaging and meet their needs. It focuses specifically on researcher positionality on the insider-outsider continuum and how this informs ethical research in diverse rural communities, particularly those in which visible new migrants reside. Peer-reviewed journal articles that discuss how education researchers negotiate working in rural space are examined and considered in relation to discourse about ethics in practice and the insider/outsider continuum. Scholarship reflected in the literature spanned the fields of rural/research ethics, inclusive education, education research methodology and research with new migrants, minority and marginalised groups.

Terra e trabalho: permanência de uma política pública na Fazenda Mundo Novo, em Caicó-RN

This is study about the Project Vazantes, as a case of stay policy on access to land upstream of the weir humid New World, in Caicó-RN. It includes social and economic aspects of vazanteiros, that in their experiences with the land, recreate structures, forms and functions. Theoretically, the work is based on the ideas miltonianas (1986, 1988, 1996, 1997) on the production and reproduction of space, as seen this system of actions that is articulated to the public policies and the achievements solidarity, to the extent that production, in vazantes there is virtually no technology investment, technical assistance and rural credit. Regarding the search procedures, we conducted interviews and questionnaires with vazanteiros applied but did photographic records and research into documentary sources Agricultural Research Company's Rio Grande do Norte S / A (EMPARN), the Union of Rural Workers of Caicó (STRC ), In newspapers and magazines, as well as other sources of information related to the object of study.Such procedures, coupled with theoretical and methodological benchmarks, helped in the understanding of the relationship that takes place in the New World Farm, in order that space produced by actors (EMPARN and vazanteiros) comprises a structure of power that involves multiple interests in extent that land and labor are appropriate mechanisms as dialetizantes

The school environment as a teacher. The role of space and place in enhancing ecological literacy and social competence development in children and young people

Can space and place foster child development, and in particular social competence and ecological literacy? If yes, how can space and place do that? This study shows that the answer to the first question is positive and then tries to explain the way space and place can make a difference. The thesis begins with the review of literature from different disciplines – child development and child psychology, education, environmental psychology, architecture and landscape architecture. Some bridges among such disciplines are created and in some cases the ideas from the different areas of research merge: thus, this is an interdisciplinary study. The interdisciplinary knowledge from these disciplines is translated into a range of design suggestions that can foster the development of social competence and ecological literacy. Using scientific knowledge from different disciplines is a way of introducing forms of evidence into the development of design criteria. However, the definition of design criteria also has to pass through the study of a series of school buildings and un-built projects: case studies can give a positive contribution to the criteria because examples and good practices can help “translating” the theoretical knowledge into design ideas and illustrations. To do that, the different case studies have to be assessed in relation to the various themes that emerged in the literature review. Finally, research by design can be used to help define the illustrated design criteria: based on all the background knowledge that has been built, the role of the architect is to provide a series of different design solutions that can give answers to the different “questions” emerged in the literature review.

A projection into the ideas and technologies of "non-place" and "space of flow" in urban context

The meaning of a place has been commonly assigned to the quality of having root (rootedness) or sense of belonging to that setting. While on the contrary, people are nowadays more concerned with the possibilities of free moving and networks of communication. So, the meaning, as well as the materiality of architecture has been dramatically altered with these forces. It is therefore of significance to explore and redefine the sense and the trend of architecture at the age of flow. In this dissertation, initially, we review the gradually changing concept of "place-non-place" and its underlying technological basis. Then we portray the transformation of meaning of architecture as influenced by media and information technology and advanced methods of mobility, in the dawn of 21st century. Against such backdrop, there is a need to sort and analyze architectural practices in response to the triplet of place-non-place and space of flow, which we plan to achieve conclusively. We also trace the concept of flow in the process of formation and transformation of old cities. As a brilliant case study, we look at Persian Bazaar from a socio-architectural point of view. In other word, based on Robert Putnam's theory of social capital, we link social context of the Bazaar with architectural configuration of cities. That is how we believe "cities as flow" are not necessarily a new paradigm.

Characterising social media users by gender and place of residence

Characterising users through demographic attributes is a necessary step before conducting opinion surveys from information published by such users in social media. In this paper, we describe, compare and evaluate different techniques for the identification of the attributes "gender"' and "place of residence" by mining the metadata associated to the users, the content published and shared by themselves, and their friendship networks. The results obtained show that the social network is a valuable source of information for obtaining the sociodemographic attributes of single users.