Contribuições da pesquisa psicogenética para a educação escolar

O artigo aborda as relações entre a Psicologia e a Educação, tomando especialmente a perspectiva psicogenética, cujas teorias enriquecem tanto a Psicologia quanto a Educação. Apresenta, inicialmente, breve histórico dos estudos psicológicos do desenvolvimento humano, salientando as várias fases pelas quais se constituiu a Psicologia do Desenvolvimento. Trata, em seguida, das idéias centrais da teoria psicogenética piagetiana e de suas vertentes funcionalista e sócio-interacionista e comenta, por fim, a tendência das pesquisas sobre os conhecimentos sociais e conteúdos escolares, levantando suas contribuições para a educação escolar.

Education and psychology,

Mode of access: Internet.

Relationships between size of schools and school districts and the cost of education /

Issued Apr. 1980.

Differential effects of single -sex versus coed education on the mathematical reasoning ability, verbal reasoning ability, and self-concept of high school girls

This study explored the differential effects of single-sex versus coed education on the cognitive and affective development of young women in senior year of high school. The basic research question was: What are the differential effects of single-sex versus coed education on the development of mathematical reasoning ability, verbal reasoning ability, or self-concept of high school girls?^ This study was composed of two parts. In the first part, the SAT verbal and mathematical ability scores were recorded for those subjects in the two schools from which the sample populations were drawn. The second part of the study required the application of the Piers-Harris Children's Self-Concept Scale to subjects in each of the two sample populations. The sample schools were deliberately selected to minimize between group differences in the populations. One was an all girls school, the other coeducational.^ The research design employed in this study was the causal-comparative method, used to explore causal relationships between variables that already exist. Based on a comprehensive analysis of the data produced by this research, no significant difference was found to exist between the mean scores of the senior girls in the single-sex school and the coed school on the SAT 1 verbal reasoning section. Nor was any significant difference found to exist between the mean scores of the senior girls in the single-sex school and the coed school on the SAT 1 mathematical reasoning section. Finally, no significant difference between the mean total scores of the senior girls in the single-sex school and the coed school on the Piers-Harris Children's Self-Concept Scale was found to exist.^ Contrary to what many other studies have found in the past about single-sex schools and their advantages for girls, this study found no support for such advantages in the cognitive areas of verbal and mathematical reasoning as measured by the SAT or in the affective area of self-concept as measured by the Piers-Harris Children's Self-Concept Scale. ^

Cultivating Collaborative Relationships: A Case Study of Teacher Collaboration and Professional Development

Students often receive instruction from specialists, professionals other than their general educators, such as special educators, reading specialists, and ESOL (English Speakers of Other Languages) teachers. The purpose of this study was to examine how general educators and specialists develop collaborative relationships over time within the context of receiving professional development. While collaboration is considered essential to increasing student achievement, improving teachers’ practice, and creating comprehensive school reform, collaborative partnerships take time to develop and require multiple sources of support. Additionally, both practitioners and researchers often conflate collaboration with structural reforms such as co-teaching. This study used a retrospective single case study with a grounded theory approach to analysis. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with thirteen teachers and an administrator after three workshops were conducted throughout the school year. The theory, Cultivating Interprofessional Collaboration, describes how interprofessional relationships grow as teachers engage in a cycle of learning, constructing partnership, and reflecting. As relationships deepen some partners experience a seamless dimension to their work. A variety of intrapersonal, interpersonal, and external factors work in concert to promote this growth, which is strengthened through professional development. In this theory, professional development provides a common ground for strengthening relationships, knowledge about the collaborative process, and a reflective space to create new collaborative practices. Effective collaborative practice can lead to aligned instruction and teachers’ own professional growth. This study has implications for school interventions, professional development, and future research on collaboration in schools.

Being Grateful : Does it Bring Us Closer? Gratitude, Attachment and Intimacy in Romantic Relationships

To date, little is known about the function of gratitude in romantic relationships. Being grateful has been demonstrated to provide a number of positive benefits for individuals; however, few studies have explored how grateful experiences may be beneficial in enhancing romantic relationships. This study explored the extent to which adult attachment moderates the relationship between dispositional gratitude and the experience of intimacy within romantic relationships. A greater disposition toward gratitude was expected to result in more frequent experiences of gratitude. It was also anticipated that experiences of gratitude would be associated with feelings of closeness. Participants (n = 156) were required to be currently in a relationship of at least six months duration and completed a series of questionnaires assessing dispositional gratitude, attachment and emotional intimacy. Moderation analysis revealed that although a positive, weak correlation existed between dispositional gratitude and intimacy, attachment did not moderate this association. It was concluded that further investigation of the experience of gratitude is necessary to understand the function of gratitude in romantic relationships. Methods focusing on specific experiences of gratitude in romantic relationships, and the associated feelings of closeness experienced by each partner, may yield more conclusive findings and may provide support for therapeutic approaches focused on enhancing closeness between couples by increasing experiences of gratitude.

Developing and sustaining successful mentoring relationships

As mentor teachers hold the balance of power in the relationship, how do they build and sustain positive mentor-mentee relationships? This study involved eleven pairs of mentors and mentees (n=22) with audio-recorded interviews to explore their relationships, mentors’ support and mentors’ expectations for mentees’ involvement in the school. Findings suggested ways to build and sustain mentoring relationships (e.g., professionalism, respect, and support). Indeed, support in providing information for planning, access to resources, two-way dialoguing with feedback and reflections, and establishing safe, risk-taking environments to trial and evaluate newly-learnt teaching practices were considered as a ways to build and sustain relationships.

Argumentation and education. Theoretical foundations and practices

During the last decade, argumentation has attracted growing attention as a means to elicit processes (linguistic, logical, dialogical, psychological, etc.) that can sustain or provoke reasoning and learning. Constituting an important dimension of daily life and of professional activities, argumentation plays a special role in democracies and is at the heart of philosophical reasoning and scientific inquiry. Argumentation, as such, requires specific intellectual and social skills. Hence, argumentation will have an increasing importance in education, both because it is a critical competence that has to be learned, and because argumentation can be used to foster learning in philosophy, history, sciences and in many other domains. Argumentation and Education answers these and other questions by providing both theoretical backgrounds, in psychology, education and theory of argumentation, and concrete examples of experiments and results in school contexts in a range of domains. It reports on existing innovative practices in education settings at various levels.

The relationships of character strengths with coping, work-related stress, and job satisfaction

Personality traits have often been highlighted to relate to how people cope with stressful events. The present paper focuses on character strengths as positive personality traits and examines two basic assumptions that were derived from a core characteristic of character strengths (i.e., to determine how individuals deal with adversities): (1) character strengths correlate with coping and (2) buffer the effects of work-related stress on job satisfaction. Two different samples (i.e., a mixed sample representing various occupations [N = 214] and a nurses sample [N = 175]) filled in measures for character strengths, coping, work-related stress, and job satisfaction. As expected, intellectual, emotional, and interpersonal strengths were related to coping. Interpersonal strengths played a greater role for coping among nurses, as interactions with others are an essential part of their workday. Furthermore, intellectual strengths partially mediated the negative effect of work-related stress on job satisfaction. These findings open a new field for research on the role of personality in coping with work-related stress. Character strengths are trainable personal characteristics, and therefore valuable resources to improve coping with work-related stress and to decrease the negative effects of stress. Further research is needed to investigate this assumed causality.

The bubbles or the boiling pot? An ecosystemic approach to culture, environment and quality of life

For the diagnosis and prognosis of the problems of quality of life, a multidisciplinary ecosystemic approach encompasses four dimensions of being-in-the-world, as donors and recipients: intimate, interactive, social and biophysical. Social, cultural and environmental vulnerabilities are understood and dealt with, in different circumstances of space and time, as the conjugated effect of all dimensions of being-in-the-world, as they induce the events (deficits and assets), cope with consequences (desired or undesired) and contribute for change. Instead of fragmented and reduced representations of reality, diagnosis and prognosis of cultural, educational, environmental and health problems considers the connections (assets) and ruptures (deficits) between the different dimensions, providing a planning model to develop and evaluate research, teaching programmes, public policies and field projects. The methodology is participatory, experiential and reflexive; heuristic-hermeneutic processes unveil cultural and epistemic paradigms that orient subject-object relationships; giving people the opportunity to reflect on their own realities, engage in new experiences and find new ways to live better in a better world. The proposal is a creative model for thought and practice, providing many opportunities for discussion, debate and development of holistic projects integrating different scientific domains (social sciences, psychology, education, philosophy, etc.).

A relação sujeito-objeto e a unidade afetivo-cognitiva: contribuições para a psicologia e para a educação

The relationship between affective-emotional problems and school learning is present in areas of Psychology and Education. In the present study, of theoretical and bibliographic characteristics, we investigated elements that might confirm the thesis of the historicity of cognitive and affective processes, giving to these processes a social and symbolic connotation . Through the Historic-Cultural Psychology we approached the subject-object relationship and affective-cognitive unit proposing to overcome the subjectivist and organicist thinking. The study suggested the importance for us to (re) think the relationships that the subject establishes with the environment, the role of knowledge and practical conditions of life and education. Besides, it highlighted the activity as a main category in the constitution of needs and motives, as well in the formation of desires and the objectification of them. In this way, it enhances the learning and promotes the development, considering that the formation of subjectivity in each subject is the effect of an educative process that shall be object of study of both Psychology and Education.

A Culture of Relationships: Early Care for Italian and American Children

A culture of childhood is a shared vision – an agreed upon vision – of the needs and rights of children, including ideas about how the people of the community can collectively nurture them and at the same time be renewed by them. In other words, it is a set of values, beliefs, and practices that people have created to guide their way of nurturing young children and their families. The vision is about investing in young children and investing in the supports and relationships that children need to learn and grow, both for the reason that children carry our future and because they carry our hopes and dreams for the future. These hopes and dreams begin with birth. Sensitive, emotionally available parents create the framework for interaction with their children by responding to the baby’s cues, engaging the baby in mutual gazes, and imitating the baby. The baby, born with a primary ability to share emotions with other human beings eagerly joins the relationship dance. The intimate family circle soon widens. Providers, teachers, and directors of early childhood programs become significant figures in children’s lives—implicit or explicit partners in a "relationship dance" (Edwards & Raikes, 2002). These close relationships are believed to be critical to healthy intellectual, emotional, social, and physical development in childhood and adolescence as well. These conclusions have been documented by diverse fields of science, ranging from cognitive science to communication studies and social and personality psychology. Close relationships contribute to security and trust, promote skill development and understanding, nurture healthy physical growth, infuse developing self-understanding and self-confidence, enable self-control and emotion regulation, and strengthen emotional connections with others that contribute to prosocial motivation (Dunn, 1993; Fogel, 1993; Thompson, 1996). Furthermore, many studies showing how relationship dysfunction is linked to child abuse and neglect, aggression, criminality, and other problems involving the lack of significant human connections (Shankoff & Meisels, 2000). In extending the dance of primary relationships to new relationships, a childcare teacher can play a primary role. The teacher makes the space ready--creating a beautiful place that causes everyone to feel like dancing. Gradually, as the dance between them becomes smooth and familiar, the teacher encourages the baby to try out more complex steps and learn how to dance to new compositions, beats, and tempos. As the baby alternates dancing sometimes with one or two partners, sometimes with many, the dance itself becomes a story about who the child has been and who the child is becoming, a reciprocal self created through close relationships.

A critical analysis on "Active Learning" in the light of Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT): Implications to Physics Education and to experimental activities as a particular case.

This is a research paper in which we discuss “active learning” in the light of Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT), a powerful framework to analyze human activity, including teaching and learning process and the relations between education and wider human dimensions as politics, development, emancipation etc. This framework has its origin in Vygotsky's works in the psychology, supported by a Marxist perspective, but nowadays is a interdisciplinary field encompassing History, Anthropology, Psychology, Education for example.

Reciprocal Relationships between Leader–Member Exchange (LMX) and Job Satisfaction: A Cross‐Lagged Analysis

While previous research has mainly emphasised the importance of leader–member exchange (LMX) to job satisfaction, there is a lack of research on reciprocal relationships between job satisfaction and LMX. In this study, we not only suggest that good LMX increases job satisfaction, but that job satisfaction can also enhance high-quality supervisor–employee relationships. A full cross-lagged panel analysis was used to test reciprocal relationships between LMX and job satisfaction. Employees (N= 279) of a large information technology company filled out questionnaires at two times, with a time lag of 3 months. In line with our predictions, findings revealed a positive relationship between LMX and job satisfaction both at Time 1 and Time 2. Moreover, LMX at Time 1 predicted the increase of job satisfaction at Time 2, and job satisfaction at Time 1 predicted the increase of LMX at Time 2. The results demonstrate the need to consider reciprocal relationships between job satisfaction and LMX when explaining employees' workplace outcomes. Our findings are discussed in terms of positive psychology theory.

Relationships of impulsivity and physical fighting history to alcohol -induced aggression in women

Research suggests women respond to the aggression-inducing effects of alcohol in a manner similar to men. Highly aggressive men are more prone to alcohol-induced aggression, but this relationship is less clear for women. This study examined whether alcohol consumption would differentially affect laboratory-measured aggression in a sample of aggressive and non-aggressive women and how those differences might be related to components of impulsive behavior. In 39 women recruited from the community (two groups: with and without histories of physical fighting) ages 21–40, laboratory aggressive behavior was assessed following placebo and 0.80 g/kg alcohol consumption (all women experienced both conditions). Baseline laboratory impulsive behavior of three impulsivity models was later assessed in the same women. In the aggression model (PSAP), participants were provoked by periodic subtractions of money, which were blamed on a fictitious partner. Aggression was operationalized as the responses the participant made to subtract money from that partner. The three components of impulsivity that were tested included: (1) response initiation (IMT/DMT), premature responses made prior to the completion of stimulus processing, (2) response inhibition (GoStop), a failure to inhibit an already initiated response, and (3) consequence sensitivity (SKIP and TCIP), the choice for a smaller-sooner reward over a larger-later reward. I hypothesized that, compared to women with no history of physical fighting, women with a history of physical fighting would exhibit higher rates of alcohol-induced laboratory aggression and higher rates of baseline impulsive responding (particularly for the IMT/DMT), which would also be related to the alcohol-induced increases aggression. Consistent with studies in men, the aggressive women showed strong associations between laboratory aggression and self-report measures, while the non-aggressive women did not. However, unlike men, following alcohol consumption it was the non-aggressive women's laboratory aggression that was related to their self-reports of aggression and impulsivity. Additionally, response initiation measures of impulsivity distinguished the two groups, while response inhibition and consequence sensitivity measures did not; commission error rates on the IMT/DMT were higher in the aggressive women compared to the non-aggressive women. Regression analyses of the behavioral measures showed no relationship between the aggression and impulsivity performance of the two groups. These results suggest that the behavioral (and potentially biological) mechanism underlying aggressive behavior of women is different than that of men. ^