Signs In Time: The Hypothesis Of Social Time For A Cultural Semiotic Analysis

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A Historical Approach to Children s Physics Education : Modelling of DC-circuit Phenomena in a Small Group

This three-phase design research describes the modelling processes for DC-circuit phenomena. The first phase presents an analysis of the development of the DC-circuit historical models in the context of constructing Volta s pile at the turn of the 18th century. The second phase involves the designing of a teaching experiment for comprehensive school third graders. Among other considerations, the design work utilises the results of the first phase and research literature of pupils mental models for DC-circuit phenomena. The third phase of the research was concerned with the realisation of the planned teaching experiment. The aim of this phase was to study the development of the external representations of DC-circuit phenomena in a small group of third graders. The aim of the study has been to search for new ways to guide pupils to learn DC-circuit phenomena while emphasing understanding at the qualitative level. Thus, electricity, which has been perceived as a difficult and abstract subject, could be learnt more comprehensively. Especially, the research of younger pupils learning of electricity concepts has not been of great interest at the international level, although DC-circuit phenomena are also taught in the lower classes of comprehensive schools. The results of this study are important, because there has tended to be more teaching of natural sciences in the lower classes of comprehensive schools, and attempts are being made to develop this trend in Finland. In the theoretical part of the research an Experimental-centred representation approach, which emphasises the role of experimentalism in the development of pupil s representations, is created. According to this approach learning at the qualitative level consists of empirical operations like experimenting, observations, perception, and prequantification of nature phenomena, and modelling operations like explaining and reasoning. Besides planning teaching, the new approach can be used as an analysis tool in describing both historical modelling and the development of pupils representations. In the first phase of the study, the research question was: How did the historical models of DC-circuit phenomena develop in Volta s time? The analysis uncovered three qualitative historical models associated with the historical concept formation process. The models include conceptions of the electric circuit as a scene in the DC-circuit phenomena, the comparative electric-current phenomenon as a cause of different observable effect phenomena, and the strength of the battery as a cause of the electric-current phenomenon. These models describe the concept formation process and its phases in Volta s time. The models are portrayed in the analysis using fragments of the models, where observation-based fragments and theoretical fragements are distinguished from each other. The results emphasise the significance of the qualitative concept formation and the meaning of language in the historical modelling of DC-circuit phenomena. For this reason these viewpoints are stressed in planning the teaching experiment in the second phase of the research. In addition, the design process utilised the experimentation behind the historical models of DC-circuit phenomena In the third phase of the study the research question is as follows: How will the small group s external representations of DC-circuit phenomena develop during the teaching experiment? The main question is divided into the following two sub questions: What kind of talk exists in the small group s learning? What kinds of external representations for DC-circuit phenomena exist in the small group discourse during the teaching experiment? The analysis revealed that the teaching experiment of the small group succeeded in its aim to activate talk in the small group. The designed connection cards proved especially successful in activating talk. The connection cards are cards that represent the components of the electric circuit. In the teaching experiment the pupils constructed different connections with the connection cards and discussed, what kinds of DC-circuit phenomena would take place in the corresponding real connections. The talk of the small group was analysed by comparing two situations, firstly, when the small group discussed using connections made with the connection cards and secondly with the same connections using real components. According to the results the talk of the small group included more higher-order thinking when using the connection cards than with similar real components. In order to answer the second sub question concerning the small group s external representations that appeared in the talk during the teaching experiment; student talk was visualised by the fragment maps which incorporate the electric circuit, the electric current and the source voltage. The fragment maps represent the gradual development of the external representations of DC-circuit phenomena in the small group during the teaching experiment. The results of the study challenge the results of previous research into the abstractness and difficulty of electricity concepts. According to this research, the external representations of DC-circuit phenomena clearly developed in the small group of third graders. Furthermore, the fragment maps uncover that although the theoretical explanations of DC-circuit phenomena, which have been obtained as results of typical mental model studies, remain undeveloped, learning at the qualitative level of understanding does take place.Tutkimuksessa kuvataan tasavirtapiirin ilmiöiden mallinnusprosesseja kolmivaiheisessa kehittämistutkimuksessa. Ensimmäisessä vaiheessa analysoidaan tasavirtapiirin historiallisten mallien kehittymistä Voltan parin rakentamisen yhteydessä 1700- ja 1800-lukujen taitteessa. Toisessa vaiheessa suunnitellaan peruskoulun kolmasluokkalaisille opetuskokeilu, jonka tekemisessä hyödynnetään muun muassa ensimmäisen vaiheen tuloksia sekä tutkimustietoa oppilaiden tasavirtapiirin mentaalimalleista. Tutkimuksen kolmas vaihe on suunnitellun opetuskokeilun toteuttaminen, jossa tutkitaan tasavirtapiirin ilmiöitä koskevien ulkoisten representaatioiden kehittymistä kolmasluokkalaisten pienryhmässä. Tutkimuksen tavoitteena on ollut etsiä uusia tapoja ohjata oppilasta oppimaan tasavirtapiirin ilmiöitä kvalitatiivisen tason ymmärtämistä painottaen, jolloin vaikeaksi ja abstraktiksi koettua sähköoppia voisi oppia kokonaisvaltaisemmin. Erityisesti pienten koululaisten sähköopin oppimisen tutkiminen on jäänyt kansainvälisestikin vähemmälle huomiolle, vaikka tasavirtapiirin ilmiöitä opetetaan myös alemmilla luokilla. Tutkimuksen tulokset ovat tärkeitä, koska peruskoulun alaluokkien luonnontieteiden opetusta on Suomessa vahvistettu ja pyritään kehittämään. Tutkimuksen teoreettisessa osassa luodaan kokeellisuuden roolia oppilaan representaatioiden kehittymisessä korostava lähestymistapa, kokeellisuuskeskeinen representaatioiden kehittyminen. Lähestymistavan mukaan oppiminen kvalitatiivisella tasolla koostuu empiirisistä operaatioista kuten kokeileminen, havaitseminen, hahmottaminen ja luonnonilmiöiden esikvantifiointi sekä mallintavista operaatioista kuten selittäminen ja päättely. Opetuksen suunnittelun lisäksi uutta lähestymistapaa voidaan käyttää myös analyysivälineenä sekä historiallisen mallinnuksen että oppilaan representaatioiden kehittymisen kuvailussa. Tutkimuksen ensimmäisen vaiheen tutkimuskysymyksenä on, miten tasavirtapiirin historialliset mallit kehittyivät Voltan aikana. Analyysin perusteella historiallisessa käsitteenmuodostusprosessissa erottuu kolme kvalitatiivista historiallista mallia, jotka sisältävät käsitykset suljetusta virtapiiristä tasavirtapiirin ilmiöiden tapahtumapaikkana, komparatiivisesta sähkövirtailmiöstä erilaisten havaittavien seurausilmiöiden syynä sekä pariston sähköisestä voimakkuudesta sähkövirtailmiön syynä. Nämä mallit kuvaavat Voltan aikaista tasavirtapiirin ilmiöiden käsitteenmuodostusprosessia ja -vaihetta. Mallit esitetään analyysissa käyttäen mallikehyksiä, joissa havaintoihin perustuvat fragmentit ja teoreettiset fragmentit erottuvat toisistaan. Tulokset korostavat kvalitatiivisen käsitteenmuodostuksen tärkeyttä sekä kielen merkitystä tasavirtailmiöiden historiallisessa mallintamisessa. Tästä syystä näitä näkökulmia painotetaan tutkimuksen toisen vaiheen opetuskokeilun suunnittelemisessa. Lisäksi tasavirtapiirin ilmiöiden opetuksen suunnittelussa hyödynnetään historiallisten mallien taustalla olevaa kokeellisuutta. Tutkimuksen kolmannessa vaiheessa kysymyksenä on, kuinka pienryhmän ulkoiset representaatiot tasavirtapiirin ilmiöistä kehittyvät opetuskokeilun aikana. Kysymys jaetaan kahteen alakysymykseen: Millaista puhetta pienryhmän puheessa ilmenee? Millaisia tasavirtapiirin ilmiöitä koskevia ulkoisia representaatioita pienryhmän puheessa ilmenee opetuskokeilun aikana? Analyysissa havaitaan, että pienryhmän opetuskokeilu onnistui tavoitteessaan aktivoida pienryhmän puhetta. Erityisen onnistuneeksi osoittautui opetuskokeilun suunnitteluvaiheessa kehitettyjen kytkentäkorttien käyttö puheen aktivoijana. Kytkentäkortit ovat virtapiirin komponentteja esittäviä kortteja, joiden avulla oppilaat tekivät erilaisia virtapiirikytkentöjä ja keskustelivat, millaisia ilmiöitä oikeilla välineillä tehdyissä vastaavissa kytkennöissä tapahtuisi. Pienryhmän puhetta tutkitaan vertaamalla kahta tilannetta, joissa pienryhmä keskusteli samanlaisten ensin kytkentäkorteilla, sitten oikeilla komponenteilla tehtyjen kytkentöjen äärellä. Tuloksena oli, että kytkentäkortteja käytettäessä oppilaiden puheessa ilmeni enemmän korkeamman tason ajattelua sisältävää mallinnusta kuin vastaavassa keskustelussa oikeiden komponenttien kanssa. Vastauksena toiseen alakysymykseen analyysissa kuvataan pienryhmän puheessa opetuskokeilun aikana ilmenneitä ulkoisia representaatioita, jotka esitetään suljetun virtapiirin, sähkövirran ja lähdejännitteen fragmenttikarttojen avulla. Fragmenttikartat esittävät pienryhmän tasavirtapiirin ilmiöitä kuvaavien ulkoisten representaatioiden asteittaista kehittymistä opetus-kokeilun aikana. Tutkimuksen tulokset haastavat aiemmat tutkimukset sähköopin käsitteiden abstraktiudesta ja vaikeudesta: kolmasluokkalaisten ulkoiset representaatiot kehittyvät selkeästi oppilaan puhetta ja aktiivisuutta korostavan pienryhmäopiskelun aikana. Lisäksi fragmenttikartat paljastavat, että vaikka tyypillisten sähköopin mentaalimallitutkimusten tuloksina saadut tasavirtapiirin ilmiöitä kuvaavat teoreettiset selitykset olisivatkin kehittymättömiä, oppimista tapahtuu tasavirtapiirin ilmiöiden kvalitatiivisen tason ymmärtämisessä

1º Congresso Internacional de Geologia de Timor-Leste.

Congresso Internacional de Geologia de Timor-Lest

Borders and Objects: Representing the Geopolitical in New World Art Histories, 1990-2010

Several contemporary art historians have been interested in exploring how their discipline could respond to the increasing globalisation of knowledge and information by encompassing global perspectives into the methodologies that underpin their approaches to art historiography. This dissertation aims to explore how, in developing their new approaches to world art history, they have drawn on a range of natural and social sciences, thus enabling their work to be placed in a wider social, political and indeed global context. While their individual approaches are many and varied it is important to identify commonalities between them so as to highlight unifying approaches across such diversity. The dissertation begins with literature review of the key concepts I want to explore. The work of the 19th century historian, Aby Warburg is highlighted to draw attention to his early pioneering attempts to provide an intercultural perspective to art history. Recent attempts to develop new approaches to world art history are then analysed. These include works by David Carrier, Ben-Ami Scharfstein, David Summers, Esther Pasztory and John Onians. The thesis concludes with a discussion on the recent exhibition at the British Museum entitled A History of the World in 100 Objects. The dissertation will show that despite the diverse methodologies used by all of these writers and the challenges of the different media employed, all utilise concepts of borders and objects in an explicitly geopolitical context

Theoretical Marxist approaches in palaeodemography aspects of three Greek regions

The question of the nature of human activity, its specific formulation and function in social production and reproduction is a fundamental one for any theory of social formation, existence and evolution. There are various forces to accounts for which do not remain static as they are categories of human needs and consciousness and they are transformed as society changes. Nonetheless theoretical pre-suppositions in general have rested on the validity of rigid argumentations embedded in a tradition of conservative ideology, with their central feature the a priori reduction of population dynamics and social values to eternal natural laws. In this "Hobbesian society" concepts, categories and methods are the products of the very phenomena they are designed to describe; the effect is empirical closure, artificial separation of the object from its history, and the application in any field of the "true or false” hypotheses, which once categorized remain ever so. However, an understanding of the reality depends on the question we ask. Rather than seeking comparabilities in statistical terms and countings according to some unstated value scheme considered as proven, the Marxist commitment is to detailed study of societies, with written or non-written history, based on the dialectical-historical analysis of relationships and contradictions that must be elaborated, refined and tested both through theory and praxis; and this is the concern of the following thesis

The Levels of Ambience: An Introduction to Integrative Rhetoric

Although felt as a vague though often powerful sense of the world’s presence as we engage in a rhetorical situation, ambience is the highly complex and integrated totality of the world’s environmental, behavioral, symbolic, and temporal dimensions and their fields of objects, agents, relations, and forces of which we may or may not become aware and with which we may or may not intentionally engage. Although we may feel it so, ambience is not merely a vague, amorphous background to our conscious acts which gives it meaning; rather, it is itself highly organized and organizing, developing from our interactions with the world in a series of succeeding integrative levels, each with its own structures based upon and providing purpose to the lower, earlier developed structures it supervenes and each providing meaning to the higher, later developed structures that depend upon it

Blast Theory: Intermedial Performance Praxis and the Generative Conditions for Performance Subjectivity

The work of the British theatre company Blast Theory explores intermedial dramaturgies that this thesis claims can be categorized as radical because they present a generative characteristic. Intermediality, understood here as the impact of analogue and digital technologies in theatrical performance, establishes complex relationships between physical and virtual spaces, structures that create a rich polyphony of multiple temporal orchestrations, and narratives that present a multiplicity of performative arrangements. Intermedial performance, as a performative and experiential event, encompasses a triad of performative interactions between performers, spectators and the media itself executed at and concentrated on the moment of the performance encounter. This research argues that this encounter displays a generative character – a moment at which all the attending performance variables come together in a constant process of performative re-activation thus generating the intermedial performance event. Within this descriptive parameter, this research claims that recent performance conceptualizations fail to account for the work of Blast Theory. Contemporary performance and liveness debates focus principally on the ontology of performance. So, notwithstanding their differences, performance theorists such as Lavender (2002), Fischer-Lichte (2008), and Schechner (2003), and presentness/presence theorists such as Phelan (1993) and Power (2008) all agree that performance is an ontological, ephemeral, and fleeting event. While there are many valid points in these diverse approaches, they only offer a partial account of the specificities of the work of Blast Theory and, by extent, the intermedial performance event. This thesis therefore relocates the terms of the debate on a constructivist epistemological basis. In this way, the thesis proposes that an intermedial performance event must be understood beyond the ontological approach by specifically interrogating the conditions of intelligibility; that is, its operative and intelligible architecture of attending elements and the participating subject. The key hypothesis shared is that in introducing a constructivist reading of epistemology, as described by Alfred Whitehead and Gilles Deleuze, a new account of intermediality in performance emerges as a radical dramaturgy, incorporating generative aspects, and with this, a unique type of intermedial performance subjectivity is enabled

1º Congresso Internacional de Geologia de Timor-Leste. Livro de resumos

Livro de resumos e textos de conferencias convidas do 1CoGeoTiL: 1º Congresso Internacional de Geologia de Timor-Leste

1º Congresso Internacional de Geologia de Timor-Leste. Livro de resumos

Livro de resumos e textos de conferencias convidas do 1CoGeoTiL: 1º Congresso Internacional de Geologia de Timor-Leste