High School students' participation and the provision of choice

Tesis (Profesor de Inglés para la Enseñanza Básica y Media y al grado académico de Licenciado en Educación)Participation has been studied by many researchers during the last years. Researchers and important authorities related to the educational field highlight the importance of having students who actively participate inside the classrooms. Participation promotes interaction, which is a key element in the acquisition of a new language, and for this reason, when it comes to English classes, participation becomes even more important. Even though many researchers have been focusing their studies on analyzing in-class participation, there is a lack of studies in which students’ perceptions about their own participation are considered. Due to the importance of participation, many people have tried to come out with ideas, class methodologies and techniques that could enhance participation. Little is known about the provision of choice within classes however, studies on the topic have shown that the provision of choice, when offered in an appropriate way, could be beneficial for the creation of a sense of autonomy on students, and more specifically on adolescents. For the aim of the current study to be fulfill, the provision of choice will be considered as the opportunity for the meaningful realization of the individual’s desires or preferences related to class materials. The purpose of the current study is to understand high school students’ classroom participation views, and explore whether the provision of choice could somehow influence their perceptions about participation. An explanatory study using a mixed-method research design was used. A survey, a quantitative instrument, was utilized at the beginning of this investigation in order to select 5 out of 41 students from a ninth grade of a subsidized school. Classes in the school selected for this study were focused mainly on grammar and the participation rate inside the classroom was low therefore, it was considered a perfect scenario for the current study. After the survey, a first interview was done to the five participant of this study with the purpose of knowing students’ perceptions about participation and the concept of choice. Then, an intervention in which the provision of choice was given to the students with the use of class material took place. Finally, another interview was held in order to know if students’ perceptions about participation and choice had changed after the intervention. Results showed that in general students considered participation as an important factor inside the classroom; however, they did not feel comfortable participating orally in class. Finally, the results demonstrated that the provision of choice influenced students’ perceptions about participation within English sessions

On Productivity Measurement and Interpretation: Some Insights on Italy in the European Context. LEQS Paper No. 142/2019 March 2019

Over the period 1995–2016, the Italian performance in terms of productivity was poor in historical terms and in comparison with its main international partners. This issue goes beyond Italy, with declining productivity growth observed, from the second half of the nineties, in several other advanced economies. Possible explanations for the slowdown include factors such as lower capital investment by firms, decreased competition, excessive regulation, and capital misallocation. The diffuse slowing rates of measured productivity growth has also raised questions on whether GDP and output current compilation methods are adequate (i.e. the mis-measurement hypothesis). The “ICT revolution” has created new ways of exchanging and providing goods and services as result of increased connectivity. These developments challenge the way economic activity is traditionally measured. There are also measurement problems associated with estimating output and input volumes especially related to the quality of price indexes for some products and services. These problems have an impact on productivity estimates and might impair international comparability. In this paper, we intend to investigate what the core problems in productivity measurement and interpretation are in the European context, with a specific focus on Italy

The Mean-Field Limit for Solid Particles in a Navier-Stokes Flow

We propose a mathematical derivation of Brinkman's force for a cloud of particles immersed in an incompressible fluid. Our starting point is the Stokes or steady Navier-Stokes equations set in a bounded domain with the disjoint union of N balls of radius 1/N removed, and with a no-slip boundary condition for the fluid at the surface of each ball. The large N limit of the fluid velocity field is governed by the same (Navier-)Stokes equations in the whole domain, with an additional term (Brinkman's force) that is (minus) the total drag force exerted by the fluid on the particle system. This can be seen as a generalization of Allaire's result in [Arch. Rational Mech. Analysis 113 (1991), 209-259] who treated the case of motionless, periodically distributed balls. Our proof is based on slightly simpler, though similar homogenization techniques, except that we avoid the periodicity assumption and use instead the phase-space empirical measure for the particle system. Similar equations are used for describing the fluid phase in various models for sprays

Order reduction approaches for the algebraic Riccati equation and the LQR problem

We explore order reduction techniques for solving the algebraic Riccati equation (ARE), and investigating the numerical solution of the linear-quadratic regulator problem (LQR). A classical approach is to build a surrogate low dimensional model of the dynamical system, for instance by means of balanced truncation, and then solve the corresponding ARE. Alternatively, iterative methods can be used to directly solve the ARE and use its approximate solution to estimate quantities associated with the LQR. We propose a class of Petrov-Galerkin strategies that simultaneously reduce the dynamical system while approximately solving the ARE by projection. This methodology significantly generalizes a recently developed Galerkin method by using a pair of projection spaces, as it is often done in model order reduction of dynamical systems. Numerical experiments illustrate the advantages of the new class of methods over classical approaches when dealing with large matrices

Matrix-equation-based strategies for convection-diffusion equations

We are interested in the numerical solution of nonsymmetric linear systems arising from the discretization of convection-diffusion partial differential equations with separable coefficients and dominant convection. Preconditioners based on the matrix equation formulation of the problem are proposed, which naturally approximate the original discretized problem. For certain types of convection coefficients, we show that the explicit solution of the matrix equation can effectively replace the linear system solution. Numerical experiments with data stemming from two and three dimensional problems are reported, illustrating the potential of the proposed methodology

Positioning adolescents in literacy teaching and learning

Secondary literacy instruction often happens to adolescents rather than with them. To disrupt this trend, we collaborated with 12th-grade “literacy mentors” to reimagine literacy teaching and learning with 10th-grade mentees in a public high school classroom. We used positioning theory as an analytic tool to (a) understand how mentors positioned themselves and how we positioned them and (b) examine the literacy practices that enabled and constrained the mentor position. We found that our positioning of mentors as collaborators was taken up in different and sometimes unexpected ways as a result of the multiple positions available to them and institutional-level factors that shaped what literacy practices were and were not negotiable. We argue that future collaborations with youth must account for the rights and duties of all members of a classroom community, including how those rights and duties intersect, merge, or come into conflict within and across practices.The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was supported by a Faculty Research Award from the School of Education at Boston University. (Faculty Research Award from the School of Education at Boston University)Accepted manuscrip

Greater Resistencia Study Case: Greenfield and Increased Densification

. This paper focuses on one of the relevant issues of the phenomena of urban expansion and densification, i.e. the lack of planning of public greenfields. At the regional level, since 2001, Resistencia City Council has been promoting a growth in height by increasing built-up areas in central districts that have complete infrastructure, through the implementation of the Ordinance 5403/01 - high density. On the other hand, in the last 10 years the population growth of the city (16%) has been followed by an increase in the supply of open space per inhabitant (85%). However, this increase is not reflected in the inner city areas, where the higher population density is located. This paper aims to analyze and relate the results arising, so far, from the densification of central areas and its relationship with the availability of open space in central districts of Greater Resistencia City