A Construção do processo democrático de auto-avaliação institutucional na UNESP Developing a democratic institutional evaluation process at UNESP

O desenvolvimento de um processo democrático de avaliação institucional na UNESP, uma universidade multi-campus, envolveu três desafios: garantir o envolvimento de grupos representativos da comunidade no processo de avaliação; atribuir poder e responsabilidade a cada setor acadêmico e administrativo no processo de avaliação; criar uma cultura de auto-avaliação e reflexão que possibilitasse debate crítico e auto-gestão dos projetos acadêmicos. Com base nos termos de referência estabelecidos pela comunidade a CPA desenvolveu uma metodologia de avaliação democrática e investigativa, orientada para a auto-gestão e de natureza quali-quantitativa. Fundamentada em três enfoques teóricos de avaliação, o democrático, o de tomada de decisão e o crítico o processo envolveu três funções: a diagnóstica, a formativo-reflexiva e a de revisão crítica. Atualmente os usos dos resultados da avaliação para orientar políticas e decisões acadêmicas, especialmente nos cursos de graduação, evidenciam avanços no processo de internalização de cultura de avaliação orientada para auto-gestão.<br>The challenge of developing and implementing a democratic process of institutional evaluation at UNESP (São Paulo State University), a multi-campus university, was threefold: to guarantee the involvement of representative reference groups in the process of evaluation; to empower and assign responsibility in the evaluative process to each academic and administrative sector and; to create a culture of self-evaluation and reflection which would enable critical and informed debates and self-management of academic projects. Based on references and objectives established by the community, a self-regulative and quali-quantitative oriented democratic and investigative evaluation methodology was developed. Based on three theoretical evaluation approaches: decision making, democratic and critical, the process involved three roles: diagnostic, formative reflexive and critical revision. To this moment, the use of the evaluation results to enlighten policies and academic decisions, especially in undergraduate programs, shows improvement in the process of internalizing a democratic and self-regulative culture of evaluation

Interneuron cell types are fit to function

Understanding brain circuits begins with an appreciation of their component parts - the cells. Although GABAergic interneurons are a minority population within the brain, they are crucial for the control of inhibition. Determining the diversity of these interneurons has been a central goal of neurobiologists, but this amazing cell type has so far defied a generalized classification system. Interneuron complexity within the telencephalon could be simplified by viewing them as elaborations of a much more finite group of developmentally specified cardinal classes that become further specialized as they mature. Our perspective emphasizes that the ultimate goal is to dispense with classification criteria and directly define interneuron types by function