Application of micro-Raman spectroscopy for conservation projects in art and archaeology with a case study on Cappadocia rock-hewn wall paintings

This paper aims at reporting an overview of the principles and applications of micro-Raman spectroscopy in cultural heritage. Micro-Raman was used for characterizing painting pigments, inorganic binders, degradation materials in artworks with different goals: to know the materials and so the execution technique, to investigate the state of preservation, to establish the authenticity of the artefacts. The micro-Raman analyses were often performed on the occasion of conservative projects and they were able to supply valid and useful information to the conservators during their work. As case study, the project on the investigation of rock-hewn wall paintings in Cappadocia (Turkey) will be shortly presented as exemplificative of application of Raman techniques for the knowledge of the constituent materials, for supporting the conservation work and for detecting degradation products. Analysis were performed in the Interdepartmental instrument Center of Modena and Reggio Emilia University by a bench top system equipped with a microscope allowing for studying in non-destructive way different kinds of samples: powders, cross and thin sections, pre-treated samples

Introduction

This chapter describes the objectives and the overall design of the CHILD-UP project with a view to highlighting its main points of interest. Specifically, it accounts for the reasons foregrounding our research relative to how the enhancement of migrant children’s ability to participate in changing their social and cultural conditions of integration is currently achieved, and the ways this ability is accounted for and engaged with in educational interventions and policies. The chapter also describes the conceptual background of the CHILD-UP research concerning the ways of enhancing and supporting migrant children’s agency in activities that can improve hybrid integration in the education system. The aims of CHILD-UP, as will be shown in the chapter, are to improve policies and interventions, suggesting methods that can be applied in educational institutions across Europe, to support migrant children’s opportunities for participating creatively and autonomously in the production of their education. Finally, the chapter describes the project methodology, a prevalently qualitative inquiry that has been used to investigate the policies and practices of integration of migrant children, the professionals’ and migrant children’s narratives about the education system, the classroom activities facilitating children’s agency and dialogue, and finally interpreting/mediation in parent-teacher interactions

Facilitation of adolescents' agency and hybrid integration

This paper is based on a Horizon 2020 research project on the enhancement of migrant children's ability to contribute to the change of their conditions of integration in the education system in seven countries (Children Hybrid Integration: Learning Dialogue as a way of Upgrading Policies of Participation, CHILD-UP; GA 822400). The paper draws on data collected in vocational schools, with adolescents aged 14–16, in Italy. It draws on transcribed interactions to analyse activities in school classrooms in which facilitators support migrant adolescent's agency in producing narratives of their personal cultural trajectories. The paper shows how facilitators and adolescents share the rights of telling the narratives, the gender differences that become visible in the adolescents' narratives, and the ways in which facilitation supports the hybrid integration of migrant adolescents

Facilitating the Construction of Cultural Diversity in Classroom Interactions

This paper focuses on the ways of constructing the cultural meanings of diversity in classroom interactions, mingling sociological, pedagogical and linguistic theories. Firstly, it analyzes the meanings of cultural diversity in theories of intercultural education, the importance of analyzing this education from a sociological perspective on classroom interaction, and the importance of facilitation of pupils’ participation and production of narratives in this interaction. Next, it focuses on sequences of classroom interaction to highlight the different ways of enhancing the social construction of cultural diversity through the facilitation of pupils’ participation, with different effects in terms of their authority in producing knowledge. The analysis focuses on the forms of facilitation, as social structures enhancing the production of narratives of cultural diversity in classroom interactions. It shows that, while facilitation is always based on the same types of actions, these actions may have different effects on pupils’ participation and production of narratives, depending on the form of facilitation. On the one hand, facilitation may lead to enhance narratives of cultural identity, as based on group membership and as presupposition of intercultural communication. On the other, it may lead to enhance narratives of cultural diversity as based on pupils’ personal experience and knowledge

The conceptual framework

The chapter describes the conceptual framework of the project which combined the concepts of hybrid integration and the facilitation of migrant children’s agency. It deals with the concept that facilitating migrant children’s agency is extremely important for their hybrid integration. Agency is intended as a specific form of participation, based on the choices of action that enable children to promote change in their social contexts. The concept of agency is combined with the concept of facilitation of children’s narratives and non-essentialist theories that challenge the idea of permanent membership of cultural groups to conceive cultural identity as a contingent product of social negotiation in public discourse and interaction. The chapter explains that cultural and ethnic diversity can be conceived as social construction, so that negotiations can produce hybrid identities, i.e. changing and flexible manifestations of cultural identities so that integration can be seen as hybrid integration, based on the interlacing of children’s personal cultural trajectories. Finally, the chapter illustrates how expectations about girls and boys can differ, creating barriers and possibilities in terms of children’s agency. The combination of an agency-based perspective with a gender approach leads to approach gender as a social construction

Conclusions

The first objective of the final chapter summarises the findings of CHILD-UP field research. Moreover, the implications of CHILD-UP research are discussed with regard to the potential impact of its results for scientific innovation and quality of education practices at local and European levels, by stressing the meanings and the importance of hybrid integration based on children’s exercise of agency. For this purpose, the chapter includes several aspects and consequences of the CHILD-UP research. First, it focuses on findings showing the educational practices as well as acknowledging challenges for these practices. Second, it suggests theoretical and methodological innovation in the ways of investigating the inclusion of children with migration background in the education system, by promoting their agency and hybrid integration. Third, it suggests what can be done to overcome challenges towards better results. Finally, by explaining practices that promote children’s agency and hybrid integration, the chapter suggests ways of achieving educational change and the possible social impact of research findings on educational policies and practices

This is my truth, tell me yours. Positioning children as authors of knowledge through facilitation of narratives in dialogic interactions

The article discusses data from educational workshops in English and Italian classrooms, in the context of an research project funded by the European Union. The research promoted children’s work on personal memories and the dialogical exchange in the classroom of narratives related to memories. Facilitation was utilised to foster children’s contributions to interactions, empowering children epistemic status as authors of valid knowledge to create favourable conditions for dialogue in the classroom. The article discusses a facilitative action that impacted on the promotion of children’s narratives: facilitators’ comments on narratives. Facilitators’ comments take form as: 1) personal stories; 2) displacements. Both types of comments proved particularly effective in supporting children’s agency as authorship of narratives during workshops as a component of dialogic learning

Language mediation in schools. The case of parent-teacher meetings.

This chapter focuses on interpreter-mediated interactions between teachers and migrant parents. The chapter includes a review of studies on interpreter-mediated interactions in schools, a description of the data and methodology adopted and the discussion of our data. The main corpus of data consists in audio-recorded interpreter-mediated interactions between teachers and foreign-speaking parents in Italian contexts, largely in primary schools. Interpreting is provided by professional intercultural mediators, who are employed to provide interpreting service in many Italian public areas. The teachers participating in the interactions all speak Italian while parents are of diverse provenances and they speak Chinese, Twi, Arabic, Urdu and Albanian. The main issues dealt with in our interpreter-mediated interactions concern the children’s performance, both at school and during education activities at home (mainly homework). Some reflections are drawn on the ways in which language mediation may affect school–family communication when the families are migrant

Opposite effect of acute and subchronic treatments with Ferula hermonis on copulatory behavior of male rats

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Una lezione sulla resa traduttiva di turni "difficili"

This paper analyses two sociology lectures on dialogue interpreting I gave to a university class of students graduating in foreign languages and cultures. The lectures were video-recorded as part of a university programme aimed at facilitating students’ access to academic resources. During the lectures, the students, in groups, analysed transcriptions of interpreted interactions audio-recorded in Italian healthcare services and involving Arabic patients, Italian healthcare providers and Arabic mediators. These transcriptions were used to reflect on ways to render turns by healthcare providers, which might be difficult to understand for patients, in that they were either too short (implicating a number of details) or very long and technical. The lectures aimed to show how modified renditions of these turns may facilitate patients’ understanding and participation. The students were firstly invited to propose possible renditions of providers’ turns, then to analyse the mediators’ ones. The students then had to report their proposals and comments in a class discussion. Observation of the video-recorded discussion suggests ways to improve: a. the actual renditions of inexplicit or technical turns, b. the teacher’s coordination of the students’ discussion to guide them to appreciate the types of problems characterising the rendition proces