Collaborative Agency in Educational Management : a joint object for school and community transformation

This research paper aims at discussing a chain of activities developed in a school, located in a favela in the city of São Paulo, Brazil, and its community, on how to deal with a flood issue. As theoretical background I discuss educational management as form of expansion, and of collaborative agency. Methodologically I follow the critical collaborative research and formative intervention, which implies different subjects taking part and negotiating decisions to be made during the research moving beyond school settings. The analysis is based on categories of description and argumentation, which contribute to the scrutiny of different voices and activities in the relation school and community. As a result, I discuss how collaborative agency contributes to the transformation of the given context: first how the community gets involved in the school activities and second, how school gets involved in the community activities in order to overcome a flood issue.Peer reviewe

The creative chain of activities towards educational management transformation Findings from an intravention case study

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore a formative intervention project that was developed for the Municipal Secretariat of Education in São Paulo, Brazil for the broad development of all levels of educational management (teacher educators, coordinators, principals, teachers and students). Thus, the creative chain of activities is a key theoretical framework for promoting critical collaboration in order to cross the boundaries of educational management organization. Design/methodology/approach The authors use data from the Management in Creative Chains Project (Liberali, 2012), as a way to enable the wide development of all levels of educational management. Data comprise formative meetings in which different educational managers system take part in two settings, the regional board with 25 schools and one of the participating schools. The analysis is based on thematic content and argumentative organization, and on critical situations and the potentials they entailed. Findings The study guides to the conclusions of the process of creative chain as a possibility to expand management in the educational system and its community. Research limitations/implications Every time there is a change in the mayors, there are changes in the way of addressing school management in the city. However, after the project, considerations about the needs of the communities became part of the public policy regardless of who is in charge of the city and its educational system. Practical implications This study can be used for transformation in the management and teaching and learning activities and improvement of the school-community relation. Social implications Socially this study can lead to improvement in the quality of life in the community and at school. Originality/value Differently from a top down educational management, which enables a reproductive chain, educational management in a creative chain, considering the community needs, enables subjects to become interdependent to expand and transform the activities in the educational system and hence the communities’ reality.Peer reviewe

Use of time-resolved fluorescence to monitor bioactive compounds in plant based foodstuffs

The study of compounds that exhibit antioxidant activity has recently received much interest in the food industry because of their potential health benefits. Most of these compounds are plant based, such as polyphenolics and carotenoids, and there is a need to monitor them from the field through processing and into the body. Ideally, a monitoring technique should be non-invasive with the potential for remote capabilities. The application of the phenomenon of fluorescence has proved to be well suited, as many plant associated compounds exhibit fluorescence. The photophysical behaviour of fluorescent molecules is also highly dependent on their microenvironment, making them suitable probes to monitor changes in pH, viscosity and polarity, for example. Time-resolved fluorescence techniques have recently come to the fore, as they offer the ability to obtain more information, coupled with the fact that the fluorescence lifetime is an absolute measure, while steady state just provides relative and average information. In this work, we will present illustrative time-resolved measurements, rather than a comprehensive review, to show the potential of time-resolved fluorescence applied to the study of bioactive substances. The aim is to help assess if any changes occur in their form, going from extraction via storage and cooking to the interaction with serum albumin, a principal blood transport protein

Formative Interventions for Expansive Learning and Transformative Agency

This article examines formative interventions as we understand them in cultural-historical activity theory and reflects on key differences between this intervention research tradition and design-based research as it is conceived in the learning sciences tradition. Three projects, including 2 Change Laboratories, are analyzed with the help of conceptual lenses derived from basic epistemological principles for intervention research in activity theory. In all 3 interventions, learners expansively transformed the object of their activity. The Change Laboratory cases, however, show that this learning process included productive deviations from the researchers' instructional intentions, leading to significant outcomes, both practical and theoretical, that were not anticipated by the interventionists. Together these cases illustrate that an activity-theoretical formative intervention approach differs from design-based research in the following ways: (a) formative interventions are based on design done by the learners; (b) the collective design effort is seen as part of an expansive learning process including participatory analyses and implementation phases; (c) rather than aiming at transferable and scalable solutions, formative interventions aim at generative solutions developing over lengthy periods of time both in the researched activities and in the research community.Peer reviewe

Expanding educational management activities beyond school walls

This dissertation provides an analysis of educational management, based on Cultural-Historical Activity Theory, within school and beyond its walls. To begin with, I analyzed the definition process of educational management that was furthermore used to produce and evaluate the management plan, a tool to reorganize an educational system. After that, I introduced a case in which a school reorganized its management based on a creative chain of activities to transform itself and the local community. Finally, I analyzed secondary students’ social movements as a form of paving the way to organize educational management from the grassroots. The whole research process was supported by formative interventions, leading to an intravention, under the umbrella of critical collaborative research, in which different stakeholders took part in different stages of the research to negotiate and act. In the formative intervention, the researcher played a central role in supporting participants in the organization of the activities and in the different learning cycles that took place in each bond of the creative chain of activities. The intravention was the result of the formative intervention. While the formative intervention enabled an environment collaboratively guided by the researcher, in the intravention stakeholders developed and enhanced the tools used in the formative intervention, In a different perspective, an exploratory study was also conducted, though investigating how secondary students developed their own intervention in the form of social movements as an attempt to reorganize the school. Concerning data, the Management in Creative Chians project comprised 120 hours of recorded videos of the formative meetings, which objective was to define the concept and support coordinating the educational management in the city. In addition to the formative encounters, different data sources comprised: interviews with educational managers, educational management plans, presentations used to organize and document the encounters, teacher planning, and educational management reports. Whereas in the students’ social movements, data derived from 122 Facebook pages posts related to the interconnected social movements: 56 pages from the movements that happened in São Paulo, and 66 pages about the movements in Rio de Janeiro. Data were collected between October 9, 2015, at the beginning of the first movement, until April 30, 2016. To analyze data from the Management in Creative Chains Project, qualitative methods were applied. Data were firstly organized based on the thematic content and afterwards, discursive analysis based on argumentation organization was conducted. In the secondary students’ social movements, in addition to qualitative methods, such as content and multimodal analysis, network analysis were also applied. I summarized the findings into five scientific articles of the dissertation (Article I - Article V). In Article I, the focus was on the formation of the concept of educational management. In Article II, the tool management plan was analyzed during its production and implementation. Articles III and IV dealt with a specific school case in which school members and the community worked together to solve a flood issue. Articles I and II were part of the Management in Creative Chains project, while Articles III and IV present an intravention, which was an extension of the management in a creative chain project. Article V introduced the exploratory study in which secondary students occupied their schools to fight for better educational conditions, providing the understanding of a form of educational management from students’ perspectives. This dissertation provides an interconnected thread of theoretical concepts and methodological framework that led to the analysis of different forms of expansive learning. Besides, the dissertation sheds the light on the analysis of educational management beyond schools’ walls.Tämä väitöskirja tarkastelee toiminnanteoreettista työtä apuna opetuksen/koulutuksen johtamisessa/järjestämisessä koulussa ja sen ulkopuolella. Aluksi tarkastelen opetuksen/koulutuksen johtamisen/jäsentämisen määrittelyprosessia, jota käytetään toimintasuunnitelman tuottamiseen ja arvioimiseen. Toimintasuunnitelma on työkalu, jolla koulutusjärjestelmää uudelleen organisoidaan. Tämän jälkeen esittelen tapaustutkimuksen, jossa koulu uudelleen organisoi johtonsa “toimintojen luovan ketjun” pohjalta, tarkoituksenaan muuttaa sekä koulua että sitä ympäröivää yhteisöä. Lopuksi analysoin toisen asteen opiskelijoiden yhteiskunnallista liikettä toimintamuotona, joka viitoittaa tietä opetuksen/koulutuksen organisoinnille ruohonjuuritasolta käsin. Koko tutkimusprosessia tukevat formatiiviset interventiot, jotka johtavat intraventioon. Tämä tapahtuu kriittisen kollaboratiivisen tutkimuksen kautta, johon eri partnerit/toimijat sitoutuvat neuvotellen sekä osallistuen tutkimuksen eri vaiheisiin. Formatiivisessa interventiossa tutkijalla on keskeinen rooli osallistujien tukemisessa näiden organisoidessa toimintojaan ja eri oppimissyklien aikana, jotka tapahtuvat kunkin luovan toimintaketjun solmukohdassa. Viimeksi mainitussa tutkijoiden läsnäolo on vahva, kun taas ensiksi mainittu toimii tilana, jossa työntekijät kehittävät ja uudelleen luovat välineet formatiivisen intervention pohjalta. Toisesta näkökulmasta katsoen väitöskirjassa suoritetaan myös kokeilullinen tutkimus, jossa tutkitaan miten toisen asteen oppilaat kehittävät oman interventionsa yhteiskunnallisen liikkeen muodossa yrityksenään uudelleen organisoida koulu. Management in Creative Chains - projektin aineisto koostuu 120 tunnista videomateriaalia, jotka on nauhoitettu formatiivisissa tapaamisissa/kehitysistunnoissa, joiden tarkoitus oli käsitteellistää ja organisoida opetuksen johto/johtaminen kunnallisessa koulutusjärjestelmässä. Näiden tapaamisten lisäksi muuta aineistoa ovat haastattelut, hallintasuunnitelmat, eri versiot tapaamissuunnitelmista sekä Powerpointesitykset, koulun suunnitelmat sekä raportit. Oppilaiden yhteiskunnallisia liikkeitä koskeva aineisto koostuu 122 aikajanajulkaisusta Facebook-sivulla, jotka liittyvät keskenään yhteydessä oleviin yhteiskunnallisiin liikkeisiin: 56 liittyen Sao Paoloon ja 66 Rio de Janeiroon. Julkaisujen aikajänne kattaa ajan lokakuusta 2015, jolloin ensimmäinen liike perustettiin, huhtikuuhun 2016. Management in Creative Chains - projektin aineiston analyysi perustuu laadulliseen tutkimusmenetelmään. Aineisto järjestettiin ensin temaattisen sisältönsä mukaan ja analysoitiin tämän jälkeen diskurssianalyysin avulla, joka pohjautui argumentaation jäsentelyyn. Toisen asteen oppilaiden yhteiskunnallisten liikkeiden osalta käytettiin lisäksi sisällönanalyysia sekä multimodaalianalyysia. Väitöskirja koostuu viidestä tieteellisestä artikkelista, jossa tutkimustulokset on raportoitu (Artikkelit I-V). Artikkelissa II analysoidaan toimintasuunnitelmaa välineenä sen tuottamis - ja toimeenpanovaiheissa. Artikkelit III ja IV käsittelevät tapaustutkimusta koulussa, jossa koulun sekä sitä ympäröivän yhteisön jäsenet työskentelevät yhdessä ratkaistakseen alueen tulvaongelman. Artikkelit I ja II ovat osa Management in Creative Chain - projektia, kun taas artikkelit III ja IV pohjautuvat intraventioon, joka rakentuu edellä mainitun projektin pohjalle. Artikkeli V esittelee tutkimuksen, jossa toisen asteen oppilaat valtasivat koulunsa taistellakseen parempien opiskeluolojen puolesta. Tämä artikkeli lisää ymmärrystä opiskelun järjestämisen muodosta oppilaiden näkökulmasta. Tämä väitöskirja nivoo yhteen teoreettisia käsitteitä sekä metodologisen viitekehyksen, joiden avulla ekspansiivisen oppimisen muotoja voidaan analysoida. Lisäksi väitöskirja valaisee opetuksen järjestämisen/johtamisen analyysia koulun seinien ulkopuolella. (The abtstract was translated into Finnish by Terhi Esko with the help of Heli Kaatrakoski.

Do Not Close My School : Facebook, Occupations and Demonstrations for Promoting Social Change

This article describes how secondary education students from the state of São Paulo, Brazil, protested against the closure of ninety-four schools of public educational system. The movement named ‘Do not close my school’ was a combination of online protest, using Facebook pages, occupy-type protest, in which students occupied more than 200 schools, and demonstrations, which occurred in different cities of the state. It was a movement organized by the students, with no official support of school managers, and lasted more than two months. We analyse the activities involved in the ‘Do not close my school’ movement under a Cultural-Historical Activity Theory framework, and we discuss how the concept of collaborative agency is important for the development of such a protest. As data, we use the content of pages on Facebook from fifty-six groups related to the school occupation and 111 official pages, also on Facebook, from the schools. We performed a multimodal and network analysis of the data in order to understand how the movement developed which results were obtained by the students. Our findings suggest that by acting collaboratively students were able to reach satisfactory results from their protests. In addition, they expanded the activities in their groups on Facebook to other contexts, like organizing events in their schools or using them for other social movements.Peer reviewe

Use of time-resolved spectroscopy as a method to monitor carotenoids present in tomato extract obtained using ultrasound treatment

Introduction Compounds exhibiting antioxidant activity have received much interest in the food industry because of their potential health benefits. Carotenoids such as lycopene, which in the human diet mainly derives from tomatoes (Solanum lycopersicum), have attracted much attention in this aspect and the study of their extraction, processing and storage procedures is of importance. Optical techniques potentially offer advantageous non-invasive and specific methods to monitor them. Objectives To obtain both fluorescence and Raman information to ascertain if ultrasound assisted extraction from tomato pulp has a detrimental effect on lycopene. Method Use of time-resolved fluorescence spectroscopy to monitor carotenoids in a hexane extract obtained from tomato pulp with application of ultrasound treatment (583 kHz). The resultant spectra were a combination of scattering and fluorescence. Because of their different timescales, decay associated spectra could be used to separate fluorescence and Raman information. This simultaneous acquisition of two complementary techniques was coupled with a very high time-resolution fluorescence lifetime measurement of the lycopene. Results Spectroscopic data showed the presence of phytofluene and chlorophyll in addition to lycopene in the tomato extract. The time-resolved spectral measurement containing both fluorescence and Raman data, coupled with high resolution time-resolved measurements, where a lifetime of ~5 ps was attributed to lycopene, indicated lycopene appeared unaltered by ultrasound treatment. Detrimental changes were, however, observed in both chlorophyll and phytofluene contributions. Conclusion Extracted lycopene appeared unaffected by ultrasound treatment, while other constituents (chlorophyll and phytofluene) were degraded. Copyright \ua9 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd