Discutindo a educação ambiental no cotidiano escolar: desenvolvimento de projetos na escola formação inicial e continuada de professores

A presente pesquisa buscou discutir como a Educação Ambiental (EA) vem sendo trabalhada, no Ensino Fundamental e como os docentes desta escola compreendem e vem inserindo a EA no cotidiano escolar., em uma escola estadual do município de Tangará da Serra/MT, Brasil. Para tanto, realizou-se entrevistas com os professores que fazem parte de um projeto interdisciplinar de EA na escola pesquisada. Verificou-se que o projeto da escola não vem conseguindo alcançar os objetivos propostos por: desconhecimento do mesmo, pelos professores; formação deficiente dos professores, não entendimento da EA como processo de ensino-aprendizagem, falta de recursos didáticos, planejamento inadequado das atividades. A partir dessa constatação, procurou-se debater a impossibilidade de tratar do tema fora do trabalho interdisciplinar, bem como, e principalmente, a importância de um estudo mais aprofundado de EA, vinculando teoria e prática, tanto na formação docente, como em projetos escolares, a fim de fugir do tradicional vínculo “EA e ecologia, lixo e horta”.Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias de la Educació

Debt maturity, cash holding and investment decisions : an empirical investigation for UK firms

EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Debt Maturity and the Characteristics of Ownership Structure: An Empirical Investigation of UK Firms

This work investigates the relationship between debt maturity and the characteristics of ownership in a sample of 700 UK non-financial listed firms for the period 1991-2001. The reported results suggest that there is a significant U-shaped relationship between short-term debt and managerial ownership, which seems to be robust when we analyse the debt decisions of high leverage firms. Moreover, we provide evidence of a significant negative relation between short-term debt and large external shareholdings. Our results tend also to support the hypothesis that the identity of large non-managerial shareholders matters in debt maturity choices. Finally, the analysis reveals that large amounts of bank debt in the capital structure induce firms to have long-term credit, but this effect may be moderate when firms deal with multiple banks.Debt maturity structure; ownership and control structure; panel data; GMM

Large Shareholder Diversification and Corporate Risk-Taking

Using new data for the universe of firms covered in Amadeus, we reconstruct the equity portfolios of shareholders who hold equity stakes in private and publicly-traded European firms. We find great heterogeneity in the degree of portfolio diversification across large shareholders. Exploiting this heterogeneity, we document that firms controlled by diversified large shareholders undertake riskier investments than firms controlled by non-diversified large shareholders. The impact of large shareholder diversification on corporate risk-taking is both economically and statistically significant. Our results have important implications at the policy level because they identify one channel through which policy changes aimed at improving capital market development and diversification can improve economic welfare

Direct and Ultimate Ownership Structures in the UK: an intertemporal perspective over the last decade

In this paper we analyse the evolution of the direct and ultimate ownership structure of a large sample of UK non-financial listed firms over the last decade. Our data show that while "outsider" ownership is relatively stable over time, managerial ownership shows a sharp decreasing trend and it is significantly lower in the presence of a large outside controller. Nonetheless, while average shareholding by executives confirms the decreasing trend, the opposite holds for non-executive directors. In addition, while average board size is rather constant in time, the proportion of non-executives is steadily increasing in time. As far as ultimate ownership is concerned, our data show that the existence of complex ownership structures in the UK is far from being negligible. We document that more than 10 per cent of the firms are owned via a complex structure and the degree of divergence between cash flow and control rights for these firms is around 11 per cent at the 10 per cent cut-off. Our data also suggest that the presence of complex structures is decreasing in time at any cut-off level. In addition, we report a decreasing trend over time of "widely held" firms. Finally, we show preliminary evidence of a negative impact of the divergence between cash flow and control rights on firm value. Copyright Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2005.