Trabalho colaborativo e representações sociais: Contributos para a promoção do sucesso escolar, em matemática

Numa sociedade tecnológica e global, como a actual, são exigidas, aos cidadãos, capacidades e competências que lhes permitam ultrapassar os desafios. A matemática assume-se como uma forma de conhecimento, culturalmente situado, importante na mediação e resolução desses desafios. Enquanto disciplina associada a elevadas taxas de insucesso académico e a representações sociais negativas, é, muitas vezes, responsável por abandonos escolares precoces. O trabalho colaborativo, em díade ou pequenos grupos, actua como ferramenta mediadora no acesso ao sucesso académico e como facilitador no desenvolvimento de capacidades e competências (matemáticas), promovendo a literacia matemática. Este trabalho insere-se no projecto Interacção e Conhecimento. Assume um paradigma interpretativo e um design de investigação-acção. Os participantes são os alunos duma turma de 8.º ano de escolaridade, o professor/investigador e outros dois observadores. Os instrumentos de recolha de dados são um instrumento de avaliação de capacidades e competências (matemáticas), tarefas de inspiração projectiva, questionários, observação, recolha documental e protocolos dos alunos. Os dados foram tratados através de uma análise de conteúdo narrativa, sucessiva e aprofundada, de onde emergiram categorias indutivas. Analisamos as trajectórias de participação de uma aluna (Carolina, nome fictício), enquanto exemplo paradigmático. Discutimos estas trajectórias de participação em matemática, nomeadamente as três tarefas de inspiração projectiva e algumas tarefas matemáticas, realizadas em aula e em díade. Esta investigação ilumina as potencialidades que o trabalho colaborativo tem na apropriação de conhecimentos (matemáticos), na mobilização e/ou desenvolvimento de capacidades e competências (matemáticas), na mudança das representações sociais relativas à matemática e nos processos de socialização dos alunos.In a technological and global society citizens are demanded to use diverse abilities and competencies, allowing them to overcome societal challenges. Mathematics is a very important cultural tool to mediate and solve these challenges. This subject is associated with high academic failure, to the development of negative social representations, and is often responsible for some of the early school dropouts. Collaborative work, particularly peer interactions and small groups work, can be used as a mediating tool promoting students’ access to the academic achievement. It also facilitates the development of (mathematical) abilities and competencies contributing to the promotion of a mathematical literacy. This work is part of the Interaction and Knowledge project. It assumed an interpretative approach and an action-research design. The participants were the 8th grade students, the teacher/researcher and two other observers. Data was collected through an instrument to evaluate students’ (mathematical) abilities and competencies, tasks inspired in projective techniques, questionnaires, observation, documents and students' protocols. Data was treated and analysed through a narrative content analysis performed in a successive and in-depth way, from which inductive categories emerged. We analyse one student’s trajectory (Carolina, pseudonym), a paradigmatic example. We discuss this student’s life trajectories of participation, particularly in mathematics, namely the three tasks inspired in projective techniques and some mathematical tasks solved in dyads. This research illuminates the potential of collaborative work in the appropriation of (mathematical) knowledge, in the mobilization and/or development of (mathematical) abilities and competencies, in the change of social representations and in students’ socialization process

"The Information Society": Capitalist restructuring and The Global Public Sphere

La idea de una sociedad de la información sólo podrá tener sentido cuando se tenga claro que se trata simplemente de una nueva fase del capitalismo, en que las tecnologías de la información adquieren una relevancia fundamental. Los elementos de articulaciThe idea of an "information society" can only make sense when it is clear that it is simply a new phase of capitalism, in which information technologies acquire a fundamental relevance. The proposed elements or articulation are concepts of cultural and i

Masculinities: notes on its crises, challenges, and perspectives

La masculinidad no es una condición inherente al cuerpo del varón, sino que es una construcción cultural, con matices y fisuras. Al apostar por la racionalidad, los hombres niegan y excluyen su lado emotivo; con ello deviene lo que se conoce como crisis de las masculinidades. Los retos para afrontar las nuevas maneras de vivir la masculinidad deben contar con la participación de los hombres, pero también la de las mujeres.Masculinity is not an inherent condition of the male body. Rather, it is a cultural construct with many subtleties and shades. Men lean towards rationality at the expense of emotionality, and as a result of this, fall into a crisis of masculinity. The challenges of living the new types of masculinity must be faced with the participation of men, but also of women

A first attempt at constructing genetic programming expressions for EEG classification

Proceeding of: 15th International Conference on Artificial Neural Networks ICANN 2005, Poland, 11-15 September, 2005In BCI (Brain Computer Interface) research, the classification of EEG signals is a domain where raw data has to undergo some preprocessing, so that the right attributes for classification are obtained. Several transformational techniques have been used for this purpose: Principal Component Analysis, the Adaptive Autoregressive Model, FFT or Wavelet Transforms, etc. However, it would be useful to automatically build significant attributes appropriate for each particular problem. In this paper, we use Genetic Programming to evolve projections that translate EEG data into a new vectorial space (coordinates of this space being the new attributes), where projected data can be more easily classified. Although our method is applied here in a straightforward way to check for feasibility, it has achieved reasonable classification results that are comparable to those obtained by other state of the art algorithms. In the future, we expect that by choosing carefully primitive functions, Genetic Programming will be able to give original results that cannot be matched by other machine learning classification algorithms.Publicad

Em direção a uma utopia espacializada: romantismo e vida cotidiana no marxismo de Henri Lefebvre

The presence of the spatial element in the reflections of Henri Lefebvre does not merely result from work involving the translation and adaptation of critical thinking developed up until his time. The realization that not even the highest expression of the critical tradition had sufficiently noticed this crucial dimension of life was one of the connecting points between theoretical advance, represented by the spatial orientation of critique, and the effort to renew the utopian horizon. A very distinct assimilation of the early work of Marx and the proximity to revolutionary romanticism, particularly of Nietzschean extraction, rendered a decisive impact on Lefebvrian conception. Practice, body, pleasure and instincts, recovering their place in the critical social imagination, went on to become the basis for the re-foundation of a theoretical-practical program that involved the formulation of the notion of the right to the city. The perspective of appropriation thus replaced the vague emancipatory statements of the subject's philosophies.A presença do elemento espacial na reflexão de Henri Lefebvre não é mero resultado do trabalho de tradução e adaptação do pensamento crítico desenvolvido até o seu tempo. A compreensão de que nem mesmo a mais elevada expressão da tradição crítica havia notado suficientemente essa dimensão crucial da vida é um dos pontos de ligação entre o avanço teórico representado pela orientação espacial da crítica e o esforço de renovação do horizonte utópico. Uma assimilação muito particular do trabalho de juventude de Marx e a proximidade com o romantismo revolucionário, sobretudo de extração nietzschiana, tiveram impacto decisivo na concepção lefebvriana. A prática, o corpo, o gozo e os instintos, recobrando lugar na imaginação social crítica, se tornam a base da refundação de um programa teórico-prático que envolve a formulação da noção de direito à cidade. A perspectiva da apropriação substitui, assim, os vagos enunciados emancipatórios das filosofias do sujeito

Country Diversification, Product Ubiquity, and Economic Divergence

Countries differ markedly in the diversification of their exports. Products differ in the number of countries that export them, which we define as their ubiquity. We document a new stylized fact in the global pattern of exports: there is a systematic relationship between the diversification of a country’s exports and the ubiquity of its products. We argue that this fact is not implied by current theories of international trade and show that it is not a trivial consequence of the heterogeneity in the level of diversification of countries or of the heterogeneity in the ubiquity of products. We account for this stylized fact by constructing a simple model that assumes that each product requires a potentially large number of non-tradable inputs, which we call capabilities, and that a country can only make the products for which it has all the requisite capabilities. Products differ in the number and specific nature of the capabilities they require, as countries differ in the number/nature of capabilities they have. Products that require more capabilities will be accessible to fewer countries (i.e., will be less ubiquitous), while countries that have more capabilities will have what is required to make more products (i.e., will be more diversified). Our model implies that the return to the accumulation of new capabilities increases exponentially with the number of capabilities already available in a country. Moreover, we find that the convexity of the increase in diversification associated with the accumulation of a new capability increases when either the total number of capabilities that exist in the world increases or the average complexity of products, defined as the number of capabilities products require, increases. This convexity defines what we term as a quiescence trap, or a trap of economic stasis: countries with few capabilities will have negligible or no return to the accumulation of more capabilities, while at the same time countries with many capabilities will experience large returns - in terms of increased diversification - to the accumulation of additional capabilities. We calibrate the model to three different sets of empirical data and show that the derived functional forms reproduce the empirically observed distributions of product ubiquity, the relationship between the diversification of countries and the average ubiquity of the products they export, and the distribution of the probability that two products are co-exported. This calibration suggests that the global economy is composed of a relatively large number of capabilities – between 23 and 80, depending on the level of disaggregation of the data – and that products require on average a relatively large fraction of these capabilities in order to be produced. The conclusion of this calibration is that the world exists in a regime where the quiescence trap is strong

Automatic extraction of mobility activities in microblogs

Tese de Mestrado Integrado. Engenharia Informática e Computação. Faculdade de Engenharia. Universidade do Porto. 201