Gestão curricular intencional numa comunidade de professores e investigadores

A presente comunicação visa divulgar a gestão curricular intencional (GCI) realizada numa comunidade de prática (CoP) online de professores e investigadores, constituída no âmbito do projecto “Investigação e práticas lectivas em Educação em Ciência: Dinâmicas de interacção” (IPEC). Foi desenvolvido um módulo curricular de trabalho de campo na temática da Sustentabilidade, dirigido a alunos do ensino secundário. A CoP procurou fundamentar científica e didacticamente o módulo desenvolvido, tendo sentido dificuldades na definição dos objectivos educacionais. Foi privilegiado o trabalho de grupo, sendo as estratégias mais frequentes a exposição (pelo docente ou aluno), o debate e o trabalho prático. As docentes envolvidas apontaram impactos e constrangimentos associados ao seu envolvimento na CoP e manifestaram elevada satisfação com o mesmo

Descrição detalhada das actividades efectuadas no decurso do projecto IPEC

Este documento é parte integrante do relatório final do projecto IPEC, apresentando a descrição das actividades desenvolvidas até 2008.A presente secção é constituída por seis partes e visa descrever detalhadamente as actividades efectuadas no decurso do projecto IPEC. Após uma breve alusão aos pressupostos, problema, questões de investigação e objectivos do projecto, apresenta-se uma reflexão sobre o seu desenho metodológico. Na terceira secção, sintetiza-se o desenvolvimento do projecto e os seus resultados. Na quarta, analisam-se as consequências do projecto ao nível dos impactos nas escolas em que leccionavam os professores nele envolvidos e no desenvolvimento profissional desses docentes e os ganhos percepcionados pelos investigadores no que respeita à sua prática de investigação. Na quinta parte, efectua-se uma meta-análise do projecto bem como dos seus resultados e limitações, de acordo com a perspectiva dos investigadores nele envolvidos. Por último, na sexta, fazem-se sugestões visando os decisores políticos e sugestões para futuros trabalhos

Pervasive gaps in Amazonian ecological research

Biodiversity loss is one of the main challenges of our time,1,2 and attempts to address it require a clear un derstanding of how ecological communities respond to environmental change across time and space.3,4 While the increasing availability of global databases on ecological communities has advanced our knowledge of biodiversity sensitivity to environmental changes,5–7 vast areas of the tropics remain understudied.8–11 In the American tropics, Amazonia stands out as the world’s most diverse rainforest and the primary source of Neotropical biodiversity,12 but it remains among the least known forests in America and is often underrepre sented in biodiversity databases.13–15 To worsen this situation, human-induced modifications16,17 may elim inate pieces of the Amazon’s biodiversity puzzle before we can use them to understand how ecological com munities are responding. To increase generalization and applicability of biodiversity knowledge,18,19 it is thus crucial to reduce biases in ecological research, particularly in regions projected to face the most pronounced environmental changes. We integrate ecological community metadata of 7,694 sampling sites for multiple or ganism groups in a machine learning model framework to map the research probability across the Brazilian Amazonia, while identifying the region’s vulnerability to environmental change. 15%–18% of the most ne glected areas in ecological research are expected to experience severe climate or land use changes by 2050. This means that unless we take immediate action, we will not be able to establish their current status, much less monitor how it is changing and what is being lostinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Pervasive gaps in Amazonian ecological research

Biodiversity loss is one of the main challenges of our time,1,2 and attempts to address it require a clear understanding of how ecological communities respond to environmental change across time and space.3,4 While the increasing availability of global databases on ecological communities has advanced our knowledge of biodiversity sensitivity to environmental changes,5,6,7 vast areas of the tropics remain understudied.8,9,10,11 In the American tropics, Amazonia stands out as the world's most diverse rainforest and the primary source of Neotropical biodiversity,12 but it remains among the least known forests in America and is often underrepresented in biodiversity databases.13,14,15 To worsen this situation, human-induced modifications16,17 may eliminate pieces of the Amazon's biodiversity puzzle before we can use them to understand how ecological communities are responding. To increase generalization and applicability of biodiversity knowledge,18,19 it is thus crucial to reduce biases in ecological research, particularly in regions projected to face the most pronounced environmental changes. We integrate ecological community metadata of 7,694 sampling sites for multiple organism groups in a machine learning model framework to map the research probability across the Brazilian Amazonia, while identifying the region's vulnerability to environmental change. 15%–18% of the most neglected areas in ecological research are expected to experience severe climate or land use changes by 2050. This means that unless we take immediate action, we will not be able to establish their current status, much less monitor how it is changing and what is being lost

Pervasive gaps in Amazonian ecological research

Biodiversity loss is one of the main challenges of our time,1,2 and attempts to address it require a clear understanding of how ecological communities respond to environmental change across time and space.3,4 While the increasing availability of global databases on ecological communities has advanced our knowledge of biodiversity sensitivity to environmental changes,5,6,7 vast areas of the tropics remain understudied.8,9,10,11 In the American tropics, Amazonia stands out as the world's most diverse rainforest and the primary source of Neotropical biodiversity,12 but it remains among the least known forests in America and is often underrepresented in biodiversity databases.13,14,15 To worsen this situation, human-induced modifications16,17 may eliminate pieces of the Amazon's biodiversity puzzle before we can use them to understand how ecological communities are responding. To increase generalization and applicability of biodiversity knowledge,18,19 it is thus crucial to reduce biases in ecological research, particularly in regions projected to face the most pronounced environmental changes. We integrate ecological community metadata of 7,694 sampling sites for multiple organism groups in a machine learning model framework to map the research probability across the Brazilian Amazonia, while identifying the region's vulnerability to environmental change. 15%–18% of the most neglected areas in ecological research are expected to experience severe climate or land use changes by 2050. This means that unless we take immediate action, we will not be able to establish their current status, much less monitor how it is changing and what is being lost

Dinâmicas de interacção numa comunidade de prática online envolvendo professores e investigadores: um estudo no âmbito do projecto IPEC

Da análise da literatura da especialidade tem emergido que o desenvolvimento profissional de profes- sores pode beneficiar da utilização das tecnologias de informação e comunicação. Testemunho disso é o projecto IPEC (Investigação e práticas lectivas em Educação em Ciência: dinâmicas de interacção), que promoveu, com recurso a ferramentas de comunicação online, a articulação entre a investigação e as práticas lectivas, assim como o desenvolvimento profissional dos elementos envolvidos no projecto. No âmbito deste projecto surgiram quatro grupos de trabalho, envolvendo professores e investigadores, que conceberam, implementaram e avaliaram módulos curriculares para o ensino das Ciências. Um dos grupos interagiu preferencialmente através de ferramentas de comunicação online, facilitando a análise das suas dinâmicas de interacção, e constituiu uma comunidade de prática que desenvolveu práticas inovadoras, implementadas pelos docentes do grupo e por professores não envolvidos directamente no projecto. Nesta contribuição analisam-se as dinâmicas de interacção do grupo, tendo em vista delinear recomendações relativas ao trabalho docente em comunidades de prática e seus contributos para o desenvolvimento profissional de professores, uma das lacunas da literatura. O estudo realizado é de natureza qualitativa, descritiva, exploratória e do tipo estudo de caso único, sendo o caso as dinâmicas de interacção do grupo em análise. Estas foram investigadas a partir da análise das mensagens publicadas em fóruns da plataforma online de apoio ao projecto, bem como das estatísticas de utilização da plataforma.From the literature it emerges that teachers’ professional development can benefit from the use of information and communication technologies. A demonstration of these benefits is the work developed within the project IPEC (Research and teaching practices in Science Education: dynamics of interaction), which promoted, using online communication tools, the articulation between research and teaching practices, as well the professional development of the elements involved in the project. In the context of this project four working groups, involving teachers and researchers, were created that designed, implemented and evaluated Science education curricular modules. One of the groups interacted mainly through online communication tools, facilitating the analysis of the group’s dynamics of interaction. The group established a community of practice and developed innovative practices that were implemented by the group’s teachers and by other colleagues of theirs schools that were not directly involved in the project. This contribution presents the analysis of the group’s dynamics of interaction, in order to suggest recommendations concerning teachers’ involvement in online communities of practice and its impact on the teachers’ professional development, one of the shortcomings of the literature. The study is a single case study (being the case the group’s dynamics of interaction) and has a qualitative, descriptive and exploratory nature. The group’s dynamics of interaction were studied through the content analysis of the messages published in the group’s forums of the online platform of the project and the statistics of utilisation of that platform

Planning innovative teaching practices in a community of practice: a case study in the context of the project IPEC

This paper presents an analysis of the contribution of the collaborative work developed by a Portuguese community, involving teachers and researchers, and created in the context of the project ‘Investigação e práticas lectivas em Educação em Ciência: Dinâmicas de interacção’ (IPEC), to the development of innovative practices in formal education. The community members developed, implemented, and evaluated curricular modules about sustainability, through continued interactions in an online platform and some face-to-face meetings. The case study revealed that the community created challenging innovative practices, since we uncover: a evidence of 13 of the 14 descriptors of innovative teaching practices taken into account for the analysis b disruptive practices when compared to traditional practices, presenting high risk-taking, large scope and complexity. In the final session, we present suggestions concerning design issues for web-based communities, such as the need to combine online interaction with face-to-face meetings

Characterisation of microbial attack on archaeological bone

As part of an EU funded project to investigate the factors influencing bone preservation in the archaeological record, more than 250 bones from 41 archaeological sites in five countries spanning four climatic regions were studied for diagenetic alteration. Sites were selected to cover a range of environmental conditions and archaeological contexts. Microscopic and physical (mercury intrusion porosimetry) analyses of these bones revealed that the majority (68%) had suffered microbial attack. Furthermore, significant differences were found between animal and human bone in both the state of preservation and the type of microbial attack present. These differences in preservation might result from differences in early taphonomy of the bones. © 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved