Esta tese apresenta movimentos e teorias que demandam a mudança de paradigma na educação básica. A adoção de métodos ativos de aprendizagem com uso de tecnologia digital é defendida como oportunidade para concretização da inovação desejada. O problema é definido com a identificação de barreiras para concretização da mudança em escala. A intenção de diferenciar a educação esbarra em limitações na formação e vivência de educadores em relação ao paradigma desejado e ao uso da tecnologia digital. Uma pesquisa ação participante foi conduzida em um centro social, com organização semelhante a uma escola, com objetivo de envolver educadores e gestores locais na construção de instrumentos e na melhoria de práticas educacionais a partir do uso de tecnologias digitais com métodos ativos de aprendizagem. A estratégia proposta foi estruturada sobre quatro elementos que fundamentaram intervenções para mudanças de práticas educacionais: Referencial de Habilidades do Século XXI como possíveis objetivos; aprendizagem por atividades; Rede Social com biblioteca individual no papel de ambiente virtual de aprendizagem; a construção de rubricas por parte dos educadores para detalhar, valorizar e monitorar novas dimensões de avaliação. A partir de uma análise situacional foram propostos ciclos de mudanças de práticas, onde atores locais se envolveram com o planejamento, implementação e análise de mudanças viabilizadas pelo uso de tecnologias digitais e alinhadas com os objetivos priorizados pela equipe local. Estes ciclos incluíram a construção de instrumentos destinados a facilitar e sistematizar as estratégias propostas. Os resultados mostram que as atividades planejadas e desenvolvidas pelos educadores evoluíram ao longo dos ciclos aproximando-se do paradigma desejado. A análise do uso da rede social aponta para o crescimento da autoria e expressão dos alunos, mas não apresenta evidências de interações que promovam a reflexão dos aprendizes autores. As rubricas mostraram-se valiosas para aprendizagem ativa dos educadores, porém apresentaram certa incompatibilidade com práticas construtivistas alinhadas com o paradigma desejado. A estratégia foi eficiente em provocar o desequilíbrio dos educadores e iniciá-los em práticas, reflexões e aprendizagem ativa sobre o paradigma desejado, porém várias limitações são apontadas para o uso da estratégia em grande escala. O desenvolvimento de sistemas digitais específicos para o apoio à mudança desejada é discutido e sugerido para estudos futuros. / This thesis presents moves and theories that ask for change of paradigm on basic education. The adoption of active learning methods with the use of digital technology is thought as an opportunity for the consolidation of the desired innovation. The identification of barriers to consolidate the change in large scale is presented as the research problem. The intention to differentiate education faces a barrier on educators limited education and experience on the desired paradigm as well as on the use of digital technology. An action participatory research was conducted on a social center, structured similar to a regular school, having as goal the engagement of local educators and coordinators on the design of instruments and on the improvement of educational practices enabled by the use of digital technologies with active learning methods. The strategy proposed was based on four elements that influenced the interventions for the change on educational practices: Framework on 21st Century Skills as possible goals; learning by activities; a social network with personal library on the role of digital learning environment; educators building rubrics to design, give value and monitor new dimensions for evaluation. Based on a situational analysis, cycles of change on practices were proposed on a way that local subjects got involved with planning, implementation and analysis of changes enabled by the use of digital technology and aligned with the goals selected by the local educational team. These cycles included the creation of instruments designed to facilitate and systematize the proposed strategies. The results show that the activities designed and implemented by the educators have evolved through the research cycles becoming better aligned with the desired paradigm. The strategy has proved to be efficient to unbalance the educators and start them in practices, reflections and active learning related to the desired paradigm, but in the other hand, some limitations were pointed out when considering the adoption of this strategy in a systemic way. The development of digital systems designed specifically to support the desired change is discussed and suggested for future studies.

abstract: In recent years, machine learning and data mining technologies have received growing attention in several areas such as recommendation systems, natural language processing, speech and handwriting recognition, image processing and biomedical domain. Many of these applications which deal with physiological and biomedical data require person specific or person adaptive systems. The greatest challenge in developing such systems is the subject-dependent data variations or subject-based variability in physiological and biomedical data, which leads to difference in data distributions making the task of modeling these data, using traditional machine learning algorithms, complex and challenging. As a result, despite the wide application of machine learning, efficient deployment of its principles to model real-world data is still a challenge. This dissertation addresses the problem of subject based variability in physiological and biomedical data and proposes person adaptive prediction models based on novel transfer and active learning algorithms, an emerging field in machine learning. One of the significant contributions of this dissertation is a person adaptive method, for early detection of muscle fatigue using Surface Electromyogram signals, based on a new multi-source transfer learning algorithm. This dissertation also proposes a subject-independent algorithm for grading the progression of muscle fatigue from 0 to 1 level in a test subject, during isometric or dynamic contractions, at real-time. Besides subject based variability, biomedical image data also varies due to variations in their imaging techniques, leading to distribution differences between the image databases. Hence a classifier learned on one database may perform poorly on the other database. Another significant contribution of this dissertation has been the design and development of an efficient biomedical image data annotation framework, based on a novel combination of transfer learning and a new batch-mode active learning method, capable of addressing the distribution differences across databases. The methodologies developed in this dissertation are relevant and applicable to a large set of computing problems where there is a high variation of data between subjects or sources, such as face detection, pose detection and speech recognition. From a broader perspective, these frameworks can be viewed as a first step towards design of automated adaptive systems for real world data. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Computer Science 2013

abstract: We solve the problem of activity verification in the context of sustainability. Activity verification is the process of proving the user assertions pertaining to a certain activity performed by the user. Our motivation lies in incentivizing the user for engaging in sustainable activities like taking public transport or recycling. Such incentivization schemes require the system to verify the claim made by the user. The system verifies these claims by analyzing the supporting evidence captured by the user while performing the activity. The proliferation of portable smart-phones in the past few years has provided us with a ubiquitous and relatively cheap platform, having multiple sensors like accelerometer, gyroscope, microphone etc. to capture this evidence data in-situ. In this research, we investigate the supervised and semi-supervised learning techniques for activity verification. Both these techniques make use the data set constructed using the evidence submitted by the user. Supervised learning makes use of annotated evidence data to build a function to predict the class labels of the unlabeled data points. The evidence data captured can be either unimodal or multimodal in nature. We use the accelerometer data as evidence for transportation mode verification and image data as evidence for recycling verification. After training the system, we achieve maximum accuracy of 94% when classifying the transport mode and 81% when detecting recycle activity. In the case of recycle verification, we could improve the classification accuracy by asking the user for more evidence. We present some techniques to ask the user for the next best piece of evidence that maximizes the probability of classification. Using these techniques for detecting recycle activity, the accuracy increases to 93%. The major disadvantage of using supervised models is that it requires extensive annotated training data, which expensive to collect. Due to the limited training data, we look at the graph based inductive semi-supervised learning methods to propagate the labels among the unlabeled samples. In the semi-supervised approach, we represent each instance in the data set as a node in the graph. Since it is a complete graph, edges interconnect these nodes, with each edge having some weight representing the similarity between the points. We propagate the labels in this graph, based on the proximity of the data points to the labeled nodes. We estimate the performance of these algorithms by measuring how close the probability distribution of the data after label propagation is to the probability distribution of the ground truth data. Since labeling has a cost associated with it, in this thesis we propose two algorithms that help us in selecting minimum number of labeled points to propagate the labels accurately. Our proposed algorithm achieves a maximum of 73% increase in performance when compared to the baseline algorithm. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.S. Computer Science 2013

nÃo hà / A presente pesquisa tem como objetivo fazer uma anÃlise do ensino de Hidrologia baseada nos conceitos de ensino hÃbrido e de aprendizagem ativa com o uso de videoaulas. A disciplina de Hidrologia pertence aos cursos de Engenharia Civil e de Engenharia Ambiental da Universidade Federal do CearÃ. Para isso, a pesquisa busca identificar, na perspectiva do professor, os conceitos de ensino hÃbrido, sala de aula invertida, e de aprendizagem ativa presentes nas aulas da disciplina de Hidrologia, bem como avaliar, na perspectiva dos alunos, a proposta metodolÃgica adotada pelo professor. O estudo tambÃm investiga o papel das tecnologias e das mÃdias digitais para o desenvolvimento da metodologia aplicada. No que se refere aos instrumentos de coleta, foram utilizados questionÃrios on-line, entrevistas, observaÃÃes das aulas e diÃrio de campo. Nos procedimentos metodolÃgicos, optou-se por uma abordagem qualitativa com o emprego do estudo de caso. Para anÃlise dos dados, foram utilizados elementos da teoria de Strauss e Corbin (2008). Os resultados estÃo apresentados em trÃs categorias: 1) PrÃtica docente baseada no ensino hÃbrido e na aprendizagem ativa; 2) AvaliaÃÃo discente sobre a metodologia aplicada; e 3) A influÃncia da tecnologia e das mÃdias digitais na disciplina. Os resultados indicam que a metodologia aplicada pelo docente em Hidrologia carrega elementos do ensino hÃbrido e da aprendizagem ativa, o que favoreceu a satisfaÃÃo do professor e a motivaÃÃo e o engajamento dos alunos com os conteÃdos curriculares, elevando o nÃvel das discussÃes em sala e das avaliaÃÃes na disciplina. Ademais, foi observado que esta aÃÃo provocou em outros docentes e em outras instituiÃÃes o interesse pelas teorias que permeiam a proposta empregada em Hidrologia. A pesquisa se diferencia dos demais estudos ao relacionar a utilizaÃÃo de vÃdeo com um contexto de educaÃÃo presencial no ensino superior para favorecer o entendimento sobre tendÃncias de uso das tecnologias digitais de informaÃÃo e comunicaÃÃo na educaÃÃo. Com isso, percebe-se as potencialidades do uso de materiais audiovisuais e confirma-se que esta utilizaÃÃo pode auxiliar o professor em sua estratÃgia de ensino e proporcionar aos alunos uma variedade de atividades que favorecem o aprendizado.

Esta tese apresenta movimentos e teorias que demandam a mudança de paradigma na educação básica. A adoção de métodos ativos de aprendizagem com uso de tecnologia digital é defendida como oportunidade para concretização da inovação desejada. O problema é definido com a identificação de barreiras para concretização da mudança em escala. A intenção de diferenciar a educação esbarra em limitações na formação e vivência de educadores em relação ao paradigma desejado e ao uso da tecnologia digital. Uma pesquisa ação participante foi conduzida em um centro social, com organização semelhante a uma escola, com objetivo de envolver educadores e gestores locais na construção de instrumentos e na melhoria de práticas educacionais a partir do uso de tecnologias digitais com métodos ativos de aprendizagem. A estratégia proposta foi estruturada sobre quatro elementos que fundamentaram intervenções para mudanças de práticas educacionais: Referencial de Habilidades do Século XXI como possíveis objetivos; aprendizagem por atividades; Rede Social com biblioteca individual no papel de ambiente virtual de aprendizagem; a construção de rubricas por parte dos educadores para detalhar, valorizar e monitorar novas dimensões de avaliação. A partir de uma análise situacional foram propostos ciclos de mudanças de práticas, onde atores locais se envolveram com o planejamento, implementação e análise de mudanças viabilizadas pelo uso de tecnologias digitais e alinhadas com os objetivos priorizados pela equipe local. Estes ciclos incluíram a construção de instrumentos destinados a facilitar e sistematizar as estratégias propostas. Os resultados mostram que as atividades planejadas e desenvolvidas pelos educadores evoluíram ao longo dos ciclos aproximando-se do paradigma desejado. A análise do uso da rede social aponta para o crescimento da autoria e expressão dos alunos, mas não apresenta evidências de interações que promovam a reflexão dos aprendizes autores. As rubricas mostraram-se valiosas para aprendizagem ativa dos educadores, porém apresentaram certa incompatibilidade com práticas construtivistas alinhadas com o paradigma desejado. A estratégia foi eficiente em provocar o desequilíbrio dos educadores e iniciá-los em práticas, reflexões e aprendizagem ativa sobre o paradigma desejado, porém várias limitações são apontadas para o uso da estratégia em grande escala. O desenvolvimento de sistemas digitais específicos para o apoio à mudança desejada é discutido e sugerido para estudos futuros. / This thesis presents moves and theories that ask for change of paradigm on basic education. The adoption of active learning methods with the use of digital technology is thought as an opportunity for the consolidation of the desired innovation. The identification of barriers to consolidate the change in large scale is presented as the research problem. The intention to differentiate education faces a barrier on educators limited education and experience on the desired paradigm as well as on the use of digital technology. An action participatory research was conducted on a social center, structured similar to a regular school, having as goal the engagement of local educators and coordinators on the design of instruments and on the improvement of educational practices enabled by the use of digital technologies with active learning methods. The strategy proposed was based on four elements that influenced the interventions for the change on educational practices: Framework on 21st Century Skills as possible goals; learning by activities; a social network with personal library on the role of digital learning environment; educators building rubrics to design, give value and monitor new dimensions for evaluation. Based on a situational analysis, cycles of change on practices were proposed on a way that local subjects got involved with planning, implementation and analysis of changes enabled by the use of digital technology and aligned with the goals selected by the local educational team. These cycles included the creation of instruments designed to facilitate and systematize the proposed strategies. The results show that the activities designed and implemented by the educators have evolved through the research cycles becoming better aligned with the desired paradigm. The strategy has proved to be efficient to unbalance the educators and start them in practices, reflections and active learning related to the desired paradigm, but in the other hand, some limitations were pointed out when considering the adoption of this strategy in a systemic way. The development of digital systems designed specifically to support the desired change is discussed and suggested for future studies.

Neste trabalho, apresenta-se uma pesquisa em Ensino de Ciências e Matemática que consistiu na investigação de uma prática pedagógica aplicada a estudantes do 8º ano do Ensino Fundamental, sobre conceitos de Geometria Espacial. A temática desenvolvida surgiu diante da discrepância observada entre os conteúdos da grade curricular do município no qual os estudantes estavam inseridos e aqueles indicados na Base Nacional Comum Curricular (em versão preliminar disponível à época do início da pesquisa), aliada à curiosidade e à vontade de aprimorar a prática pedagógica da professora pesquisadora. Concebido para compreender qual a contribuição de uma proposta didática que integra a utilização de materiais manipuláveis e a produção de audiovisuais na apropriação de conceitos, o projeto atingiu seu objetivo principal: o de promover a aprendizagem de conteúdos de Geometria Espacial. Embasado nas concepções teóricas de Paulo Freire sobre a aprendizagem, que têm a autonomia como princípio educativo, este projeto também desenvolveu fundamentos sólidos para um novo modelo educomunicacional, democrático e dialógico da Educomunicação. Promoveu-se, outrossim, a construção de ecossistemas comunicativos, desenvolvendo um processo dinâmico e prazeroso, estruturado através dos Três Momentos Pedagógicos. Uma avaliação mediadora esteve a serviço da aprendizagem e da melhoria da ação pedagógica, contemplando a autoavaliação, tanto por parte dos estudantes, quanto da professora. Os dados, obtidos e analisados seguindo orientações da análise textual discursiva, mostraram o progresso dos estudantes no desenvolvimento de cinco habilidades geométricas: a visual, a verbal, a gráfica, a lógica e a de aplicação. Além disso, ao se promover a autonomia, geraram-se condições para a construção de conhecimentos, liberdade de expressão, criatividade, dialogicidade e o que Freire chama de “pensar certo”. Como produto final, foi elaborado um guia didático, que pode servir como recurso de aprendizagem a ser utilizado por outros professores de Educação Básica. / In this work, it is presented a research in Science and Mathematics Teaching, which consisted in the investigation of a pedagogical practice applied to students of the 8th year of Elementary School, about the concepts of Spatial Geometry. In view of the discrepancy between the curricular grid of the Municipality, in which the students are inserted and the new National Common Curricular Base, as well as, the curiosity and the desire to do more of the researcher, the theme of this research appeared. Conceived to understand how the production of audiovisuals with the aid of manipulable materials can contribute to the appropriation of the concepts of Spatial Geometry, the project achieved its main objective that was to promote the occurrence of learning of Spatial Geometry concepts through the use of manipulable materials and the production of audiovisuals. Based on Paulo Freire’s theoretical conceptions of learning, which has autonomy as an educational principle, this project also developed solid foundations for a new educommunicational model, essentially horizontal, democratic and dialogic of the Educommunication. It was promoted the construction of communicative ecosystems, developing a dynamic and pleasant process structured through the Three Pedagogical Moments. A mediative evaluation was at the service of the students' learning and of the improvement of the pedagogical action, contemplating the self-assessment of both the students and the teacher. The data, built and tabulated through Discursive Textual Analysis, showed the progress of the students in the development of the five geometric, for the learning of Geometry to occur: Visual, Verbal, Graphic, Logic and Application abilities. In addition, autonomy was fostered that generated ideal conditions for the development of knowledge, freedom of expression, creativity, and dialogue, and what Freire calls "Think Right". As a final product, a didactic guide was developed, that can be used as learning resources by other Basic Education teachers.

Topic hierarchies are efficient ways of organizing document collections. These structures help users to manage the knowledge contained in textual data. These hierarchies are usually obtained through unsupervised hierarchical clustering algorithms. By not considering the context of the user in the formation of the hierarchical groups, unsupervised topic hierarchies may not attend the user\'s expectations in some cases. One possible solution for this problem is to employ semi-supervised clustering algorithms. These algorithms incorporate the user\'s knowledge through the usage of constraints to the clustering process. However, in the context of semi-supervised hierarchical clustering, the works in the literature do not efficient explore the selection of cases (instances or cluster) to add constraints, neither the interaction of the user with the clustering process. In this sense, in this work we introduce two semi-supervised hierarchical clustering algorithms: HCAC (Hierarchical Confidence-based Active Clustering) and HCAC-LC (Hierarchical Confidence-based Active Clustering with Limited Constraints). These algorithms employ an active learning approach based in the confidence of cluster merges. When a low confidence merge is detected, the user is invited to decide, from a pool of candidate pairs of clusters, the best cluster merge in that point. In this work, we employ HCAC and HCAC-LC in the extraction of topic hierarchies through the SMITH framework, which is also proposed in this thesis. This framework provides a series of well defined activities that allow the user\'s interaction in the generation of topic hierarchies. The active learning approach used in the HCAC-based algorithms, the kind of queries employed in these algorithms, as well as the SMITH framework for the generation of semi-supervised topic hierarchies are innovations to the state of the art proposed in this thesis. Our experimental results indicate that HCAC and HCAC-LC outperform other semi-supervised hierarchical clustering algorithms in diverse scenarios. The results also indicate that semi-supervised topic hierarchies obtained through the SMITH framework are more intuitive and easier to navigate than unsupervised topic hierarchies / Hierarquias de tópicos são formas eficientes de organização de coleções de documentos, auxiliando usuários a gerir o conhecimento materializado nessas publicações textuais. Tais hierarquias são usualmente construídas por meio de algoritmos de agrupamento hierárquico não supervisionado. Entretanto, por não considerarem o contexto do usuário na formação dos grupos, hierarquias de tópicos não supervisionadas nem sempre conseguem atender as suas expectativas. Uma solução para este problema e o emprego de algoritmos de agrupamento semissupervisionado, os quais incorporam o conhecimento de domínio do usuário por meio de restrições. Entretanto, para o contexto de agrupamento hierárquico semissupervisionado, não são eficientemente explorados na literatura métodos de seleção de casos (instâncias ou grupos) para receber restrições, bem como não há formas eficientes de interação do usuário com o processo de agrupamento hierárquico. Dessa maneira, neste trabalho, dois algoritmos de agrupamento hierárquico semissupervisionado são propostos: HCAC (Hierarchical Confidence-based Active Clustering) e HCAC-LC (Hierarchical Confidence-based Active Clustering with Limited Constraints). Estes algoritmos empregam uma abordagem de aprendizado ativo baseado na confiança de uma junção de clusters. Quando uma junção de baixa confiança e detectada, o usuário e convidado a decidir, em um conjunto de pares de grupos candidatos, a melhor junção naquele ponto. Estes algoritmos são aqui utilizados na extração de hierarquias de tópicos por meio do framework SMITH, também proposto nesse trabalho. Este framework fornece uma série de atividades bem definidas que possibilitam a interação do usuário para a obtenção de hierarquias de tópicos. A abordagem de aprendizado ativo utilizado nos algoritmos HCAC e HCAC-LC, o tipo de restrição utilizada nestes algoritmos, bem como o framework SMITH para obtenção de hierarquias de tópicos semissupervisionadas são inovações ao estado da arte propostos neste trabalho. Os resultados obtidos indicam que os algoritmos HCAC e HCAC-LC superam o desempenho de outros algoritmos hierárquicos semissupervisionados em diversos cenários. Os resultados também indicam que hierarquias de tópico semissupervisionadas obtidas por meio do framework SMITH são mais intuitivas e fáceis de navegar do que aquelas não supervisionadas

This thesis focuses on how unlabeled data can improve supervised learning classi-fiers in all contexts, for both scarce to abundant label situations. This is meant toaddress the limitations within supervised learning with regards to label availability.Extending the training set with unlabeled data can overcome issues such as selec-tion bias, noise and insufficient data. Based on the overall data distribution andthe initial set of labels, semi-supervised methods provide labels for additional datapoints. The semi-supervised approaches considered in this thesis belong to one ofthe following categories: transductive SVMs, Cluster-then-Label and graph-basedtechniques. Further, we evaluate the behavior of: Logistic regression, Single layerperceptron, SVM and Decision trees. By learning on the extended training set,supervised classifiers are able to generalize better. Based on the results, this the-sis recommends data-processing and algorithmic solutions appropriate to real-worldsituations.

Master of Science / Division of Biology / Ashley E. Rhodes / To retain students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) various pedagogical techniques, such as active learning, have been incorporated in STEM courses. Despite the popularity of active learning, it has rarely been empirically tested with a comparison or control group. To compare the benefits of active learning to conventional lecture learning, the aims of this project were twofold: conduct a physiological research project investigating thermoregulation in large ruminants and evaluate the effectiveness of active learning tools for an undergraduate course that focused on core concepts in physiology. Physiological concepts from the thermoregulation study were integrated into the educational portion of the study. Holstein heifers were used as the model organism for the thermoregulation study. Initially, 8 heifers were fitted with indwelling jugular catheters and serial blood samples were collected at 3-minute intervals during exercise of increasing intensity. Blood lactate was then measured and it was determined that the lactate threshold of Holstein heifers occurs on average at a heart rate of 145bpm ± 7.7 and at an exercise speed of 6.44km/h ± 0.3. The results from the lactate threshold test were used to design two 8-week exercise trials with the objective to examine the effects of exercise on heat stress using high-intensity (short bouts of exercise above the lactate threshold), low-intensity (relatively long bouts of exercise below the lactate threshold), and sedentary control treatments. No differences were found in weekly skin temperatures or core body temperatures (p >.05). Expression of lactate dehydrogenase A in skeletal muscle cells decreased in the high-intensity treatment (p =.03). Expression of lactate dehydrogenase B in skeletal muscles decreased in the high-intensity (p =.02) and sedentary control (p =.02) treatments. Skin and core body temperatures from all treatments were correlated with THI (p < 0.001). There were no differences in body weight, body condition score, or conception rate between treatments (p > .05). Although not significant (p > .05), after low-intensity exercise training, skin temperatures increased while core body temperatures decreased. Trends from this study warrant further investigation on the effects of low-intensity exercise on thermoregulation in Holstein cattle. The second component of this project involved the incorporation of core physiological concepts from the thermoregulation project, in conjunction with those identified by the American Physiological Society, into an educational study where the utility of active learning for teaching difficult concepts within an undergraduate physiology course was investigated. Using a design-based research approach, two distinct pedagogical tools were developed: an active learning tool in the form of a case study and a conventional lecture. It was hypothesized that, compared to a conventional lecture, students receiving the active learning tool would perform significantly better on tests measuring their ability to comprehend, apply, and transfer the information to novel scenarios. Results from this project did not support the hypothesis but instead led to the question of is it the method or is it the student? Prior knowledge of students was evaluated using a physiology knowledge assessment. Students with low prior knowledge had greater learning gains from the use of a conventional lecture while students with high prior knowledge had greater learning gains from the use of a case study. Students with fewer college credit hours completed and those with lower ACT scores had larger learning gains after receiving a conventional lecture compared to the use of a case study. Students with more college credit hours completed and those with higher ACT scores had larger learning gains from the use of a case study compared to receiving the information from a conventional lecture. Furthermore, students who relied on memorization for learning new information benefitted more from a conventional lecture, while students who relied on elaboration for learning new information benefitted more from a case study. Thus, the success of active learning likely depends on specific student characteristics. A one-size-fits-all approach to teaching and learning will not suffice; we must first consider the population of students and then select the proper instructional approach.

In this thesis I offer an alternative to the hyper–individualistic, hyper-performative means-end dynamic that dominates contemporary educational practice. I foreground dimensions of experience that possibilise an approach that is neither instrumentatlised nor instrumentalising; an approach I term (a) (more) just education. The thesis opens with an analysis of how the reduction of education to use-value is both dependent on, and perpetuating of, a conception of subjectivity that overlooks the facticity of embodied life. The prevalence of dualist assumptions in both liberal and critical educational thinking and the persistence of these assumptions despite explicit attempts to think otherwise is mapped out and I draw a link between these assumptions and the privilege accorded to displays of understanding. Alongside this analysis I propose that the seemingly all-pervasive Cartesian legacy might be circumvented by approaching the question of subjectivity from a kinaesthetic perspective. This kinaesthetic approach is outlined with reference to the somatic dance practice of Skinner Releasing Technique (SRT). The practice of SRT offers up three ‘kinaesthetic provocations’ that invite re-thinking both the dynamics of education and the dynamics of justice. Throughout the thesis I explore an interplay between these provocations and the work of Derrida and Deleuze/Deleuze and Guattari; and through this interplay I unsettle the dualisms of self and other, self and world, and self and work. By approaching the shaping of subjectivity from a bodily, kinaesthetic perspective I submit the bodies called teachers and students, the bodies of practice called teaching and learning, the bodies of knowledge called curricula and the ideal body called justice to processes of deterritorialisation. Untethering education from its ends in this way affords the possibility of approaching education as an experience of passage. I argue that an emphasis on passage offers up educational consequences that are shared in rather than shared out and that therefore escape the grip of performative categorising trends. Through this account the role of the educator becomes one of affirmation, rather than validation, and I conclude the thesis by examining the particular sensitivities that this demands.