In Tanzania, the enrolment in school is high but the students’ performance is in general low. Parents are seen as important agents to provide students with opportunities to succeed in school. It is therefore of interest to investigate what is being said about parental involvement (PI) in the Tanzanian school. The aim with this study is to identify and analyse common assumptions about PI in the context of the Tanzanian primary school. We had the opportunity to travel to Tanzania for eight weeks to investigate this. Qualitative semi-structured interviews with eight parents and two teachers about PI were carried out in two rural villages. Questions to the parents about their perception of education were furthermore asked in order to achieve a background for their statements about PI. The study is based on a discourse analytical approach, meaning that the result was obtained through identifying discourses by analysing the respondents’ statements. The analysis resulted in five discourses: Education for the future, PI as a resource, PI as pressures from teachers, PI as a lack of education and PI as paying attention to children’s education. The contents which fill the discourses are discussed in relation to the context of the study as well as perception of the relationship between home and school. The parents in this study value education highly and their involvement is mostly about contributing with financial support. Yet, the teachers are demanding a higher involvement from parents. The low socioeconomic background is a barrier for many parents to become involved. A conscious effort, aimed at getting parents more involved, is needed in order to increase the children’s academic performance.

It is a truism in contemporary understandings of semantics that there is no simple one-to-one correspondence between a word and its referent. As Wittgenstein has suggested, we can only know the meaning of a word by understanding the way it is used, and these uses are known often to be variable and highly context-dependent. / The issue of the variable meanings of terms is especially important when the term in question has assumed some centrality within a particular social domain, when its meanings are contested, and when the way the term is interpreted has a major bearing on subsequent social and institutional practices. In contemporary debates about the aims and purposes of higher education one such term is ‘critical thinking’. Whilst there is general unanimity in the higher education literature about the importance of ‘critical thinking’ as an educational ideal, there is surprisingly little agreement about what the term means exactly, as well as what exactly students should be taught in order to be appropriately critical in their field. / This thesis reports an empirical study which investigated conceptions of critical thinking as they are held by academics from a range of humanities disciplines: History, Philosophy, and Literary/Cultural Studies. The broad method used was a ‘textographic’ one, focusing both on how the concept of critical thinking was talked about by informants in interview, and also how it was constructed in a range of texts used by them in their teaching on undergraduate programs. / The study found a good deal of variation in the meaning of the term ‘critical’, not only between the three disciplines, but also within them. This variation was located in a number of areas: in the epistemic entities to which students needed to direct their thinking (e.g. textual vs. phenomenal entities), and in the various analytical modes they were required to adopt (e.g. evaluative vs. interpretative modes). The broad principle to be drawn from these findings is that the nature of one's thinking is indivisible from the object to which that thinking is directed. / The varieties of critical thinking found in the study provide some challenge to certain generic understandings of critical thinking, ones that have assumed increasing influence in higher education debates in recent years. The study concludes by suggesting that the teaching of critical thinking is likely to be more effective if handled within the context of students’ study in the disciplines, as opposed to a generic extra-disciplinary approach. It is also suggested that an important part of becoming a critical thinker in the academy is being able to recognise and to negotiate this variety of critical modes.

Les débats sur la spécificité ou non d’une écriture féminine à caractère sexuée, l’investissement exponentiel des femmes dans le champ littéraire de ces dernières décennies dans des thématiques variées et des discours transgressif et subversif, justifient notre intérêt pour l’analyse du discours de femmes dans la fiction littéraire contemporaine. En littérature comme dans d’autres disciplines, les discours des femmes sont presque toujours en conflit entre le besoin de dire les hiérarchies sociales, et celui de revendiquer une légitimité universelle. Aussi, à travers une analyse immanente et structurelle des textes qui constituent notre corpus à savoir : Riwan ou le chemin de sable (Ken Bugul,), Les vaisseaux du coeur (Benoîte Groult), L’empreinte de l’ange (Nancy Huston), La Joueuse de go (Shan Sa), ce travail de recherche s’interroge sur la spécificité du discours de ces femmes et la valeur de l’autofiction associé à ces discours. En nous servant des méthodes de l’analyse du discours et des Women Studies, cette thèse se donne de lire les thématiques, le contour des stratégies discursives des femmes, ce qu’elles disent d’elles et du monde qui relèvent ou non de l’influence féministe afin d’en dévoiler la performativité. / The debates on the specificity or not of a feminine gendered writing. The exponential investment of women in the literary field of these recent decades, in various themes, justify our interest of discourse analysis of women in contemporary literary fiction. In literature as in other discipline, the women’s discourses are mostly in conflict between the need to say social hierarchies of genders and to claim universal legitimacy. Also, through an immanent and structural analysis of the texts that constitute our corpus: Riwan ou le chemin de sable (Ken Bugul,), Les vaisseaux du coeur (Benoîte Groult), L’Empreinte de l’ange (Nancy Huston), La Joueuse de go (Shan Sa). This research is about the specificity of these women discourses, and the autofiction value associated with these discourses. Thoroughly using the methods of Discourse Analysis and Women Studies, this thesis aims to read themes, the outline of women's discursive strategies, what they say about them and the world that is or not influenced by feminism and then reveals the performativity of their discourse.

Este trabalho parte da afinidade que encontramos entre aspectos da pesquisa psicanalítica e da aprendizagem por projetos para lançar nossa questão: em que essas duas metodologias, concernentes a campos diferentes – psicanálise e educação –, convergem ou em que divergem? Seria uma relação de homologia? A fim de realizar essa análise, estamos posicionando-nos desde a pesquisa psicanalítica. Portanto, é nela que buscamos nosso método e nosso instrumento de análise, a saber, o matema dos quatro discursos. No que diz respeito à pesquisa psicanalítica, buscamos nossos fragmentos em textos de Lacan e Freud. Esses fragmentos são articulados às diretrizes teóricas da aprendizagem por projeto, e a uma situação prática de nossa pesquisa: uma oficina de programação de computadores ocorrida em uma escola pública de Porto Alegre. Com essa articulação, percorremos nossa análise, delimitando pontos que aproximam ou afastam essas duas metodologias. / This work starts since the affinity that we found between features of the psychoanalytic research and the learning projects in order to launch our question: considering these two methodologies, concerning different fields – psychoanalysis and education –, at what points do they converge or diverge? It would be a homology? In order to realize this analysis, we are positioning ourselves since the psychoanalytic research. Thus, there we get our method and our analysis tool, that is, the matema of four discourses. As regards psychoanalytic research, we get our fragments in texts written by Lacan and Freud. These fragments are articulated on the theoretical guidelines of learning project, and on a practical situation of our research: a workshop of computer programming for children, which has occurred in a public school in Porto Alegre. After that, we go through our analysis, delimiting points that bring these methodologies closer or further each other.

A pesquisa investiga e analisa os discursos jornalísticos sobre educação da revista Veja entre os anos de 2002 e 2012. Os estudos jornalísticos sobre educação foram tomados como objeto de estudo devido ao entendimento de que ao falar sobre educação esses discursos também constituem a mesma. A revista Veja foi escolhida como campo de análise devido ao fato de ser a revista brasileira de maior circulação semanal. E o referido período, que compreende a análise, foi delimitado tento em vista ser um período de significativo crescimento da classe média brasileira, majoritariamente o público-alvo leitor da revista Veja. Ao me aproximar do objeto de estudo buscando entender que ideologias operam nesses discursos e que visões hegemônicas sobre educação são constituídas pelos mesmos, através dos conceitos de ideologia (HALL, 2009) e hegemonia (WILLIAMS, 1979), tive de recorrer a referenciais metodológicos que me permitissem operar as análises. Através dos conceitos de intertextualidade e representação de atores sociais (FAIRCLOUGH, 2003) e falta e excesso (PÊCHEUX, 1990) pude identificar algumas vozes presentes e ausentes nos discursos jornalísticos sobre educação da revista Veja, assim como de que modos são representados aqueles que têm voz ou são privados das mesmas nesses discursos. A pesquisa e análises demonstraram que operam ideologias nos discursos sobre educação da revista Veja, muitas vezes híbridas e contraditórias, não necessariamente uma única ideologia. A educação básica, de modo geral, é entendida como um projeto público e coletivo nacional, já o ensino superior é caracterizado como passível de privatização ou capitalização. A revista também apresenta uma preocupação constante com a presença de ideologias de esquerda em materiais didáticos e escolas, assim como uma vigilância constante ao trabalho docente, conclamada principalmente na participação dos pais na educação escolar dos filhos. O trabalho docente, por sua vez, é tomado como problemático e propulsor de mudanças, deste modo tanto críticas à formação de professores são encontradas nesses discursos quanto a necessidade de valorização dos professores. Finalmente, a revista toma indícios de experiências de outros países e recomendações de organismos internacionais como referência para fazer avançar a educação no Brasil. / This research analyzes the journalistic discourses of education in Veja, a Brazilian magazine, between 2002 and 2012. Journalistic discourses were taken as the object of this study due to the understanding of media and information as a social construction. Veja magazine was chosen as the field of this analysis because it is Brazil‟s biggest magazine in circulation, the third largest weekly news magazine in the world and the largest outside the United States. That period of time was chosen since it was an important moment for Brazilian economy, when a significant economic growth of the country‟s middle class – Veja‟s target readership – happened. I identified media as one of the social structures that has been continuously mobilized for education, under the assumptions of a deficit in Brazilian basic education, and low qualification of teachers – both in comparison to the rest of the world via rankings or, sometimes, to a certain selective past. Through the concepts of intertextuality and representation of social actors (FAIRCLOUGH, 2003), I realized that present and absent voices in Veja‟s journalistic discourses about education consider basic education as a public and collective national project that requires managerial inputs, considering the urgency of an economic development for the country. In this sense, Veja magazine presents the work of teachers, at the same time, as the problem and the solution. It is both critical - to formation and performance of teachers - and scrupulous - as it recognizes the need to value teachers. If we consider that all social problems and their possible solutions are partly discursive (RESENDE; RAMALHO 2013), hegemonic discourses built through the articulation of certain ideologies‟ alliances (HALL, 2009) with the common sense, even though never guaranteed, are powerful. This research conclusions suggest that counter-hegemonic alternatives to managerialist projects must always be accompanied also by discursive alternatives, and journalistic discourses about education, more than objects of study, should also be seen as objects of dispute.

Insects are not really beloved by many people, although their importance for humankind and the planet’s ecosystem is out of question. The lack of resonance and emotional attachment towards insects have an immense impact on how politics deal with the fact that the number of insects is decreasing and the ecological balance is threatened as a consequence. This thesis contributes to the understanding of the role of emotions in environmental discourses and examines the societal meaning of the insect biodiversity. Analysing how the discourse is visualised and communicated in the media shows how and to what extent different emotions are evoked to make people care about insects, be engaged and mobilised. Emotions can be seen as the base for caring and feeling responsible for the natural word, establishing ecological awareness and inducing socio-political change.

A pesquisa investiga e analisa os discursos jornalísticos sobre educação da revista Veja entre os anos de 2002 e 2012. Os estudos jornalísticos sobre educação foram tomados como objeto de estudo devido ao entendimento de que ao falar sobre educação esses discursos também constituem a mesma. A revista Veja foi escolhida como campo de análise devido ao fato de ser a revista brasileira de maior circulação semanal. E o referido período, que compreende a análise, foi delimitado tento em vista ser um período de significativo crescimento da classe média brasileira, majoritariamente o público-alvo leitor da revista Veja. Ao me aproximar do objeto de estudo buscando entender que ideologias operam nesses discursos e que visões hegemônicas sobre educação são constituídas pelos mesmos, através dos conceitos de ideologia (HALL, 2009) e hegemonia (WILLIAMS, 1979), tive de recorrer a referenciais metodológicos que me permitissem operar as análises. Através dos conceitos de intertextualidade e representação de atores sociais (FAIRCLOUGH, 2003) e falta e excesso (PÊCHEUX, 1990) pude identificar algumas vozes presentes e ausentes nos discursos jornalísticos sobre educação da revista Veja, assim como de que modos são representados aqueles que têm voz ou são privados das mesmas nesses discursos. A pesquisa e análises demonstraram que operam ideologias nos discursos sobre educação da revista Veja, muitas vezes híbridas e contraditórias, não necessariamente uma única ideologia. A educação básica, de modo geral, é entendida como um projeto público e coletivo nacional, já o ensino superior é caracterizado como passível de privatização ou capitalização. A revista também apresenta uma preocupação constante com a presença de ideologias de esquerda em materiais didáticos e escolas, assim como uma vigilância constante ao trabalho docente, conclamada principalmente na participação dos pais na educação escolar dos filhos. O trabalho docente, por sua vez, é tomado como problemático e propulsor de mudanças, deste modo tanto críticas à formação de professores são encontradas nesses discursos quanto a necessidade de valorização dos professores. Finalmente, a revista toma indícios de experiências de outros países e recomendações de organismos internacionais como referência para fazer avançar a educação no Brasil. / This research analyzes the journalistic discourses of education in Veja, a Brazilian magazine, between 2002 and 2012. Journalistic discourses were taken as the object of this study due to the understanding of media and information as a social construction. Veja magazine was chosen as the field of this analysis because it is Brazil‟s biggest magazine in circulation, the third largest weekly news magazine in the world and the largest outside the United States. That period of time was chosen since it was an important moment for Brazilian economy, when a significant economic growth of the country‟s middle class – Veja‟s target readership – happened. I identified media as one of the social structures that has been continuously mobilized for education, under the assumptions of a deficit in Brazilian basic education, and low qualification of teachers – both in comparison to the rest of the world via rankings or, sometimes, to a certain selective past. Through the concepts of intertextuality and representation of social actors (FAIRCLOUGH, 2003), I realized that present and absent voices in Veja‟s journalistic discourses about education consider basic education as a public and collective national project that requires managerial inputs, considering the urgency of an economic development for the country. In this sense, Veja magazine presents the work of teachers, at the same time, as the problem and the solution. It is both critical - to formation and performance of teachers - and scrupulous - as it recognizes the need to value teachers. If we consider that all social problems and their possible solutions are partly discursive (RESENDE; RAMALHO 2013), hegemonic discourses built through the articulation of certain ideologies‟ alliances (HALL, 2009) with the common sense, even though never guaranteed, are powerful. This research conclusions suggest that counter-hegemonic alternatives to managerialist projects must always be accompanied also by discursive alternatives, and journalistic discourses about education, more than objects of study, should also be seen as objects of dispute.

Este trabalho parte da afinidade que encontramos entre aspectos da pesquisa psicanalítica e da aprendizagem por projetos para lançar nossa questão: em que essas duas metodologias, concernentes a campos diferentes – psicanálise e educação –, convergem ou em que divergem? Seria uma relação de homologia? A fim de realizar essa análise, estamos posicionando-nos desde a pesquisa psicanalítica. Portanto, é nela que buscamos nosso método e nosso instrumento de análise, a saber, o matema dos quatro discursos. No que diz respeito à pesquisa psicanalítica, buscamos nossos fragmentos em textos de Lacan e Freud. Esses fragmentos são articulados às diretrizes teóricas da aprendizagem por projeto, e a uma situação prática de nossa pesquisa: uma oficina de programação de computadores ocorrida em uma escola pública de Porto Alegre. Com essa articulação, percorremos nossa análise, delimitando pontos que aproximam ou afastam essas duas metodologias. / This work starts since the affinity that we found between features of the psychoanalytic research and the learning projects in order to launch our question: considering these two methodologies, concerning different fields – psychoanalysis and education –, at what points do they converge or diverge? It would be a homology? In order to realize this analysis, we are positioning ourselves since the psychoanalytic research. Thus, there we get our method and our analysis tool, that is, the matema of four discourses. As regards psychoanalytic research, we get our fragments in texts written by Lacan and Freud. These fragments are articulated on the theoretical guidelines of learning project, and on a practical situation of our research: a workshop of computer programming for children, which has occurred in a public school in Porto Alegre. After that, we go through our analysis, delimiting points that bring these methodologies closer or further each other.

Este trabalho parte da afinidade que encontramos entre aspectos da pesquisa psicanalítica e da aprendizagem por projetos para lançar nossa questão: em que essas duas metodologias, concernentes a campos diferentes – psicanálise e educação –, convergem ou em que divergem? Seria uma relação de homologia? A fim de realizar essa análise, estamos posicionando-nos desde a pesquisa psicanalítica. Portanto, é nela que buscamos nosso método e nosso instrumento de análise, a saber, o matema dos quatro discursos. No que diz respeito à pesquisa psicanalítica, buscamos nossos fragmentos em textos de Lacan e Freud. Esses fragmentos são articulados às diretrizes teóricas da aprendizagem por projeto, e a uma situação prática de nossa pesquisa: uma oficina de programação de computadores ocorrida em uma escola pública de Porto Alegre. Com essa articulação, percorremos nossa análise, delimitando pontos que aproximam ou afastam essas duas metodologias. / This work starts since the affinity that we found between features of the psychoanalytic research and the learning projects in order to launch our question: considering these two methodologies, concerning different fields – psychoanalysis and education –, at what points do they converge or diverge? It would be a homology? In order to realize this analysis, we are positioning ourselves since the psychoanalytic research. Thus, there we get our method and our analysis tool, that is, the matema of four discourses. As regards psychoanalytic research, we get our fragments in texts written by Lacan and Freud. These fragments are articulated on the theoretical guidelines of learning project, and on a practical situation of our research: a workshop of computer programming for children, which has occurred in a public school in Porto Alegre. After that, we go through our analysis, delimiting points that bring these methodologies closer or further each other.

A pesquisa investiga e analisa os discursos jornalísticos sobre educação da revista Veja entre os anos de 2002 e 2012. Os estudos jornalísticos sobre educação foram tomados como objeto de estudo devido ao entendimento de que ao falar sobre educação esses discursos também constituem a mesma. A revista Veja foi escolhida como campo de análise devido ao fato de ser a revista brasileira de maior circulação semanal. E o referido período, que compreende a análise, foi delimitado tento em vista ser um período de significativo crescimento da classe média brasileira, majoritariamente o público-alvo leitor da revista Veja. Ao me aproximar do objeto de estudo buscando entender que ideologias operam nesses discursos e que visões hegemônicas sobre educação são constituídas pelos mesmos, através dos conceitos de ideologia (HALL, 2009) e hegemonia (WILLIAMS, 1979), tive de recorrer a referenciais metodológicos que me permitissem operar as análises. Através dos conceitos de intertextualidade e representação de atores sociais (FAIRCLOUGH, 2003) e falta e excesso (PÊCHEUX, 1990) pude identificar algumas vozes presentes e ausentes nos discursos jornalísticos sobre educação da revista Veja, assim como de que modos são representados aqueles que têm voz ou são privados das mesmas nesses discursos. A pesquisa e análises demonstraram que operam ideologias nos discursos sobre educação da revista Veja, muitas vezes híbridas e contraditórias, não necessariamente uma única ideologia. A educação básica, de modo geral, é entendida como um projeto público e coletivo nacional, já o ensino superior é caracterizado como passível de privatização ou capitalização. A revista também apresenta uma preocupação constante com a presença de ideologias de esquerda em materiais didáticos e escolas, assim como uma vigilância constante ao trabalho docente, conclamada principalmente na participação dos pais na educação escolar dos filhos. O trabalho docente, por sua vez, é tomado como problemático e propulsor de mudanças, deste modo tanto críticas à formação de professores são encontradas nesses discursos quanto a necessidade de valorização dos professores. Finalmente, a revista toma indícios de experiências de outros países e recomendações de organismos internacionais como referência para fazer avançar a educação no Brasil. / This research analyzes the journalistic discourses of education in Veja, a Brazilian magazine, between 2002 and 2012. Journalistic discourses were taken as the object of this study due to the understanding of media and information as a social construction. Veja magazine was chosen as the field of this analysis because it is Brazil‟s biggest magazine in circulation, the third largest weekly news magazine in the world and the largest outside the United States. That period of time was chosen since it was an important moment for Brazilian economy, when a significant economic growth of the country‟s middle class – Veja‟s target readership – happened. I identified media as one of the social structures that has been continuously mobilized for education, under the assumptions of a deficit in Brazilian basic education, and low qualification of teachers – both in comparison to the rest of the world via rankings or, sometimes, to a certain selective past. Through the concepts of intertextuality and representation of social actors (FAIRCLOUGH, 2003), I realized that present and absent voices in Veja‟s journalistic discourses about education consider basic education as a public and collective national project that requires managerial inputs, considering the urgency of an economic development for the country. In this sense, Veja magazine presents the work of teachers, at the same time, as the problem and the solution. It is both critical - to formation and performance of teachers - and scrupulous - as it recognizes the need to value teachers. If we consider that all social problems and their possible solutions are partly discursive (RESENDE; RAMALHO 2013), hegemonic discourses built through the articulation of certain ideologies‟ alliances (HALL, 2009) with the common sense, even though never guaranteed, are powerful. This research conclusions suggest that counter-hegemonic alternatives to managerialist projects must always be accompanied also by discursive alternatives, and journalistic discourses about education, more than objects of study, should also be seen as objects of dispute.