<p> This study sought to uncover teacher perceptions of social capital within a high school mathematics department utilizing a research design that acknowledged the complex environment faced by high school teachers and their subsequent interpretations of how and from whom they sought access to professional resources. Through an analysis of narratives captured as teachers interviewed one another in strong-tie pairs, the study identified the elements of social capital which were central to the professional lives of high school mathematics teachers. Narrative analysis revealed that the group, situated in an urban setting, was able to define issues around trust and structure within their network. There was significantly less discussion or acknowledgement of the remaining dimensions of social capital: level of professional expertise within their group, and the depth or content of their professional interactions. Teachers had no vocabulary, interactional routines, norms or other tools to assist in the analysis of these key social capital resources. </p><p> The study found that there is a need for an additional dimension to be included in existing social capital models. Defined as &ldquo;Group Self-Knowledge&rdquo;, I describe this construct as a way for teacher networks to detect, define and assess their own capacity for change and innovation. The ability of a network to assess its social capital is described as necessary in determining specific needs for professional development resources, and in aligning those needs with the resources (physical, human or social capital) that are most likely to lead to conditions in which a network could learn, adapt, grow and change. Social capital models offer constructs which can assist in social capital analysis, and which could lead to significant impacts on educational organizations: a "systems" view that privileges the knowledge of the group and disrupts teachers' tendency towards individualism, presentism and conservatism (Lortie, 1975); an expectation of professionalism, creativity and problem-solving from the teachers within the system; a shift away from a deficit model of teaching towards a vision of educational systems as collections of assets; and an educational model that operates from a standpoint of reinvestment and re-cycling of vital resources back into itself.</p>

O presente trabalho tem por objetivo analisar os argumentos apresentados por Bloor a favor de uma sociologia da matemática. Nesta perspectiva, cabe identificar no contexto sociocultural os aspectos imanentes e transcendentes que relacionam os objetos que constituem o conhecimento matemático com as práticas sociais. Investiremos, num primeiro momento, na leitura crítica dos três últimos capítulos do livro Knowledge and Social Imagery de David Bloor. O livro se propõe a uma investigação da natureza e conteúdo do conhecimento científico através do chamado programa forte em sociologia. Pretende-se confrontar as hipóteses e os argumentos dos autores que participam do debate e ao final apresentar alguma contribuição para a Filosofia da Educação Matemática. Um ponto que considero relevante tratar nesse trabalho é a orientação relativista sugerida pela proposta de Bloor, alvo das críticas mais pungentes. O caminho (método) que melhor se adequa a essa nossa intenção é a discussão crítica entre os autores, fundamentada apenas em fontes bibliográficas. Não é fruto de uma pesquisa empírica, mas de um exercício de reflexão de cunho teórico. Temos alguns indícios da possível relação da matemática com as questões socioculturais: o fenômeno da difusão cultural, a existência de certas práticas universais tais como contar, medir, jogar, localizar, etc, a concepção de que certos imperativos universais da matemática são constituídos a partir de formas de vida que participam de um jogo de linguagem, etc.. Seja qual for a explicação que relacione a matemática com as questões socioculturais, há conceitos que ultrapassam a simples determinação social. Nosso trabalho demonstra que esses conceitos existem, e embora divirjam da posição de David Bloor, não impossibilitam a existência de uma sociologia da matemática. / The purpose of this work is to make an analysis about the arguments in favour of a mathematics sociology. In order to reach this aim, it is necessary to identify the immanent and transcendent aspects in the cultural social context which make a relationship of the objects that form mathematical knowledge with social practices. Firstly, we are going to make a critical reading of three last chapters of \"Knowledge and Social Imagery\" by David Bloor. This book aims to investigate nature and contents of scientific knowledge by the so called Strong Program in Sociology whose principles include causality, impartiality, symmetry and reflexivity. The last three chapters are destined to mathematics. Secondly, we will make a confrontation between the hypothesis and the authors\' arguments in favour and against Bloor\'s outlook. Eventually, we will present some contributions to Mathematical Education Philosophy. Therefore, the way (method) that better suits to our purpose is the critical discussion among authors, based on bibliographical sources only. This is not result of empirical research, but a theoretical character reflexion. There are some elements of possible relationship between mathematics and cultural and social aspects: the cultural diffusion phenomenon, certain universal practices such as counting, measuring, playing, searching, etc, the understanding that certain universal mathematical imperatives are formed from living forms that participate in a language game, etc.. Whatever is the explanation that makes a relationship between mathematics and social cultural questions, there are concepts go beyond any social determination. Our task is to demonstrate that such concepts exists, and although they differ from David Bloor´s outlook, they do not make impossible the existence of a mathematics sociology.

O presente trabalho tem por objetivo analisar os argumentos apresentados por Bloor a favor de uma sociologia da matemática. Nesta perspectiva, cabe identificar no contexto sociocultural os aspectos imanentes e transcendentes que relacionam os objetos que constituem o conhecimento matemático com as práticas sociais. Investiremos, num primeiro momento, na leitura crítica dos três últimos capítulos do livro Knowledge and Social Imagery de David Bloor. O livro se propõe a uma investigação da natureza e conteúdo do conhecimento científico através do chamado programa forte em sociologia. Pretende-se confrontar as hipóteses e os argumentos dos autores que participam do debate e ao final apresentar alguma contribuição para a Filosofia da Educação Matemática. Um ponto que considero relevante tratar nesse trabalho é a orientação relativista sugerida pela proposta de Bloor, alvo das críticas mais pungentes. O caminho (método) que melhor se adequa a essa nossa intenção é a discussão crítica entre os autores, fundamentada apenas em fontes bibliográficas. Não é fruto de uma pesquisa empírica, mas de um exercício de reflexão de cunho teórico. Temos alguns indícios da possível relação da matemática com as questões socioculturais: o fenômeno da difusão cultural, a existência de certas práticas universais tais como contar, medir, jogar, localizar, etc, a concepção de que certos imperativos universais da matemática são constituídos a partir de formas de vida que participam de um jogo de linguagem, etc.. Seja qual for a explicação que relacione a matemática com as questões socioculturais, há conceitos que ultrapassam a simples determinação social. Nosso trabalho demonstra que esses conceitos existem, e embora divirjam da posição de David Bloor, não impossibilitam a existência de uma sociologia da matemática. / The purpose of this work is to make an analysis about the arguments in favour of a mathematics sociology. In order to reach this aim, it is necessary to identify the immanent and transcendent aspects in the cultural social context which make a relationship of the objects that form mathematical knowledge with social practices. Firstly, we are going to make a critical reading of three last chapters of \"Knowledge and Social Imagery\" by David Bloor. This book aims to investigate nature and contents of scientific knowledge by the so called Strong Program in Sociology whose principles include causality, impartiality, symmetry and reflexivity. The last three chapters are destined to mathematics. Secondly, we will make a confrontation between the hypothesis and the authors\' arguments in favour and against Bloor\'s outlook. Eventually, we will present some contributions to Mathematical Education Philosophy. Therefore, the way (method) that better suits to our purpose is the critical discussion among authors, based on bibliographical sources only. This is not result of empirical research, but a theoretical character reflexion. There are some elements of possible relationship between mathematics and cultural and social aspects: the cultural diffusion phenomenon, certain universal practices such as counting, measuring, playing, searching, etc, the understanding that certain universal mathematical imperatives are formed from living forms that participate in a language game, etc.. Whatever is the explanation that makes a relationship between mathematics and social cultural questions, there are concepts go beyond any social determination. Our task is to demonstrate that such concepts exists, and although they differ from David Bloor´s outlook, they do not make impossible the existence of a mathematics sociology.

Internet content and Internet users are becoming more linguistically diverse as more people speaking different languages come online and produce content on user-generated content platforms. Several platforms have emerged as truly global platforms with users speaking many different languages and coming from around the world. It is now possible to study human behavior on these platforms using the digital trace data the platforms make available about the content people are authoring. Network literature suggests that people cluster together by language, but also that there is a small average path length between any two people on most Internet platforms (including two speakers of different languages). If so, multilingual users may play critical roles as bridges or brokers on these platforms by connecting clusters of monolingual users together across languages. The large differences in the content available in different languages online underscores the importance of such roles. This thesis studies the roles of multilingual users and platform design on two large, user-generated content platforms: Wikipedia and Twitter. It finds that language has a strong role structuring each platform, that multilingual users do act as linguistic bridges subject to certain limitations, that the size of a language correlates with the roles its speakers play in cross-language connections, and that there is a correlation between activity and multilingualism. In contrast to the general understanding in linguistics of high levels of multilingualism offline, this thesis finds relatively low levels of multilingualism on Twitter (11%) and Wikipedia (15%). The findings have implications for both platform design and social network theory. The findings suggest design strategies to increase multilingualism online through the identification and promotion of multilingual starter tasks, the discovery of related other-language information, and the promotion of user choice in linguistic filtering. While weak-ties have received much attention in the social networks literature, cross-language ties are often not distinguished from same-language weak ties. This thesis finds that cross-language ties are similar to same-language weak ties in that both connect distant parts of the network, have limited bandwidth, and yet transfer a non-trivial amount of information when considered in aggregate. At the same time, cross-language ties are distinct from same-language weak ties for the purposes of information diffusion. In general cross-language ties are smaller in number than same-language ties, but each cross-language tie may convey more diverse information given the large differences in the content available in different languages and the relative ease with which a multilingual speaker may access content in multiple languages compared to a monolingual speaker.