Orientador: Marcia Regina Ferreira de Brito / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Faculdade de Educação / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-04T12:37:52Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Quintiliano_LucianedeCastro_M.pdf: 18140612 bytes, checksum: 9b62d56cba6f4d49846edf7718a34c1f (MD5) Previous issue date: 2005 / Mestrado / Educação Matematica / Mestre em Educação

D.Ed. / Adolescents who achieve inadequately in mathematics often experience that the different aids available to assist them on their road to recovery are not sufficient. Most adolescents do not know how to bring about desired change. They are not aware what their problem areas are and how it should be addressed. Due to growing numbers in the classrooms in formal teaching, the teacher cannot assist the student individually on an ongoing basis. Factors within the student and his circumstances may also prevent him from benefiting from assistance. Furthermore, most adolescents in the senior secondary phase, who want to study further, are pressurized by educational bodies for higher marks. Therefore, limited time also becomes an issue. Although several studies have been carried out to investigate this matter and create models, the majority of practical programmes lacked depth and a holistic approach.

In the context of reading strategy research, the present study explores changes with passage difficulty in the frequencies of occurrence of responses and strategies identified in expert readers' think-aloud protocols. Data consisted of tape recorded think-alouds collected from ten university undergraduates reading to summarize three expository passages ordered from simple to difficult by independent raters. Tapes were transcribed and six categories of responses and strategies were identified in subjects' protocols. The six categories, in order of frequency of occurrence, were: Metastatement, Problem Solving, Repetition, Surface Response, Surface Structure, and Divergent. There were significant differences across passage difficulty in expert readers' evidence of responses and strategies. The frequency of occurrence of problem solving increased significantly as subjects read increasingly difficult expository text. Both surface reactions to text and subjects' comments on their own reading, were high in frequency of occurrence only for the most difficult text. Interpretation suggests expert readers seem to engage with text through problem solving more often in reading more difficult text and demonstrate the existence of a lack of comprehension through reactions to the text and to their own reading. Implications for practice and research are discussed. / Graduate

This study shows how different conflict resolution strategies and styles are used and how they affect  the  employees  in  a  workplace.  Previous  research  has  shown  five  styles  which  are commonly used by supervisors to solve conflicts between employees. The present study takes place  in  a  headquarter  of  a  company  in  Sweden  which  provides  customer  service  in  the department of sales. Two supervisors and five employees has been part of an interview research and  the  purpose  is  to  find  out  what  conflict  resolution  strategies  are  preferred  by  both supervisors and employees at the office. This research also shows the knowledge supervisors have about conflict resolution and what they are doing to prevent conflicts from happening. The material  is  analyzed  using  grounded  theory  which  resulted  in  five  different  categories, communication, trust, knowledge, rules and guidelines and workplace environment.

THESIS Pupils' problem solving strategies at lower and upper secondary level ABSTRACT Thesis Pupils' problem solving strategies at lower and upper secondary level deals with pupils' strategies of solving mathematical problems that we can observe at primary and secondary school. The theoretical part summarizes basic concepts in the field of mathematical problems and pupils' strategies. The main aim of the experimental part of the thesis is finding new knowledge from this field at the second level of Czech education. I focused primarily on tasks involving data, addiction and statistics, including the concept of a mathematical function that is deeply linked to these educational contents. In the experimental part, there are selected tasks, expected or discovered strategies, statistics of chosen strategies and the success of the solutions and strategies found, in some cases even the transcription of pupils' errors. Keywords Problem, word problem, assignment, strategy, error, analysis, success rate, solving problems.

M.Ed. (Curriculum Studies) / Problem solving is potentially one of the most valuable skills that can be acquired in the primary school. In spite of it's value problem solving was not successful implemented in overseas countries. Schools in South-Africa have just started to implement problem solving techniques in the primary school. To ensure successful implementation of problem solving in South-Africa this study examines possible reasons for it's failure in the primary school. Success in Problem solving depends on the correct perspectives to problem solving and the feeling of success by the teachers and pupils. This implies that the teachers and pupils must see progress by using problem solving in the mathematics class. A new teaching model was designed to prevent or eliminate the failure of problem solving in the classroom. This model was developed from a problem solving perspective and can be described as a Social Constructivistic model. This model includes lesson structures, worksheets and a proposed teaching style. The.basis of the model is real world problems. It was found that after nine weeks of implementation the children were positive toward problem solving and mathematics. An empirical investigation showed that children. can become beter problemsolvers in a relative short time span. This study suggests a holistic approach to implementing problem solving in mathematics. This approach includes a change in the whole educational situation. The teacher needs maximum assistance through tutorial programs, worksheets and staff supervision.

Writing has increasingly been emphasised in EFL classrooms in recent years, and Korea is no exception to this trend. The literature indicates that L2 writers experience language problems and attempt to solve them while converting their thoughts into another language. At the moment when learners struggle with a linguistic feature, they become aware of their lack of linguistic knowledge, and try to resolve the problem either by employing their own previously acquired knowledge sources, or by trying to access external knowledge sources. This problem-solving process may occur repeatedly during the L2 writing process. The aims of the current research are threefold: first, it investigates what Korean university learners of English notice while they are writing in L2; second, it attempts to examine what variables are related to and affect learners' noticing during the L2 problem-solving process and; third, the knowledge sources employed by learners when they face language problems are analysed. In order to achieve these aims, 108 English major students were recruited from three high ranked universities in Korea; think-aloud protocols and stimulated-recall interviews comprised the primary means of data collection. All participants were asked to do a writing task in L2 and to verbalise their thoughts while producing written text. Building on the data gathered from the writing task, stimulated recall interviews were carried out in order to identify the sources of knowledge employed to resolve language problems. The results of quantitative data analysis showed that the 108 participants in this study noticed approximately five language problems while writing an L2 text for 20 minutes, and verbally expressed many more lexical episodes than grammatical episodes. Regarding the relations between learner-related variables and noticing during the L2 writing process, previous study abroad experience and L2 proficiency affected learners' noticing. It was also found that L2-based verbal working memory had an effect when learners notice language problems in L2 text production, while L1-based verbal working memory had no effect. Moreover, qualitative data analysis indicated that the participants employed various types of knowledge sources in order to solve lexical or grammatical problems. It was found that both explicit linguistic knowledge sources, such as previously acquired L1-L2 translation word pairs, aspects of word knowledge (i.e., form, meaning, or use), episodic memory or analogy, and implicit knowledge sources, such as intuition, were used during the L2 problem-solving process. Based on these findings, possible implications for L2 writing teaching are discussed, stressing the importance of providing many writing opportunities for students, and suggestions for future research are presented.

Computational thinking (CT) is gaining recognition as an important skill for students, both in computer science and other disciplines. Although there has been much focus on this field in recent years, it is rarely taught as a formal course, and there is little consensus on what exactly CT entails and how to teach and evaluate it. This research addresses the lack of resources for integrating CT into the introductory computer science curriculum. The question that we aim to answer is whether CT can be evaluated in a meaningful way. A CT framework that outlines the skills and techniques comprising CT and describes the nature of student engagement was developed; this is used as the basis for this research. An assessment (CT test) was then created to gauge the ability of incoming students, and a CT-specfic computer game was developed based on the analysis of an existing game. A set of problem solving strategies and practice activities were then recommended based on criteria defined in the framework. The results revealed that the CT abilities of first year university students are relatively poor, but that the students' scores for the CT test could be used as a predictor for their future success in computer science courses. The framework developed for this research proved successful when applied to the test, computer game evaluation, and classification of strategies and activities. Through this research, we established that CT is a skill that first year computer science students are lacking, and that using CT exercises alongside traditional programming instruction can improve students' learning experiences.

This study examined the influence of age, expertise, and task difficulty on children's patterns of collaboration. Six- and eight-year-old children were individually pretested for ability to copy a Lego model and then paired with each other and asked to copy two more models. The design was a 3 (dyad skill level: novice, expert, or mixed) X 2 (age: six or eight) X 2 (task difficulty: moderate or complex) factorial. Results indicated that cooperation increased with age and expertise and decreased with task difficulty. However, expertise had a greater influence on younger than older children's interaction styles. It is argued that with age, social skills may become as important as expertise in determining styles of collaboration. The issue is raised of whether cooperation, domination, and independence represent developmental sequences (i.e., independence precedes cooperation) or whether they represent personal styles of interaction. Finally, it is suggested that an important goal for future research is to assess the relationship between patterns of collaboration and learning.

Social dominance influences many aspects of the life of animals living in social groups, including fitness. Recent work suggests that individuals occupying different positions in a dominance hierarchy may differ in their behavioural and cognitive traits. The first objective of this thesis was to determine whether personality (i.e. consistent behavioural differences between individuals) is correlated with dominance in natural groups of black-capped chickadees (Poecile atricapillus) in the wild. Dominance relationships within these groups were highly asymmetrical and transitive, which is typical of linear dominance hierarchies. None of the measured personality traits (i.e. aggressiveness in hand, exploration, activity and neophilia) were significantly correlated with dominance. These results suggest that personality does not contribute to the formation of black-capped chickadee hierarchies and add to the growing body of evidence that inherent attributes of individuals are not sufficient to explain the structure of linear dominance hierarchies observed in the wild. The second objective of this thesis was to investigate how dominance and correlates of competitive ability (i.e. sex, age and body condition) are related to novel problem-solving performance, which is a proxy for innovativeness, the invention of new behavioural patterns or the modification of an existing behaviour in a novel context. Problem-solving performance was not significantly associated with sex, age or body condition, but dominants were more efficient problem-solvers than subordinates. This finding suggests that efficiency when solving a novel problem might be driven by cognitive capacity instead of the necessity induced by the social position of an individual. Overall, results of this thesis help to better understand dominance hierarchies in wild groups of animals.