Much of the service-learning literature in higher education assumes that community service linked to classroom learning is inherently connected to concerns of social justice. While some service-learning practice aims to alleviate oppressive or unfair circumstances and promote "more just relationships," there is little research that examines the effectiveness of service-learning in developing that commitment. The purpose of this qualitative research is to understand how students' experiences in service-learning contribute to their understanding of and commitment to social justice. The program investigated is a four semester critical service-learning experience, named the Citizen Scholars Program, at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Written assignments and interview transcripts from 11 women who participated in the program comprise the data for this dissertation research. This secondary data set was analyzed using grounded theory methodology to explore connections between students' participation in service-learning and their understandings of and commitments to social justice. The findings from this research suggest that participants in this study did develop more complex conceptions of social justice. Through the critical service-learning experience provided by the Citizen Scholars Program, students report being able to: develop authentic relationships with community members, question the distribution of power in society, and deepen their commitments to social justice. The study identified six properties of social justice sensemaking that appear to influence students' understanding of and commitment to social justice. Reflection on the self and experience, introduction to new information, contradictory experiences, relationships with peers and community members, and the idea of plausibility were all shown to spur students' social justice meaning construction. The findings of this study were used to develop a conceptual framework that charts how the critical service-learning experience of the Citizen Scholars Program facilitates social justice sensemaking. This framework can guide the work of scholars and practitioners who aim or hope to encourage social justice commitments in students. Students left Citizen Scholars with confidence in their views of social justice and a willingness to take action in alignment with those views. This research demonstrates that critical service-learning can foster a greater sense of agency to act in support of social justice.

This study explored the complexity of working and teaching within one English post -1992 university from the perspectives of thirteen members of academic staff. Work relationships, work load and perception of the management’s support of teaching were investigated via semi-structured interviews. Interviews were transcribed and analysed using interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) as a theoretical framework. This method offered a way to analyse and interpret the experiences of lecturers working in Higher Education by maintaining a focus on the academics’ own words. Previous research using IPA has been established within health and counselling fields (Smith et al, 2009) and its use within educational settings is emergent (Creanor, Trinder, Gowan et al, 2008; Biggerstaff and Thompson, 2008). The academics interviewed mostly entered higher education with no formal teacher training and many found their initial time in the role to be stressful and poorly managed. Support mechanisms (induction, mentoring, team teaching, teacher training courses) were described as being areas that could all be improved. The dramatic metaphorical language used to describe their entry into the HE system vividly depicted these challenges. The capturing of this highly expressive language offered new insight into understanding the lives of lecturing staff. Participants expressed their working lives with multiple references to the language of war, battle and struggle. Aspects of both vulnerability and tenacity were present in the findings, with the responses to challenges being expressed in both positive and negative ways. Most participants found that the levels of university bureaucracy impeded their teaching effectiveness; they battled with time management and felt tension between the levels of control, audit and freedom within their roles. This was somewhat ameliorated by the satisfaction they gained from teaching their students. The majority described students as consumers who were increasingly demanding and had varied abilities which created challenges for the lecturers. Traditional HE lecture-based techniques were perceived to be less effective in engaging students and most participants actively tried new methods of teaching, despite having little knowledge of theoretical aspects of learning to support this work. Few had experienced formal observation mechanisms and there were mixed responses about the level of support they received from their colleagues around teaching and its associated administrative tasks. The interviewed academics did not perceive that teaching was overtly valued by their superiors as their efforts remained largely unrecognised by those in senior management. Insights into the complex lives of the lecturers gave the researcher scope to create initiatives to promote positive change and make recommendations to senior management that could foster further improvements. In light of the data collected, the induction processes were changed to include more consistent mentoring, peer teaching observation groups (peer learning circles) were coordinated and staff development was organised to facilitate enhanced support for lecturers.

This study was designed to: (a) describe the degree to which introductory science programs at two colleges engaged students in the process of scientific inquiry, and (b) describe changes in students' maturity with regard to epistemology, methods of justifying decisions, and agency in science. Course descriptions drew from classroom observations, interviews with faculty about their goals and methods, and interviews with students about their experiences in the courses. Student development was analyzed from pre- and post-semester interviews, pre-, post-semester Likert-scale surveys on students' attitudes and beliefs about science, and post-semester Likert-scale student self-assessments. Both the inquiry and traditional programs allowed opportunities for students to be engaged in answering ill-structured questions. Overall, the inquiry-based courses had more intensive engagement of students in the processes scientists use in authentic research. Students in inquiry-based courses made significantly greater gains in epistemology and methods of justifying decisions as measured by coding interviews and performing t-tests on survey items. What is more, students in inquiry courses reported producing work of their own design. Students in both programs, however, were more confident of their abilities to participate in science after one semester in college. Courses whose goals were primarily content related taught students content and studenting skills; courses whose goals were explicitly process related taught students about the nature and methods of science. The results indicate that if college students are to better understand the nature of scientific knowledge and be better able to justify decisions about complex scientific issues, they should be engaged in more inquiry-based course work.

The Linguistic Interdependence Hypothesis as developed by Cummins (1978) argues that certain first language (L1) knowledge can be positively transferred during the process of second language (L2) acquisition. The L1 linguistic knowledge and skills that a child possesses can be extremely instrumental to the development of corresponding abilities in the L2. An integral component of these facilitative aspects of language influence is that the L1 be sufficiently developed prior to the extensive exposure to the L2 as would be found, for example, in an educational environment. An additional theoretical framework that has motivated this study incorporates principles of Universal Grammar, namely, that there are innate properties of language shared by the human species, and that language acquisition is the result of the interaction between these biologically determined aspects of language with the learner's linguistic environment. The principal goal of this dissertation is to examine children's knowledge of one area of Yucatec Maya L1 syntax, specifically, the word order of simple transitive sentences. By means of an experiment conducted with 28 Mayan children of 4 and 5 years of age, data were gathered and analyzed. Overall, the findings suggest that the subjects of the study are still in the process of acquiring the syntactic structure under investigation, that their L1 is still developing. Very few of the subjects demonstrated mastery of the structure under investigation. With regards to pedagogical concerns within the context of minority language education, the potentiality for these findings to enhance or inhibit the subsequent acquisition of Spanish as an L2 is examined.

No description available.

Submitted by SBI Biblioteca Digital (sbi.bibliotecadigital@puc-campinas.edu.br) on 2016-05-10T18:09:29Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Paulo Roberto Teixeira Junior.pdf: 2232470 bytes, checksum: 3e87999e1f8946dc0030d5687bd498e3 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-05-10T18:09:29Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Paulo Roberto Teixeira Junior.pdf: 2232470 bytes, checksum: 3e87999e1f8946dc0030d5687bd498e3 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-12-15 / Since the 90s Brazil has been implementing educational evaluation policies on a large scale. In higher education, we had the Institutional Assessment Program of Brazilian Universities (PAIUB) in 1993, the National Examination of Courses (ENC) in 1995 and the National System of Higher Education Assessment (SINAES), in force since 2004. Before that, there were specific initiatives diagnostic of higher education with the specific purpose of understanding the landscape of universities in the country: Atcon Plan, Meira Mattos Commission, July 1968 Commission, University Reform Assessment Program (PARU), National Commission for Revision of Teaching Superior (CNRES) and Group Executive for Restructuring of Higher Education (GERES). The SINAES is an assessment policy aimed to map the higher education in three dimensions: institutional assessment, course assessment and students assessment. This study is in the second dimension - course assessment - and the question is: Does SINAES has taken effect upon the management teaching? This is a bibliographic research that mapped masters and doctoral?s texts, published in 2004 - 2014 in order to investigate whether some research addressed the effects of SINAES the course upon teaching management. Among the 101 master and doctorate?s texts and 32 paper, only one deals with this topic: "Sinaes: quality indicators courses in higher education and social reproduction". Author: Leandro Berchielli. University: Catholic University of Sao Paulo (PUC-SP). Date: 2012. Berchielli argues the SINAES caused no improvement in management courses for him searched. Starting from the principle that all public policy takes effect, we argue the SINAES have rather taken effect, but not those recommended by the institution's policy, namely to promote the improvement of the courses. According to Berchielli, SINAES just contribute to legitimate and reproduce the separation of social groups, it is also true that this result, despite its anti-democratic feature, is an effect too. The management teaching, despite being which has the largest number of students in Brazil, needs to more studies and researches, mainly in its intersection with the assessment policies. The small number of studies in this field, in some way, can demonstrate us the State?s intentions about this course. / Desde os anos 90 o Brasil vem implementando pol?ticas de avalia??o educacional em larga escala. Na Educa??o Superior, tivemos o Programa de Avalia??o Institucional das Universidades Brasileiras (PAIUB) em 1993, o Exame Nacional de Cursos (ENC) em 1995 e o Sistema Nacional de Avalia??o da Educa??o Superior (SINAES), em vig?ncia desde 2004. Antes disso, houve iniciativas pontuais de diagn?stico da educa??o superior com a finalidade espec?fica de compreender o cen?rio das universidades no pa?s: Plano Atcon, Comiss?o Meira Mattos, Comiss?o de Julho de 1968, Programa de Avalia??o da Reforma Universit?ria (PARU), Comiss?o Nacional para Reformula??o do Ensino Superior (CNRES) e Grupo Executivo para Reformula??o do Ensino Superior (GERES). O SINAES ? uma pol?tica de avalia??o orientada para mapear as institui??es de ensino superior (IES) em tr?s dimens?es: avalia??o da institui??o, avalia??o do curso e avalia??o do estudante. Este estudo se situa na segunda dimens?o ? avalia??o de curso ? e pretende responder ? quest?o: o SINAES t?m produzido efeitos no curso de Administra??o? Trata-se de uma pesquisa bibliogr?fica que mapeou trabalhos de mestrado, doutorado e artigos publicados nos anos de 2004 a 2014 a fim de investigar se alguma pesquisa tratou dos efeitos do SINAES o curso de Administra??o. Dentre as 101 obras de mestrado e doutorado e 32 artigos, somente 1 disserta??o trata deste tema. Tal disserta??o ? ?Sinaes: indicadores de qualidade de cursos no ensino superior e reprodu??o social? ? de Leandro Berchielli, defendida na PUC de S?o Paulo em 2012, argumenta que o SINAES n?o provocou melhoria nos cursos de Administra??o por ele pesquisados. Partindo-se do princ?pio de que toda pol?tica p?blica produz efeitos, argumentamos que o SINAES t?m sim produzido efeitos, por?m n?o aqueles preconizados pela institui??o da pol?tica, qual seja, promover a melhoria dos cursos. Se ? certo que o SINAES, como argumenta Berchielli, est? mais a servi?o de legitimar e reproduzir nas IES a separa??o dos grupos sociais, ? certo tamb?m que este resultado, em que pese sua fei??o antidemocr?tica, tamb?m ? um efeito, ainda que indesejado por n?s. O curso de Administra??o, apesar de ser o que det?m a maior quantidade de estudantes do pa?s, carece de mais pesquisas na sua intersec??o com as pol?ticas de avalia??o. O pequeno n?mero de estudos neste campo, de alguma forma, tamb?m pode nos sinalizar tend?ncias do que o poder p?blico quer, e o que n?o quer, para esta ?rea.

The number of women in senior administrative and leadership roles in higher education is minimal compared to the number of women in higher education jobs in general. This phenomenological study explored pathways women took to advance in their careers and barriers that prevent more women from gaining senior administrative and leadership roles. Research questions addressed perceived barriers participants faced while trying to advance their careers, mentoring and other support strategies women in higher education employed to help them move up the career ladder, and actions female leaders took in order to help establish gender equity. Dambe and Moorad's empowerment-based/transformational leadership theory, Vroom's expectancy theory, and hooks's feminist theory were used as conceptual frameworks for this study. Data collection included in-depth interviews and gestural observations. Data were triangulated through member check, debriefing, iterative questioning, and reflective commentary. Titchen's thematic data analysis and the hermeneutic circle were used to analyze data; analysis was validated by an independent auditor. Mentoring and networking were identified as effective tools for gaining executive skills. Political savvy, determination, and serendipity were factors to which participants attributed success. Based on study results, higher education institutions should focus on succession planning to bring more women into senior leadership roles. The age gap for female senior leaders in higher education is an area for further study. This study may support positive social change by providing female leaders the opportunity to understand the nature of higher education and subsequently to develop strategies and to gain constructive experiences that can improve their status.

First-year composition (FYC) courses are a backbone of undergraduate instruction, with nearly every institution of higher education requiring a version of the course. The majority of FYC courses assign reading, especially the reading of contemporary essays, for students to respond to in their own writing. However, a common concern among compositionists who focus on reading is that composition studies as a whole does not, and has not, focused enough on reading theories and pedagogies in FYC. Using a method of close reading and analyses, and borrowing from post-qualitative research the idea of reflexivity, this study examines texts in composition studies and adjacent fields, published primarily from the mid-20th century to the present, to explore how reading is, and has been, understood in relationship to writing and composition. Further, this study explores pedagogical and theoretical consequences of the “place” of reading in FYC. It ultimately contends that the marginalization of reading in composition studies as well as FYC limits both the pedagogical and reading possibilities of this universally required course.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-12-17T15:43:50Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 IramaraLR_DISSERT.pdf: 2162677 bytes, checksum: c6c196b8b1248eb5206ecee52d24e6b4 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2013-02-08 / Considerando o papel do ensino superior em sa?de para a sociedade brasileira, em que os egressos dos cursos ofertados na ?rea ser?o os profissionais prestadores de servi?os ? popula??o, este estudo objetivou analisar o componente ensino do PET-Sa?de da Fam?lia - Natal-RN na forma??o de estudantes dos cursos de gradua??o em sa?de da UFRN. Foi realizada pesquisa qualitativa com an?lise de documentos das disciplinas SACI e POTI datados entre 2009 e 2011 (portf?lios, avalia??es de desempenho e oficina de avalia??o), mediante o aux?lio do software Alceste? e an?lise de conte?do, segundo Bardin. Na an?lise foi encontrado como potencialidades: o alunato trabalhando em grupo tutorial multidisciplinar, cuja intera??o e contato com a Unidade de Sa?de da Fam?lia, inclu?dos os profissionais, bem como a comunidade, instiga nos aprendizes o di?logo consigo mesmo e com o outro, numa constru??o dos ser/agir no mundo. Os textos trabalhados durante as aulas permitem refletir e teorizar a respeito da realidade observada, auxiliando-os na identifica??o dos problemas e no tra?ar estrat?gias de interven??o. J? a observa??o da realidade reveste o aluno de humaniza??o. Este passa a captar as necessidades e dificuldades enfrentadas pela comunidade observada. Nas fragilidades ficaram evidenciados: problemas de rela??es interpessoais entre os estudantes da SACI; a maioria dos projetos de interven??o ocorrendo numa perspectiva paternalista, reproduzindo o modelo de presta??o de servi?os na sa?de mais praticado nas sociedades brasileiras; dificuldades em aprofundar no aprendiz, a import?ncia da teoriza??o dos assuntos; problemas de financiamento de projetos de interven??o; descumprimento do plano de ensino em alguns grupos tutoriais; e, por fim, dificuldades dos alunos e monitores em acompanhar as atividade de pesquisa e extens?o do PET-Sa?de, pela falta de integra??o dos projetos pedag?gicos dos cursos. Conclui-se que o componente ensino do PET-Sa?de da Fam?lia adota metodologias ativas de ensino na inser??o de alunos na Aten??o Prim?ria em Sa?de, proporcionando uma forma??o dentro de princ?pios ?ticos e human?sticos a partir do trabalho em equipe e da inclus?o reflexiva dos alunos na Estrat?gia Sa?de da Fam?lia. Apesar da exist?ncia de fragilidades concernentes ?s rela??es interpessoais, descompasso entre as proposi??es multiprofissionais e interdisciplinares da SACI e POTI e as dificuldades de p?-las em pr?tica em curr?culos fragmentados e organizados por disciplinas pouco flex?veis, potencialmente, ao fim dessas experi?ncias conectadas a Aten??o Prim?ria, os discentes apresentam uma nova vis?o do cuidado com a sa?de, pr?xima ?s necessidades da popula??o, iniciando uma tomada de postura cr?tica e reflexiva, entendendo-se com sujeitos ativos no construir a sa?de coletivamente

231 f. / Submitted by Maria Auxiliadora Lopes (silopes@ufba.br) on 2013-08-22T15:18:59Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Tese Arturo Cavalcanti Catunda.pdf: 2723253 bytes, checksum: 38250b04e206fdb2415f37491931a4b9 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Maria Auxiliadora Lopes(silopes@ufba.br) on 2013-08-22T17:47:48Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Tese Arturo Cavalcanti Catunda.pdf: 2723253 bytes, checksum: 38250b04e206fdb2415f37491931a4b9 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2013-08-22T17:47:49Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Tese Arturo Cavalcanti Catunda.pdf: 2723253 bytes, checksum: 38250b04e206fdb2415f37491931a4b9 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2012 / Este trabalho objetivou investigar de que forma fatores de contexto, entrada e processo estão relacionados à qualidade de cursos superiores. Para tanto, utilizou dados de instituições, cursos e alunos da área de administração, do ano de 2006, extraídos principalmente do Censo da Educação Superior e do Exame Nacional de Desempenho de Estudantes (ENADE). Os principais conceitos utilizados foram o de qualidade – que foi associado às dimensões de efetividade, eficiência, eficácia e equidade – e o de eficácia escolar. A investigação teve como característica ser quantitativa, utilizando-se de funções de produção inspiradas nos trabalhos de Scheerens (2000 e 1990). A partir do referencial teórico, foram propostas três hipóteses que auxiliaram a responder a pergunta de partida: H1) os fatores de contexto, entrada e processo, simultaneamente, contribuem significativamente para a qualidade de cursos superiores; H2) fatores relacionados ao nível socioeconômico dos alunos e ao contexto do município da IES são, nessa ordem, os que mais contribuem com a qualidade de cursos superiores; H3) modelos elaborados com os fatores de contexto, entrada e processo conseguem explicar, ao menos, metade (r2 > 0,5) da variância da qualidade de cursos superiores. O estudo envolveu em sua base de dados 60 variáveis independentes – associadas às dimensões de contexto, entrada e processo – e três independentes – associadas à dimensão eficácia. Ao todo, foram trabalhados dados de 1.465 cursos e 130.270 alunos. Para a investigação das hipóteses, foram adotadas as seguintes técnicas estatísticas: análise descritiva, análise bivariada, análise de classes latentes, regressão logística e modelos de equações estruturadas. A partir da análise de classe latente (LCA), a base de dados foi reduzida para 11 construtos (variáveis independentes) e três variáveis dependentes, o que facilitou a interpretação dos resultados das modelos formados. Com os resultados das regressões logísticas foi possível confirmar parcialmente a primeira e segunda hipóteses. A partir dos modelos de equações estruturais não foi possível confirmar a terceira hipótese. Apesar disso, pode-se verificar que cursos com melhor desempenho no ENADE estão mais associados a: universidades públicas e com alta concorrência; instituições com mais professores do quadro, experientes e mais dedicados à pesquisa; instituições com menos alunos por professor e professor doutor; e a cidades mais desenvolvidas e ricas. Como contribuição, este trabalho ampliou o conhecimento sobre fatores de eficácia escolar no ensino superior brasileiro, servindo de fundamento para discussão de políticas públicas educacionais nesse nível de ensino; introduziu, no Brasil, a LCA como uma técnica estatística com potencialidades para o campo das Ciências Sociais Aplicadas; e difundiu mais a utilização de modelos de equações estruturais como ferramenta para a compreensão de fenômenos sociais complexos. / Salvador