Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / The study aimed to investigate the kind of knowledge privileged when student teachers use Information Communication Technologies in facilitating learning in science subjects. The assumptions were that future student teachers, through their pedagogic practices, may either reproduce or interrupt educational inequalities. The ability to interrupt inequalities is conditioned by the manner in which these student teachers have been inducted into the field of teacher education and this process includes the ability to manipulate technological resources to facilitate epistemological access. This concept originally coined by Morrow in the 1980s looked at black students seeking entry to university. Since then the concept was used to signify the importance of knowledge in the curriculum. In this study, the exploration of epistemological access goes beyond physical or formal access and includes meaningful access to knowledge. The semantics dimension of Legitimation Code Theory (LCT) proposed by Maton was used, with a particular focus on semantic density (SD) as a theoretical framework. Maton argues that semantic density can vary across teaching practices and contexts. The study assumes that student teachers, through their pedagogic practices, may either reproduce or interrupt educational inequalities

The term "safe space" has a long history of signifying a place of sanctuary or refuge, and of a potential site of activism, advocacy, and political action (Davis, 1999; Kenney, 2001; Harris, 2015; Crockett, 2016). In recent decades, it has been adopted by student groups and advocates for inclusion, diversity and social justice on college and university campuses, who also saw such places as providing safety, freedom, activism, and intellectual discussion (Crockett, 2016; White, 2016). But critics argued that such spaces have the potential to stifle academic freedom, intellectual growth and free speech, and act as cocoons for students (Crovitz, 2016; Will, 2016). Both advocates and critics use the term "safe space," but with different meanings. Using speech code theory, I analyze opinion-editorial essays and commentaries from five national news periodicals to examine how proponents and critics of safe spaces use the term and to explore the clash of meanings and contexts. / Master of Arts / The term safe space suggests a place of refuge and safety, where those who use it are free from harm. During the past 60 years, the term has taken on additional meaning as a potential site of activism and advocacy action as well as safety and freedom (Davis, 1999; Kenney, 2001; Harris, 2015; Crockett, 2016). Originally used by second wave feminists, Civil Rights activists and the LGBTQ movement, it more recently has been adopted by student groups and advocates for inclusion, diversity and social justice on college and university campuses. For them, safe spaces serve as places not only for safety, but for intellectual discussion (Crockett, 2016; White, 2016). Not everyone favors providing such spaces on campus. Critics argued that safe spaces have the potential to stifle free speech and interfere with students' opportunities to learn, and that such spaces can insulate students, allowing them to avoid dealing with uncomfortable ideas (Crovitz, 2016; Will, 2016). Using speech code theory, I analyzed 79 opinion-editorial essays and commentaries from five national news periodicals to examine how proponents and critics of safe spaces use the term and to explore the clash of meanings and contexts in their words.

Based on students’ declining reading comprehension there is a need to develop systematic explicit instruction in teaching reading. This study is based on theories of metacognition, reading comprehension, reading instruction and Legitimation Code Theory and has the reading triangle as a model for teaching expository texts. The model has been tested in one class with eighth-grade students. The students have estimated their own reading comprehension and how they worked before, during and after reading an expository text, both before and after work with the reading triangle. The students in this survey have been taught and have worked with texts based on three levels of the reading triangle. The materials in the study are students’ self-assessments, texts with underlining and comments and interviews with the students and their teacher. The results show that the model, the reading triangle, as a part of an approach to develop literacy, with modelling and metacognitive textual conversations, can contribute to an understanding of the students’ reading process and knowledge of how global and local aspects of texts – such as purpose, text structure and choice of words – are connected with and influence reading comprehension. The study shows that the link between local and global levels must be explicit, since a focus on details can be detrimental to the overall understanding of texts. The use of the reading triangle in the classroom can also help the teaching move between the concrete and the abstract, enabling students to use the acquired knowledge and insights in new texts and reading situations.

This study addresses the question: How do the structural conditions of university organisation modulate subject position, social relations and discourse and therefore shape individual consciousness and activity? The response is informed by an empirical pedagogical problem located at the tertiary level in Japan: What makes acquirers attain higher levels of language mastery in foreign language (Spanish) settings informed by communicative language teaching? The attempted answer is framed within cultural-historical activity theory, the cultural theory of Holland et al. (2001), and Basil Bernstein’s code theory. These theories have been combined using Marxian-Hegelian notions of culture and subject, which allow language development and mastery to be treated as the acquisition by an individual of a cultural tool (semiotic mediation) subject to both individual agency and historical forces. The organisational and pedagogical contexts of three institutions engaged in Spanish language education have been analysed using motive-action/educational task as the unit of analysis that situates the observation in between micro and macro levels of analysis, in combination with the methodologies for ascertaining subject position provided by Bernstein’s code theory and the cultural theory of Holland et al. This procedure made it possible to determine acquirers’ coding orientations (orientations to meaning) and to establish comparisons between organisation and learning settings. The findings indicate that acquirers who have a formal trajectory of language learning and who are able to recognise grammar instructional discourse – i.e., who possess a representational gaze – attain better levels of language mastery (active realisation) than those with informal trajectories (e.g. learning languages overseas in a conversational fashion without following a formal programme) and who do not recognise grammar instructional discourse. Evidence is provided to indicate that there is no way to avoid representational-function programmes. The bottom-up move within Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development is suggested as a feasible intervention without a drastic reshaping of the programmes.

The purpose of this dissertation is critically to illustrate discursive recontextualization between sociocultural production and reproduction, with respect to both relations within and relations to music education in Swedish upper-secondary school. The starting point for the study is the Swedish upper-secondary school reform, Gy 2011, which has involved a marked reformulation of the agenda for music education in upper-secondary school. The general Artistic Activities disappeared, at the same time as the significance of a specialising education in the field was strengthened. This dissertation is driven by the desire to understand the results of the upper-secondary school reform by explaining the processes and principles involved. But, in a wider perspective, the dissertation deals not only with a single reform, but encompasses a search for the underlying principles that have had, and are having, a regulating effect on the design and positioning of music in publicly regulated education. The results show that structuring of the subject of music takes place primarily through the classification and framing of social relationships in general, and of interactional relationships in particular. The focus of these relationships has shifted from time to time, and varies from context to context, but has always been in relation to something that has been regarded as sacred. In recent times, the framing within music-oriented knowledge practices has become weaker. At the same time, such knowledge practices have shown an increasing need for the drawing of boundaries in relation to other knowledge practices. The latter also has a value in explaining why general music content was removed from the upper-secondary school curriculum, whereas a special and specialising educational programme was able to gain legitimacy.

The purpose of this research was to investigate the influence of imagery strategy in learning performance. According to imagery and memory theory and imagination effect, using imagery strategy can help students integrate different information, reduce cognitive loading and the capacity of working memory, enhance schema acquisition and encoding the information to long-term memory. A total of 181 undergraduates and graduates were randomly assigned in the imagery group, transcribe group, note group, and study group. We found that there was no difference between imagery and transcribe group; however, the learning performance of imagery group was better than note group and study group. One week later, there was no difference between four groups. In the feedback of this research, the participant in imagery group thought the imagery strategy was interesting and cost few time than transcribe group. Finally, the primary findings were discussed and educational implications were provided.

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The purpose of this dissertation is critically to illustrate discursive recontextualization between sociocultural production and reproduction, with respect to both relations within and relations to music education in Swedish upper-secondary school. The starting point for the study is the Swedish upper-secondary school reform, Gy 2011, which has involved a marked reformulation of the agenda for music education in upper-secondary school. The general Artistic Activities disappeared, at the same time as the significance of a specialising education in the field was strengthened. This dissertation is driven by the desire to understand the results of the upper-secondary school reform by explaining the processes and principles involved. But, in a wider perspective, the dissertation deals not only with a single reform, but encompasses a search for the underlying principles that have had, and are having, a regulating effect on the design and positioning of music in publicly regulated education. The results show that structuring of the subject of music takes place primarily through the classification and framing of social relationships in general, and of interactional relationships in particular. The focus of these relationships has shifted from time to time, and varies from context to context, but has always been in relation to something that has been regarded as sacred. In recent times, the framing within music-oriented knowledge practices has become weaker. At the same time, such knowledge practices have shown an increasing need for the drawing of boundaries in relation to other knowledge practices. The latter also has a value in explaining why general music content was removed from the upper-secondary school curriculum, whereas a special and specialising educational programme was able to gain legitimacy.

Implicit concept mapping (iCmap; Aidman & Egan, 1998), measures: (1) the complexity of conceptual activation, and (2) the degree to which integration is internally consistent. These characteristics describe aspects of both Dual Code theory (DCT; Paivio,1986) and of lexical meaning (Johnson-Laird, 1987). Within the DCT literature, two kinds of representations have been proposed, verbal and nonverbal, and in the case of concrete words both kinds of representations will be activated compared to abstract words, which only have a verbal representation. 40 Participants completed Experiment 1, which aimed to assess degree of conceptual change due to learning. The results revealed no change in performance. 120 Participants completed Experiment 2 with a modified task called, progressive concept mapping (proCmap). The results indicated that concrete nouns had greater consistency between trials relative to abstract nouns, whereas abstract nouns had greater complexity. These results provide confirmatory evidence that proCmap is sensitive to information associated with conceptual structure

Orientador: Jaime Portugheis / Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Faculdade de Engenharia Eletrica e de Computação / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-15T19:30:44Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Andrade_Alexandrede_D.pdf: 5191552 bytes, checksum: ae675c28ea93ab3a91655042f4cd13d1 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2010 / Resumo: Esta tese aborda métodos de estimação probabilística em sistemas de comunicações usando a teoria de grafos-fatores e seu algoritmo genérico soma-produto. Estas ferramentas são atualmente reconhecidas como um ambiente ideal para derivar vários esquemas de decodificação/ estimação, e também integrar modelos de componentes típicos num sistema de comunicação para melhor desempenho do processo de recepção. Mais genericamente, são adequadas para projetos de receptores unificados. Além disso, vários esquemas de decodificação conjunta fonte/canal podem ser contextualizados neste ambiente. Partimos de uma revisão geral da teoria grafos-fatores e do algoritmo soma-produto de forma abrangente e inserindo os fundamentos matemáticos relacionados. Na sequência aplicamos estes conceitos a sistemas de comunicações. Focamos em sistemas de grafos com ciclos, que são de grande interesse e que resultam na versão iterativa do algoritmo somaproduto, onde cronogramas de execução devem ser arbitrados eficientemente. Descrevemos a decodificação turbo seguindo esquemas de grafos-fatores normais e causais, a forma mais apropriada para a descrição e análise de cronogramas. A partir desta formulação, estudamos o caso da decodificação turbo na sua variante não-bloco, com entrelaçadores periódicos e decodificação contínua/causal. Apresentamos um cronograma completo do algoritmo soma-produto para este caso, mostrando vantagens práticas em relação ao proposto na literatura, sobretudo em relação a sua implementação. Na última parte da tese, apresentamos um estudo da aplicação de grafos-fatores no problema de decodificação iterativa conjunta fonte/canal. Partimos de um modelo genérico de fonte com memória, discreta no tempo e contínua em amplitude, consideramos quantização vetorial e tratamos o problema da decodificação iterativa conjunta integrando modelos destes componentes com o resto do sistema. Alguns resultados de simulações computacionais para os esquemas propostos são apresentados / Abstract: The present thesis deals with probabilistic inference methods for communication systems described by the unifying framework of factor graphs and the general elimination algorithm, the so called sum-product algorithm. These exceedingly general tools are understood as a state of the art environment to build many decoding schemes, and to model typical components for a joint efficient inference at reception. More generally, is a suitable framework to unified receiver designs. Additionally, some joint source channel decoding schemes can also be proper modeled under this context. We start with a review of this framework and related mathematical topics. Thereafter, we particularize to cases of interest, like typical communication systems. This framework gives powerful insights into the structures of multivariate constrained systems and shows how distributed probabilistic inferences can be performed, as shown for typical communication systems with a standard channel encoder. Systems represented by fator graphs with cycles are the most relevant. For the iterative version of the sum-product algorithm, a calculation schedule has to be efficiently chosen. We review the turbo decoding scheme for the classical turbo code using a normal and causal factor graph realization, providing an environment for scheduling descriptions. Then, we approach the non-block turbo decoding version (stream-oriented turbo codes), where general periodic and causal interleavers can be used and continuous decoding schemes are required. We present a full decoding sum-product schedule for this case, with pratical improvements over the usual non-graphical decoding scheme. In the last part of this thesis, we address the joint source channel decoding problem using the factor-graph framework. Starting from a general source model, linear discrete time series, we consider straight vectorial quantization. Instead of trying to remove redundancy, we go in the direction of building decoding schemes that explore this redundancy from source model and quantizer map.We analyse cases when iterative decoding can be performed taking these elements into account in a proper way. Some simulation on the proposed schemes are presented / Doutorado / Telecomunicações e Telemática / Doutor em Engenharia Elétrica