This thesis reports on a qualitative case study that explores the perceptions of seven elementary school teachers on the concept of media educational practices in the classroom. This study explores the opinions of selected elementary school teachers concerning media educational practices in the elementary classrooms. These perspectives may assist learners to explore their self-identities, develop critical thinking, express and practice creativity, represent their social position, and foster critical consciousness. The study participants included seven elementary school teachers who have adopted various modes of media educational practices in their teaching praxis utilizing technology and their conceptualizations of media education. One primary research question was addressed: What are elementary school teachers’ understandings of critical media education in the classroom? Three sub-questions have been used to inform the primary research question in three categories of contexts, processes, and outcomes. Through data collected by a semi-structured interviewing method, this study describes and analyzes personal teaching experiences of elementary teachers to provide a deeper understanding of the context of media education, the instructional process for developing critical thinking and creative expression, and the criteria for measuring competencies in media education outcomes. This research highlights teachers’ perspectives on the successes and challenges associated with their efforts to implement media literacy into school curricula; and on the importance of cross-curricular integration of media educational practices in elementary classrooms. The findings of this study provide insights into the importance of cross-curricular integration of media educational practices associated with critical thinking and creative expressions in elementary classrooms. These practices play a significant role for both students and teachers in becoming change agents in a dynamic teaching and learning environment that promotes critical thinking, creativity, and positive transformation for self and community.

Aim: The aim of this study was to develop and evaluate an evidence-based creative expression therapy for Chinese people with dementia in hospitals, LTC settings and household. Background: Creative expression (CE) has been shown to be effective for engagement of both people with dementia and carers to communicate in the USA. However, there are limited cross-cultural studies of psychological therapy of people with dementia in China. Method: The overall research strategy is a mixed method. To develop standard CE programme, action research was conducted by three sequential sessions in the geriatric wards, long term care institution and patients’ homes respectively. 7rounds of action research cycle including plan, action, observation, reflective discussion was complemented and 31 people with dementia received CE intervention and evaluating by means of observation, semi-structure interview. The following evaluation research is a controlled trial for people with dementia in LCT settings and hospitals. 91 cases of people with dementia were recruited and divided into two groups. While a series of social contact activities were conducted on the 48 cases control group, the revised CE intervention carried out on the 43 cases test group, both twice weekly for 6 weeks. The primary outcome was measured by MMSE、QOL-AD、CSDD and SFACS in week 0, week 7, week 10. Findings For the social communication and communication of basic needs in SFACS score, pleasure and general alertness mood by OERS, the test group presented significantly better effect than the control group (P < 0.05). Although both group had a decline effect on CSDD score, the test group were maintaining lower 1month after intervention (P < 0.05). Thus the revised CE programme may improve the communication ability and alleviate depression of people with dementia significantly .However, although the quality of life is less affected, it showed a rising tendency after CE programme. Conclusions: This study added trans-cultural evidence on dementia treatment and developed a standard and effective creative expression intervention on Chinese people affected by dementia.

Remiantis Bendrųjų programų aktualumo visuomenei ir mokinių darnaus vystymosi principais, kuriais siekiama padėti mokiniui pažinti save ir kitus bei ugdyti kūrybingą asmenybę, darbe keliami klausimai: kokį vaidmenį mokinių subkultūroje ir kūrybinėje raiškoje atlieka mokykla, ypač technologijų ir meninio ugdymo dalykai? Ar šių dalykų žiniomis naudojasi mokiniai? Surinkta ir išanalizuota literatūra apie mokinių subkultūras bei kūrybinę raišką, jų formavimosi veiksniai sutampa su Lietuvos mokyklose atliktu mokinių (mergaičių ir berniukų) kultūriniu stebėjimu – analize. Nustatyti moksleivių subkultūros bruožai bei kūrybiniai veiksniai palyginti su technologijų ir meninio ugdymo programų teikiamomis galimybėmis. Baigiamojo darbo objektas – mergaičių ir berniukų kultūrinė ir kūrybinė raiška arba, kitaip sakant, subkultūros raiška. Baigiamojo darbo tikslas - analizuoti moksleiviškos kultūrinės saviraiškos ypatumus ir jos formavimosi priežastis. Svarbiausios išvados: 1. Mokinių subkultūrą išskiria viešos kalbos ypatumai, užrašai sąsiuviniuose, telekomunikacijos, pasirinkti įvaizdžiai, stiliai, įpročiai, žaidimai, mėgstama muzika, vertybinės orientacijos ir net patyčių formos. Kuriama subkultūra tampa savų vertybių bei papročių, turinčių ypatingos įtakos mokinių gyvenimui, raiška, kuri lemia jų trokštamą išskirtinumą. 2. Paaugliai intensyviai ieško savojo ,,Aš“: nebijo naujų idėjų, naujų stilių, įvaizdžių, stengiasi išbandyti viską, kas nauja. Tyrimu nustatyta: visi mokiniai vartoja... [toliau žr. visą tekstą] / According to the principles of framework programs relevance to the public and students’ sustainable development, sought to help learners to know themselves and others and develop a creative personality, the work raises questions: what role in the students’ subculture and creative expression is played by school, especially technology and art education subjects? Is this knowledge used by the students? Literature on student’s subcultures and creative expression is collected and analyzed, their formation factors coincide with cultural observation - analysis in Lithuanian schools (girls and boys). Student’s subcultures and creative expression are identified and compared with the technology and art education opportunities. The thesis subject: the cultural and creative expression of girls and boys, or in other words, the expression of subculture. Goal of the final paper: to analyze features of student’s subcultures and creative expression and the reasons for their formation. The most important conclusions: 1. Students’ subculture is distinguished by public language features, notes in notebooks, telecommunications, selected images, styles, patterns, games, favorite music, value orientation, and even bullying. Development of a subculture becomes an expression of own values ​​and habits that have a profound effect on students' lives, which determines the desired uniqueness. 2. Teenagers are looking intensively for own "I": they are not afraid of new ideas, new styles, images, they... [to full text]

This phenomenological hermeneutic research explores the author’s lived experience of painting a Sacred Mandala over the course of 15 months while focusing on child-loss by adoption. In this dissertation, the structure, process, and mindful practice of Sacred Mandala Inquiry are presented—incorporating methodological considerations, related theories, and illuminated through personal examples. Although the focus in the paper is on an individual Sacred Mandala practice, it is with the understanding that the individual is embedded within a community and world in a web of relationships. Impetus for research often arises from personal lifeworld experience. The Sacred Mandala provides structure and containment for inquiry, for those who are attracted to the form, assisting in bracketing that which has previously been accepted while simultaneously becoming a sacred boundary for the unknown to emerge, protected and witnessed. The practice and process may be taken up by inquirers in the social sciences, humanities, arts and within the community of adult learners. The mindful and embodied painting and journaling practices necessitate the inclusion of processes occurring outside of awareness—hosted in emerging images, dialogues, stories, synchronistic events, myths, metaphors, and poetry; inviting the unconscious forward. Opening both eyes—the rational and imaginal—provides a depth perspective. Both are needed, each is as real as the other, one illuminating the inner world, one illuminating the outer world, in wholeness. Importantly, the meanings embedded within the work continue to resonate, unfold, and inform over time. / Graduate / 2020-08-27

Orientador: Lauro Frederico Barbosa da Silveira / Banca: Adolpho Menezes de Mello / Banca: Alfredo Pereira Júnior / Resumo: O presente trabalho propõe uma discussão a respeito da fisiologia do músculo esquelético humano como um processo de caráter sígnico. Trata-se de uma abordagem interdisciplinar para se estudar as relações biológicas baseada no pensamento de Charles S. Peirce. Diferente das aproximações mecanicistas e reducionistas, que entendem o ser vivo como uma máquina cartesiana, a tendência semiótica busca uma abordagem mais ampla sobre as fundações da biologia, liberando o pensamento e lançando nova luz nas investigações dos seres vivos. Tal estudo poderá contribuir no entendimento das relações psicofísicas do corpo por considerar os músculos uma ampla esfera de processos mentais. Este texto inicia-se com uma discussão a respeito da natureza da conduta muscular. Na segunda parte do texto, examinar-se-á a conduta muscular como um hábito baseado na experiência. Na terceira parte, a relação entre causação final e eficiente na conduta muscular será examinada a seguir, e na quarta parte, o fenômeno da indeterminação na contração muscular. Na quinta parte, será discutida a relação entre o hábito autocontrolado do músculo e os três tipos de raciocínio proposto por Peirce: Abdução, Dedução e Indução. O modelo triádico do signo permite-nos observar na conduta muscular uma ampla esfera de atividades racionais, mostrando-nos que o músculo possui as mais elevadas e refinadas propriedades de uma mente que aprende com a experiência. Assim não há motivos suficientemente fortes ou logicamente sustentados para reivindicar qualquer privilégio à racionalidade humana. / Abstract: This contribution proposes an analysis the human skeletal muscle physiology as a sign process, based on Charles S. Peirce's thought. It contributes to understand the psychophysical relations in the human body by considering muscles an including sphere of mental processes. This paper first discusses the nature of muscular conducts. Following Peirce's Objective Idealism, it is argued that muscle contraction is a typically mental process. It is general and eidetic. In the second part, the muscular physiological conduct is discussed as experience based habits, anticipated by Peirce. In the third part, the relation between final and efficient causation in muscular conduct is examined, and in the fourth part, the phenomena of indeterminacy in muscular contraction. It is argued that objective chance is the only responsible for originating spontaneous and original muscular conducts. In a fifth part, one discusses the relation between the acquired auto-controlled muscular habit and the three different types of reasoning proposed by Peirce: Abduction, Deduction and Induction. One concludes raising the hypothesis that the basis of all muscular cell conduct is evolutionary rationality. The triadic model of Sign proposed by Peirce allows us to observe a wider rationality in muscular conduct. It shows us the higher and refined properties of a Mind that learns by experience. / Mestre

This project honors and recognizes the art and activism of four Black woman--Nina Simone, Nikki Giovanni, Elizabeth Catlett, and Ntozake Shange that contributed to the revolutionary movements of the 1960s through the early 1980s. This thesis examines the works and political challenges of Black women by asking what elements in their artistry/activism addressed issues specifically related to Black women's unique position in America during the Black Revolution and feminist movements? Both primary and secondary sources such as literature from advocates of the Black Arts Movements and the lyrics, poetry, and visual art of the four Black women artists were used to gain perspectives to answer the thesis major questions. The creative visions and activism of these Black women expressed the dire need for the issues of Black women to be heard and also to address all forms of oppression that Black women experience with race, gender, social or economic status, and even cultural identity. The works of these Black women were radical and were also cultural reflections of Black women embracing their idiosyncratic position as Black women despite the climate of perpetual deceptions used either by White Western ideologies or Black male chauvinism. This thesis concluded that when the concerns of Black women are attended to by their own strengths of character and merits, they are also able in return to contribute to their own self-empowerment as well as to the development of racial, gender, and community uplift.

I explore through feminist content analysis how poetry, blogging, political narrative, and music are employed by Black women as a means of personal and political empowerment, healing, activism and feminist practice. I theorize the emergence of a new manifestation Black feminism represented in poetry, blogs, political narrative, and popular music-exploring its ties to the history of Black feminism. I seek to demonstrate how gender conscious Black women create poetry, blogs, political narratives, and music as the catalyst to spark anti-sexist activism in contemporary Black women who may or may not call themselves feminists.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-07-29T16:10:25Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 DissertLarissa(1).pdf: 5736817 bytes, checksum: 450fdfb6e8e9a7617531a6cde4fe81fc (MD5) Previous issue date: 2008-10-10 / This work, linked to the Line of Research Training and Professional Teacher Project and the Public Policy and Education of Children in India: history, concepts, projects and practices of the Group of Studies and Research Childhood and education in different contexts, investigates the importance of art for the formation of young children by examining the development of perception and memory of girls and boys from their learning expressive and symbolic. This research aims to probe the place of creative experiences for child development, emphasizing the role of cultural mediation and images of everyday life and art for the child's cognitive performance, and seek to understand the process of signification that introduces these subjects in the world of knowledge through exercises and awareness creation. Based upon the socio-historical references, especially in studies of Vygotsky, Luria, Leontiev and Wallon, this work is guided by three themes: psychological function, awareness and creative exercise, which served as subsidy for conducting a field survey participant with a nonary children enrolled in a nonprofit day care center in the city of Pirenopolis / GO. For five months, the creative girls and boys aged three to four years, was observed, encouraged and shared. This interaction, fellowship and study, it was concluded that small perceive and know the same time they express and transform their memories, thoughts and context, the playful action and imagery. This occurs through a wide awareness, involving body size, cognitive, emotional and social. It also showed that the child is a cultural producer, because constructs symbols and meanings transformed through interaction with affective images, and everydaynew, exercised and synthesized in the appropriation of the gesture, speech and activity of drawing. / Este trabalho, vinculado à Linha de Pesquisa Formação e Profissionalização Docente e ao Projeto Políticas Públicas e Educação da Infância em Goiás: história, concepções, projetos e práticas do Grupo de Estudos e Pesquisa da Infância e sua Educação em diferentes contextos, investiga a importância da arte para a formação da criança pequena, analisando o desenvolvimento da percepção e da memória de meninas e meninos a partir de suas aprendizagens expressivas e simbólicas. Tal pesquisa objetiva sondar o lugar das experiências criativas para o desenvolvimento infantil, salientando o papel das mediações culturais e imagens do cotidiano e da arte para o exercício cognitivo da criança, além de procurar compreender o processo de significação que introduz estes sujeitos no mundo do conhecimento, por meio de exercícios de sensibilização e criação. Embasado no referencial sócio-histórico, especialmente nos estudos de Vygotsky, Luria, Leontiev e Wallon, este trabalho orienta-se por três eixos temáticos: função psicológica, sensibilização e exercício criativo, que serviram de subsídio para a realização de uma pesquisa de campo participante com um grupo de nove crianças matriculadas em uma creche filantrópica na cidade de Pirenópolis/GO. Durante cinco meses, a produção criativa de meninas e meninos, com idade entre três a quatro anos, foi observada, estimulada e partilhada. Desta interação, convívio e estudo, concluiu-se que os pequenos percebem e conhecem ao mesmo tempo em que expressam e transformam suas lembranças, pensamentos e contexto, pela ação lúdica e imaginária. Isto se dá através de uma sensibilização ampla, envolvendo a dimensão corporal, cognitiva, emocional e social. Também se evidenciou que a criança é produtora cultural, pois constrói símbolos e transforma significados por meio da interação com imagens afetivas, cotidianas e novas, exercitadas e sintetizadas na apropriação do gesto, da fala e na atividade do desenho.

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