The increasing awareness of the opportunities and possibilities of digitization in research and industry brings increased demands on graduates. The fact that digital resources are now cumulatively playing a role in the humanities and social sciences also necessitates the networking of various specialist disciplines. Cross-disciplinary project work, however, has its own challenges due to different subject cultures, perspectives and working methods. In order to adequately prepare students for these hurdles, the TU Dresden and the HTW Dresden (University of Applied Sciences) carried out a joint teaching project called “Dresdner Stadtgeschichte 3D”. Potentials and challenges were collected and analysed in a mixed method procedure in order to subsequently formulate didactic-conceptual implications.

This dissertation explores how different understandings of power in IR theory lead to different understandings of world order. In particular, I examine how notions of power have informed recent 'debate about empire' and what the term empire might usefully mean in the context of contemporary international relations. I start by investigating how power is understood in relation to the role of shared understandings. Mainstream or "Rationalist" scholars of IR have argued that shared norms and principles are epiphenomenal, existing only to the extent that sovereign states find utility in them. 'Reflectivist' scholars, on the other hand, have suggested that we attribute a much greater degree of autonomy to what they call "constitutive knowledge". That is, the intersubjective and historically contingent truths about world politics that inform the values and norms of state behavior. What is noteworthy about the recent debates about "empire" is that, for better or for worse, Rationalist scholars have tended to explain America's recent unilateralism in terms of a return to the logic of political realism which gives primacy to state power. However, following the Reflectivist argument, I argue that it is a mistake to limit the analytic scope of unilateralism to the egoistic agency of any one state. Instead, it may be more precise to situate American unilateralism in the context of an emerging regime or formation of shared understandings which is more global in scope. To explore this possibility, I turn to Foucault's theory of power which explores how liberal governments both direct their populations and rationalize the use of certain forms of violence. I turn also to Hardt and Negri who, taking their lead from Foucault, offer a novel definition of the term empire as a quality or condition of the practice of global governance particular to late modernity. Hardt and Negri define empire as a new form of global sovereignty that has emerged along with the global market and global circuits of production. My research explores how this definition can be used to refine such key concepts and categories of IR theory research as sovereignty, political economy and security. Through the reinterpretation of these key categories, I show how theories based on constitutive knowledge are capable of recognizing that there is in fact a great deal more going on in contemporary global power relations than American unilateralism. / Ph. D.

Seldom are we privileged to witness an international philosophical movement, which in addition to being a philosophical revolution, vindicates the values and concerns of a critical anthropological approach in Spirituality from the analytic tradition. The work of critical realists is potential remedy for the ills, dichotomies and lacunae inherent in the Western philosophical and spiritual traditions. Critical realism and philosophy of meta-reality, it is claimed, not only emancipate philosophy but, science and society as spiritual. This dissertation explores the many points of confluence and exposes dimensions of living and studying spirituality, which challenge us to think of ontological realism, epistemological relativism and rational (reflexive) judgement in a mode, which cautions against the naive relativism, tacit irrealism and other mistakes which tend to over-characterise our academic discourse with social linguistification, to the detriment of humanity and our utopian freedom and flourishing. / Christian Spirituality, Church History & Missiology / M. Th. (Christian Spirituality)

Seldom are we privileged to witness an international philosophical movement, which in addition to being a philosophical revolution, vindicates the values and concerns of a critical anthropological approach in Spirituality from the analytic tradition. The work of critical realists is potential remedy for the ills, dichotomies and lacunae inherent in the Western philosophical and spiritual traditions. Critical realism and philosophy of meta-reality, it is claimed, not only emancipate philosophy but, science and society as spiritual. This dissertation explores the many points of confluence and exposes dimensions of living and studying spirituality, which challenge us to think of ontological realism, epistemological relativism and rational (reflexive) judgement in a mode, which cautions against the naive relativism, tacit irrealism and other mistakes which tend to over-characterise our academic discourse with social linguistification, to the detriment of humanity and our utopian freedom and flourishing. / Christian Spirituality, Church History and Missiology / M. Th. (Christian Spirituality)

The Mathematics´ Teaching and Learning process is still, no doubt, a complex and problematic issue in the Brazilian Education context. Discipline with a lowest accomplishment and a higher failure level, as the results of educational evaluations have shown, it has been a source for discussions as well as academic and educational policy studies. Talking about Art, another focus in this study, there is a kind of devaluation of it as a part of the knowledge constitution, being this duality one of the possible barriers to the interdisciplinary use of these knowledge fields in teaching. Similarly, motivated by the possibilities of the use of art as an aid to the Mathematics´ teaching and learning process during the initial grades of Elementary School, we define as an objective of this study to investigate the knowledge and the teacher´s practices concerning the relation of Art and Mathematics during the initial grades of Elementary School. The mentioned research was developed in a Local School at Aracaju (a city in Sergipe - Brazil), designated to the five first grades of Elementary School. The main subjects of this research are two teachers of the second and fourth grades of Elementary School. For the understanding of the study´s target, we appealed to theorists who develop connected researches, directly or indirectly, to the investigation pivot such as Nacarato, Lorenzato, Brizuela, Ferreira, Barbosa, Pereira, Read Fazenda, Silva, Tardif, Japiassú, Freire, D´Ambrosio, Fusari, Fiorentini, Pimenta, among others. The research, with a qualitative approach, it has been characterized as an ethnographic study in the perspective told by André (1995) it had a fieldwork fulfilled between June and July in 2014, with questionnaire appliance, interviews and the observation with a solid description as the procedures. The research aroused a greater reflection about the relevance of the relation between Art and Mathematics in the classroom. It was possible to realize the effort of the teachers in making the Mathematics class stimulator, making use of specific tools offered by Art. We found out that the imposition of the methodological accomplishment from some educational institutions have made it difficult to apply an interdisciplinary methodology. We also found out that the greater difficulty of the relation between Arts and Mathematics in teaching it might has been caused by the lack of a specific education training, as well as a continued education to teachers of the initial grades of Elementary School. Consequently, we realize a constant fight from these teachers to overcome the lack of time to find ways of planning in a stimulator manner to their educational practice, equally to adapt themselves to the several disciplinary possibilities in this practice. / O processo de ensino e aprendizagem em Matemática ainda é, sem dúvida, uma questão complexa e problemática no contexto da Educação Brasileira. Disciplina com mais baixo desempenho e maior índice de reprovação, como apontam os resultados das avalições educacionais, tem sido cada vez mais fonte de debates e estudos acadêmicos e político-educacionais. Em relação à arte, o outro foco deste estudo, há certa desvalorização desta como campo de constituição de conhecimento, sendo essa dualidade uma das possíveis barreiras à prática da interdisciplinaridade entre esses campos do conhecimento no ensino. Neste sentido, motivados pelas possibilidades do uso da arte como subsídio para o ensino e a aprendizagem da Matemática nos anos iniciais do Ensino Fundamental, definimos como objetivo deste estudo investigar saberes e práticas de docentes acerca da relação da Arte com a Matemática dos Anos Iniciais do Ensino Fundamental. A referida pesquisa foi desenvolvida em uma Escola Municipal de Aracaju (Sergipe/Brasil), que atende do 1º ao 5º ano do Ensino Fundamental. Os sujeitos centrais da pesquisa são duas professoras dos 2º e 4º anos do Ensino Fundamental. Para compreensão do objeto de estudo, recorremos a teóricos que desenvolvem pesquisas vinculadas, direta ou indiretamente, aos eixos da investigação em tela, tais como: Nacarato, Lorenzato, Brizuela, Ferreira, Barbosa, Pereira, Read Fazenda, Silva, Tardif, Japiassú, Freire, D Ambrósio, Fusari, Fiorentini, Pimenta, dentre outros. A pesquisa, de abordagem qualitativa, caracterizada como um estudo do tipo etnográfico na perspectiva descrita por André (1995), teve o trabalho de campo realizado no período de Junho a Dezembro de 2014, com aplicação de questionários, realização de entrevistas e observação com descrição densa como procedimentos. A pesquisa provocou uma maior reflexão sobre a relevância da relação da Arte com a Matemática em sala de aula. Foi possível perceber o esforço das professoras em tornar a aula de Matemática motivadora, utilizando-se inclusive e especificamente ferramentas oferecidas pela Arte. Constatamos que a imposição do cumprimento metodológico de alguns pacotes educacionais institucionais tem dificultado a aplicabilidade de metodologias relacionais, multi ou interdisciplinares. Constatamos também, que a maior dificuldade de se relacionar Artes com Matemática no ensino tem entre suas prováveis causas a incipiência de formação acadêmica específica, bem como da formação continuada de professores/professoras dos anos iniciais do Ensino Fundamental. Por conseguinte, percebemos uma luta constante desses professores em driblar a falta de tempo para buscar formas de planejar, de maneira motivadora, a sua prática pedagógica assim como se adaptar às mais diversas possibilidades disciplinares nessa prática.

This PhD responds to a two fold problem with the philosophy of design and the practice of design. The philosophical problem is stated as the discrepancy between a dominant philosophical framework that orders the world according to eternal essences and the actual conditions of the world in which we exist: the conditions of becoming and of flux. Commencing with a critique of the western metaphysical tradition of statics this research project proposes that we need to find a way of describing an evolutionary model of practice, and by so doing to provide a revitalised narration of process. Consequently, the PhD explores the meanings of process through a critical examination of an ensemble of projects created by the author. Within this framework, a number of questions are posed in order to explore the proposition of a process practice. These questions are: What is process? How does one think process? Indeed, how do we get to grasp change? What are the consequences of process thinking on the practices of design, their fields of operation, and their productions? And, how can the thematising of process contribute to the design of the constructed environment, as well as reconfigure the practices of design? This thematising of process is argued to involve a necessary address to the constitutive and interrelated characteristics of process: space/time, movement, change, form and matter. Such an address is also seen to problematise the status of the object, the paradigms of representation, the modes of creation, the economies of exchange, and the structures of community, and to offer a modality of practice which would re-imagine the forms of social exchange to offer an ethical alternative to the tyranny of supply and demand, and thereby reconfigure the potential for dwelling. Making an overview of the discourses and practices engaging with theories of becoming, this thesis argues that almost all of these re-inscribe statics and that consequently the practice of design seems to drag behind our understanding of the world. Through a meditation on dis/appearance, in which the dynamics of being and becoming and the restless ambiguity of the gap are examined, the work establishes a process vocabulary, and makes clear through a material practice, the domains of process thinking, its inclinations, and the kinds of operations and procedures that flourish there. Foregrounding the fertile character of process practice, the PhD then proceeds to introduce notions of the movement-form, the duration-form, the transformational-form, the geometry of encounter, and to argue for physical form as an in-movement poise. Advocating new modes of approach and of attentiveness, and demonstrating new generative methods, this PhD argues that process thinking is not simply an operational stance, but an ethical position that identifies a field of care, and that consequently the design practices be expanded by taking seriously the relationship between process thinking and place making. Thus, this thesis concludes by advocating a mode of place making which, rather than reproduce planned environments as systems of control, configures place as the discursive contested place of encounter and exchange.

The aim of this study was to analyze the subject \"Environmental Education\" offered in the course of Biological Sciences - Federal University at Uberlândia, from 2009/1-2, to understand its limits and possibilities for the improvement of the Environmental Education in the formation of a biologist. The parameters and guidelines were taken from Tbilisi theoretical discussion. The discussion about subject, specialization, curriculum and (inter)disciplinarity in the context of the ongoing paradigm changes in Science also was considered to the analysis and the relationship between Biology and environmental issues. Within the qualitative research, we have chosen the case study, which has been widely used since the 1990s by researchers of Environmental Education. We have selected the discipline as a case, covering the students, the teacher in charge, practices in the classroom and in the field, as well as its insertion in the area of Teaching Practice of the Course Pedagogical Program and at the Institute of Biology of UFU. The strategies for the construction of the survey data were observation and participation in class in two semesters, analysis of the pedagogical course program, a questionnaire for students, interviews with some students who attended the courses and interview with the teacher in charge. The data analysis allowed the construction of the following categories: the subject in the course pedagogical project of the course; the subject in the course; the hours and location of the subject in the curriculum; the subject and students\' conceptions about Environmental Education; the teaching strategies in the subject; cultural studies in the subject; the subject and the research in Environmental Education; (inter)disciplinarity of the subject and the teaching practices during the subject. The research evidenced the difficulty for interdisciplinary work between the teachers; offering the discipline at the end of the course decreased the chances of the students involvement in research in the area, and the great volume and complexity of the texts used brought difficulties to the future biologists; despite the strangeness of the students to the anthropogenic nature adopted in the subject, it was very appreciated by them; no major advances were found in the students conception of Environmental Education; the course hours were insufficient for practice as well as for the development of projects of social changes; cultural studies permeated the subject with a well explored use of films and texts quite instigating. Data analysis subsidized by the theoretical referential chosen indicated that the offer of Environmental Education as a discipline, though it doesn t constitute in an ideal situation consists of an advance to its insertion on the course and that the course meets some assumptions for environmental education waved in Tbilisi going beyond these guidelines under the influence of other theoretical contributions that support the discussions in the area. / O objetivo da presente pesquisa foi analisar a disciplina Educação Ambiental (EA), do curso de Ciências Biológicas da Universidade Federal de Uberlândia (UFU), ministrada em 2009/1 e 2009/2, para entender seus limites e possibilidades para o desenvolvimento da Educação Ambiental na formação do biólogo, tendo como parâmetros as orientações de Tbilisi e a discussão teórica a respeito. A discussão teórica sobre disciplina, especialização, currículo e interdisciplinaridade no contexto da mudança de paradigma da Ciência também foi considerada para sustentação da análise, bem como a relação entre a Biologia e a questão ambiental. Dentro da pesquisa qualitativa, optei pelo estudo de caso, o qual vem sendo bastante utilizado desde a década de 1990 por pesquisadores da EA. Selecionei a disciplina como um caso, abrangendo nele os alunos, a docente responsável, as práticas disciplinares em sala e em campo e a inserção da mesma na área de Prática de Ensino, no Projeto Pedagógico do curso e no Instituto de Biologia da UFU. As estratégias para a construção dos dados da pesquisa foram a observação e participação nas aulas nos dois semestres, análise do projeto pedagógico do curso, aplicação de questionário para os alunos da turma, entrevista com alguns alunos que cursaram as disciplinas e entrevista com a professora responsável. A análise dos dados permitiu a construção das seguintes categorias: a disciplina no projeto pedagógico do curso; a presença da disciplina no curso; a carga horária e a localização da disciplina na grade curricular; a disciplina e as concepções dos alunos sobre EA; estratégias didáticas da disciplina; os Estudos Culturais na disciplina; a disciplina e a pesquisa em EA; a disciplinaridade e a interdisciplinaridade da EA e a postura docente durante a disciplina. A pesquisa evidenciou a dificuldade para o trabalho interdisciplinar entre os próprios professores das disciplinas do núcleo de formação pedagógica; a oferta da disciplina no final do curso diminuiu as possibilidades do envolvimento dos alunos com a pesquisa na área; o grande volume e a complexidade dos textos utilizados trouxeram algumas dificuldades para os futuros biólogos; apesar do estranhamento dos alunos à natureza antrópica adotada na disciplina, a mesma foi muito valorizada por eles; não houve grandes avanços entre os alunos na concepção Tradicional de EA; a carga horária foi insuficiente para a parte prática bem como para o desenvolvimento de projetos de transformação social; os Estudos Culturais perpassaram a disciplina com uma bem explorada utilização de filmes e textos bastante instigantes. A análise dos dados subsidiada pelo referencial teórico escolhido indicou que o oferecimento da Educação Ambiental como disciplina, embora não se constitua em uma situação ideal consiste em um avanço para sua inserção no curso e que a disciplina atende alguns pressupostos para a Educação Ambiental acenados em Tbilisi, indo além dessas orientações sob influência de outros aportes teóricos que subsidiam as discussões na área. / Doutor em Educação

No description available.