Um longo e lento caminho de transformações determina a história da educação. Da criação da instituição escolar, até a atualidade, a luta para transformar o privilégio da educação, em um direito e expandi-lo a todos atravessou os séculos. A consolidação da educação como direito trouxe o acesso de todos às escolas e modificou a sala de aula, aumentando a heterogeneidade e desafiando os modelos pedagógicos que se tornaram insuficientes para atendê-la. O debate sobre a qualidade na educação contemporânea se alterna entre a perspectiva econômica da visão da educação do povo, como capital humano e a de direito de inserção social do indivíduo. Os professores enfrentam o desafio de promover a aprendizagem de todos dentro de duas perspectivas divergentes e necessitam recorrer a habilidades profissionais para lidar com as diferenças em salas de aula e adequar sua prática docente. Para oferecer apoio a esses profissionais é necessário conhecer seu modo de compreender e atuar dentro desse cenário para se estabelecer ações mais eficazes para formação desses profissionais. Assim, este trabalho visou identificar as formas de representação dos professores da educação básica sobre a heterogeneidade das classes, que foi acentuada pelas transformações sociais e pelas mudanças da educação contemporânea no Brasil. Para atingir nosso objetivo, fizemos uma pesquisa com 31 professoras de anos iniciais de três escolas públicas de São Paulo, coletando informações sobre as representações que fazem da heterogeneidade da sala de aula e buscando as relações com as dimensões de ação e de emoção dos professores. Nossos resultados apontaram que as professoras, em sua maioria identificam o fenômeno da heterogeneidade em suas salas e fazem diferentes representações a respeito dele. Existe, no grupo, de forma expressiva, a visão problematizada sobre as diferenças dos alunos, seja em relação aos níveis de alfabetização, ou a limites de aprendizagem que identificam neles. Registramos a presença de forte ideal de homogeneização do grupo-classe, expresso pela definição de objetivos pedagógicos unificados, levando a um ensino padronizado, com pouca consideração para as expectativas ou interesses dos alunos.. Esses objetivos estão também atrelados às avaliações oficiais padronizadas para todas as escolas, que acabam reforçando a tendência niveladora. Identificamos uma minoria de professoras que buscam atuar na lógica contrária, qual seja, a de partir das necessidades e expectativas diferenciadas dos alunos para oferecer-lhes caminhos pedagógicos adequados, que consideram suas singularidades. Estas professoras consideram as diferenças nos alunos na ótica inclusiva e até como elemento enriquecedor da sala de aula e consideram as diferenças ao realizarem planejamento e estabelecerem objetivos para grupo e alunos, utilizando estratégias inclusivas. / A long and slow path of transformations underlines the history of Education . Since creation of the school institution, thousands of years ago, until today, the struggle to transform this privilege in right and expand it to all people it took centuries . The consolidation of education as a right brought access to all schools and changed the classroom, increasing heterogeneity and challenging pedagogical models. The debate about quality in contemporary education alternated between economic perspective view of the education of the people , such as human rights and social integration of the individual . Teachers face the challenge of promoting the learning of all within two divergent perspectives and need to resort to professional skills to deal with differences in classrooms and adapt their teaching practice. To provide support for them is necessary to know their way of understanding and acting within this scenario to establish more effective actions on training of these professionals. This study aimed at identifying the representation form of Basic Education teachers on the heterogeneity seen in classrooms, as well as identifying implications between teaching representations and practices. To address this issue, we carried out a study with 31 teachers of the first years of public schools of São Paulo, trying to get information on the representation they make of the classrooms heterogeneity, and trying to find relationships with the teachers action and emotion dimensions. Our findings indicate that the vast majority identifies their student groups as heterogeneous in different ways. The two leading approaches show a strong link of homogenization with the classroom-group. The most recurring one associates the heterogeneity to the discrepancies in learning processes or results presented by the students, and the second one, of heterogeneity in a perspective of heterogeneity as a synonym of problems. In a smaller part of our sample we also identified the idea of heterogeneity as a natural phenomenon among students that manifest itself through different expectations, personalities and learning ways. Also, we were able to identify the existence of correlations among the forms of representations made and the practices suggested by teachers, reinforcing the research work in the field. This points out to the need of resuming the debate with the teachers on the current educational background and the discussion on the educational models that could be implemented to indeed promote education for all.

This phenomenological study addressed teacher perceptions of indigenous representations in United States history within a school district in East Tennessee. Teacher perceptions of indigenous representations in history were defined as teacher beliefs towards the inclusion and representation of indigenous peoples in United States history. Individual and focus group interviews were conducted from a purposeful sample of United States history teachers from multiple high schools in the school district. The analysis of data revealed three themes: (a) systemic challenges to multiculturalism within state course standards and textbooks, (b) teachers’ perceived self-efficacy in teaching their students using indigenous perspectives, (c) and the perpetuation of indigenous stereotypes. Furthermore, analysis revealed that U.S. history courses in the district perpetuate both the notion of indigenous peoples as historical bystanders and the racial stereotypes of Native Americans.

Abstract is available to download.

One hundred high school Algebra students from a southern California school participated in this study to provide information on students’ ability to relate the definition of function to its representations. The goals of the study were (1) to explore the extent to which students are able to distinguish between representations of functions/non-functions; (2) to compare students’ ability to distinguish between familiar/unfamiliar representations of functions/non-functions; (3) to explore the extent to which students are able to apply the definition of function to verify function representations; and (4) to explore the extent to which students are able to provide an adequate definition of function. Data was collected from written responses on a math survey consisting of items that asked students to decide if given illustrations are representations of functions, to explain how the decision was made, and to supply the domain and range when applicable. The questions included seven types of illustrations: graphs, equations, ordered pairs, tables, statements, arrow diagrams, and arbitrary mappings. Findings indicated that students were more able to correctly identify familiar than unfamiliar function representations. The easiest representation for students to correctly identify was the graph of a linear function and the most difficult was the graph of a piecewise function. A conjecture as to why this occurred is that the formal definition of function is not often emphasized or referenced when function and its representations are introduced so students do not have a deep understanding of how the function definition is related to its representations. The explanation, domain, and range responses were sketchy. A conjecture as to why this occurred is that in general, students have difficulty expressing themselves orally and in writing or perhaps students had not learned about domain and range. A separate question asked students, “What is a function?” To this question, students provided a variety of responses. It is suggested that conducting further studies that include student interviews and participants from multiple teachers, would provide increased understanding of how students learn the definition of function and the extent to which they are able to relate it to its representations.

Au Sénégal, les conditions de vie des enfants handicapés sont toujours inférieuresà celles des autres enfants du fait, pour une part, de représentations sociales duhandicap qui ne favorisent pas leur intégration sociale et scolaire. Beaucoup n'ont pasaccès à l'éducation. Mais malgré ces barrières, des parents d’enfants en situation dehandicap et de professionnels exerçant dans des écoles qui accueillent ces enfants, lesont dépassé et les scolarisent.Notre travail de recherche pose l’hypothèse suivante : Si des enfants en situationde handicap sont scolarisés au Sénégal, il s’est passé quelque chose de différent chezleurs parents et chez les professionnels en service dans ces écoles. Qu’est-ce qui apoussé des parents d’enfants handicapés et des professionnels à scolariser cesenfants ? Quelles sont les conditions qui ont été réunies pour permettre à certainsenfants handicapés d’aller à l’école au Sénégal.? Comment faire pour améliorer lascolarisation des enfants handicapés au Sénégal ?Notre travail, à travers une démarche analytico-descriptive axée sur l'usage d'uneméthode monographique descriptive et analytique par des récits de vie de parentsd’enfants handicapés et de professionnels exerçant dans des écoles qui accueillent desenfants handicapés au Sénégal et l’utilisation de la théorie des représentationssociales comme outil d'analyse, a permis de découvrir un changement dereprésentations sociales traditionnelles du handicap en représentations scientifiqueschez ces parents et professionnels et un impact de l’approche communautaire de laprise en compte du handicap du fait de pratiques nouvelles contradictoires auxreprésentations sociales. Donc, nous devons encourager un passage à l’acte descolarisation des enfants handicapés pour permettre un changement dereprésentations sociales négatives du handicap. / To Senegal the conditions of handicapped child life are always lower to those of the other children of the fact, for a part, of social representations of the handicap that don't encourage their social and school integration. Greatly don't have access to the education. But in spite of these gates, of child parents in situation of handicap and professionals exercising in schools that welcome these children, passed them and school them. Our work of research puts the following hypothesis: If the children in situation of handicap are schooled in Senegal, he/it happened something of different at their parents and at the professionals in service in these schools. What pushed parents of handicapped children and professionals to school these children? What are the conditions that have been united to allow some children handicapped to go to the school to Senegal.? How to make to improve the schooling of the children handicapped in Senegal ? Our work, through an analytico - descriptive gait centered on the use of a method descriptive and analytic monographique by narrations of life of parents of handicapped children and professionals exercising in schools that welcome the children handicapped to Senegal and the use of the social representation theory as tool of analysis, allowed to discover a change of traditional social representations of the handicap in scientific representations at these related and professional and an impact of the communal approach of the hold in account of the handicap because of practices contradictory news the social representations. Therefore, we must encourage a passage to the act of child schooling handicapped to permit a change of negative social representations of the handicap.

This study was designed to examine the effect of Science Writing Heuristic Approach on Students’ Learning of Multimodal Representations across 4th Grade to 8the Grade Levels. Multimodal representations in the forms of figures, tables, pictures, and charts are part of scientific language. A quasi-experimental design with control and treatment group of classes was used. Students completed the summary writing task by including multimodal representations in the both control and treatment classes. The students’ writing samples were evaluated with four measures of multimodal categories, including sign, functional, conceptual and embeddedness structures. To examine the differences of treatment and control groups and the effect of age, the Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM) analysis was used in this study. The HLM provides an opportunity to use statistical models that account for nesting of the data. Analysis of quantitative data indicated that the treatment classes significantly outperformed than the control classes on four measures of categories. Age also was a significant contributor to students’ learning of multimodal representations. Three key points emerged from the results. Firstly, the SWH approach had positive effects on students’ understanding of the multimodal representations. Secondly, the impact of the age was different for each category. Thirdly, the categories were used in this study had significant potential when exploring the students learning of multimodal representations. The study indicated some practical benefits that the strategy of promoting argumentative scientific language effectively was resulted in better communication, understanding of the topic with multimodal representations, and some transferring impacts of all these with the summary writing activities.

Prior research has indicated that laypeople construct mental representations of physical symptoms in order to attempt to understand illness (e.g., Leventhal, Safer, Panagis, 1983; Leventhal & Contrada, 1987; Lau, Bernard, & Hartman, 1989). These "illness representations" are influenced by prior experience with and prior knowledge about illness as well as efforts to seek additional information through social channels or media. More and more, the internet is a prominent source of health information, especially for older adults (aged 50 year and up). Yet, few studies have systematically examined how older adults search for health information online. Similarly, recent trends in healthcare such as health consumerism assume that patients will be more empowered if they have access to more information. However, little has been done to investigate whether patients, in fact, feel more empowered after acquiring online health information. The current study examined the online health information seeking of older adults (N = 79) in order to determine the cognitive and diagnostic processes that older adults use to acquire information. Older adults read a vignette which depicted one of two common illnesses and then were asked to "think-aloud" while they attempted to diagnose the illness. Older adults then diagnosed the illness using either a traditional search engine (Google) or popular self-diagnosis tool (WebMD Symptom Checker), and answered questions about illness representations, cognitive effort, web interactivity, and feelings of empowerment after the search. Quantitative results showed inconsistent change in illness representations. Plausible reasons for a lack of findings are discussed. Participants who used WebMD perceived greater cognitive effort while using the computer program than those who used Google, and participants who were inaccurate in their diagnosis perceived greater cognitive effort of diagnosing than those who were accurate. Accuracy was unrelated to perceived interactivity, age, or search method. Participants 50-64 years old found a new version of WebMD to be less interactive than Google. In contrast, participants 65 years or older perceived no difference in interactivity depending upon search method. In terms of empowerment, participants who used Google perceived greater choice than WebMD. There were no differences in feelings of competence depending upon search method. Qualitative results showed that participants spent the majority of time navigating the computer and processing health information. Most participants diagnosed the illness by eliminating diseases whose symptoms did not match the symptoms of the illness vignette. Participants tended to visit commercial health websites such as Everyday Health and begin their information search by typing a vignette symptom into the search bar. Participants who were 65 years or older were less confident about their diagnosis than 50-64 year old participants. Finally, participants who used Google to diagnose were more likely to comment about the credibility of the information found when compared to those who used WebMD. The current study found no change in illness representations after an online information search. However, this produces questions as to the amount of time in which the layperson constructs his/her illness representation. In addition, few differences in interactivity, accuracy, or empowerment were found between an online health information search conducted with a search engine as compared to a self-diagnosis tool. However, individual differences suggest that different age cohorts may prefer information to be presented in different ways which could influence web design. Further studies in human-computer interaction and health cognition may be able to answer the questions that arose.

Magister Educationis - MEd / The purpose of this paper was to examine the use of the multiple representation approach as a teaching strategy to improve learners understanding of vectors in Grade 10 Physical Sciences. The study also wanted to consider the MR approach through the lens of the learners. A sample consisting of 45 Grade 10 learners from a total of 160 Grade 10 Physical Sciences learners participated in the study. Both quantitative and qualitative data were collected and analysed. Learners were first given a pre-test to establish their initial understanding of vectors. This pre-test was followed by an intervention in the form of a lesson. The lesson was conducted in order to expose learners to learning through Multiple Representations. A post-test was then administered to determine the impact of the intervention. To gather and quantify the learners’ perceptions on the use of Multiple Representations in teaching and learning of vectors in Grade 10 Physical Sciences learners were given questionnaires to complete. The last step was interviewing of learners to triangulate the results from the three instruments. The study found that learners were struggling with understanding of vectors in their traditional chalk-and-talk lessons and their perceptions towards vectors were negative. The study also found that Multiple Representations can improve understanding and develop positive perception of learners towards the teaching and learning of vectors. This improvement occurs only if Multiple Representations is used correctly. The study further found out that when Multiple Representations is used improperly it limits deeper understanding by learners. A number of recommendations were made out of the findings of the study. Some of them were that multiple representations should be used when teaching vectors and that subject advisers and teachers should be developed on the proper use of multiple representations. The Physical Sciences textbooks must be designed to accommodate Multiple Representations.

Chemical representations play a vital part in the teaching and learning of chemistry. The aim of this research was to investigate students’ understanding of chemical representations and to ascertain the influence of chemical representations on students’ developing mental models of chemical phenomena. Three primary threads flowing through the thesis are models, representations and learning. Each thread was found to play a vital part in students’ learning of chemical content, in their learning of the scientific process and in their learning about the process of learning itself. This research with students from Year 8 to first year university level comprised four studies that provide comparisons between ages, abilities, learning settings and teaching and learning approaches. Students’ modelling ability was observed to develop and improve through instruction and practice and usually coincided with an improvement in their understanding of chemical concepts. While students were observed to actively use models to make predictions and test ideas, some were not aware of the predictive nature of models when asked about it. From the research, five characteristics of scientific models have been identified: scientific models as multiple representations, scientific models as exact replicas, scientific models as explanatory tools, how scientific models are used, and the dynamic nature of scientific models. A theoretical framework relating the four types of models - teaching, scientific, mental and expressed - and a typology of models that highlights the significant attributes of models, support the research results. The data showed that students’ ability to describe the role of the scientific model in the process of science improved with their increasing age and maturity. / The relationship between the three levels of chemical representation of matter - the macroscopic level, the sub-microscopic level and the symbolic level - revealed some complexities concerning the representational and theoretical qualities and the reality of each level. The research data showed that generally most students had a good understanding of the macroscopic and symbolic levels of chemical representation of matter. However, students’ understanding of the sub-microscopic level varied, with some students being able to spontaneously envisage the sub- microscopic view while for others their understanding of the sub-microscopic level of chemical representation was lacking. To make sense of the sub-microscopic level, students’ appreciation of the accuracy and detail of any scientific model, or representation upon which their mental model is built, depended on them being able to distinguish reality from representation, distinguish reality from theory, know what a representation is, understand the role of a representation in the process of science, and understand the role of a theory in the process of science. In considering learning, the importance of an individual’s modelling ability was examined alongside the role of chemical representations and models in providing clear and concise explanations. Examining the links forged between the three levels of chemical representation of matter provided an insight into how students were learning and understanding chemical concepts. Throughout this research, aspects of students’ metacognition and intention were identified as being closely related to their development of mental models. / The research identified numerous factors that influenced learning, including internal factors such as students’ prior chemical and mathematical knowledge, their modelling ability and use of chemical representations, motivation, metacognitive ability and time management as well as external factors such as organisation, assessment, teaching resources, getting feedback and good explanations. The choice of learning strategies by students and instructors appeared to be influenced by those factors that influenced learning. Feedback to students, in the form of discussion with classmates, online quizzes and help from instructors on their understanding was observed to be significant in promoting the learning process. Many first year university non-major chemistry students had difficulties understanding chemical concepts due to a limited background knowledge in chemistry and mathematics. Accordingly, greater emphasis at the macroscopic level of representation of matter with contextual references is recommended. The research results confirmed the theoretical construct for learning chemistry - the rising iceberg - that suggests all chemistry teaching begins at the macroscopic level, with the sub-microscopic and symbolic levels being introduced as needed. More of the iceberg becomes visible as the students’ mental model and depth of understanding increases. In a variety of situations, the changing status of a concept was observed as students’ understanding in terms of the intelligibility, plausibility and fruitfulness of a concept developed. / The research data supported four aspects of learning - epistemological, ontological, social affective and metacognitive - as being significant in the students’ learning and the development of their mental models. Many university students, who are mature and are experienced learners, exhibited strong rnetacognitive awareness and an intentional approach to learning. It is proposed that the intentional and metacognitive learning approaches and strategies could be used to encourage students to be more responsible for their own learning.

This practice-based project explores the photographic phenomenon of ‘moment beyond moment’, which refers to the combined representations of an existing image in an environment, together with the real-life situation at the moment the photograph is taken. I call this photograph an ‘extended photograph’. Employing practical works of extended photographs and focusing on interactions between the moment in real-life and the moment in an existing image, the research explores the transformation of meanings caused by the interactions of these moments in an extended photograph. The research owes its approach to grounded theory, contrary thinking and Chinese Buddhist ‘Sudden Enlightenment’ to further its aim of exploring the unpredictable interaction of these moments, and to disclose the potentials of meaning transformation. My research outcome intends to initiate a discourse with photographic practitioners and theorists on the phenomenon of moment beyond moment in a working environment that is encaged by the excessive existence of displayed images. The thesis is composed as a creative work that consists of a series of photographic images accompanied by an exegesis component. The images represent a nominal 80%, and the exegesis 20% of the final submission.