Despite the fact that Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have been seen as a new global education phenomenon over the last decade, MOOCs are still in the early stage of its development in Sweden. MOOCs are being adopted into the Swedish context through the application of translation theory. This process of translation has been a slow process in Sweden.  The aim of this thesis is to describe how a global idea is translated to Swedish context, and explore the reasons behind the slow pace of that process in that country, thus contributing to empirical research of the role of actors in the process of translating an idea. Why and how does a university respond to an emerging global idea? In the process of translating and spreading the MOOCs phenomenon at Swedish HEIs, what has been the role of various actors, and their activities involved in this process? Qualitative research is based on one case study, with abductive reasoning.  The translation of MOOC in Sweden is an active, complicated process, and involves a number of actors such as professors, researchers, government, education authorities and students whose activities actively edit, contextualize, and circulate the concept of MOOCs into Swedish HEIs. The findings indicate that the translation process is still slow and undirected due to the lack of support for management and leadership at all levels. However, indicators are that MOOCs will eventually be fully implemented at Swedish Higher Education Institutions, and will be developed as a national platform in Sweden.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-12-17T15:06:58Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 RodrigoNQ_DISSERT.pdf: 3682649 bytes, checksum: 33832ac05cfe929df2ad407d3f5c4739 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2012-11-30 / Research in the area of teacher training in English as a Foreign Language (CELANI, 2003, 2004, 2010; PAIVA, 2000, 2003, 2005; VIEIRA-ABRAH?O, 2010) articulates the complexity of beginning teachers classroom contexts aligned with teaching language as a social and professional practice of the teacher in training. To better understand this relationship, the present study is based on a corpus of transcribed interviews and questionnaires applied to 28 undergraduate students majoring in Letters/English emphasis, at a public university located in the interior of the Western Amazon region, soliciting their opinions about the reforms made in the curriculum of this Major. Interviews and questionnaires were used as data collection instruments to trace a profile of the students organized in Group 1, with freshmen and sophomore undergraduates who are following the 2009 curriculum, and Group 2, with junior and senior undergraduates who are following the 2006 curriculum. The objectives are to identify, to characterize and to analyze the types of pronouns, roles and social actors represented in the opinions of these students in relation to their teacher training curriculum. The theoretical support focuses on the challenge of historical and contemporary routes from English teachers initial education programs (MAGALH?ES; LIBERALLI, 2009; PAVAN; SILVA, 2010; ALVAREZ, 2010; VIANA, 2011; PAVAN, 2012). Our theoretical perspective is based on the Systemic Functional Grammar of Halliday (1994), Halliday and Hasan (1989), Halliday and Matthiessen (2004), Eggins (1994; 2004) and Thompson (2004). We focus on the concept of the Interpersonal meaning, specifically regarding the roles articulated in the studies by Delu (1991), Thompson and Thetela (1995), and in the Portuguese language such as Ramos (1997), Silva (2006) and Cabral (2009). Moreover, we ascribe van Leeuwen s (1997; 2003) theory of Representation of Social Actors as a theoretical framework in order to identify the sociological aspect of social actors represented in the students discourse. Within this scenario, the analysis unfolds on three levels: grammatical (pronouns), semantic (roles), and discursive (social actors). For the analysis of interpersonal realizations present in the students opinions, we use the computational program WordSmith Tools (SCOTT, 2010) and its applications Wordlist and Concord to quantify the occurrences of the pronouns I, You and They, which characterize the roles and social actors of the corpus. The results show that the students assigned the following roles to themselves: (i) apprentice to express their initial process of English language learning; (ii) freshman to reveal their choice of Major in Letters/English emphasis; (iii) future teacher to relate their expectations towards a practicing professional. To assign the roles to professors in the major, the students used the metaphor of modality (I think) to indicate the relationship of teacher training, while they are in the role of a student and as a future teacher. From these evidences the representation of the students as social actors emerges in roles such as: (i) active roles; (ii) passive roles and (iii) personalized roles. The social actors represented in the opinions of the students reflect the inclusion of these roles assigned to the actions expressed about their experiences and expectations derived from their teacher training classroom / Pesquisas na ?rea de forma??o de professores de ingl?s como l?ngua estrangeira (CELANI, 2003, 2004, 2010; PAIVA, 2000, 2003, 2005; VIEIRA-ABRAH?O, 2010) dimensionam a complexidade de contextos da sala de aula de forma??o inicial em aliar o ensino da l?ngua com a pr?tica social e profissional do futuro professor. Como forma de fornecer subs?dios para a compreens?o dessa rela??o, a presente pesquisa baseia-se em um corpus composto de entrevistas transcritas de 28 alunos de um Curso de Letras/Ingl?s (CLI) de uma universidade p?blica localizada no interior da Amaz?nia Ocidental e suas opini?es acerca da reformula??o do curr?culo do curso. Os instrumentos de coleta de dados utilizados foram entrevistas e question?rios para tra?ar o perfil dos alunos do CLI concentrados em Grupo 1, com os alunos do 1? e 3? per?odos do curr?culo de 2009, e o Grupo 2, com os alunos do 5? e 7? per?odos do curr?culo de 2006. Os objetivos propostos buscam identificar, caracterizar e analisar os tipos de pronomes, os pap?is e os atores sociais representados nas opini?es dos alunos em rela??o ao curr?culo de sua forma??o inicial. O aporte te?rico enfoca os desafios do percurso hist?rico e contempor?neo dos programas de forma??o inicial de professores de l?nguas (MAGALH?ES; LIBERALLI, 2009; PAVAN; SILVA, 2010; ALVAREZ, 2010; VIANA, 2011; PAVAN, 2012). Para a perspectiva te?rica e anal?tica, apoiamo-nos na Gram?tica Sist?mico-Funcional (GSF) de Halliday (1994), Halliday e Hasan (1989), Halliday e Matthiessen (2004), Eggins (1994; 2004) e Thompson (2004). Focamos no conceito da Interpessoalidade, especificamente acerca dos pap?is abordados por Delu (1991), Thompson e Thetela (1995), e trabalhos em l?ngua portuguesa como os de Ramos (1997), Silva (2006) e Cabral (2009). A Teoria da Representa??o dos Atores Sociais de van Leeuwen (1997; 2003) contempla a base te?rica para identificarmos o car?ter sociol?gico dos atores sociais representados no discurso dos alunos. Com este panorama, o percurso proposto para an?lise percorre tr?s n?veis principais: os pronomes (n?vel gramatical), os pap?is (n?vel sem?ntico) e os atores sociais (n?vel discursivo). Para a an?lise das marcas interpessoais presentes nas opini?es dos alunos, utilizamos o programa computacional WordSmith Tools (SCOTT, 2010), e suas ferramentas Wordlist (Lista de Palavras) e Concord (Concordanciador) para quantificar as ocorr?ncias dos pronomes: Eu, Voc? e Eles, que permitam caracterizar os pap?is e os atores sociais no corpus. Os resultados demonstram que os alunos atribuem a si mesmos os seguintes pap?is: (i) aprendiz para expressar o processo inicial de seu aprendizado com o ingl?s; (ii) ingressante na licenciatura para expor suas escolhas em cursar Letras/Ingl?s; (iii) futuro professor para relacionar suas expectativas com a pr?tica profissional. Para atribuir os pap?is aos professores e o curso, os alunos utilizam a met?fora de modalidade, Eu acho que para marcar as rela??es da forma??o inicial como aluno e futuro professor. Destas evid?ncias emergem os atores sociais representados pelos alunos em: (i) pap?is ativos; (ii) pap?is passivos e (iii) pap?is personalizados. Esses atores sociais representados nas opini?es dos alunos refletem a inclus?o dos pap?is atribu?dos para as a??es expressas acerca das experi?ncias e expectativas oriundas da sala de aula de sua forma??o