Denna studie undersökte korrelationen mellan elevernas förståelse av matematikens syfte på samhällsvetenskapsprogrammet, deras inställning till ämnet och deras betyg i kursen Matematik 1b. Genom en blandad metod som inkluderade en enkätundersökning och intervjuer samlades både kvantitativ och kvalitativ data in från elever och lärare på samhällsvetenskapsprogrammet. Enkätundersökningen distribuerades till elever från tre olika skolor, och resulterade i 130 respondenter och en svarsfrekvens på 62%. Datan analyserades genom med hjälp av korrelationsanalys, specifikt Pearson's korrelationskoefficient för ett urval, för att undersöka samband. Resultaten visade på en måttlig korrelation mellan elevernas förståelse av matematikens syfte och deras inställning till ämnet. I enkätundersökningen var det även tydligt att majoriteten av eleverna hade ett lågt intresse för matematiken. Flera elever uttryckte i intervjuerna bristen på ett tydligt syfte med att studera matematik. Vidare observerades även en måttlig korrelation mellan elevernas inställning till ämnet och deras betyg i kursen. Enkätundersökningen indikerade även, förutom bristen på intresse för ämnet, att hälften av eleverna var underkända i kursen eller endast hade betyget E. Intervjuerna genomfördes med elever och lärare för att fördjupa förståelsen av elevernas uppfattningar om syftet med matematikämnet och deras inställning till ämnet. Dataanalysen inkluderade tematisk analys för att identifiera gemensamma teman och utmaningar. Resultatet av den kvalitativa analysen visade på bristen av ett tydligt syfte inom matematikundervisningen, vilket påverkade elevernas inställning negativt. Inom ramen för detta examensarbete utvecklades ett utbildningsmaterial för kursen Matematik 1b för samhällsvetenskapsprogrammet. Utbildningsmaterialet består av olika kapitel och projekt som syftar till att tydliggöra matematikens relevans och tillämpningar inom samhällsvetenskapliga områden. Design Thinking användes som metod för utvecklingsprocessen för utbildningsmaterialet. I metoden ingår det att förstå användarnas behov, generera idéer till potentiella lösningar, skapa prototyper och testa dessa. Det resulterande utbildningsmaterialet anpassades specifikt för samhällsvetenskapsprogrammet och kan vara en värdefull resurs för elever och lärare. Genom utbildningsmaterialet kommuniceras matematikens syfte på ett tydligt sätt vilket främjar en positiv inställning till ämnet och förbättrar elevernas prestationer och betyg i kursen. Sammanfattningsvis betonar denna studie vikten av att tydliggöra matematikens syfte för eleverna på samhällsvetenskapsprogrammet. Genom att kommunicera syftet på ett tydligt sätt, exempelvis med hjälp av det utvecklade utbildningsmaterialet, kan elevernas inställning förbättras, vilket i sin tur kan höja elevernas betygsnivå. / This study examined the correlation between students' understanding of the purpose of mathematics in the social science program, their attitudes towards the subject, and their grades in the Mathematics 1b course. A mixed-method approach was employed, involving a survey and interviews to collect both quantitative and qualitative data from students and teachers in the social science program.  The survey was distributed to students from three different schools, resulting in 130 respondents and a response rate of 62%. The data was analyzed using correlation analysis, specifically Pearson's correlation coefficient for a sample, to explore relationships. The results showed a moderate correlation between students' understanding of the purpose of mathematics and their attitude towards the subject. The survey also revealed that the majority of students had low interest in mathematics. Several students expressed in the interviews the lack of a clear purpose for studying mathematics. Furthermore, a moderate correlation was observed between students' attitude towards the subject and their grades in the course. The survey also indicated, in addition to the lack of interest, that half of the students were failing the course or had only achieved a grade of E. Interviews with students and teachers provided further insights into students' perceptions on the purpose of mathematics and their attitude towards the subject. Thematic analysis was conducted to identify common themes and challenges. The qualitative analysis revealed the absence of a clear purpose in mathematics education, which negativley influenced students' attitude towards the subject.  Within the scope of this thesis, an educational material was developed for the Mathematics 1b course in the social science program. The educational material consists of various chapters and projects aimed at highlighting the relevance and applications of mathematics in social science domains. Design Thinking was employed as the methodology for the development process of the educational material, involving understanding user needs, generating ideas for potential solutions, creating prototypes, and testing them. The resulting educational material was specifically tailored for the social science program and can be a valuable resource for students and teachers. By clearly communicating the purpose of mathematics, the educational material promotes a positive attitude towards the subject and improves students' performance and grades in the course. In conclusion, this study emphasizes the importance of clarifying the purpose of mathematics for students in the social science program. By effectively communicating the purpose, such as through the developed educational material, students' attitudes can be enhanced, leading to improved academic results.

Cette étude veut montrer comment le travail est décrit et vécu dans les utopies littéraires et programmatiques du dix-huitième siècle, de John Bellers (1695) à Robert Owen (vers 1830). Dans la société britannique de l’époque, le travail évolue, de nécessaire condition de l’homme vers un moyen de progresser dans la hiérarchie sociale. Les utopies, micro-sociétés idéales, sont toujours isolées, de sorte que le travail agricole et artisanal est la principale occupation de leurs habitants. De pénible qu’il est en Europe, il devient léger en utopies car il est équitablement partagé entre des individus qui savent se contenter de peu. Les autres professions, plus intellectuelles, jouissent d’un prestige nettement moins important qu’en Europe, puisque chaque utopien est à la fois son prêtre, son avocat, son médecin. Tous les utopiens contribuent également à la beauté de leur environnement, on ne trouve que rarement des artistes identifiés par leur fonction. La façon dont les utopistes abordent la question du travail traduit leur projet de société, le plus souvent égalitariste et coopératif, par opposition à une Grande-Bretagne dominée par la compétition. / The point of this thesis is to show how work is depicted in eighteenth-century utopias, from John Bellers (1695) to Robert Owen (in the 1830s). Labour is the necessary condition of the vast majority of the British population at the beginning of the period. Over the century, though, work takes on a more positive connotation as it becomes a means of ascending the social ladder (especially for the merchants and members of the professions). In utopian texts, European “toil” becomes pleasant and healthful “exercise”, because the inhabitants of ideal societies have few needs that are easily satisfied. A little agriculture and craft industry only is required to provide them with anything they want. The intellectual professions, that were more prestigious in Britain, are disregarded as each citizen is able to act as his own priest, lawyer or physician. All utopians are artists, contributing to the beauty of their environment, so that none is really identified as such. The last part aims at demonstrating that work and labour are at the heart of the utopists’ view of society. Their plans are vindications of more egalitarian and cooperative societies.

Discussing controversial issues in the classroom is important. Through discussing controversial issues students can both learn and develop a more democratic ethos. The teachers in Sweden have a clear task to defend and mediate democratic values to the students. This leads to a conflict in the duty of the teacher because the curriculum also dictates that teachers have to let the students develop a sense of critical thinking and this opens up for potential criticism of the concept of democracy when students discuss controversial issues. Another conflict in the curriculum that appears when discussing controversial issues is the fact that teachers both have to respect the student’s opinions but also have a duty to challenge these opinions. That is why the aim of this essay is to analyse how social science teachers handle controversial issues in the classroom. The study was conducted by interviewing four social sciences teachers at high school level.   The result shows that teachers see controversial issues as issues that relate to human beings and that the discussion of these issues can arouse emotions and make the participants emotional. Further the result shows that teachers have a very open mind towards controversial issues and are open to discussing anti-democratic issues. In ensuring that the discussion of controversial issues leads to learning teachers mostly use strategies that ensure that student feel comfortable to express their opinions. In handling the above mentioned curricular conflicts that appear in the discussion of controversial issues three of four teachers saw that such a conflict existed. The other three gave answers that suggested that they did not think the conflict was so problematic and that their strategies for handling it where effective.

The WikiLeaks Afghanistan war logs contain nearly 77,000 reports of incidents in the US-led Afghanistan war, covering the period from January 2004 to December 2009. The recent growth of data on complex social systems and the potential to derive stories from them has shifted the focus of journalistic and scientific attention increasingly toward data-driven journalism and computational social science. In this paper we advocate the usage of modern statistical methods for problems of data journalism and beyond, which may help journalistic and scientific work and lead to additional insight. Using the WikiLeaks Afghanistan war logs for illustration, we present an approach that builds intelligible statistical models for interpretable segments in the data, in this case to explore the fatality rates associated with different circumstances in the Afghanistan war. Our approach combines preprocessing by Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) with model trees. LDA is used to process the natural language information contained in each report summary by estimating latent topics and assigning each report to one of them. Together with other variables these topic assignments serve as splitting variables for finding segments in the data to which local statistical models for the reported number of fatalities are fitted. Segmentation and fitting is carried out with recursive partitioning of negative binomial distributions. We identify segments with different fatality rates that correspond to a small number of topics and other variables as well as their interactions. Furthermore, we carve out the similarities between segments and connect them to stories that have been covered in the media. This gives an unprecedented description of the war in Afghanistan and serves as an example of how data journalism, computational social science and other areas with interest in database data can benefit from modern statistical techniques. (authors' abstract)

This study aims to describe and analyze how the development of technology and social change came to influence the Faculty of Science and Technology which during the fall of 2000 launched two new master programs in engineering. These programs were of a new kind where elements which traditionally had not been a big part of such educations made up a uniquely large part of the content. The ambition is to show how and why these elements came to be increasingly sought, and what they consisted of. To do this a study of meeting protocols from the elementary education committee from the years before the programs started was made. In these protocols the goal was to, from a perspective of technological development and social change, analyze how the contents of these programs were discussed. This was also connected to a perspective of education and learning – what should be taught during education and why?

Este trabalho tem como objeto de estudo a Coleção Estudos Brasileiros da editora Paz e Terra. Publicada entre 1974 e 1987, essa série de livros foi composta, notadamente, por trabalhos de intelectuais do Brasil e do exterior em especial dos Estados Unidos vinculados às áreas de Ciência Política, História, Sociologia, Economia e Antropologia. Com a participação de um total de oitenta e oito autores e a presença de quase cem títulos em seu catálogo, a análise da constituição desse conjunto torna possível a visualização da forma como determinados grupos de acadêmicos, sobretudo a partir de um núcleo paulista, se articularam com o editor Fernando Gasparian para divulgar suas interpretações do presente e do passado brasileiro. Ao desenvolvermos essa perspectiva, identificamos preferências temáticas e teóricas, mas também os vínculos institucionais e pessoais que contribuíram para a consolidação de um novo vocabulário a respeito do Brasil em grande parte influenciado por um objetivo político comum: o fim da ordem implantada em 1964. / This work is focused on the Coleção Estudos Brasileiros of the Paz e Terra publisher. Published between 1974 and 1987, this sequence of books was notably composed of intellectuals works from Brazil and abroad, specially from United States, linked to Political Science, History, Sociology, Economy and Anthropology areas. With the participation of eighty-eight authors and the presence of almost a hundred titles in its catalogue, the analysis of the constitution of this set make possible the visualization of the way that certain academic groups, mainly, of a group from São Paulo city, joined with the editor Fernando Gasparian to spread their interpretations about the Brazilian present and past. Developing this perspective, we identify themes and theoretical preferences, but also institutional and personal links that contributed to the consolidation of a new vocabulary concerning Brazil, mostly influenced by a common political purpose: the end of the order introduced in 1964.

Made available in DSpace on 2015-03-04T22:02:04Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 6 / Nenhuma / O presente estudo versa sobre o cotidiano do Vale dos Vinhedos, com aporte de conhecimento das representações sociais. A pesquisa enfoca três territórios, quais sejam, Bento Gonçalves, Monte Belo do Sul e Garibaldi, formadores de uma cooperação territorial de fronteiras acordadas em torno da Indicação Geográfica dos Vinhos do Vale dos Vinhedos, que lhe atribuem características de seletividade e desenvolvimento próprias das sociedades pós-modernas. Lá, o empreendedorismo agrega nuances de valoração sobre a produção local que se traduzem nas práticas, nos saberes e fazeres aqui reinterpretados através das Representações Sociais. Dessa forma, pesquisar a interação desses sujeitos com a tradição e a cultura herdada dos ancestrais italianos é de suma importância para que não se percam esses vínculos históricos e culturais. Para tanto, utiliza-se a pesquisa bibliográfica, o estudo etnográfico, diário de campo e observações participantes, técnicas de entrevistas e grupos focais, dentre outras que resultam na análise / The present study is about Vineyard Valley, with social representations intake. The search focuses three territories: Bento Gonçalves, Monte Belo do Sul and Garibaldi, formers of a territorial cooperation of borders agreed around Vineyard Valley Wine Geographical Indication, which attribute to it development selectivity inherent to post modern societies, where entrepreneurship aggregates valuation nuances about the local production, which are translated into experiences, knowledge and actions, reinterpreted here through Social Representations. This way, knowing about these people interaction with tradition and the inherited culture from Italian ancestors is very important to maintain historical and cultural links. For this, it is used bibliographical search, ethnographic study, a field diary, participant observation, interview techniques and focal groups, among others, which result in an eight-dimension analysis: the socialized imaginary and immigration myths; religiosity; survival economy; structuring patria

Esta tese é um estudo sobre a recepção da obra de José Carlos Mariátegui (1894-1930) nas ciências sociais latino-americanas. Trata-se de delinear sociologicamente a difusão e as apropriações das ideias mariateguianas no conjunto da história intelectual das ciências sociais e da história do marxismo neste continente. A primeira parte, dedicada a um estudo de trajetória social e intelectual, investiga as incursões literárias de Mariátegui no jornalismo, sua inserção no debate político peruano, alguns aspectos de sua formação intelectual europeia, o estilo de sua produção, bem como certas perspectivas de análise e tensões políticas decorrentes de seu papel enquanto militante socialista. Na segunda parte, procura-se expor o processo de difusão da obra, especialmente a partir da década de 1960. Parte-se da hipótese de que a confluência entre um notável empreendimento editorial levado a cabo pelos familiares do autor e as circunstâncias sociopolíticas e culturais vivenciadas no Peru e na América Latina facilitaram a construção de redes de recepção transnacional das ideias de Mariátegui. Em um processo de crítica do discurso tradicional da esquerda latino-americana, das vertentes de modernização e das teses dualistas das ciências sociais, observa-se, ainda, que a construção de uma imagem heterodoxa de Mariátegui emerge como um dos principais referenciais de atualização do marxismo. A partir da década de 1990, Mariátegui passa a ser incorporado pela perspectiva decolonial, em particular por Aníbal Quijano, como referencial epistemológico da crítica eurocêntrica. A terceira e última parte deste trabalho tece uma reflexão sobre a recepção de Mariátegui na sociologia brasileira com base em um mapeamento de leitores (e leituras) do intelectual peruano, notadamente Florestan Fernandes e Michael Löwy. / This thesis is a study about José Carlos Mariátegui´s work reception (1894-1930) on Latin America social science. It deals with the social diffusion and appropriations of Mariteguiana´s ideas on the series of intellectual social science history and the history of Marxism in this continent. The first part is dedicated to a social and intellectual study, to investigate Mariátegui literacy incursions in journalism, his position on political Peruvian debate, some aspects of his European intellectual background, the style of his production as well as certain analytical perspectives and political tensions due to his role as a socialist militant. On the second part, it seeks to expose the diffusion process of his work, especially from 1960´s onwards. It considers the hypothesis of a meeting between a notable editorial enterprise coordinated by the author´s relatives and social-political and cultural circumstances experienced in Peru and Latin America favoured the construction of Mariátegui´s transnational ideas reception. In a critical process of traditional Latin American left discourse, of modernization perspectives and dualistic thesis on social science, it is possible to observe that the heterodox image of Mariátegui emerge as one of the most important update referential on Marxism. From the decade of 1990 onwards, Mariátegui becomes incorporated to a colonial perspective, especially by Aníbal Quijano, as a epistemological reference about Eurocentric critic view. The third and last part of this research builds a reflexion on Mariátegui´s reception by Brazilian sociology based on mapping readers (and readings) of the Peruvian intellectual, notably Florestan Fernandes and Michael Löwy.

This thesis investigates the role of network structure, brokerage, and framing in high-risk collective action. I use the protest movement that emerged in Russia following falsified national elections in 2011 and 2012 as an empirical case study. I draw on a unique dataset of nearly 30,000 online documents and the linking structure of over 3,500 Russian Web sites. I employ a range of computational social science methods, including Exponential Random Graph Modeling, an advanced statistical model for social networks, social network analysis, machine learning, and latent semantic analysis. I address three research questions in this thesis. The first asks if a protest network challenging a hybrid regime will have a polycentric or hierarchical structure, and if that structure changes over time. Polycentric networks are conducive to high-risk collective action and are robust to the targeted removal of key nodes, while hierarchical networks can more easily mobilize protesters and spread information. I find that the Russian protest network has a polycentric structure only at the beginning of the protests, and moves towards a less effective hierarchical structure as the movement loses popular support. The second research question seeks to understand if brokered text is actually novel, and if that text is more novel in polycentric networks than in hierarchical ones. Brokers are the individuals or nodes in a network that connect disparate groups through weak ties and close structural holes. Brokers are advantageous because they have access to and spread novel information. I find that the text among nodes in brokered relationships is indeed novel, but that information novelty decreases when networks have a hierarchical structure. The last research question asks if a protest movement in a high-risk political setting can be more successful than the government at spreading its preferred frames, and within such a movement, whether moderate or extremist framing is more prevalent. I find that the opposition is far more effective than the government in spreading its frames, even when the government organizes massive counter protests. Within the movement, moderates are more likely to have their framing adopted online than extremists, unless violence occurs at protests. The findings suggest that movements should build flatter, more diffuse networks by ensuring that brokers tie together diverse protest constituencies. The findings also provide evidence against those who claim that authoritarian governments are more effective in shaping online discourse than oppositional movements, and also suggest that movements should advance moderate framing in order to attract a wider base of support among the general population.

Online social networks (OSNs) have seen a remarkable rise in the presence of automated social agents, or social bots. Social bots are the new computing viral, that are surreptitious and clever. What facilitates the creation of social agents is the massive human user-base and business-supportive operating model of social networks. These automated agents are injected by agencies, brands, individuals, and corporations to serve their work and purpose; utilising them for news and emergency communication, marketing, social activism, political campaigning, and even spam and spreading malicious content. Their influence was recently substantiated by coordinated social hacking and computational political propaganda. The thesis of my dissertation argues that automated agents exercise a profound impact on OSNs that transforms into an array of influence on our society and systems. However, latent or veiled, these agents can be successfully detected through measurement, feature extraction and finely tuned supervised learning models. The various types of automated agents can be further unravelled through unsupervised machine learning and natural language processing, to formally inform the populace of their existence and impact.