Pre-service teachers' representations of children's understanding of mathematical concepts: conflicts and conflict resolution

The purpose of this study was to investigate the extent to which research experience could enhance pre-service teachers' understanding of children's knowledge of mathematical concepts. A group of five pre-service teachers designed and conducted a study of children's understanding of fractions. As participant-observers throughout their study we gathered evidence of change in pre-service teachers' representations of children's knowledge of fractions. The focus of our observations was on the conflicts generated by the gaps between the pre-service teachers' research findings and their representations of the children's knowledge of fractions. Results indicate that research experience is fruitful in developing an inquisitive disposition in pre-service teachers and in sensitizing future teachers to children's knowledge of a mathematical concept. Pre-service teachers became familiar with the research literature regarding children's understanding of fractions, they questioned the typical instructional sequence of teaching fractions and they scrutinized methods of assessing children's knowledge of mathematical topics.     

Experiences on the Design,Creation, and Analysis of Multimedia Content to Promote Active Learning

In an educational context, multimedia content can be created by the students, by the faculty, or by a third party. With the aim of improving the lab work, motivation, and active learning in introductory electronics courses, several innovative technologies and instructional strategies were considered involving these three possibilities: real-time screen capture, video recording with smartphones, and technical analysis of science fiction films. Factors such as ease of use, fast production, or no need of expensive tools were critical for the choice of these technologies, which were introduced on activities (lab sessions, collaborative work) where traditional strategies required too much time or could not be applied properly due to a large number of students and/or time constraints. We found that video lab reports made by the students using smartphones are a very adequate and straightforward assessment method, combining the advantages of oral assessment and written reports. The technical analysis of science fiction films proved to be helpful to reinforce the motivation of some students towards the subject, although it requires some degree of maturity to reach this end. Video tutorials made with screen capture technology proved to be easy to record and produce, and they constitute a fast and convenient way to produce new multimedia resources adapted to the specific needs of the subject.

     

The endogenous relationship between innovation and diversification, and the impact of technological resources on the form of diversification

This research has endeavoured to build on earlier research on the relationship between a firm's technological resources and the direction of its diversification, by trying to confirm the endogeneity of this relationship and by addressing the influence of innovation on the choice of the mode of diversification. Based on a sample of Spanish firms, our results suggest that innovation drives diversification, but not the reverse. The second important finding of this research is the empirical confirmation that knowledge assets are not related to the diversification mode.     

The role of part-time employment among young people with a non-university education in Spain

For some people, a part-time job is merely an intermediate state that serves as a stepping stone to further employment and makes labour market integration easier. Yet, part-time work also appears in highly unstable careers. The present research aims to determine the role of part-time employment for young people with non-university studies. Using the Survey on Transition from Education/Training and Labour Market Integration (ETEFIL-2005), we build the monthly sequence of labour states for young people from when they finish their non-university studies until the time of the survey. The analysis allows us to conclude that part-time work is fairly atypical in the early stages of a career but that those who have part-time jobs spend quite a long time in them. In addition, we identify several patterns in the use of part-time work, the ‘integrative’ pattern proving to be the most prevalent. Factors such as education and early preferences are seen to have a major impact on career paths.     

Digital preservation of Brazilian indigenous artworks: Generating high quality textures for 3D models

Three-dimensional (3D) digital preservation aims at generating 3D models of objects that have cultural or scientific value. It allows realistic visualization of objects through virtual museums or scientific applications, and the restoration of the preserved object in case of natural wear or accidents. This work contributes to this research area by presenting a method to improve color texture quality of 3D models obtained from color and depth images of a laser scanner. Although this device offers precise depth information, the resulting color information is still poor and limits the generation of realistic textures. Our approach is to capture photographs of the object with a high-resolution digital camera and use them to generate a new color texture for the 3D model. Our work proposes a practical technique, easy to replicate, to generate high quality textures for 3D models from photographs. The method is composed by three main steps: (1) calibration of the image acquisition devices; (2) data acquisition; and (3) texture generation. In this paper, we detail our color texture generation method and apply it on the digital preservation of many artworks made by native Brazilians (indians) from the Wauja and Karaja communities. These indigenous communities are acknowledged as great ceramic artists, each bearing their own main themes, using a very rich symbolism in their paintings. Their artworks represent important aspects of the native South American culture and their digital preservation is motivated by three main reasons: (1) their fragility; (2) the paintings loose their original appearance with time; and (3) the possibility of extinction of these communities. We present several results of preserved artworks with enhanced quality realistic texture maps. Also, we present a methodology to analyze the quality and accuracy of texture maps. The resulting 3D models can be visualized through a tool we developed to support the virtual exhibit of 3D preserved heritage.     

3D preserving xviii century barroque masterpiece: Challenges and results on the digital preservation of Aleijadinho's sculpture of the Prophet Joel

We present our recent efforts in the digital preservation of a set of baroque sculptures made by Antônio Francisco Lisboa, known as O. Aleijadinho, which is an important American baroque artist. The set was made in the beginning of the xix century and is composed of 12 near real sized sculptures, hand-carved in soapstone. These sculptures represent 12 of the 16 prophets from the Holy Bible and are part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Our group has been collaborating with UNESCO in a project that aims to preserve all these statues. We hereby present our initial efforts, consisting of the 3D digital preservation of the Prophet Joel sculpture. We developed a complete 3D digital preservation pipeline composed of four main stages: data acquisition, 3D reconstruction, texture generation and 3D model visualization. By evaluating our results in this first sculpture, we discuss the improvements we conceived before applying our pipeline in the remaining ones. Finally, we present the 3D model of the Prophet which registers the sculpture's current state and will be used in restoration, research and educational activities. We believe this contribution may be useful to guide further research on similar scenarios, showing how to avoid some practical mistakes and achieve good results.     

Parental beliefs about child development and parental inferences about actions during child-rearing episodes

The way parents’ beliefs on child development support the elaboration of practical inferences during everyday child-rearing episodes was examined. We contrasted two models based respectively on the classical and the connectionist view of schema approaches. According to the classical view, parents activate preformed packages of beliefs in order to produce inferences whereas under the connectionist view, they activate the network of interconnected episodic traces that better fits the information provided by the situation. In the former case, the quality of the inferences depends on the activation of the proper schema whereas in the latter case it depends on the structure of the information given. Two experiments were designed in which parents holding a particular global belief about child development (either constructivism or environmentalism), were presented with a target couple with similar or different views with respect to them. In Experiment 1, constructivist parents bearing in mind the couple’s belief had to judge a set of words describing the couple’s image as parents, their educational goals as well as a number of sentences describing the couple’s child-rearing practices during hypothetical episodes. In Experiment 2, environmentalist parents had to judge the couple’s practices and the amount of information presented about the couple’s ideas as well as its plausibility were manipulated. The results indicate that the accuracy and speed in the production of inferences depends on the information presented in the task. When the information is embedded in episodes and a full, plausible and distinctive account of the couple’s belief are provided, then the production of inferences is performed faster and with more accuracy. The results are discussed in terms of the classical and connectionist views of schema approaches.