Metaphors we’re colonised by? The case of data-driven educational technologies in Brazil

ABSTRACT

This article discusses issues concerning the spread of data-driven educational technologies in Brazil. Here, as elsewhere, educational technology continues to be promoted optimistically as the bearer of a panacea for historically-rooted social problems. Whilst some of these technologies have indeed contributed to important widening-participation programmes in the last two decades, widespread advocacy of technological ‘solutionism’, reflected in gradually stronger policy demands for efficiencies to be improved through ‘innovation’, has supported a relentless marketisation of the country’s educational systems. As transnational corporations position themselves to take control of key areas of these systems, threatening to restructure the whole sector, data-driven educational technologies provide the latest example in a series of ‘new’ ideas offered in an ever-expanding market. Based on the notion of ‘conceptual metaphors’, which encapsulate specific ways of perceiving, thinking and relating with the world, this article examines key metaphors underpinning discourses surrounding data-driven educational technologies in Brazil. In particular, the article analyses ways in which these specific metaphors may be promoting perspectives that ignore difference and obscure broader questions concerning education, thus contributing to the reproduction of previously existing problems and supporting new forms of colonisation.     

知识产权特征新论——兼析知识产权与有形财产权的区别

知识产权本质上是一种无形财产权,本文通过对知识产权与有形财产权之比较,论述了知识产权的四方面特征,即客体的无形性、相对垄断性、法律效力在时空上的有限性及权利保护范围的不确定性.     

Association between attitudes of filial responsibility and parent caregiving behavior

Objective: To analyze the association between attitudes of filial responsibility and adult child caregivers’ behaviors in the Southern Region of Brazil.

Methods: Cross-sectional study with 100 child caregivers of older adults. The data were collected through an interview using the protocol of filial responsibility adapted and validated to Brazilian Portuguese. Filial Expectation and Filial Piety scales evaluated the attitudes of filial responsibility. Caring behaviors assessed were: instrumental support, emotional, financial support, and companionship. The variables that presented p< .20 value in the bivariate analysis were inserted into a multivariate Poisson regression model.

Results: Financial and emotional support behaviors were significantly associated with filial piety (p = .050 and p = .001, respectively) and filial expectation (p = .013 and p = .023, respectively). Providing companionship was associated with filial piety (p = .015).

Conclusion: Attitudes of filial responsibility are associated with some but not all caregiving behaviors. Brazilians caring for older parents show more similarities to Chinese than to Canadian caregivers. Furthermore, filial responsibility and caregiving behaviors are strongly affected by Brazilian social and cultural norms. Reasons are discussed.     

营造有利于我国高等职业教育发展的法制环境

作为高等教育重要组成部分的高等职业教育，由于发展起步迟，历史短，相应的法制建设还未跟上，还存在着法制建设尚不健全，司法执法不够严格，社会各界及人民群众关于职业教育的法制观念不强等问题。因此，必须积极营造有利于我国高等职业教育发展的法制环境，建立健全高等职业教育方面的法律法规体系，使高等职业教育走上健康，快速发展的轨道。     

Connectedness among taiwanese middle school students: a validation study of the hemingway measure of adolescent connectedness

Theories of adolescent connectedness suggest that adolescents strive to become connected by engaging with and valuing the people, activities, and worlds in their social ecology. The purpose of this study was to examine the psychometric properties of a measure designed to assess these worlds of connectedness among 320 junior high school students in Taiwan. The subscales and composite scales evidenced satisfactory reliability and concurrent validity. A hypothesized three-factor, higher order structural model of connectedness was cross-validated. Girls were generally more connected than boys. Both connectedness to school and to friends explained more variance in connectedness to self than did family connectedness. There was mixed support for separation-individuation processes. The measure appears promising in terms of future research on adolescent social development in the Asia Pacific.     

Literature,listening, and young children

“What is that sound?”, “What did the kangaroo say?”, and “What might you hear during a walk?” provide evidence that educators of young children realize that listening represents a necessary ingredient in successful school experiences. Children listen for many hours of the school day, but listening has been a neglected area of instruction. The traditional low priority of listening instruction may have been based upon the myth that children naturally learn to listen or on the misconception that listening skills cannot be taught. Using literature to teach listening can improve learners' listening abilities, provided early childhood educators use developmentally appropriate children's literature.     

A technological pedagogical content knowledge based instructional design model: a third version implementation study in a technology integration course

This paper presents the third version of a technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) based instructional design model that incorporates the distinctive, transformative, and integrative views of TPACK into a comprehensive actionable framework. Strategies of relating TPACK domains to real-life learning experiences, role-playing, and teachers as designers were developed based on the three views and integrated into the third version of the model. The model was then applied in a teacher education undergraduate course on technology integration. A case study approach was used. Data were collected from the participants’ discussion worksheets, lesson designs, and the researchers’ field observation notes. Data analysis results suggest that the strategies integrated into the model helped the participants deepen their understanding of student-centered technology applications and practice TPACK. Findings, implications, and future research possibilities are discussed.     

Experiential learning in doctoral training programmes: fostering personal epistemology through collaboration

There has been increasing recognition for the need to reform doctoral training practices to foster students’ personal epistemology. This study describes the design and evaluation of a learning experience designed to help students understand the scholarly publication process. Firstly, this study discusses the design of the learning experience, describing the collaborative process of writing an interdisciplinary publication using both online and face-to-face learning. Secondly, this study evaluates the effectiveness of the learning experience by examining students’ reflections. We show that participation in the learning experience helped students to develop their academic writing proficiency, collaboration and teamwork, intercultural competence, and ability to engage in reflective practice. Importantly, we show that each student also created more individualised knowledge, gaining insight into how they and others think. This study, therefore, demonstrates that personal epistemology can be fostered through collaboration in a doctoral writing group context.     

Nonverbatim captioning in Dutch television programs: a text linguistic approach

In the Netherlands, as in most other European countries, closed captions for the deaf summarize texts rather than render them verbatim. Caption editors argue that in this way television viewers have enough time to both read the text and watch the program. They also claim that the meaning of the original message is properly conveyed. However, many deaf people demand verbatim subtitles so that they have full access to all original information. They claim that vital information is withheld from them as a result of the summarizing process. Linguistic research was conducted in order (a) to identify the type of information that is left out of captioned texts and (b) to determine the effects of nonverbatim captioning on the meaning of the text. The differences between spoken and captioned texts were analyzed on the basis of on a model of coherence relations in discourse. One prominent finding is that summarizing affects coherence relations, making them less explicit and altering the implied meaning.     

The Effects of a Student Sampling Plan on Estimates of the Standard Errors for Student Passing Rates

Examined in this study were three procedures for estimating the standard errors of school passing rates using a generalizability theory model. Also examined was how these procedures behaved for student samples that differed in size. The procedures differed in terms of their assumptions about the populations from which students were sampled, and it was found that student sample size generally had a notable effect on the size of the standard error estimates they produced. Also the three procedures produced markedly different standard error estimates when student sample size was small.