Search

This article describes how The Language Center at the Espirito Santo Federal University changed from using traditional pencil-andpaper tests to performance testing, based on authentic tasks. The change was prompted because people thought that their testing did not reflect a communicative approach to language teaching. The Assessment Project lasted for two years; the author discusses its participants, goals, stages (including pilot testing), and results. Content and construct validity improved, leading to positive washback. Learning objectives and criteria for passing were clarified.

Having the South American Amazon as our spatial cut, this paper aims to discuss it as a space of physical, environmental and socioeconomic relevance to regional rearticulation, highlighting the issue of transport infrastructure and the importance of Brazil to boost this process in contemporary times. With the end of the Union of South American Nations (Unasur) in 2019, several of its councils were paralyzed and discontinued, such as the Infrastructure and Planning Council (Cosiplan), reflecting the abandonment of efforts built since the beginning of the 21st century. In addition, relations between national preferences and the indispensable search for development, and mechanisms of cooperation and regional integration, which are fundamental instruments to meet such demands, were stressed. In turn, a scenario of discredited institutions made room for greater action by multiple public and private, internal and increasingly international and multinational actors who, in a way disconnected from regional arrangements, directed infrastructure investments focusing on their own interests, resulting in expiation of the the socio-environmental vulnerability in the Amazonian territories. We argue that it is necessary to integrate to preserve and develop. Regional governance and institutionality are central pillars for the resumption of a more resilient South American integration process, aimed at protecting and developing the Amazon, in which Brazil has an important driving role to be exercised and a directive leadership to retrieve.

Although the importance of understanding the social and cultural processes mediating pre-service teachers' expansion of the power to act has been increasingly recognized lately, the way the concept of "agency" is portrayed in most of the studies focuses almost exclusively on the subject of activity and therefore, there is insufficient theoretical attention to the reverse side of agency, the experience of being subject to and subjected to conditions. In this paper, the authors exemplify the process of "conscientização" and agential development in the case study of Jefferson, a new teacher engaged in a school teaching education program. The purpose of this paper is to show how new forms of consciousness, expansion of the power to act, and increasing control over conditions simultaneously emerge for teachers in training during praxis and how agency is played out by the relations between being subject to and subjected to conditions. Implications for teaching education programs are discussed.

As humanity reaches the 5.0 industrial revolution, education plays a critical role in boosting the quality of human resources. This paper reports bibliometric research on emerging TiP during 1993-2022 in the educational field to analyse its development on any level of education during the last three decades. This study employed a Scopus database. The findings are that the trend of TiP publication in educational fields has tended to increase every year during the past three decades and conference paper became the most published document type, the USA is the country which produces the most publications; "Students" being the most occurrences keyword and total link strength. The publication of the TiP is ranked to the Quartile 1, which implies that a publication with the cited performance is a publication with credibility because the publisher has a good reputation. Researchers can find the topics most relevant to other metadata sources such as Web of Science, Publish, and Perish.

Calls from policymakers to assimilate immigrants through English literacy have grown urgent. Yet the 2007 U.S. Census has reported that one in five U.S. residents speaks a language other than English at home. What's more, new immigrants often settle in long-standing immigrant communities in which these non-English languages are the lingua franca. These demographic trends call for a reconceptualization of the problematic relationship of literacy to immigrant assimilation. To whom, precisely, are immigrants assimilating, especially in multi-ethnic communities? And how exactly does literacy, especially biliteracy, shape this process? Through an ethnographic investigation of how two different immigrant groups form biliterate partnerships in the quest for legal immigration papers, this essay examines how literacy and assimilation function in light of the changing writing demands of contemporary immigrant life. (Contains 8 notes.)

Over the course of less than a quarter of a century, two Brazilian Heads of State – Fernando Collor in 1992 and Dilma Rousseff in 2016 – have been removed from office by impeachment. There has been much controversy surrounding both proceedings, particularly the latter. The article seeks to discuss briefly the history of the proceeding of impeachment in Brazil and its significance for the country’s political life after 1988. Through an analysis of the impeachment cases of President Fernando Collor and President Dilma Rousseff, and overview of the literature on impeachment in Latin America, the paper will address the similarities and differences present in both cases in which a Brazilian Head of State was removed from office. The last part of the article will further discuss the disputes among Brazilian jurists triggered by differing evaluations of this legal measure and, in particular, the more recent case of its implementation in Brazil.

This paper is a written dialogue among four activists from the Emancipa Popular Education Movement in Brazil, following the principles of Freirean pedagogy as a "circle of culture." It delves into how "popular knowledge can be experienced as popular power," narrating the history, struggles, and strategies employed by the Emancipa movement in their pursuit of democratizing Brazilian universities. The discussion is set within the context of Latin American structural inequalities and the issue of educational exclusion in Brazil. It emphasizes the vital role of contesting culture and knowledge as part of the movement's fight against social injustices perpetuated by peripheral capitalism, including racist violence and gender oppression. The paper adopts emancipatory pedagogy as the method to empower and mobilize grassroots efforts in this transformative endeavour.

Purpose: Microteaching is a teacher training method based on microclasses (groups of four or five students) and microlessons lasting no more than 5-20 min. Since it was first explored in the late 20th century in experiments at Stanford University, microteaching has evolved at the interdisciplinary level. The purpose of this paper is to examine the networks found via an analytical bibliometric study of the scientific output related with microteaching in teacher training, through a study and examination of the Web of Science database. Design/methodology/approach: This research was conducted with the VOSviewer tool for content analysis through data mining and scientific network structure mapping by means of the normalisation technique. This technique is based on the association strength indicator, which is interpreted as a measurement of the similarity of the units of analysis. Findings: Two hundred and nine articles were thus obtained from the Web of Science database. The networks generated and the connections among the various items, co-authorship and co-citation are presented in the results, which clearly indicates that there are significant authors and institutions in the field of microteaching. The largest cluster is made up of institutions such as Australian Catholic University. The most often-cited document is by Rich and Hannafin. Allen (1968), who defines microteaching as a technique based on microclasses and microlessons, is the author most often cited and has the largest number of connections. Research limitations/implications: This research's limitations concern either aspects that lie beyond the study's possibilities or goals that have proved unattainable. The second perspective, which focuses on skill transfer, contains a lower percentage of documents and therefore has a weaker central documentary structure. Lastly, the authors have also had to bear in mind the fact that the scientific output hinges upon a highly specific realm, the appearance and/or liberalisation of digital technologies and access to those technologies in the late 20th century. Originality/value: This research shows that microteaching is a promising area of research that opens up vast possibilities in higher education teacher training for application in the realm of technologies. This paper could lead to several lines of future research, such as access to and the universal design of learning from the standpoint of different communication and pedagogical models based on microteaching.

This paper aims at identifying and explaining the correlation between the Covid-19 and multi-lingualism through cross-country research, drawing on three datasets: WHO data on the expanse of the pandemic, UNESCO data on endangered languages, and the LDI (Linguistic Diversity Index). Results establishing a direct correlation between the pandemic and multi-lingualism vary across the countries, except the USA, India, and Brazil. The three countries experiencing the highest global pandemic caseload occupy the top positions in the number of endangered languages and are among the top ten linguistically diverse countries. Drawing from the research findings, the paper addresses the criticality of investing in multi-lingualism and calls for a shift of perspective among policymakers driven by neoliberal rationale towards greater recognition and higher funding for multi-lingual education.

Purpose: There is a widely held belief that sustainable development (SD) policies are essential for universities to successfully engage in matters related to sustainability, and are an indicator of the extent to which they are active in this field. This paper aims to examine the evidence which currently exists to support this assumption. It surveys a sample of universities in Brazil, Germany, Greece, Portugal, South Africa and the UK and the USA to ascertain the extent to which universities that are active in the field of sustainable development have formal policies on sustainable development, and whether such policies are a pre-condition for successful sustainability efforts. Design/methodology/approach: The study involved 35 universities in seven countries (five universities respectively). A mixed-methods approach has been used, ranging from document analysis, website analysis, questionnaires and interviewing. Findings: Although only 60 per cent of the sampled universities had a policy that specifically addressed SD, this cannot be regarded as an indicator that the remaining 40 per cent are not engaged with substantial actions that address SD. Indeed, all of the universities in the sample, regardless of the existence of a SD formal policy, demonstrated engagement with environmental sustainability policies or procedures in some form or another. This research has been limited by the availability and ability to procure information from the sampled universities. Despite this, it is one of the largest research efforts of this kind ever performed. Research limitations/implications: This research has been limited by the availability and ability to procure information from the sampled universities. Practical implications: The findings provide some valuable insights into the connections between SD policies on the one hand and the practice of sustainable development in higher education institutions on the other. Social implications: Universities with SD policies can contribute to models of economic growth consistent with sustainable development. Originality/value: The study is the one of the largest research efforts of this kind ever performed.

Copyright of Revista de Sociologia e Política is the property of Revista de Sociologia e Politica and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Learning analytics (LA) adoption is a challenging task for higher education institutions (HEIs) since it involves different aspects of the academic environment, such as information technology infrastructure, human resource management, ethics, and pedagogical issues. Therefore, it is necessary to provide institutions with supporting instruments to deal with these challenges. Although there has been much research on factors that are associated with the adoption of LA in HEIs, there has been much less research on specific models that can be used to guide actual adoption. In this sense, we developed MMALA, a Maturity Model for Adopting Learning Analytics. It is a guide that describes the necessary practices for taking the first steps in this area and enables institutions to reach higher levels of maturity in LA use, culminating in an organized and systematic adoption. In this paper, we describe the development process of MMALA, focusing on the model evaluation, which used both the questionnaire and the expert opinion method. MMALA can also give institutions an overview of their current situation regarding LA adoption. In this sense, we present the results of the maturity evaluation of three Brazilian HEIs using MMALA.

An alternative to insert history of science (HS) in teacher formation programs is the use of concept maps (CM), which may be very useful to represent the historical elaboration dimension of science concepts, laws, and principles. This paper presents the results of a study that identifies the conceptions of pre-service physics teachers about the relationships between CM hierarchical organization and knowledge elaboration in HS. In the first stage of the research, the content analysis methodology was used to analyze and categorize the students' answers to questions concerning the relationships between CM hierarchical organization and HS. In the second stage, the answers of a different group of pre-service teachers were analyzed concerning the level of agreement with the categories previously elaborated. The students associated CM hierarchical organization with knowledge improvement, elucidation of the importance level of the concepts, and the relationships between more general and more specific contents. We point out that the use of CM in HS subjects may contribute to the pre-service teachers associating HS concepts not in a chronological way, but in hierarchical order, from the most general to the most specific ones.

Teaching programming is a complex process requiring learning to develop different skills. To minimize the challenges faced in the classroom, instructors have been adopting active methodologies in teaching computer programming. This article presents a Systematic Mapping Study (SMS) to identify and categorize the types of methodologies that instructors have adopted for teaching programming. We evaluated 3,850 papers published from 2000 to 2022. The results provide an overview and comprehensive view of active learning methodologies employed in teaching programming, technologies, programming languages, and the metrics used to observe student learning in this context. In the results, we identified thirty-seven different ALMs adopted by instructors. We realized that seventeen publications describe teaching approaches that combine more than one ALM, and the most reported methodologies in the studies are Flipped Classroom and Gamification-Based Learning. In addition, we are proposing an educational and collaborative tool called CollabProg, which summarizes the primary active learning methodologies identified in this SMS. CollabProg will assist instructors in selecting appropriate ALMs that align with their pedagogical requirements and teaching programming context.

The present paper discusses higher education and the role of digital learning in the Brazilian context. Using a social justice, multicultural perspective, it argues that effective digital learning in higher education is likely to happen when digital curricular contents have been embedded with inclusionary strategies that foster plural students' critical thinking and empowerment. To develop the argument, it firstly discusses the multicultural nature of Brazilian society and the relevance of conceptualizing digital learning and multicultural perspectives in education. It then highlights the higher education system and structure in Brazil, discussing how remote digital learning has been taking place in that system. It also depicts how digital learning in higher education has been conceived in Brazilian educational policies, both before, and as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Brazil has focused on internationalization of the higher education sector, in response to trends across the globe. The main program for promoting internationalization was the Science without Borders program. The paper analyses Brazilian international mobility from a regional perspective, particularly reviewing how inequality affected access to fellowships. The Northeast Region, which historically records higher poverty indicators than the South and Southeast regions, showed average growth statistically equal to the Southeast Region. By comparing access to scholarships and fellowships between the two largest regions of Brazil, this paper sought to analyze any structural change between the Southeast region and the Northeast. The Science without Borders (Ciência sem Fronteira, in Portuguese) program has achieved considerable results. In the first four years of the program, completed student exchange programs increased by 1,620% (i.e., 2011-2014). Despite this, the structure of unequal regional access remained. Using the hypothesis test methodology T for means with different variances, it was possible to evaluate at a significance level of 95%. The two largest regions in Brazil maintained the unequal profile of access to the program. The conclusion is that the growth in the offer of scholarships for internationalization between 2010 and 2019 has not changed the unequal regional profile of access to public education services in Brazil.

Over the past decade, the number of advertised tenure-track faculty positions in higher education institutions in the United States and abroad has steadily declined while the competition for these positions has become fierce. This situation has caused some scholars to seek perspectives into the factors that influence the tenure-track faculty selection process. This study investigates the elements that impact higher education graduate programme faculty searches. A total of 39 programme coordinators, department heads and deans who had previously participated in higher education programme searches were surveyed to explore their experiences and perceptions regarding the selection process. The findings indicate that the search committee's faculty votes within the higher education hiring programme are more influential in selection decisions than the votes of either a programme chair or dean. Additionally, participants identified a candidate's academic accomplishments, interview performance and presentation skills as the determining characteristics influencing their selection. These findings provide useful information to tenure-track job seekers who seek faculty positions at higher education graduate programmes in the United States and around the world.

The present paper posits that in culturally diverse societies such as Brazil the value of cultural diversity within higher education institutions, faculties, and students has begun to gain momentum as a relevant dimension in the assessment of quality, performance, and productivity. In order to develop this argument, it first reviews the supporting literature, offering an overview of the institutional structures of higher education in Brazil and its quality assessment practices. It then analyses how multicultural aims may or may not have been articulated in the assessment of performance and productivity in Brazilian higher education policies, as gleaned from the National Plan for Education (Presidency of Republic, 2014), and recent debates around curriculum reform. It discusses the extent to which higher education policies in Brazil have tried to tackle the twin objectives of enhancing performance while also valuing cultural diversity and inclusion in their quality control strategies. The study may have global implications; as international mobility increases societies around the globe should be prepared to value both performance and diversity in their assessment exercises and curricular policies. [This paper was presented at the 14th Higher Education Reform Workshop 26-28 September 2017, Hiroshima University, Japan.]

This paper presents and analyzes a case study of a five-week study abroad course called "Inequality in Brazil: An exploration of race, class, gender, sexuality, and geography." The course was constructed to teach social inequality in the context of Brazil by using place-based and experiential learning within the framework of critical pedagogy (Freire, 1989). By examining inequality through the lens of culture and geography, students were empowered to become "student-teachers" in their explorations of race, class, gender, and sexuality as they linked theory to practice and lived experience. This paper provides an example of how study abroad can be used to teach about issues of inequality by partnering with community members to build learning environments where students and community members can all benefit.

The aim of this study is to identify the most prolific countries in the field of special education and to discuss the widespread impact of their papers by taking into account the country's h-index. Through a bibliometric analysis, the data were collected in the Web of Science Core Collection category "Education, Special" in the Social Science Citation Index during 2011-2020. The 25 most prolific countries in the field of special education were determined in terms of paper productivity, and it was seen that the leading country was undisputedly the USA (54.42%). Meanwhile, a strong positive correlation was found between the h-index and the number of papers published by the countries (r=0.864). On the other hand, when the ranking in terms of the number of papers was reconfigured by the h-index, it was relatively changed. The possible reasons for this change for the countries with the most changing rankings were discussed by considering some definitive criteria such as the journal quartiles, the percentage of international and domestic, and the percentage of open access papers. This study reports a positive correlation between the quality and quantity in the field of special education for the publications of countries. It has been shown that where the positive correlation deviates, then especially, the journal quartiles, the percentage of international collaboration and the percentage of open access papers have a significant effect. The bibliometric findings may be useful to enrich the discussion about the widespread impact of papers and debate whether the use of h-index is acceptable for cross-national comparisons.

This paper examines the pedagogical and decolonial possibilities of teaching genre cinema through non-Western perspectives. As a sessional instructor teaching across multiple institutions in Vancouver, Canada, I elaborate on how I have taught genre cinema as a decolonial and pedagogical project. Through course design that recognises the way that the evolution of film theory in general, and genre theory in particular, has been encoded in Euro-Western-centrism and analysis, my teaching practice brings into conversation other knowledges and approaches to film-making and film studies that have often been excluded from film studies pedagogy. My pedagogical project is to decolonise film studies, including genre theory, as exemplified in such courses as: Re-Visioning Genre Theory, a fourth-year course at Emily Carr University of Art and Design; Genre Cinema: From Classical Hollywood to Global Contemporary, a third-year course at the University of British Columbia; and Refiguring Futurisms, a fourth-year film seminar at the University of British Columbia. Some of the questions explored in my research and teaching practice consider how genre cinema is adopted and subverted in contemporary non-Western films. In this paper, I use Latin American decolonial theory to focus on Brazilian cinema as an exemplar of non-Western and decolonial approaches to genre theory.

The higher education efficiency evaluation model using the data envelopment analysis method has interested many researchers. This paper uses bibliometric analysis on publications extracted from the Scopus database to provide a comprehensive overview of research publications on the measurement of higher education efficiency based on data envelopment analysis: its growth rate, major collaboration networks, the most important and popular research topic. A total of 169 related publications were collected and analyzed from 1988 to 2021. The analysis results show that: Publications published every year have increased sharply in the last six years; The quality of publications is relatively high as publications tend to be published in journals with high-ranking indexes; Countries with the most influence in studies on this topic are: Italy, China, Spain, the USA, and the United Kingdom; Authors with the most influence in this research direction are Agasisti T., Abbott M., Doucouliagos C., Avkiran N.K., and Johnes J.; The research cooperation among countries and among affiliations is not strong. Finally, the paper has provided recommendations for future studies based on the findings.

In recent decades, increased scholarly attention has been paid to the interactions between immigration, media coverage, framing, and the rise of populism. This paper draws on these interactions to systematically review peer-reviewed articles related to media representations of immigrants and refugees in Brazil and the United Kingdom (UK). The objective was to identify the tone used in such representations and the research methods applied in the articles. This is the first systematic literature review that compares studies on media and immigration including both Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) and non-WEIRD countries. This paper uses Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) to collect, map, and systematize 47 peer-reviewed articles published in the past two decades. The findings show that, in the studies we analyzed, the tone of representation of refugees in the media in both countries is negative. Mass media underrepresent the main actors and use stereotypes and discourses of otherization. This paper contributes to our understanding of the differences between studies, including those conducted in the UK and Brazil, and calls for more comparative studies that include countries from the global south and global north. It also demonstrates the standardization of frames and tone of representation on immigration in both countries, suggesting similar patterns across different countries.

In this paper, we present our study into how teaching practices in chemistry are socially stratified under the center-suburban divide in a medium-sized city, located in the State of São Paulo, Brazil. The paper mainly draws upon the Bourdieusian-inspired concepts of institutional habitus and symbolic capital to examine how institutional discourses and norms are embodied and implemented by chemistry teachers in their pedagogical practices, and the way in which this affects the distribution of chemistry knowledge in the classroom. This study is a comparative ethnographic-based investigation which employs multiple qualitative methods to investigate chemistry classes in two public schools in Brazil. The schools were selected based on their achievements in large-scale assessment tests and socioeconomic composition. Based on the results obtained from the analysis of four months of observational data of chemistry classes, school routines, 12 focus groups composed of high school students, and four semi-structured interviews conducted with teachers and staff, we argue that chemistry teaching is partially influenced by two interrelated dimensions of the school's institutional habitus--the schools' reputation and their students' social profile. Students in different schools tend to have unequal opportunities for learning and identification with chemistry. For instance, in the suburban school, students are seen as having learning deficiencies and are given deficit explanations on scientific concepts during classes, while the students from the school in the city center are taught under a pervasive culture centered around academic achievements, intense competition and individuality. The aforementioned factors largely shape chemistry teaching in the two public schools investigated. We conclude by presenting our final considerations on how educational institutions play an influential role in shaping chemistry teaching practices.

Online learning is a reality in much of the world. Among the tools available for online learning, there are Online Discussion Forums (ODF), due to their potential to promote collaborative learning. However, there is a lack in the literature about the evaluation of the forums, a gap marked by the absence of quantitative tools that make it possible to evaluate the forums from the student's perspective. In this sense, the objective of this paper was to develop and validate a Quality Perception of Online Discussion Forums (QPODF) scale. To this end, quantitative research was carried out with students of postgraduate courses "lato sensu" the online distance education. Exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis was used to validate the QPODF scale. The results demonstrate that the quality of the construct perceived online discussion forums has two dimensions "Forum Structure" and "Forum Mediation." The two identified factors were shown to be consistent and accurate to measure the quality of online forums. Moreover, the theoretical approach used to compose the scale is convergent with the measurement model proposed in the paper.

Brazilian writer Carolina Maria de Jesus (1914-1977) was born in a rural community and spent most of her life in a slum. Despite this, her literary work achieved remarkable editorial success, having its value recognized by critics and academic circles. This paper analyzes Carolina Maria de Jesus's autobiographical narratives in the light of John Dewey's aesthetic theory, with the purpose of investigating the factors responsible for the development of her aesthetic sensitivity -- intellectual and emotional dispositions favorable to involvement with artistic practices. The results suggest that Carolina Maria de Jesus's literary skills, which express not only individual but also collective yearnings, resulted from the incentive she received to think about things that do not exist and from her relationship with people who favored the formation of a personality open to varied experiences. Such results are presented as requirements for a democratic and humanist education that aims at the flowering of aesthetic sensitivity and encourages educators and students to believe in their creative potential.

Abstract This article takes the opportunity of the recent establishment of two large and remote marine protected areas (MPAs) in Brazilian jurisdictional waters to discuss the role played by large-scale MPAs and their impacts to achieve international goals. After the launching of the Aichi Biodiversity Targets in 2010, especially Target 11, which concerns marine areas, some coastal states have created large-scale MPAs as a way of attaining a numerical target, though not necessarily fulfilling other ecosystem commitments. Brazil is the most recent example of this strategy through the establishment of MPAs that seem primarily concerned with international goals rather than effective biodiversity protection. Since the management of these protected areas will be shared between a technical body (Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation) and the Navy, and only a small portion of which will have similar status to "no-take" zone, the new MPAs can hardly be identified as being strongly committed to the marine environment protection. The article ends with some suggestions for improving biodiversity conservation in the Brazilian large-scale MPAs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper is proposed a straightforward model selection approach that indicates the most suitable count regression model based on relevant data characteristics. The proposed selection approach includes four of the most popular count regression models (i.e. Poisson, negative binomial, and respective zero-inflated frameworks). Moreover, it addresses two of the most relevant problems commonly found in real-world count datasets, namely overdispersion and zero-inflation. The entire selection approach may be performed using the programming language R, being all commands used throughout the paper available for practical purposes. It is worth mentioning that counting regression models are still not widespread within the social sciences.

Copyright of Organizações Rurais & Agroindustriais is the property of Organizacoes Rurais & Agroindustriais and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Teaching introductory computer programming and choosing the proper tools and programming languages are challenging tasks. Most of the existing tools are not fully integrated into systems to support the teaching-learning processes. The present paper describes the usability evaluation of the Virtual Programming Lab module for Moodle (VPL-Moodle) based on a satisfaction questionnaire answered by 37 undergraduate students enrolled in CS1 and CS2 courses and 7 lecturers. Moreover, a heuristic evaluation performed by two specialists is also presented. Results of the descriptive and inferential analysis revealed mainly two things: (a) the VPL-Moodle has a low level of usability in all five aspects analyzed by the students: satisfaction, efficiency, learnability, helpfulness, and environment control; and (b) lecturers found some difficulties using the VPL-Moodle. A number of suggestions for the improvement of the VPL-Moodle interface are provided based on the findings of the paper.

This paper presents an explorative holistic analysis of digitally-constructed gamification processes in mathematics education. The main aim of this study is to identify the key issues, intentions and trends by examining peer-reviewed publications using a combination of social network analysis (SNA), computerized lexical analysis and content analysis. Research findings indicate that there is a growing trend in gamification in mathematics education (GIME) research. GIME is mostly employed in primary school level. It was also found that, numbers is the most gamified math topic. Another research finding reveals that the researchers mostly use gamification to improve mathematical problem-solving, math achievement and math performance apart from the motivation and engagement. According to SNA findings, the most strategic terms in GIME research are as follows; geometry, fractions, mobile-learning, gender-studies, human-computer interaction, intelligent tutoring systems and tangible user-interfaces. GIME research is mostly influenced by USA and Brazil hence, the developing countries have an increasing interest in GIME research. Finally, findings on general research discourse implies that the general discourse among the sampled papers is positive. The findings obtained in this study may be useful to improve mathematics education by mapping a research agenda for researchers and educators with the exploration of potentials of GIME research.

This study is a follow-up to the analysis of an inquiry-based learning activity applied to students in a public university in Brazil. We advocate that an effective education in immunology must incorporate elements that are essential to research in the area, such as generating and analysing data. These elements would empower students to apply science reasoning to face professional challenges. Our protocol included two of these elements: experimentation and abstraction. The utmost aim was to examine the production of argument by groups engaged in three different activities: 1) performing experiments and analysing the data generated; 2) reading papers on the subject (activation of complement) prior to the activities in (1), and 3) reading papers on the subject and analysing data generated by others. Our analysis reveals that guided scientific paper presentation was more influential than performing an experiment in terms of production of complex arguments. Additionally, we found that some groups merely described the data rather than relating the obtained data to the original question that led to the experiments. The findings described herein show the importance of engaging students in procedures that actually generate knowledge and thus incorporate scientific reasoning and discourse in higher immunology education.

In this paper, we describe a dynamic-model as a strategy to teach DNA transcription and translation in an active way. This activity aims to provide learning beyond memorisation through the simulation of molecular processes, stimulating the elaboration of questions and hypotheses by students. The dynamic consists of four steps, starting with different problem situations which provide a context and encouragement to start the activity. The next steps connect these problems with DNA transcription and translation, requiring the active participation of students to simulate these processes through a construction of a model based on an iron board and representations of cellular structures, enzymes and genetic sequences fixed in magnets. An implementation experience of this dynamic, applied to 21 undergraduate veterinary students at a public university in the city of Curitiba, Paraná State, Brazil, is also described. Data from pre and post-questionnaires suggest knowledge about DNA transcription and translation was improved and some previous mistakes were clarified. Among the positive aspects that were cited by the students, the words visualisation and playful were more frequent, which reflect the didactic aspects of the dynamic. Some points of attention are discussed throughout the paper, as well as educational implications associated with the material and its potential to promote active learning.

Purpose: Population worldwide has experienced several challenges related to sustainable development, such as scarcity of natural resource, unsustainable consumption, poverty, injustice, violence, social inequality and natural disaster (including floods, tsunami and landslide). These issues interfere in sustainable development and target to achieve societal balance, structuring without compromising economic and environmental resources of future generations. The higher educational institutions are included in this context because they play a role in professional training and in education to promote sustainable practices. The higher educational institutions can assume a prominent position in the 2030 Agenda implementation for sustainable development of the United Nations, especially in the Goals 4 and 10, quality education and reduced inequalities, respectively. The purpose of this research study aims to develop a literature review and analyze the higher educational and sustainable themes, involving the Brazilian scenario. Design/methodology/approach: This research study develops a literature review based on researches that involve higher educational and sustainable themes in the Brazilian scenario. Inclusion criteria are papers in English, with the search equations in their titles, and peer-reviewed papers. Paper publication year was not an exclusion criterion. This research aimed to understand opportunity and challenge processes in the Brazilian higher educational institutions and their actions, so that the Sustainable Development Goals are completely achieved and the 2030 Agenda for sustainable development is fulfilled. For this, a research central question was established: What are the opportunities and the challenges to achieve the 2030 Agenda for sustainable development in the Brazilian higher education? Findings: A total of 636 papers were recovered. The "Higher Education AND Opportunities," "Higher Education AND Challenge," "Higher Education AND Challenges," "Higher Education AND Opportunity," "Brazilian AND Higher Education" and "Brazil AND Higher Education" search equations found, respectively, 165, 146, 131, 74, 62 and 25 papers, involving 94.8% of the total number of the papers found. The papers recovered enabled the vision of five clusters: policy; inclusion; culture; relationship; and environment, society and economy. The paper analyses found that innovation process, sustainable practical implementation and holistic look, involving professors and students, can allow the 2030 Agenda achievement. Originality/value: The authors of this research study presented a framework based on the literature analyzed through five clusters: policy; inclusion; culture; relationship; and environment, society and economy, considered from opportunity and challenge perspectives. The authors introduced and discussed the Brazilian higher educations and their opportunities and challenges. The Brazilian panorama was linked with the 2030 Agenda for sustainable development, in specific, with the Goals 4 and 10. Implications of this research study are related to the higher educational opportunities and challenges in policy, inclusive, cultural, sustainable and relationship contexts, involving governmental and nongovernmental sectors, professors and students for the Brazilian educational improvement.

The aim of this paper is to analyze a set of didactic materials developed to teach English as an Additional Language at a Brazilian public school in Rio de Janeiro. Such materials were designed to invite 7th grade students with diverse social, racial, and economic backgrounds to learn about the world and the English language from viewpoints that delineate a decolonial stance (Mignolo, 2010; Kumaravadivelu, 2016; Jansen, 2017). Grounded on the notions of Critical Race Literacy (Ferreira, 2014) and Critical Language Awareness (Alim, 2005), this paper looks into didactic activities built upon emancipatory (Freire, 1996) and transgressive (Pennycook, 2006; hooks, 2013) approaches to Applied Linguistics and Language Education, understanding English Language classrooms as privileged arenas for the construction of ideas on race. The methodological approach is based on the premises of a Dialogical Discourse Analysis (Brait, 2006/2018) to identify centripetal and centrifugal forces (Bakhtin, 1981) in the didactic materials produced. Results have indicated that the discourse genres selected (Bakhtin, 2003/1979 apud Tilio, 2017) and the set of activities developed are permeated by social voices (Bakhtin, 1981) that promote decolonial dialogues in the English language classroom.

Purpose: There are several connections between education and disinformation, including the association between years of schooling and vulnerability to unfounded hypothesizing. The purpose of this paper is to inquire into a competing explanation: political leaders might be exploring powerful teaching and learning strategies to disseminate agendas based on baseless assumptions, exploiting human's tendency to generate robust theories even with incomplete or incorrect information. Design/methodology/approach: The authors analyzed ten videos published online by a highly partisan YouTube channel. The footage contained informal encounters between former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and supporters in front of his official residence. The team sought to answer two research questions: Do Mr Bolsonaro's discursive moves include activators that lead the audience to understand that they are theorizing and reaching conclusions "on their own?" Does Mr Bolsonaro's audience follow those clues and mention politically motivated hoaxes and conspiracy theories in their comments? This paper draws on perspectives from the field of educational research to investigate the mechanisms used by the president to shape public opinion. Findings: The authors found evidence of the employment of elements akin to classroom discourse in the dialogues led by Mr Bolsonaro. Specifically, different types of rhetorical questions are present to a substantial extent in the data subset analyzed for this paper. Originality/value: This work offers an alternative perspective to analyzing disinformation. By drawing from established literature from education research, this paper departs from facile explanations that take for granted the lack of intelligence of the audience. Conversely, it argues that popular, if not powerful, teaching and learning strategies might play an undesired role by shaping individuals' cognitive processes to create robust, internally consistent theories about the world using flawed assumptions and incorrect "building blocks."

Through activities such as institutional partnerships, scholarships, mobility and, most recently, offshore campuses and satellite offices, universities and their nations of origin have furthered their relationship with key-countries. This paper aims to understand what factors universities considered when choosing the host country of their satellite offices and possible interest in diplomacy. The exercise focused on the efforts of US universities in Brazil. It tested expressions of soft power versus internal elements of universities' administration to verify their significance. By checking the efforts of 131 US universities, this paper hints that non-academic elements, such as a country's foreign policy, were also statistically significant and must be taken into account when analysing universities' internationalisation strategies.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper aims to discuss the outreach strategies of higher education institutions (HEIs) to promote the inclusion of refugees, focusing on two case studies of programs in southern Brazil. Design/methodology/approach: This paper analyzes two outreach programs of Brazilian universities: the Welcome Program for Immigrants (Programa Acolhida ao Imigrante) of the University of South Santa Catarina, a private higher education institution and the Support Center for Immigrants and Refugees (Núcleo de Apoio ao Imigrantes e Refugiados), sponsored by the Federal University of Santa Catarina, a public university. The activities of the two institutions were compared with the targets of the sustainable development goals to discuss the outreach strategies of HEIs aimed at promoting the inclusion of refugees, through descriptive research, with a qualitative approach based on documentary and bibliographic research. Findings: The results show that academic participation in research and outreach programs provides refugees with an education but also represents a social contribution far beyond qualifications and technical training, by mitigating local and global problems. The practice of inclusive education allows a reduction in historically existing inequalities. The findings of this study indicate that the results are much more effective when universities, government and society work together to reduce inequalities. Originality/value: This study addressed how universities can and should ensure life quality (SDG 3), including an equitable education and fostering lifelong learning opportunities for everybody (SDG 4) and gender equality (SDG 5), to reduce unemployment (SDG 8) and inequalities among people (SDG 10), through outreach projects.

Purpose: Energy consumption and renewable energy sources are included in the goals for the 2030 Sustainable Development Goal 7 (SDG7) agenda, and target buildings are the biggest electricity consumers. In turn, Netzero energy buildings (NZEB) contribute to achieve SDG7 goals. This paper aims to identify which Brazilian higher education institutions (HEIs) practices contribute to developing the NZEB concept. Design/methodology/approach: Case studies were selected to identify which implanted practices applied by HEIs in Brazil, listed in the UI GreenMetric 2020 Ranking, are related to the NZEB concept. The implemented sustainable practices were also analyzed to evaluate the connections and impact between universities and the local community. Findings: Results show the lighting and air conditioning retrofit were among the most common practices related to energy efficiency to reduce consumption. For renewable energy generation, photovoltaic solar energy is the most common practice used by HEIs. Research limitations/implications: Only Brazilian HEIs listed in the UI Green Metric Ranking were analyzed. No standard regulation or formal reports support the wide dissemination of the strategies adopted by HEIs in Brazil. Practical implications The strategies adopted by HEIs related to Netzero buildings can reduce emissions, optimize operating costs and improve building comfort conditions, which connect all SDGs. Social implications: HEIs can promote awareness related to energy use and clean energy generation within the local community. Originality/valu: This paper presents the most common strategies adopted by Brazilian HEIs. However, limitations related to lack of strategies, data transparency and specific Netzero energy regulation were also found. These issues can hinder other HEIs to adopt similar strategies and contribute to the promotion of SDG7 in Brazil.

Purpose: The paper investigates the learning practices carried out by Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in the transition from strictly face-to-face to remote teaching in response to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. It also analyses how these practices could be used as a baseline to support new perspectives on learning in the technological education field. Design/methodology/approach: The authors conducted a single-case study of a Brazilian technological university. Findings: This study's findings indicate that institutional planning and providing support to faculty and students were essential measures for a successful transition from face-to-face teaching to emergency remote teaching. Planning includes careful selection by the HEI of the tools that make a virtual learning environment and the strategies used to replace face-to-face teaching with emergency remote teaching. Our study points out the lessons learned during the pandemic. It presents guidelines for HEIs on how to prepare for a return to face-to-face teaching, embodying some learning dimensions such as synchronous or asynchronous, active or passive, individual or collective, and mediated or not mediated by information and communication technologies (ICTs). Originality/value: The paper provides reflections on the four dimensions to support decisions to leverage learning in each educational institution. This paper's main contribution is that the concept of teaching and learning must be comprehensive and inclusive according to the particular HEI context.

In recent years, youth across the planet have begun to mobilise, motivated by the perceived injustices associated with the causes, consequences and politics of climate change. However, education systems lag behind, preoccupied with the "what" and "how" of climate change, rather than engaging it as a social issue in which students themselves are implicated. In this paper, we share the results of our participatory research exploration into youth and climate change through an international education project, in which 99 students from 13 countries joined virtually in a climate change learning experience, culminating in the collaborative development and presentation of a White Paper to the 2018 IPCC Cities and Climate Change Conference. Grounded in a critical global citizenship education framework, this project provides a site to explore climate change education from the perspectives of diverse youth, who inform possibilities for climate change education that addresses justice, individualisation and emotionality.

Purpose: This paper aims to discuss how trade union leaders deal with the implementation of Industry 4.0 (I4.0). The study is circumscribed to the Brazilian automotive sector and came from a human-centric (Industry 5.0) concern related to issues such as organisational learning, knowledge, innovation and workplace learning. Design/methodology/approach: Case studies in two truck plants related to union participation during new product and process implementation based on Industry 4.0. Semi-structured interviews with union leaders from both plants were conducted to determine the subtle similarities and differences between the two polar types. Findings: The findings pointed out that human resources and workplace learning must be reviewed to prepare workers to face I4.0. Four themes are explored: modernisation origins; negotiation process; workers' concerns; and results and lessons learned. The findings highlight concerns about employees and job loss; replacement of workers by technological devices; workplace learning and the trade union perspective; and influence of the country's economic situation on I4.0 implementation in social systems dependent on worker tacit knowledge. Originality/value: This paper presents labour union leaders' perspectives related to the impact of I4.0 and contributes to a better understanding of industry-worker workplace learning.