Teresa Oliveira

Identity Construction through Schooling: Listening to Students' Voices

One of the main problems faced by several educational systems around the world is educational exclusion. Portugal is no exception. It is recognized that those who drop out of education are at risk of social exclusion, with reduced opportunities to participate in society. In order to understand this, the authors reconceptualized the school as a community of practice, where students not only appropriate academic knowledge, but also new ways of being and perceiving themselves and others, and school practice itself. This article aims to better understand educational exclusion from the perspective of at-risk students. How do their constructed positional identities originate ways of being, relating and acting in relation to school agents and practices? The authors developed four focus group interviews with students presenting high rates of truancy and failure. Against their expectations, several students showed intent of pursuing their own path within the school system and saw themselves as capable of changing the conditions of failure in order to succeed in school.

CURSOS DE EDUCAÇAO E FORMAÇÃO: UMA OPORTUNIDADE PARA QUESTIONAR PRÁTICAS DE SALA DE AULA E RECONSTRUIR IDENTIDADES ESCOLARES

Este estudo tem como objectivo conhecer o impacto de activi- dades investigativas em aulas de Fisica e Quimica na reconstrucao de identidades escolares. Estudaram-se tres turmas do ensino secundario de um curso de Educacao e Formacao. Participaram 28 alunos, com historias pesadas de insucesso escolar, aos quais se fez uma entrevista em grupo focado. Recorreu-se a um metodo de analise de conteudo. Os dados suge rem um percurso, inicial, feito de insucessos, assente em identidades esco lares negativas, que nao sendo passiveis de ser re-avaliadas ou restauradas, geram vontade de abandonar a escola. Para alem disso sugerem que novas experiencias pedagogicas e curriculares podem facilitar a reconstrucao dessas identidades e a emergencia de novas formas de se relacionar com a escola e com o saber escolar.

Compreendendo a aprendizagem da linguagem científica na formação de professores de ciências

After the contextualization of the Portuguese curricular basic school science reform an innovative didactic work proposal to be applied in the classroom by science teachers are presented – “design-based research”. With this approach we intend to answer to the teachers and researchers problems like the implementation of research-oriented practice and to decrease the gap between educational research and teacher practice. The above-mentioned approach integrates the scientific language teaching, crucial for scientific literacy and scientific culture. The teachers’ training, as a challenge to solve those problems is a privileged field for analysis. Key-words: design-based research; curricular reform in Portugal; Didactics of science teaching; scientific language; training of science teachers.

Confidence intervals for variance components in gauge capability studies

We present a method, that uses pivot variables, which are functions of statistics and parameters, of constructing confidence intervals for variance components in gauge capability studies. As illustration we will consider a study on repeatability and reproducibility measures. Besides this the paper includes a simulation study demonstrating that in approximately 9500 out of 10000 simulations the 95% confidence interval covers the true value of the parameter.We present a method, that uses pivot variables, which are functions of statistics and parameters, of constructing confidence intervals for variance components in gauge capability studies. As illustration we will consider a study on repeatability and reproducibility measures. Besides this the paper includes a simulation study demonstrating that in approximately 9500 out of 10000 simulations the 95% confidence interval covers the true value of the parameter.