Improvement of Educational Products Validation form in professional postgraduate programs

ABSTRACT Educational Product and Technical-Technological Product constitute a specificity of postgraduate programs in the professional modality, a product that must be carefully evaluated by the programs and recorded on platforms of evaluating bodies. In 2019, a working group from the teaching area was assembled to create a Validation Form for these products. Thus, this article aims to present a proposal for improving this Validation Form for Educational/Technical-Technological Products, based on reflections treated in scientific articles and scientific events from the area, focusing on the relevance and need for this type of evaluation in a standardized way. It is intended to collaborate with the improvement of the evaluation processes and procedures of Educational/Technical-Technological Products for the necessary accuracy, representativeness, and homogeneity, which will allow the real dimensioning of the contributions of these products. This involves not only training qualified professionals, but also transforming practices in the Sistema Único de Saúde (SUS) [Brazil's Unified Health System], promoting advances in science and in its fields of application.

Clothing and identity: Chinese rural students’ embodied transformations in the urban university

In the context of enduring urban–rural inequality in China, attention has been drawn to rural students’ encounters in the urban university. In this research, I elicit rural students’ narratives about their (classed) perceptions of clothing and style, as well as the bodily practices embedded in their subjective social mobility experiences in the unique social milieu of China’s context. I argue that participants’ transforming practices entail a nexus of challenge to and also compliance with the urban field. Through the theoretical lens of habitus, I illustrate how rural students strategically transform their ‘style’, as dispositions of habitus, in the urban field to obtain valued forms of embodied capital. At the same time, I emphasise the importance of viewing rural students’ embodied transformations critically, as it entails both their effective generation of valued capital to actively adapt to the urban field and their (involuntary) compliance to the oppressive social relations.

Transforming practices of diplomacy: the European External Action Service and digital disinformation

This article explores the transformative role of practices of countering digital disinformation in European Union diplomacy. It argues that an overlooked dimension of the change brought by the rise of digital disinformation is located in the emergence of everyday countering practices. Efforts to counter disinformation have led to the recruitment of new actors with different dispositions and skillsets than those of traditional diplomats and state officials in diplomatic organizations such as the European External Action Service. Focusing on the countering efforts by the East StratCom Task Force, a unit introduced in 2015, the article argues that the composition of actors, the task force's practices and the reorientation in audience perception it reflected, contributed significantly to institutional transformation. Drawing on 23 interviews with key actors and building on recent advancements in international practice theory, the article shows how change and transformation can be studied in practices that have resulted from digitalization in international politics. The article thus contributes to an increased understanding of the digitalization of diplomacy in which new practices can emerge from both deliberate reflection and experimentation.

Teaching in multilingual classrooms: strategies from a case study in Portugal

ABSTRACT This study examined teaching practices developed by teachers to respond to linguistic diversity in a Portuguese case study. We analysed the position that students’ languages received in the classroom, and what these practices revealed about teachers’ awareness of multilingual pedagogies, a step to social justice. Three main strategies emerged: promoting Portuguese without involving students’ languages, using a common language (English) as lingua franca, using students’ languages. These strategies appeared in a dynamic way as teachers tried to satisfy the aims of developing the language of schooling, communicating with students and valuing students’ linguistic identities. Prioritising Portuguese language dominated, and the strategies were enacted through monolingual views, indicating little awareness of multilingual pedagogies. Thus, the need to support teachers in transforming practices in multilingual classrooms is emphasised.

Ascending from the Abstract to the Concrete as a Principle of Expansive Learning

The article examines the potential of the dialectical principle of ascending from the abstract to the concrete for transforming practices of learning. It is shown that V.V. Davydov’s work has created a foundation for such transformation. The theory of expansive learning builds on Davydov’s legacy and brings the principle of ascending from the abstract to the concrete into learning and concept formation outside schools, “in the wild.” Three studies investigating different scales of expansive learning are discussed, focusing on the internally contradictory germ cells discovered and used in those studies. The article concludes by emphasizing the need to integrate Davydov’s revolutionary pedagogy and the broader agenda of school transformation as part of societal transformation.