Contributions of the History and Philosophy of Science and Methodology of Problematization to the Public Health Policies teaching and their connection with the Environment

This paper aims to report and analyze a pedagogical practice developed for Public Health Policies teaching in a course held at the Federal University of Lavras, in the first semester of 2018. For the development of this paper, a class was created and taught in a Public Health Policies teaching course based on the History and Philosophy of Science and Problem-solving Methodology, seeking to understand how these pedagogical strategies contribute to the teaching of this theme and its connection with the environment. At the end of the class, students were asked to evaluate the practice, pointing out the strengths and points to be improved. These feedbacks were organized and analyzed qualitatively through the Content Analysis and, later, were discussed. The results of the analyzes indicate that Environmental Education cannot be conservative of social conditions, but rather present the connection between man and nature, highlighting the link between the exploration of nature and the production of goods. In addition, the History and Philosophy of Science, starting with questions about the reality of students, can enhance the teaching-learning process, since it can avoid fragmentation of knowledge, allowing an approximation of students to scientific knowledge and its social use.

Robotizing meaningful work

Purpose Robots have a history of replacing human labor in undesirable, dirty, dull and dangerous tasks. With robots now emerging in academic and human-centered work, this paper aims to investigate psychological implications of robotizing desirable and socially rewarding work. Design/methodology/approach Testing the holistic stress model, this study examines educational professionals’ stress responses as mediators between robotization expectations and future optimism in life. The study uses survey data on 2,434 education professionals. Findings Respondents entertaining robotization expectations perceived their work to be less meaningful and reported more burnout symptoms than those with no robotization expectations. Future optimism about life was not affected by robotization expectations alone, but meaninglessness and burnout symptoms mediated the relation between expectations of robotization and future optimism. Practical implications Robotization may be viewed as challenging the meaningfulness of educational work by compromising ethical values and interaction. To prevent excess stress among personnel, robotization should be planned together with employees in co-operation negotiations. This implicates the need for co-designing technological changes in organizations especially in the cases of social use of robots. Originality/value Work’s meaningfulness in robotization is a novel research topic and a step toward socially sustainable robotization.

Contributions of Linguistics to the Study of Aphasias: Focus on Discursive Approaches

The chapter aims to present and discuss the contributions of Linguistics to the study of aphasias, especially regarding the power of discursive theories to subsidize language assessment and therapeutic follow-up with aphasic individuals. Jakobson, in 1956, based on Saussure’s approach and on Luria’s neuropsychological theory, was the first scholar to call for the participation of linguists in this field, once “aphasia is a problem of language”. Nonetheless, aphasia does not disturb only linguistic formal levels – phonetical-phonological, syntactic, lexical-semantic –, but also pragmatic and discursive aspects of language that are constitutive of meaning processes involved in the social use of language. Unfortunately, more traditional approaches to language assessment and to the follow-up work are exclusively based on metalinguistic tasks, which do not take into consideration the subjective and contextual aspects of language functioning. The experience we have acquired over more than thirty years within the field of Neurolinguistics has shown that qualitative longitudinal researches – mainly case studies – are a privileged locus to seek for evidences of how the linguistic levels are impacted in the several forms of aphasia. Such understanding, in turn, favor the therapeutic work towards more contextualized activities, in order to help the individuals to reorganize their linguistic-cognitive processes.

“HEY GOOGLE, HELP ME LEARN” Voice Assistant Devices in the New Zealand Primary School

<p>Artificial intelligence is being embedded into home devices and these have the potential to be useful tools in the classroom. Voice assistant devices such as Google Home or Alexa can respond to verbal instructions and answer questions using the Internet of Things, web-scraping or native programming. This research explores student use of voice assistant devices in the context of two senior primary school classrooms in New Zealand. A socio-material approach is taken, examining the devices in existing classroom environments and how the children use these devices without teacher prompting. The research is framed within the Technology Acceptance Model 2 (Venkatesh et al., 2003). Student’s perception of the device’s usefulness, ease of use, and the subjective norm and social impact of using the device in each classroom environment is discussed. The research questions examined were what and how do students ask the devices, and how accurate the devices are in answering their enquiries. Data were gathered for two case studies from device transcripts over six weeks and teacher interviews. Findings suggest that the students found the devices usable, useful and interesting to challenge and explore. Reliable responses for basic literacy, numeracy, and social studies enquiries were recorded, however, the ability of the device to understand student enquiries was variable and the device was limited by a lack of pedagogical techniques and knowledge of learner needs. Evident in the data were students’ social use, perseverance and anthropomorphism of the devices. The implications of this research are that voice-activated artificial intelligence devices can support learners in classroom environments by promoting perseverance, independence, and social learning.</p>

Public Sculpture and Social Practice in the Roman Republic

This chapter examines the production, function, and social use of public sculpture during the Roman Republic (509–27 bce). After an historical introduction, it focuses on the active interaction of plastic arts with the viewer and the different levels of meaning and understanding, surveying the types, subjects, and materials and the intent (honorary, commemorative, votive, funerary, or cult images) of republican sculpture. The state-regulated management of statues in public places—mainly honorary portraiture, which spread from the fourth century bce onward—is also discussed. Space is devoted to the viewing and reception of a portrait, which was a system of visual and material signs. Besides, statues “functioned” in a specific topographical setting. The chapter then discusses the urban scenography for statues along the triumphal route in Rome; the impact of the new Greece-oriented artistic tendencies in marble sculpture and acrolithic cult statues with respect to the conservative perception of the traditional terracotta plastic; and the ideological and religious meaning of the temple coroplastic art, which followed the spread of sacred buildings constructed both in Rome and in Italy.

“HEY GOOGLE, HELP ME LEARN” Voice Assistant Devices in the New Zealand Primary School

<p>Artificial intelligence is being embedded into home devices and these have the potential to be useful tools in the classroom. Voice assistant devices such as Google Home or Alexa can respond to verbal instructions and answer questions using the Internet of Things, web-scraping or native programming. This research explores student use of voice assistant devices in the context of two senior primary school classrooms in New Zealand. A socio-material approach is taken, examining the devices in existing classroom environments and how the children use these devices without teacher prompting. The research is framed within the Technology Acceptance Model 2 (Venkatesh et al., 2003). Student’s perception of the device’s usefulness, ease of use, and the subjective norm and social impact of using the device in each classroom environment is discussed. The research questions examined were what and how do students ask the devices, and how accurate the devices are in answering their enquiries. Data were gathered for two case studies from device transcripts over six weeks and teacher interviews. Findings suggest that the students found the devices usable, useful and interesting to challenge and explore. Reliable responses for basic literacy, numeracy, and social studies enquiries were recorded, however, the ability of the device to understand student enquiries was variable and the device was limited by a lack of pedagogical techniques and knowledge of learner needs. Evident in the data were students’ social use, perseverance and anthropomorphism of the devices. The implications of this research are that voice-activated artificial intelligence devices can support learners in classroom environments by promoting perseverance, independence, and social learning.</p>

Ethics in Social Design: Definitions, Models, and Perspectives

We are witnessing a proliferation of design, collaborative technological platforms, websites, and networks dedicated to exchanging information of all kinds. These technologies have a positive role and promote social justice, equity, and the rapprochement of cultures. However, several researchers and civil community members wonder about the use of these technologies, the reasons beyond their emergence, and their designers. While technologies are at the forefront of global development, any system to function well needs a framework to support the experiences that would flow from their environment. In all human progress, some voices urge us to be cautious. Given the preponderance of technologies in our environment, what are the principles to regulate these ecosystems? Many studies have highlighted the moral and ethical issues related to the social use of information technology. There have been previous attempts towards finding ways to create suitable rules for these systems. This paper presumes that many of these conduct codes are more user-oriented, and very few are issued to regulate information technology professionals and designers. Therefore, it is urgent to find a way to design socio systems where several entities (organizations and individuals) can collaborate independently and responsibly on-site in their respective spheres on social projects. In this paper, we are trying to provide different perspectives and lines of thought for responsible and safe use of socio systems and collaborative technology platforms.

Integrating Self-Report and Psychophysiological Measures in Waterpipe Tobacco Message Testing: A Novel Application of Multi-Attribute Decision Modeling

Background: Waterpipe (i.e., hookah) tobacco smoking (WTS) is one of the most prevalent types of smoking among young people, yet there is little public education communicating the risks of WTS to the population. Using self-report and psychophysiological measures, this study proposes an innovative message testing and data integration approach to choose optimal content for health communication messaging focusing on WTS. Methods: In a two-part study, we tested 12 WTS risk messages. Using crowdsourcing, participants (N = 713) rated WTS messages based on self-reported receptivity, engagement, attitudes, and negative emotions. In an in-lab study, participants (N = 120) viewed the 12 WTS risk messages while being monitored for heart rate and eye-tracking, and then completed a recognition task. Using a multi-attribute decision-making (MADM) model, we integrated data from these two methods with scenarios assigning different weights to the self-report and laboratory data to identify optimal messages. Results: We identified different optimal messages when differently weighting the importance of specific attributes or data collection method (self-report, laboratory). Across all scenarios, five messages consistently ranked in the top half: four addressed harms content, both alone and with themes regarding social use and flavors and one addiction alone message. Discussion: Results showed that the self-report and psychophysiological data did not always have the same ranking and differed based on weighting of the two methods. These findings highlight the need to formatively test messages using multiple methods and use an integrated approach when selecting content.