Suchergebnisse

At a time when the mass media insist on bombarding us with news about natural, political and economic disasters, words, ideas and images associated with such 'crises' and 'catastrophes' shape to a great extent collective memory and current imagination. "Fear and Fantasy in a Global World" seeks to stir the debate on the processes and meanings of, as well as on the relations between, fear and fantasy in the globalized world. Collective fears and fantasies are analysed from a number of cross-disciplinary perspectives, promoted by the epistemological underpinnings of comparative literature. In various ways and from different disciplinary angles, the 17 essays here gathered respond to and scrutinize key questions related to the imaginaries of fear and fantasy, as well as their relations to trauma, crisis, anxiety, and representations of both the conscious and the unconscious. ; info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

The FUTURE project was initiated by the Porto Metropolitan Area Regional Centre of Expertise on Education for Sustainable Development (RCE Porto) and addresses two documented priorities at the regional context: the need to improve the natural capital, particularly native woodlands (which underpin a broader environmental quality), and the need to expand on the social capital, specifically through the creation of social networks that facilitate the action, cooperation and public participation required to move the region towards sustainability. The project, collaboratively designed and managed, comprises the creation of 100 hectares of native woodlands in the region (100,000 trees) until 2015 and, simultaneously, the setting up of a group of citizens that are aware, skilled and motivated enough to promote and care for these native woodlands in close cooperation with regional organizations. ; info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

ISBN 978-989-8471-21-5 ; The processes and practices of Portuguese education and training are becoming increasingly integrated in agendas globally structured, and whose area of influence is placed in the common frame of European Union policies and transnational organisms such as OCDE (Pacheco, 2009). Evaluation has been acquiring, in the last decades, a critical role, extrapolating its importance beyond the field of education (Afonso, 2010). The emphasis given to schools evaluation derives from two trends that affect most European countries: the decentralization of means and the creation of national goals and of levels of school results (Eurydice, 2011). Departing from the political and economic analysis of globalization on education and making a critical approach to the policies of sharing (Takayama, 2008), it is aimed to analyze the mediation of the pressure applied by curricula policies of homogenization and standardization of results (Afonso, 2012; Santiago, Donaldson, Looney & Nusche,2012) and their influence on teachers of Mathematics. This quantitative study, involves a questionnaire survey to teachers from 1st to 6th grade and primary teachers, in which it is ascertained how the model of external evaluation, implemented in Portugal since 2006, has been contributing to the creation of concrete consequences in school results, namely on the standards of evaluation, and on the dominance of summative tests in Mathematics, taking in account the curricular changes and teaching changes. ; Operational Program of Competitiveness Factors – COMPETE ; FCT – Sciences and Technology Foundation under the project ...

Local Agenda 21 (LA21) emerged 23 years ago as a voluntary policy innovation for local governments aiming at sustainability and has now completed its lifecycle. We aim at a second look at LA21 from the standpoint of the institutional and innovation diffusion theories and with Portugal as case study. Results show a three moment lifecycle for LA21, each with distinct diffusion patterns. The Dawn, stymied by lack of regional and national leadership, was likely fuelled by a learning mechanism. It lasted 10 years and involved a mere 1% of the potential adopters. The Zenith took place when other countries had already come full circle. During this phase 27% of the local governments became active and both coercion and competition stand out as relevant engines. Twilight, most probably powered through coercion, competition and imitation mechanisms, took LA21 to a steady state with an additional 19% of local governments enrolling. Since then LA21 has shown departures in several different directions, including oblivion. We speculate, based on preliminary data that, although most LA21 are no longer active, a durable setting was created that promotes further innovation and public participation. ; info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

The concept of Local Agenda 21 comprises a process of participatory development by which the consensus between the authorities and several stakeholders is created, to agree on the common development and implementation of a "plan of action" in which environmental protection should be integrated, dealing with the local problems and priorities as well as economic prosperity and the social entity of the community. The council of São João de Madeira has started implementing the Local Agenda 21 by a co-operation between the City Council and the Portuguese Catholic University of Porto. Besides sustainable development one of the main goals of this process is the promotion of democratic participation. In this report the implementation of Local Agenda 21 in this council is described on the level of instruments and media used in this process: forums of discussion, strategic co-operations, direct questioning of the public, support of opinion leaders in particular teachers and the publishing of information material. The results are presented and the pros and cons of the instruments are discussed. In this report it will also be analyzed whether the perception measured among the population, about how much potential and what problems they observe in the council and whether this corresponds to the points identified by the politicians and technicians of the City Council. Identifying the diverging opinions helps to show the importance of public participation and therefore supports the decision-making process.

The water and air treatment circuits in public swimming pools are controlled by the technical staff, automatic systems and by official or accredited laboratories. The controls are based on appropriate legislation and make use of the specialized experience and accumulated knowledge of several entities. This paper presents a summary of the principles considered fundamental for the previously referred to contributions for the adequate control of swimming pools. The implementation of automatic control systems replacing manual monitoring is an interesting option, with economic benefits for operational costs. The analytical control programme proposed in this work, or any other that may serve the same purpose, should be followed by all public swimming pools. This is essential to provide a high quality public service and also to ensure healthy competition among the providers of such services. ; info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

Background: Health records are the basis of clinical coding. In Portugal, relevant diagnoses and procedures are abstracted and categorised using an internationally accepted classification system and the resulting codes, together with the administrative data, are then grouped into diagnosis-related groups (DRGs). Hospital reimbursement is partially calculated from the DRGs. Moreover, the administrative database generated with these data is widely used in research and epidemiology, among other purposes. Objective: To explore the perceptions of medical coders (medical doctors) regarding possible problems with health records that may affect the quality of coded data. Method: A qualitative design using four focus groups sessions with 10 medical coders was undertaken between October and November 2017. The convenience sample was obtained from four public hospitals in Portugal. Questions related to problems with the coding process were developed from the literature and authors' expertise. The focus groups sessions were taped, transcribed and analysed to elicit themes. Results: There are several problems, identified by the focus groups, in health records that influence the coded data: the lack of or unclear documented information; the variability in diagnosis description; "copy & paste"; and the lack of solutions to solve these problems. Conclusion and implications: The use of standards in health records, audits and physician awareness could increase the quality of health records, contributing to improvements in the quality of coded data, and in the fulfilment of its purposes (e.g. more accurate payments and more reliable research).

To respond to the consequences felt by the COVID-19 pandemic, a community-led intervention was developed by the Portuguese national Movement of Sex Workers. With this exploratory study, we aimed to document their work and analyze their perceptions of this impact. To do so, we interviewed them individually, between May and August of 2020. Additionally, we analysed an Excel Sheet that contained the needs assessment and the support provided by the Movement. The content analysis of both suggests that the impact of the pandemic might have been exacerbated by the social inequalities caused by the prostitution stigma and characteristics such as gender, migration status, race, and socioeconomic status. This study calls for the inclusion of sex workers' voices in the design of policies and responses related to the commerce of sex. The consolidation of a Portuguese Movement of Sex Workers is also noted.