In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 22 (2002) 203-205 [Access article in PDF] The Taipai, Taiwan, Museum of World Religions Maria Reis Habito Dallas, Texas A new museum dedicated to exploring the world's great religious traditions opened in Taipei this past November. Its professed mission is rather unique: to teach about religions and religious life in the world, and to provide instructive experiences about the variety of the world's religious (...) expressions as a basis for mutual understanding, peace, and love among peoples of the world. The vision for the museum as a place that will foster religious learning, interreligious dialogue, and cooperation was developed by its founder, the Venerable Dharma Master Hsin Tao. He conceived the museum as an educational institution that will "explore the fundamental values that are at the roots of all religions." The mission of the museum—"to encourage respect, tolerance and love by fostering dialogue among people of all faiths and backgrounds as we work together to create greater understanding and peaceful interaction in the New Millennium"—has attracted widespread support among his disciples in Taiwan and overseas, whose contributions have made the museum project possible. The Content of the Museum of World Religions The goal in the content development and design of the museum has been twofold: (1) to create an institution of learning in which the visitor will find well structured information about important aspects of the world's religions and (2) to create an interactive space that, in the words of Ralph Applebaum, "immerses the visitors in an experience that enables them to view religion from many different perspectives to gain a better understanding of their own faith and the faith of others." To this, Professor Sullivan added, "[V]isitors will be invited to explore all religions as expressions of a universal search for purpose, meaning, and enlightenment. The museum will be a living monument to the human spirit and a sanctuary honoring the world's myriad faith traditions." To engage the visitor in this exploration, the visit to the museum has been designed as a journey that, even though not a ritual per se, has a structure analogous to the three-part structure of religious rituals.First, visitors experience a moment of separation from everyday life and enter into a very different quality of space and time. Second, during this kind of "time out," [End Page 203] suspended between the normal moments of everyday activity, the visitors undergo a special and intense experience, during which they receive knowledge that transforms their understanding and alters their self-perception. Such transformation occurs in the face of powerful sacred objects, symbols, or events that are displayed and experiencedin relatively dramatic presentations in the museum. They invite the visitor to participate and interact. Thirdly, steps are undertaken to reinsert the visitor back into the life of daily activity.There are fourteen steps to the museum experience, each of which lands the visitor in a different place, with its own experience of time. At each step, in each place, the religious structure of time is viewed on a different scale, seen under a different order of magnification. The museum experience is an orderly succession of times, magnified and mapped onto a series of spaces that invite the visitor's interaction. The aim is to offer the visitor an experience that, like a ritual, is satisfying and transformative and yet remains an experience proper to an institute of learning.As an example of one of the steps, imagine coming from the lobby (step 5) into the Prime Times Theater (step 6). The panel on the eastern wall of the lobby slides aside, and you enter into the darkened theater as into a cave. You are implanted there in the mysterious and primeval space to relive the experience of the seed of love and peace, planted in the fertile grounds of origins. In a fifteen-minute film you view the primordial times described in religious myths and relive the drama and emotion of how life came to be as it is. A powerful weave of narration and imagery retells the stories and poses fundamental questions... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 24.1 (2004) 278-283 [Access article in PDF] The Voice of God on Mount Sinai. Rabbinic Commentaries on Exodus 20:1 In Light of Sufi and Zen-Buddhist Texts. By Reinhard Neudecker. Rome: Pontificio Istituto Biblico, 2002. 157 pp. Reinhard Neudecker's study of the central event of the first five books of the Bible, namely the revelation of God on Mount Sinai to Moses and the Israelites, is an important (...) contribution to interfaith studies that should be of interest to both the scholar and layperson alike. The clarity of purpose and treatment makes this study very accessible; each chapter is thoughtfully structured, with rich footnotes that provide documentation, further explanation, and information. The appendixes contain the relevant rabbinic texts in the original Hebrew; indices of terms, subjects, and Bible citations; as well as a helpful list of consulted works.The stated purpose of the study is to shed light on enigmatic rabbinical interpretations of Exodus 20:1, the verse that introduces the TenWords (commandments) [End Page 278] that form the basis of the complete Torah by taking into consideration analogous passages from the Sufi and Zen Buddhist traditions. In explaining his methodology, the author makes three important distinctions. First, Neudecker is "not dealing with Judaism, Islam and Zen Buddhism as such, but with the views and experiences of some rabbinic Jews, some Sufi Muslims and some Zen Buddhists" (p. x). Second, the chosen texts are offered for their spiritual and mystical insight, not for their historical context or content, because "the mystic has learned to convert the great events recorded by tradition into symbols which express the ongoing inner revelation to which he has been exposed" (p. 6). Because spiritual and mystical writers generally refrain from explaining deep experiences openly (especially because of the impossibility of putting them into words), the author refrains from adding his own interpretations and instead invites the reader to a meditative encounter with the texts. Third, the author does not intend to offer simple parallels or to readily claim correspondences between the rabbinic, Sufi, and Zen texts, but leaves it up to the reader to judge what the "different traditions may have in common and to what degree and where one tradition may go a step further than the others (p. 11, n. 30). His main purpose, as stated above, is to understand the rabbinic comments better by using the method of "intercultural reading" in drawing upon Sufi and Zen Buddhist texts.After the introductory chapter, which offers the methodological considerations and basic information about the Rabbinic sources and Buddhist terminology, the author presents Exod. 20:1 in its rabbinic translation: "And God spoke all these words to say." This short verse has become the stumbling block for the rabbinic interpreter, just as much as a Zen koan becomes a stumbling block for the Zen student or an obscure verse in the Koran for the Sufi. What these stumbling blocks have in common is that they open up a new way of nondiscursive understanding of the text that leads to profound insights and a deep spiritual experience.Chapters 4-9 of the book are devoted to unraveling the mysteries of these insights. The reader is drawn into an engaging process that opens up layer upon layer of meaning, comparable to the peeling of an onion. A short exposition of the themes of each chapter as introduction to the texts proves very helpful for orientation in this process. Chapter 4 addresses the question of how the people at Sinai heard the Ten Words. The rabbis differ on whether the people heard all of the commandments or only the first two of them, but the important point of comparison is the enigmatic statement that God pronounced all the Ten Words, including the entire Torah, "in one single sound, as the (human) mouth cannot speak and the (human) ear cannot hear" (p. 35). This statement implies that God's revelation exceeds the limits of human speaking and hearing, and that God communicates in... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:I Am Food: The Mass in Planetary PerspectiveMaria Reis HabitoI Am Food: The Mass in Planetary Perspective. By Roger Corless. Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2004. 104 pp.In this timely reprint of I Am Food: The Mass in Planetary Perspective (originally published by Crossroad in 1981), the late Roger Corless demonstrates the potential for spiritual and intellectual creativity contained within a stance of dual religious belonging. Corless (...) passed away in January 2007, but this book remains as a way for us to know him and to appreciate, as he did, the possibilities for spiritual revitalization and transformation that may be generated at the intersection and interpenetration of Christian and Buddhist traditions.Corless was raised as a Protestant but as a teenager became deeply engaged with the study of world religions and claimed Buddhism in particular as his own. Eventually he would become a scholar of Chinese Buddhism and a practitioner within the Gelugpa lineage of Tibetan Buddhism. At the same time, however, that the young Corless was being drawn to Buddhism, his connection to his Christian faith was also deepening; his profound experiences of the loving power of God could not be denied even if Christianity's theism could not be easily reconciled with Buddhism's doctrine of emptiness. Instead of leaving one religion for the other, he deepened his engagement with both. He did not seek to synthesize or reconcile Christianity and Buddhism but rather held these traditions together in a dynamic, creative tension and lived each one fully in its turn. When asked about his religious affiliation, Corless would respond playfully that he was "a Buddhist on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, a Christian on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturday, and a Gaia worshipper on Sundays." In I Am Food, however, Corless shows us that on some Sundays, specifically at the celebration of the Mass, he was both Christian and Buddhist at the same time. The great contribution of this book is in its offering of a fresh and transformative approach to the Mass through the application of the symbolic structures of Tibetan Buddhist mandala visualization as a template for active participation in the communion ritual. [End Page 161]Corless's focus in this book is the ritual of the Mass as celebrated within the Roman Catholic tradition. His conversion from Anglicanism to Catholicism occurred much to his "own surprise," prompted by his discovery in Catholicism of "a curious growing center which had great power and potential." This center "brought together many insights which I had picked up from other religions, and moved them to a new synthesis. This synthesis was concentrated in the oddly named 'Mass' " (p. 13). I Am Food offers a scholarly and personal meditation on the meaning, symbolism, and power contained in this central ritual of Catholicism. This project is signaled in the grammatically awkward but intriguing title of the book's first chapter, "Why Is the Mass?" Corless knows that many routine churchgoers never think or dare to ask this question, and the few who do ask it rarely find satisfactory answers. His book seeks to encourage such questioning among those who are in search of a personal religious experience "away from the dullness of minimalist routine" (p. 34). His very lively, humorous, and slightly irreverent style is intended to take the boredom out of the Mass, providing a very personal and original guide to it, different from the series of "excellent, but ultimately claustrophobic, devotional books on 'the spiritual meaning of the Mass'" (p. 13).Among Christian writings that were influential for his understanding of the Mass, Corless names The Mass in Slow Motion (1948) by Ronald Knox, which attempts to describe the inner meaning of the Mass, and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's Hymn of the Universe (1965), which describes a vision of the world as sacrament and celebrates Mass as a cosmic event. While Teilhard de Chardin inspires Corless's "planetary perspective" on the Mass, Nicholas Casabilas's A Commentary on the Divine Liturgy (1978) sharpens the focus on "the mystical significance of each and every act of the priest and people" (p. 13).Corless argues that what makes the Mass seem stifling is the notion of... (shrink)

Language is the main resource for meaningful action, including the very formation of selves and psychosocial identities, shaped by practical norms, beliefs, and values. Thus, language education constitutes one of the most powerful means for both social reproduction and social production and ideological maintenance and utopian innovation. In this paper, we attempt to emphasise the invaluable psychosocial, political, economic, and cultural function of language education in order to propose a critical view of the current transition from the monolingual to a (...) multilingual paradigm. We maintain that multilingual approaches tend to serve the neoliberal framework and reproduce its systemic inequalities. Therefore, we argue in favour of emancipatory multilingual practices that could embody a translingual pedagogy capable of promoting the development of capabilities, the recognition of otherness, and the cultivation of diversity. Rooted in critical theory, namely in Foucault’s notion of subjectification and Freire’s view of conscientisation, an emancipatory translingual pedagogy would enable and empower every learner to synthesise a contextually creative field of new semantic and pragmatic relationships. Critical language education would enhance the ethos of biophilia that fosters what we term the poetics of communality and selfhood, that is to say, the proactive commitment to expanding symbolic and existential novelty. (shrink)

Esse artigo teórico tem como objetivo discutir o problema do suicídio praticado por homens e suas implicações para os serviços de atenção básica à saúde. Utilizou-se o método da revisão narrativa, uma forma de pesquisa que visa contribuir para a reflexão e a discussão sobre um assunto sem pretender reproduzir dados ou responder questões quantitativas específicas. Tendo como base os descritores “suicídio”, “homem” e “saúde”, identificou-se a partir das plataformas Scielo e Pubmed 56 artigos produzidos nos últimos cinco anos em (...) português e inglês, dentre os quais seis foram selecionados. A análise dos resultados indica que no Brasil as ocorrências de suicídio são mais elevadas nas Regiões Sul e Centro Oeste, onde cerca de 70% dos casos são de homens jovens que optam pelo enforcamento. Pode-se identificar como causa aspectos sociais, econômicos, relacionais, psicológicos e aspectos culturais que implicam transformações nas formas como a sociedade vê os homens e na necessidade de que eles reconheçam suas fragilidades. As masculinidades tradicionais precisam ser revistas a fim de que lhes seja possível reconhecer suas limitações diante da vivência de problemas emocionais, buscando-se superar sua recusa a buscar ajuda nos momentos de fragilidade e intenso sofrimento. Conclui-se que os serviços básicos precisam dinamizar suas ações e promover campanhas preventivas, participação da comunidade, facilitação do acesso a profissionais da saúde mental e diversificação de abordagens, compreendendo o suicídio praticado por homens em suas especificidades. Enquanto problema de saúde pública, o suicídio precisa ser abordado de forma preventiva com ações voltadas para o público em geral, sendo importante compreender sua complexidade no que se refere às questões das masculinidades. (shrink)

The rapid and unplanned change to teaching and learning in the online format brought by COVID-19 has likely impacted many, if not all, aspects of university students' lives worldwide. To contribute to the investigation of this change, this study focuses on the impact of the pandemic on student well-being, which has been found to be as important to student lifelong success as their academic achievement. Student well-being has been linked to their engagement and performance in curricular, co-curricular, and extracurricular activities, (...) intrinsic motivation, satisfaction, meaning making, and mental health. The purpose of this study was to examine how student perceptions of their degree completion and future job prospects during the pandemic impact their well-being and what role university support plays in this relationship. We used the conservation of resources theory to frame our study and to develop five hypotheses that were later tested via structural equation modeling. Data were collected from 2,707 university students in France, Germany, Russia, and UK via an online survey. The results showed that university support provided by instructors and administration plays a mediating role in the relationship between the perceived impact of COVID-19 on degree completion and future job prospects and levels of student well-being. Student well-being is decreased by their concerns for their degree completion but not by their concerns for future job prospects. In turn, concerns for future job prospects affect student well-being over time. These results suggest that in a “new normal,” universities could increase student well-being by making support to student studies a priority, especially for undergraduates. Also, universities should be aware of the students' changing emotional responses to crisis and ensure visibility and accessibility of student support. (shrink)

Neste texto, discutimos disposições teórico-metodológicas do Grupo de Estudos sobre Numeramento (GEN), na busca de compreender os modos como pessoas, em suas singularidades, mas como sujeitos sociais, se apropriam de práticas matemáticas, tomadas como práticas discursivas. A pesquisa, a formação docente e a atuação do GEN em contextos educativos diversos inserem-se nos campos da Educação Matemática e do Letramento, pois buscam conhecer sujeitos da Educação (crianças, adolescentes, jovens, pessoas adultas e idosas), que, vivendo em sociedades ‘grafocêntricas’ e ‘quanticratas’, movidos por (...) intenções pragmáticas e parametrizados por referências culturais, forjam usos dos sistemas linguísticos relacionados à quantificação, mensuração, ordenação, classificação e organização de formas e espaços. A esses usos chamamos práticas de numeramento. As situações em que as identificamos – os eventos de numeramento –, em seu caráter histórico, são tomadas como unidades da análise das intenções dos usos, dos efeitos de sentido que logram produzir e, principalmente, de como sujeitos se constituem nas interações por eles mediadas, ao produzirem e tensionarem significados. Na seção ‘Compreendendo práticas matemáticas como práticas discursivas: foco, perspectiva e referenciais teórico-metodológicos do Grupo de Estudos sobre Numeramento (GEN)’: explicitamos o propósito do Programa de Pesquisa do Grupo (conhecer sujeitos e grupos sociais que protagonizam práticas de numeramento); justificamos sua base teórica (os Estudos do Letramento como Prática Social; a Pedagogia da Liberdade e da Autonomia; a compreensão da cognição como processo social; e a abordagem sociológica da Linguagem); assumimos a etnografia como lógica de investigação; e propomos a análise de interações como principal tratamento do material empírico. Apontamos também, dadas as especificidades dos sujeitos, a necessidade do diálogo com diversos campos: Educação de Pessoas Jovens, Adultas e Idosas (EJA), Sociologia da/s Infância/s; Estudos da/s Juventude/s; Educação do Campo; Educação Indígena; Educação de Pessoas Surdas; Formação Docente, entre outros. Na seção ‘Compreendendo práticas de numeramento como práticas de letramento: fertilidade analítica e pedagógica das escolhas teóricas’, esclarecemos como nossos estudos se inserem numa perspectiva Etnomatemática, porque contribuem para conhecermos os sujeitos que vemos protagonizar práticas matemáticas ao assumirem posições discursivas – portanto, sociais, culturais e políticas. Na seção ‘Compreendendo a aprendizagem matemática como apropriação de práticas de numeramento: desdobramentos da concepção de práticas matemáticas como práticas discursivas’, apresentamos como o conceito de apropriação de práticas de numeramento, de inspiração vigostskiana, usado para contemplar múltiplos sentidos das ações dos sujeitos em eventos de numeramento, disponibiliza uma ferramenta teórica para compreender a aprendizagem matemática não como experiência cognitiva individual, mas como ação social. Na seção ‘Interlocuções teóricas e disposições analíticas dos estudos mais recentes do GEN’, indicamos como uma análise tridimensional do discurso (do texto, da situação discursiva e da prática social), adotada para conhecer melhor os sujeitos e reconhecê-los como sujeitos sociais, tem-nos conduzido às considerações de Paulo Freire sobre sujeito de cultura, sujeito de conhecimento, sujeito dialógico e sujeito do processo, que compõem o sujeito histórico, protagonista de eventos de numeramento. Na ‘coda’ (‘Reiterando’), reafirmamos o foco de nossa linha de investigação no campo da Educação Matemática: pessoas constituindo-se como sujeitos sociais, enquanto se apropriam de práticas de numeramento. (shrink)

Log-file data from computer-based assessments can provide useful collateral information for estimating student abilities. In turn, this can improve traditional approaches that only consider response accuracy. Based on the amounts of time students spent on 10 mathematics items from the PISA 2012, this study evaluated the overall changes in and measurement precision of ability estimates and explored country-level heterogeneity when combining item responses and time-on-task measurements using a joint framework. Our findings suggest a notable increase in precision with the incorporation (...) of response times and indicate differences between countries in how respondents approached items as well as in their response processes. Results also showed that additional information could be captured through differences in the modeling structure when response times were included. However, such information may not reflect the testing objective. (shrink)

Ethical review systems need to build on their experiences of COVID-19 research to enhance their preparedness for future pandemics. Recommendations from representatives from over twenty countries include: improving relationships across the research ecosystem; demonstrating willingness to reform and adapt systems and processes; and making the case robustly for better resourcing.

The following dilemma is discussed: On the one hand, the growing impact of Technology of communication and information (ICT) in everyday habits seems to influence the dynamics of public opinion by reinforcing irrational beliefs and creating the impression that the autonomy of people’s opinion and decisions is just a myth. On the other hand, people seem to act most of the time, under the normal circumstances of daily life, in a rational way, as if their habitual actions result from relatively (...) autonomous decisions. A way out of this dilemma is suggested with the hypothesis that people can be rational most of the time, but nevertheless have their opinions influenced by insufficient, distorted information, or by previously acquired emotional dispositions. This hypothesis, in turn, is going to be scrutinized by considering, from a philosophical-interdisciplinary perspective, the role of rational choices in the dynamics of autonomous opinion. With illustrations of diagrams, we claim that the qualitative Complex Systems paradigm might help us to understand the possible role of emotional dispositions in the dynamics of autonomous opinion formation. (shrink)

“Ex nihilo nihil fit” é uma máxima da metafísica e da teologia medievais que, digamos, tinha como finalidade ajudar na organização do inventário de uma herança cultural cujas bases não eram compatíveis com aquelas do pensamento cristão no qual o universo é Criação de um Criador. A ideia de que “do nada, nada vem” pode ser talvez identificada como a ideia central do novo livro do professor Ronai Rocha, da Universidade Federal de Santa Maria, intitulado Escola partida: ética e (...) política na sala de aula. (shrink)

Resumen En este trabajo se ofrece una respuesta a la cuestión del estatus ontológico de la empresa basada en la noción de relación de la filosofía aristotélico-tomista. Para ello se analizan argumentos individualistas y colectivistas, y argumentos de autores que proponen superar esa antinomia mediante la noción de relacionalidad. Dado que dichos autores se quedan en el plano fenoménico, se ofrece un análisis que provee un adecuado fundamento metafísico a las interacciones que se dan entre los integrantes de la empresa (...) y conforman una realidad distinta a ellos, pero que inhiere en ellos. La empresa se presenta como una realidad relacional y sinérgica ordenada por una estructura, una cultura y líderes, que modifica a sus miembros en habilidades, capacidades y hábitos compartidos.This paper offers an answer to the ontological question based on the notion of relationship from Aristotelian-Thomistic philosophy. To this end, individualist and collectivist arguments are analyzed, as well as arguments by authors who propose to overcome this antinomy by means of the notion of relationality. Since these authors stop at the phenomenic level, this paper offers an analysis that provides an adequate metaphysical foundation to interactions. These real relation-ships modify its subjects in an accidental way composing a different reality, but not a substantial reality. The company is presented as a relational and synergic reality ordered by a structure, a culture and leaders that modifies its members in shared skills, capabilities and habits. (shrink)

No final do século XV, sob o reinado de Fernando e Isabel, houve a grande expulsão dos judeus espanhóis. Os cronistas da época tendem a silenciar sobre o fato, quando não a elogiar a atitude dos monarcas. No máximo, alguns apresentam o fato como um mal menor. Também os intelectuais da época, e até a universidade de Paris, tiveram palavras de louvor à atitude dos reis.

La rica concepción de la mente de santo Tomás de Aquino, que incluye no sólo la consideración de ésta como la esencia del alma sino también de las facultades y hábitos que proceden de ella, representa un importante aporte para el esclarecimiento de algunos de los planteos de la psicología contemporánea. Entre estas cuestiones la doctrina de las virtudes intelectuales sugiere valiosas perspectivas para comprender el desarrollo de la inteligencia, su influjo en el desarrollo de la personalidad y da respuesta (...) a algunas de las recientes reflexiones de los teóricos de la inteligencia, como aquella de las inteligencias múltiples. (shrink)

A escola é um espaço importantíssimo para o desenvolvimento de trabalhos e ações que envolvem a gestão de resíduos sólidos, tema cada vez mais discutido em trabalhos e eventos científicos. Com o objetivo de sensibilizar educandos para o problema, um grupo de bolsistas do Pibid Interdisciplinar – Educação ambiental realizou um experimento em que ações socioambientais foram propostas e desenvolvidas junto com educandos de uma escola parceira. As experiências vivenciadas no cotidiano escolar dos dois grupos tiveram como técnicas de coleta (...) de dados necessários à elaboração coletiva das ações, observações e oficinas teórico-práticas, em quatro encontros, nos quais o tema foi abordado teoricamente, através de exibição de documentários e realização de algumas dinâmicas. A ação resultante foi um trabalho de reciclagem com o reaproveitamento de materiais que seriam descartados, ao longo do qual ocorreram discussões que consistiam em uma problematização que, a partir da realidade dos alunos, tentava contribuir para que eles percebessem problemas ambientais presentes em seu dia a dia, convidando-os a refletir sobre os seus hábitos de consumo, a forma de descarte dos resíduos provenientes do seu ato de consumir e os prejuízos por eles causado na natureza. (shrink)