Ana Costa

Public decisions concerning large projects with detrimental environmental or heritage impacts involve value conflicts which stem from the diverse interests and variety of ways of evaluating the costs and benefits of such projects. They are also framed by institutionalised procedures and practices which favour certain concerns to the detriment of others. This paper aims to contribute towards a better understanding of how these procedures and practices, namely decision support tools such as the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), tend to shape public decision-making processes in particular ways. It draws on a study of the public controversy surrounding the Foz Tua dam in Portugal, with a focus on the values upheld by the different parties in the controversy and their interplay in the production of justifications, specifically the actors’ positions on values and value conflicts and the restrictions posed by institutionalised public decision-making procedures on the expression and consideration of certain values.

Investments in education are growing, not only in the first phase of life but also throughout life. However, the million-dollar question is: does more education make us happier? The relationship between education and happiness is assessed on two levels: at the micro level of individuals and at the macro level of nations. At the micro level, the results of 86 studies were analyzed, in which most results point to a weak positive correlation between happiness and years of schooling (r = +0.06). This is considerably lower when controlling the values for the effects of education, such as income (partial r = +0.02). At the macro level, the correlation between education and happiness in 146 nations was assessed, and a strong positive relationship was found (r = +0.61). These results suggest that the effect of education on happiness is indirect and not direct; people who live in modern societies are happier, but this means that they need a higher level of education. Apparently, education alone is not satisfactory, at least not the school education that has been provided thus far.

O bem-estar dos docentes é um tema particularmente relevante e tem vindo a receber um interesse crescente. Contudo, são escassos os estudos em escolas no estrangeiro, motivo pelo qual se apresenta este trabalho que pretende explorar do bem-estar destes professores, em particular, descrever o seu bem-estar subjetivo e o bem-estar na escola, explorando o papel de variáveis pessoais e profissionais no bem-estar dos professores. Para isso, foi recolhida uma amostra de 58 docentes a lecionar em escolas portuguesas no estrangeiro, na sua maioria mulheres, com idades entre os 27 e os 69 anos. Os resultados sugerem um bem-estar subjetivo globalmente positivo, acima do ponto médio, e relações significativas com variáveis organizacionais. Aspectos que são discutidos. Ainda sugeridas novas investigações neste domínio.

Brazil occupies almost half of South America and is the country with the greatest biodiversity in the world. In the last decade, it hosted the largest sporting events in the world, with the 2014 FIFA World Cup and the Rio 2016 Olympic Games. The preparation for sporting mega-events has improved Brazilian sports management through complex deliveries. This includes the sustainability dimension. The chapter summarizes findings from interviews with four sports managers from the public, non-profit, and for-profit sectors about responsible and sustainable management. Among the results, there is unanimity in the understanding that responsible management encompasses sustainability, the first being related to the intangible values that the organization supports, while the second to the implementation of actions. Goals related to the social dimension are more popular than environmental ones despite the opposite being fostered by international sports organizations such as the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) or the International Olympic Committee (IOC) during the mega events in Brazil. In the context of responsible and sustainable management, profit has an expanded meaning going beyond the monetary dimension. Among future trends, the public sector stands out as a developer and supervisor of policies while their implementation relies on the for-profit sector.

No capítulo X de A Estrutura das Revoluções Científicas (1962) de Thomas Kuhn o conceito de paradigma figura como elemento filosófico central na tensão que se estabelece entre o âmbito perceptivo/cognitivo versus o âmbito ontológico do “problema da mudança de mundo”. No presente artigo, apresento alguns desdobramentos do conceito de paradigma com o objetivo de indicar dois sentidos principais para o termo subjacentes às formulações kuhnianas no capítulo X e que são desenvolvidos na obra tardia do autor, a saber: (1) o ‘paradigma’ como exemplar, apresentado em “Postscript – 1969” (1970) e “Seconds thoughts on paradigms” (1977); e (2) o ‘paradigma’ como léxico, apresentado principalmente, em, “Metaphor in science” (1979), “Commensurability, comparability, communicability” (1983), “Possible worlds in history of science” (1989), “The road since Structure” (1990) e “Afterwords” (1993). Através do conceito de exemplar, explicito a função cognitiva que os paradigmas exercem nos membros das comunidades científicas: a singularidade dos exemplares reside não apenas no fato de eles serem exemplos-padrão para os membros de uma comunidade, mas em serem expressão de um processo cognitivo mais geral que já está pressuposto no desenvolvimento da atividade científica. Através do conceito de léxico, explicito a função constitutiva dos paradigmas como princípios a priori, porém dinâmicos e relativizados, como condições de possibilidade para a experiência do conhecimento, sendo, em particular, determinantes na experiência do sujeito no âmbito científico. Nesse sentido, a articulação teórica proposta nesse artigo evidencia que a análise do empreendimento científico na Estrutura considera processos cognitivos e ontológicos do sujeito epistêmico expressos por meio do conceito de paradigma. No entanto, essa compreensão é obscurecida diante do emprego polissêmico e impreciso do termo no decorrer de toda a obra e que se apresenta de modo particularmente conflitante no capítulo X. Palavras-chave: exemplar; léxico; paradigma; mudança de mundo; Thomas Kuhn.