Brazilian High School Students Research Articles

Fatphobia and the polemic “romanticization of obesity” through the eyes of Brazilian high school students

ABSTRACT: Prejudice against fat people, the so-called fatphobia, keeps affecting many people in schools. Body standardization has always been socially internalized but it is sad to know that cases of fatphobia keep taking place in schools and outside them. The fat are stereotyped as unable and are rarely chosen by their classmates to take part in collective activities. Besides, they are often embarrassed and offended. On the other hand, it is now more common to see people advocating obesity as a movement which makes people accept their own bodies in an attempt to end prejudice. As a current theme, the polemic romanticization of obesity is a risk when only the aesthetic appeal is considered. Above all, obesity is a disease that is associated with several comorbidities, such as diabetes, hepatic steatosis and arterial hypertension. Therefore, this study aimed at investigating how this issue is understood by High School students who attend the Instituto Federal do Triângulo Mineiro - Campus Uberlândia Centro, in Uberlândia, MG, Brazil, and how it affects their everyday lives. This basic, fundamental, qualitative and exploratory study collected data on “fatphobia versus romanticization of obesity” in High School. Highly connected students gave their opinions and showed how important and updated it is to address this topic in school since the social media and several people disagree regarding the dichotomy between “treating yourself” and “accepting yourself”.

Does gender-stereotyped gamification increase negative thinking? Results from an experimental study with logic tutoring systems

ABSTRACT Gender-stereotypical design, such as the predominance of blue colors in interfaces, leaderboards with only men at the top, and male avatars, may have negative effects on women in gamified tutoring systems, especially in courses with a majority of male participation, such as courses of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM). We conducted a quasi-experimental study with 133 Brazilian high school students in order to determine the impact of gender stereotypes on the flow state of students, their negative thinking, and their learning performance. These participants were divided into a control group (non-stereotyped) and two intervention groups (male and female stereotypes). Girls' flow state and academic performance were negatively impacted by male stereotypes, as indicated by p.adj values of 0.031 and 0.046, respectively. Contrary to popular belief, participants' negative thoughts were more prevalent in a neutral (non-stereotyped) context than in one with a stereotype threat condition with p.adj value of 0.039. These findings suggest that gender stereotypes should be investigated further, as there are instances in which, contrary to expectations, their effects can be positive. Therefore, the primary contribution of the study is to provide funding for future research into the causes of the observed effects of gender stereotypes on negative thinking. These findings are also applicable to specialists in the design and development of gamified systems, as they support guidelines and the need to develop mechanisms for adapting game elements and the interface of these systems.

Contact with natural areas influences Brazilian high school students’ ability to recognize native plant species

Contact with natural areas influences Brazilian high school students’ ability to recognize native plant species

Touches on Screen as New Signs in Blended Ways to Think Mathematically

This study demonstrates how manipulations on the screen can play an important role in students’ cognitive development. Specifically, it analyzes Brazilian high school students solving a task concerning isometry in an environment designed to improve mathematics learning with touchscreen mobile devices. The data include videotapes, written answers, icon sheets, and screen recordings. Results suggest including touches on screen as a resource in the semiotic bundle. With the advancement of mobile technologies and the increase of online courses, a contribution of this study to the blended learning literature is investigating the design of learning environments that take touchscreen in task design and other instruction processes into account.

The Mental Health of Young Return Migrants with Ancestral Roots in Their Destination Country: A Cross-Sectional Study Focusing on the Ethnic Identities of Japanese-Brazilian High School Students Living in Japan.

The number of young Japanese Brazilians, who are return migrants with Japanese ancestral roots, is increasing rapidly in Japan. However, the characteristics of their mental health and the relation between mental health and a complex ethnic identity remains unclear. This cross-sectional study compared 25 Japanese-Brazilian high school students with 62 Japanese high school students living in the same area. Research using self-report questionnaires on mental health, help-seeking behavior tendencies, and ethnic identity was conducted. The Japanese-Brazilian group was also divided into high and low ethnic identity groups, and their mental health conditions were compared. The Japanese-Brazilian group had significantly poorer mental health conditions and lower ethnic identities than the Japanese group and were less likely to seek help from family members and close relatives. Among the Japanese Brazilians, those with low ethnic identity had significantly poorer mental health than those with high ethnic identity. Young Japanese Brazilians may face conflicts of ethnic identity that can disturb their mental health. To build an inclusive society, the establishment of community services to support mental health and to help return migrants develop their ethnic identity is essential.

Essay-BR: a Brazilian Corpus to Automatic Essay Scoring Task

Automatic Essay Scoring (AES) is the computer technology that evaluates and scores the written essays, aiming to provide computational models to grade essays automatically or with minimal human involvement. While there are several AES studies in a variety of languages, few of them are focused on the Portuguese language. The main reason is the lack of a corpus with manually graded essays. In order to bridge this gap, in this paper we extended a corpus of essays written by Brazilian high school students in an online platform. All of the essays are argumentative and were scored across five competences by experts. Moreover, we conducted an experiment with the extended corpus to show some challenges posed by the Portuguese language. The corpus are publicly available at https://github.com/lplnufpi/essay-br.

General Versus Vocational Education in High School: Cross-Sectional Associations with Student's Health.

The aim of the present study was to analyze the association between course type and health among high school students. A cross-sectional study with 675 Brazilian high school students. The independent variable was course type (general or vocational) and dependent variables were health characteristics. All information was obtained by a self-report questionnaire and the following health characteristics were analyzed: mental health, physical activity, sedentary behavior, food consumption, daytime sleepiness, tobacco use, alcohol consumption, aggression, and musculoskeletal symptoms. The prevalence ratio (PR) was estimated by Poisson regression. Vocational students presented a higher prevalence in 7 of the 20 mental health symptoms analyzed (PR=1.21-1.64), daytime sleepiness (PR=1.39-1.71), and musculoskeletal symptoms in neck, shoulders, low back, and knees (PR=1.31-1.41), and a lower likelihood of being physically active (PR=0.59-0.70). Conversely, vocational students showed lower sedentary behavior on TV and videogames during the week (PR=0.35-0.46), consumption of snacks, cookies, and crackers (PR=0.56-0.72), and experiences of aggression (PR=0.13-0.17), all P < .05. High school can affect students' health distinctly, indicating that intervention programs and health monitoring should be specific to course type.

Motivation to learn chemistry: a thorough analysis of the CMQ-II within the Brazilian context

Studies on students’ motivation to learn Chemistry in developed countries are largely common in the literature. However, very few studies have been carried out with a view to investigating students' motivation to learn Chemistry in places like Latin America, and specifically in Brazil. The present study sought to translate the Chemistry Motivation Questionnaire II (CMQ-II) with a view to evaluating the motivation to learn Chemistry among Brazilian high school students. The study was conducted using responses obtained from 510 high school students who completed the CMQ-II during the COVID-19 pandemic. Exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis and analysis of model invariance between genders were carried out in order to compare the results obtained with those of the other studies conducted using the CMQ-II. The results obtained from this investigation showed that the CMQ-II had a five-factor structure with factor loadings ≥0.52 and Cronbach's α ≥ 0.81. Multivariate analysis was also carried out with respect to gender differences, and the results obtained showed that Brazilian boys had higher confidence when it comes to learning Chemistry, while the girls mostly studied Chemistry to obtain a good grade or because of the importance of the discipline in their imagined future career. The findings show that the Brazilian version of CMQ-II applied in this study seems to provide a consistent scale of analysis compared to that reported in the literature.

Bidirectional Daily Associations Between Accelerometer-Measured Sleep and Physical Activity in Brazilian High School Students.

This study analyzed day-to-day estimates of bidirectional associations between sleep parameters and intensity-specific physical activity and assessed whether the timing of physical activity influences these relationships. The sample was comprised of 651 high school students (51.2% female, 16.33 [1.0]y old) from southern Brazil. Physical activity and sleep were measured using accelerometers. Multilevel models were applied to test associations of nocturnal total sleep time, onset, and efficiency with moderate to vigorous and light (LPA) physical activity. Higher engagement in moderate to vigorous physical activity and LPA was associated with increased total sleep time, and this effect was greater when physical activity was performed in the morning. Morning and evening LPA were associated with increased sleep efficiency and reduced total sleep time, respectively. Practice of LPA in the morning leads to early sleep onset, whereas evening LPA was associated with later onset. Higher total sleep time and later sleep onset were associated with lower moderate to vigorous physical activity and LPA on the following day. However, higher sleep efficiency was associated with increased LPA. The relationship between sleep parameters and physical activity is bidirectional and dependent on physical activity intensity and timing.

Increasing physical activity by Gamification among Brazilian high school students: a pilot study

This pilot study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of a Gamification-based intervention on physical activity levels of High School students. This quasi experimental study was conducted in two federal high schools in Southern Brazil. One class from each school was selected to be either intervention (INT) or control (CON) group. Experiment duration was two weeks, and both groups downloaded My Active Life app. INT group (n = 69) participants received daily app alerts with messages of encouragement to practice physical activity. They also received a score based on the percentage of goal achieved. CON group (n = 35) only had access to total number of steps per day. INT group showed a lower decrease in physical activity at school compared to CON group (p = 0.024). No effect of intervention was observed in physical activity out of school (p = 0.911). Gamification-based intervention prevented a decrease in physical activity at school among male (F = 10.680; p = 0.004), students at first half of high school (F = 12.668; p = 0.002), and adequate body mass index (F = 4.640; p = 0.037), and with lower perception of barriers to physical activity (F = 5.437; p = 0.024). Although we did not observe an increase in physical activity at school, gamification-based intervention may mitigate its decrease among adolescents.

&amp;lt;i&amp;gt;On the Path of Poisonous Animals&amp;lt;/i&amp;gt;: A High School Game for Approaching Venomous Animals, Biotechnology Potential and Biodiversity

Some animals present venom, which is a mixture of several molecules used as a biological weapon against natural enemies or preys. Several of these animals are part of the huge Brazilian biodiversity and these venoms have a huge biotechnological potential as feasible natural drugs for treatment of important diseases such as thrombosis. Since educational games are described as auxiliary tools for teaching complex themes, in this work we constructed a school game about venomous animals including protective instructions when in contact with some of them. The purpose of our game named “On the path of venomous animals” was to teach about this theme. It was constructed based on previous concepts of Brazilian high school students and approaches important topics (e.g.how to act when bitten by snakes) presented in a board format with cards containing the questions to be answered about different situations (luck or mischance). The game requests teacher’s participation, and involves simulations of everyday life situations as well as the risk of encountering a poisonous animal. We tested the game with high school students aged from 16 to 18 years and despite most of them did not know much about these animals they were very interested on them. The use of this playful game as an educational instrument may allow learning about biodiversity whereas enhanced their perception of venom biotechnology potentiality.

Brazilian high school students conceptions about alcoholic beverages

Alcohol consumption is high among adolescents. It is important to implement preventive policies to avoid alcohol consumption by adolescents. We assessed the preconceptions of 171 Brazilian adolescents (15 to 18 years) from high school, on the use of alcohol. We compared students’ view with the scientific information to inform educators about the potential social and biological hazards of ethanol consumption that could be used as support material in the classroom. Students’ approval of alcohol consumption was high. However, the knowledge about chronic toxicological risks of alcohol consumption was almost absent. These results indicate that, in the students' conception, the neurobiological reward provided by alcohol outweighs the negative impacts of this substance. Thus, we strongly suggest that basic school curricula must cover the socio-toxicological effects of ethanol consumption as a strategy to increase the visibility and perceptions about the negative impact of alcohol consumption.

BioQuest: Gamified software for teaching molecular biology

Science teaching in basic education aims to provide content for individuals who can handle with new information and are able to understand, question and position themselves before ethical debates related to biotechnology and molecular biology. However, the information flow generated in the molecular biology field is not accompanied by the dissemination of scientific information into the school environment, nor is it incorporated into the teaching knowledge on a continuous basis. In addition, the teaching of molecular biology and its related concepts, which involves great abstraction capacity on the part of students, requires the elaboration and use of specific didactic resources. Thus, this work aims to present the gamified software BioQuest and its usability and interface evaluation made by 131 Brazilian high school students from the São Paulo State public school system in São Carlos region. The data show that there is no significant difference in the game evaluation made by students with previous experience with games and those without the habit of playing, except when it comes to understanding the commands proposed by the game. This implies that students with previous experience in games have greater ease in using this teaching resource. Regarding the impact on their learning, the data show that students who interacted with the game performed better on conceptual issues related to Molecular Biology when compared to students who did not. Specifically, the questions related to game phases that contained gamification elements of the narrative and extrinsic motivation types, correlated with better grades obtained by the students. The practical experience of BioQuest proposed for high school students allowed to observe a significant improvement in the quality of teaching that can contribute to became a reference in this area.

Geografia dos Esportes: apontamentos para o ensino médio

Compreendido como uma atividade polissêmica e de caráter múltiplo, os esportes são grandes consumidores do espaço geográfico e por consequência, usufruem dos principais conceitos da Geografia, como por exemplo, o lugar, a paisagem, o território, entre outros, se vinculando cada vez mais à ciência geográfica. Existe uma interação entre ambos e ela ocorre no seio da sociedade. Considerando a Geografia dos Esportes como uma possibilidade de tratar esse fenômeno da sociedade contemporânea, cada vez mais estimulado pela mídia e também enraizado no imaginário popular, o presente trabalho tem como objetivo analisar as variáveis que possibilitam aos alunos do ensino médio brasileiro, pensar o esporte como novo elemento de uma Geografia, que interage e interfere no consumo e no fazer cotidiano. De caráter geográfico, a pesquisa aborda uma discussão e revisão do tema para o ensino de Geografia em nível médio apontando sugestões para a sua prática. Conclui-se que os esportes são uma atividade heterogênea, fruto de uma territorialização que envolve complexas relações e que cativa o mundo e a sociedade de um modo geral, sendo percebidos como parte integrante de processos que envolvem a análise espacial e a caracterização socioeconômica e político cultural, elementos por excelência, geográficos.

Musical preferences of Brazilian high school students.

Music is considered a vital element in young people’s lives. It functions as an important means for expressing the emotions and feelings they experience in a daily basis. As such, this study explores the music preferences of high school Brazilian students (N = 940), 530 female (56.9%) and 410 male (43.1%) participants between 14 and 20 years old (M = 16.14 years old, SD = 1.22). The main instrument for data collection was the Questionnaire on Musical Style Preferences, which was adapted to the Brazilian context and encompassed 33 different music styles. A principal component analysis resulted in five dimensions representing different musical styles: (1) Intense, (2) Unique, (3) Sophisticated, (4) Contemporary, and (5) Mellow. The results of this study reinforced theory of the five-factor model of musical preference. Results also suggest that Mellow music was the most preferred while Sophisticated music was the least preferred among participants. Regarding gender, male participants showed a greater preference towards Contemporary, Intense, and Sophisticated music, whereas women generally preferred Mellow and Unique. Regarding age, participants under 20 years old showed a greater preference towards Mellow musical styles as compared to older participants. On the one hand, regression analyses showed that preferences towards Intense music decrease with age. On the other hand, gender was a better predictor for music preferences than age. Although the results of this study correspond to those of previous studies, more research studies are necessary to further explain musical preferences within the Brazilian context.

Using and Understanding Algorithms to Solve Double and Multiple Proportionality Problems

We analyzed the written answers and explanations by 26 Brazilian high-school students who attempted to solve double and multiple proportionality problems using the cross-product algorithm. We focused on students’ awareness of the scalar and functional relations among the quantities described in verbal problems, an aspect that has been part of their school instruction. Our results show that, in their written work, the students included data tables or pairs of values, usually with their referents and connected by arrows indicating the scalar or the functional relations described in the problems. In most cases, during individual interviews, they explained their solutions in terms of these relations. Our findings suggest that students’ understanding of proportion relationships between quantities in verbal problems constitutes a basis for their understanding and correct use of algorithms.

Reflective function and identity in adolescents with clinical and nonclinical symptoms.

Reflective function is developed in the context of secure attachment and corresponds to the ability to understand one's mental states and those of others. Thus, identity develops, which relates to the experience of self as unique, continuous and coherent. To identify reflective function and identity features in adolescents with clinical and nonclinical symptoms of mental health problems. Participants were 188 Brazilian high school students aged 14-17 years: 30.3% with clinical symptoms and 69.9% with nonclinical symptoms. Adolescents with clinical symptoms showed lower levels of reflective function and greater disintegration of identity. Adolescence is a vulnerable time for mental health problems associated with reflective function and identity. Early identification of symptoms is a matter that needs attention to prevent future consequences.

Item Response Theory Modeling of High School Students’ Behavior in a High-Stakes Exam

We put forward a model based on item response theory that highlights the role of latent features called “proficiency” and “propensity”. The model is adjusted to data from the decisions made in a high-stakes exam taken by 10,822 Brazilian high school students. Our model aims to recover infor-mation regarding the role the latent features (proficiency and propensity) play in a decision. We find that the decision of responding or not and also the decision of responding correctly or not in a group of items can be described by a two-dimensional logistic model, even if there are imperfections from an item-by-item adjustment. Not only proficiency, but also refraining from responding is found to depend on both the characteristics of the items and the latent features of the students. In particular, the least proficient students prefer to leave an item blank, rather than respond it incorrectly. There is a negative linear correlation between scoring in the exam and propensity, and scoring and proficiency are positively correlated although nonlinear.

Creative writing and iconicity in English as a foreign language

ABSTRACTCreative writing workshops in high-school English-as-a-foreign-language education have had little attention from researchers so far. Addressing this gap, this paper investigates the creative production of Brazilian high-school students after a workshop unit on iconicity. Their iconic poems are analysed visually, thematically and stylistically. Despite variation in students’ self-identified language proficiency, the results show that the poems presented visual and thematic diversity. The stylistic analysis evidenced the richness of students’ creations notwithstanding their lack of English proficiency. Although some surface language infelicities are identified, these do not limit their expression. Overall, the findings reveal that iconicity was not only an appropriate topic for these students, but it also proved to be a genuine way by means of which they could freely express their individuality, breaking away from conventions, reflecting on a variety of matters, and registering their observation of the world and of themselves.

Changes in the Perception of School Climate among Brazilian High School Students Between 2001 and 2011

Background: Perception school climate has been investigated for contributing to health promotion policies and education in the school environment. In low- and middle-incomes countries, tracking information with respect to these perceptions are still scarce. Objectives: To analyze the changes in the perception of adolescents on the school climate during the course of a decade in the state of Santa Catarina, in southern Brazil. Methods: Two cross-sectional surveys were conducted in 2001 (n = 5.028) and 2011 (n = 6.529) among public high school students (15 to 19 years old). Factors related to the negative perception of the school climate were evaluated using a structured questionnaire. Results: After ten years, there were significant differences in the proportion of adolescents who had a negative perception of the time spent in school (from 3.1% to 16.3%), of their relationship with peers (from 3.0% to 13.5%), and their relationship with teachers and staff (from 2.9% to 7.2%). Conclusions: Students reported having a worse perception of the school social environment. Interventions that encourage the adoption and maintenance of positive social relationships and healthy habits are needed in the school community.