Special education in Spain at the beginning of the 21st century: the challenge to educate in an unequal and multicultural society

An overview of the challenges facing the Spanish Special Education system at the turn of the century is presented. Significant changes have occurred in Spain over the last two decades that have affected the landscape of Spanish public schools in an unprecedented way. First, since the late 1980s, students with a variety of disabilities have been attending general education classrooms along with their peers. Additionally, for the last 20 years, Spain has experienced a dramatic increase in immigration patterns from Northern Africa, Eastern Europe and Latin America. Thus, Spanish educators are facing the challenge of educating an increasingly heterogeneous student body. Students' different educational needs are often handed down to the special educator teacher who is faced with the task of ensuring the student's academic and social participation. Reform efforts conducted by Spanish educators to ensure that all students, regardless of their gender, ability level, ethnic and social backgrounds, as well as language and religion of origin, have equal access to a full social and academic participation in their schools and communities are described.     

温故而知新践行以育人--清华大学实践教育浅析

通过实践教育全面育人,是清华大学在长期办学过程中逐渐形成的一条优良传统。在步入知识经济时代的21世纪,清华大学广大师生结合为国家建设培养和造就更多优秀人才的目标,针对新形势和新问题,通过开创性的实践探索,为今天的实践教育赋予了新的内涵。     

Addressing the Needs of Students with Autism and Other Disabilities in China: Perspectives from the Field

Autism is a developmental disability that has gained increasing attention during the past several decades in China. The two case studies presented in this article examined the perspectives of two school leaders on educating students with autism in China. Two school principals, one from a public school and one from a private school, were interviewed during this study using 10 open-ended questions. Responses generated the following areas of discussion: teacher recruitment and training, curriculum and teaching methodology, parental involvement, and factors that contribute to success and present challenges. This study provides the readers with an update from the perspectives of two school leaders on the school system in China for children with disabilities, particularly for students with autism. Implications of the study and further suggestions for future research are also discussed.     

Reading levels of Spanish deaf students

THE READING LEVELS of a population of 93 Spanish deaf students were examined. All study participants had prelingual profound hearing loss; their ages ranged from 9 to 20 years. All were enrolled in compulsory education during 2002-2003 in the Canary Islands (Spain). They were evaluated with sentence and text comprehension subtests from the Evaluation of Reading Processes of Primary Education Students, whose Spanish acronym is PROLEC (Cuetos, Rodríguez, & Ruano, 1996). A questionnaire on reading attitude was also used (Espín, 1987). Study results were consistent with those of previous research: Deaf students, at the end of their primary school education (mean age 13 years), have reading levels similar to or lower than the reading levels of hearing students at the onset of primary school education (mean age 7 years). These deaf students also have an indifferent attitude toward reading.     

Pathways to Teaching: Latino Student Choice and Professional Identity Development in a Teacher Training Magnet Program Special Issue: Partnering for Equity

This paper reports on one component of a school-university collaborative in El Paso, Texas, to create pathways to college and the teaching profession for Latino and Latina high school students. As part of the Institute for Educational Inquiry's “Diversity in Teaching and Teacher Education” initiative (1997–2000) at The University of Texas—El Paso, the authors developed a program of mentoring, professional development, college socialization, and research activities with high school students and teachers at Riverside High School's Socratic Institute (SI), an innovative, predominately Latino teacher training magnet school. This article reports on a part of the school-university collaborative that brought university faculty and Latino doctoral students into contact with high school SI students in organized research. Through surveys and semi-structured interviews, Socratic student participants reveal what they know about teaching, how they assess and make sense of teaching practice, and how they take on and articulate their identity and emerging teaching personae. Responses reveal why these Latino students choose teaching as a career, and point to the Socratic Institute as an important pre-pre-service model for the recruitment of Latino/a students to the teaching profession and college.     

Linguistic and pedagogical considerations for teaching Portuguese to Spanish speakers

This research study examines the pedagogical considerations and linguistic challenges regarding teaching Portuguese to speakers of Spanish. That the Portuguese language is similar to Spanish presents a unique set of advantages and challenges to students and instructors. The study of this population of students has grown considerably since the 1980s, and most notably since the 2000s. Two unique and growing populations of Portuguese learners come into focus during this study—both native and heritage Spanish speakers. Their specific learning goals are analyzed in detail, particularly regarding what types of innovative linguistic methods and assessment strategies are relevant for these learners.     

Learning the Colonial Past in a Colonial Present: Students and Teachers Confront the Spanish Conquest in Post-Conflict Guatemala

In Guatemala, three centuries after Spanish conquest and in the wake of more than three decades of internal conflict, the framers of the 1996 Accord for a Firm and Lasting Peace placed educational reform at the center of efforts to make peace with this contentious past. This article, based on a multisite qualitative study, describes how Guatemalan teachers, working within an ostensibly standardized national curriculum aimed at creating a common historical narrative, differed in their presentation of Spanish colonialism. In the social studies classrooms of two different settings, a private school serving affluent Ladino students and a public school serving low-income indigenous students, young people constructed usable pasts amid distinct approaches to this era. In the first, a static, fixed version of colonial history distanced these young people from their indigenous cocitizens; students described the colonial era as part of a completed and distant past. In the second classroom, the teacher framed colonialism as an enduring part of students’ lives; students articulated the continued reach of the colonial era through language loss, structural inequality, and cultural devaluation. In this postconflict setting, curricular attempts to use historical study to create a new, unified, national identity were met with local challenges embedded in distinct historical memories.     

A multicultural,gender, and sexually diverse affirming school-based consultation framework

Gender and sexually diverse (GSD) students face unique challenges in schools due to the privileging of cisgender and heterosexist norms in these settings. In particular, GSD youth who belong to ethnically and racially minoritized groups face further challenges within school environments that disregard their cultural contexts and intersectional identities. It is important for school psychologists to ensure safe and high-quality mental health, educational, and behavioral supports for these students. One possible avenue for building these types of supports is through school consultation. When school psychologists collaborate with other professionals in a culturally competent, participatory way, their work has the potential to bolster behavioral, academic, and mental health outcomes at the individual, group, and/or systems levels. Adapting Ingraham's multicultural school consultation model, this article proposes a multicultural, GSD affirming school consultation framework that also approaches the experiences of racially and ethnically minoritized individuals through the lenses of intersectionality and minority stress frameworks. Across its five domains, this adapted framework aims to give practitioners and researchers a conceptual foundation to support GSD students of minoritized ethnic and racial identities by considering interactions among consultants, consultees, and clients within their wider school contexts.     

高校辅导员微博使用状况实证调查——以上海市高校辅导员为例简

本文采用问卷调查法结合访谈法对上海14所高校的辅导员进行调研,结果表明微博尚未在辅导员工作中充分发挥优势。结合高校辅导员在学生工作中的教育、管理、服务职能,探索利用微博提高高校辅导员工作有效性的可行措施,为新形势下高校辅导员创新开展学生工作提供借鉴和参考。     

THE STUDENT HOMELESSNESS CRISIS AND THE ROLE OF SCHOOL PSYCHOLOGY: MISSED OPPORTUNITIES,ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT,AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS

Affecting more than 1 million youth, student homelessness is growing at an unprecedented rate in the United States. This is alarming because homeless students face significant barriers to their academic success and positive life outcomes. Unfortunately, despite the significant risks and challenges they face, homeless students often are overlooked and not provided with important educational and social‐emotional supports. In addition, information on student homelessness is relatively limited in the school psychology literature and practice guidelines, which can forestall efforts to help these students. To date, only a few empirical articles have been published on student homelessness in school psychology journals and in practitioner‐related literature. To help address this paucity, this article discusses barriers to the academic success of homeless students, as well as ways to reduce these barriers. Additionally, important protective factors, resilience, and ways to overcome homelessness‐related stigma are reviewed. Lastly, ways that school psychologists can become key stakeholders in efforts to help support the academic and life success of homeless students are discussed. The overall goal for this article is to encourage school psychologists to redouble their efforts to support a highly at‐risk yet often neglected student population.     

Tinkering Towards Socially Just Teaching: Moving from Critical Theory to Practice

This article narrates the experience of one middle‐school English teacher as she comes to learn about and practise critical literacy. This research documents some of the challenges associated with integrating this innovative practice in today's US classrooms. Furthermore, the author raises questions about how teacher educators can provide realistic portraits of critical literacy for their students to encourage future teachers to embrace rather than abandon this socially just practice.     

Postcolonial Literature and the Politics of Representation in School Programs

This article explores theoretical and pedagogical frameworks for re-evaluating literary curricula and reading practices in contemporary school classrooms. Data from a study of students' responses to reading international literature in a multi-ethnic urban Canadian high school and conversations with South African high school students on their reading preferences ground this discussion of how students and teachers can cross borders constructed within discourses of race, gender, and ethnicity. Drawing on postcolonial literary theory, critical theory, and reader response theories, the article considers the questions, concerns, and dilemmas that emerge when students begin to deconstruct misrepresentations of "others" in literary texts and acknowledge challenges to their perceptions of self.     

Inclusive education for students with refugee experience: whole school reform in a South Australian primary school

In recent years, there has been an increase in students with refugee experience in the UK, the US, Europe and Australia. These students face many barriers to education, and appropriately educating this diverse student population presents many challenges to schools and education departments. We argue that a whole of school approach that includes school structures, culture and pedagogy is needed to provide equity for students with refugee experience. This approach to reform requires that the ‘structures and programs [that] are designed for a dominant group’ (DETE, South Australian Curriculum Standards and Accountability Framework, South Australia 2001), and which disadvantage minority groups, are challenged and changed. Implementing such change raises many practical difficulties, and there are few documented examples of good practice. This prompted the authors’ ethnographic study of a South Australian primary school, with a New Arrivals Program, which positions itself as taking a whole of school approach to educational reform for refugees. This paper reports on the structural changes the school has implemented in its class organisation, staff roles and curriculum. We consider the effects of government funding and neoliberal education policy on these reforms.     

Diversity and School Curriculum: the response of the Spanish educational system to the needs of academically highly able pupils

In Spain, there is a growing awareness that diversity, and the special educational needs arising out of it, are not only reflected in the social sphere and the school system but also in legislation. Legal changes since 1990 have had many implications for the education of highly able pupils: the Resolucion of 29 April 1996 extends the principles of integration and diversity to all pupils, not exclusively the handicapped. The present study overviews the possibilities under current Spanish legislation for responding and adapting to the educational needs of highly able pupils. It shows how the legislation and guiding principles of the Spanish educational system make it possible to give an effective response to educating highly able students. However, work is needed on the adaptation of diagnostic tests and curricular material, and the training of specialized professionals.     

What Makes a High School a Good High School for Students with Disabilities

This article summarizes the findings and themes from the three high schools we studied. All three schools engaged in five schoolwide strategies for educating students with disabilities. They provided a broad array of academic courses and program options; provided schoolwide support structures that could be combined and customized to the needs and strengths of individual students; worked intentionally to connect students to the school and build their motivation to succeed; created a connected and caring adult community to serve students' academic and social/personal needs; and developed responsive leaders who managed the tensions inherent in the commitment to prepare students with disabilities to be successful in their lives beyond school. The article also reviews the different ways these three school instantiated these strategies. We describe the “theory of action” that integrates the five schoolwide strategies into a synergistic approach in each school and explore implications of the Good High Schools study for practice and for future research.     

Investigating the role of computer‐supported annotation in problem‐solving‐based teaching: An empirical study of a Scratch programming pedagogy

For more than 2 years, Scratch programming has been taught in Taiwanese elementary schools. However, past studies have shown that it is difficult to find appropriate learning methods or tools to boost students’ Scratch programming performance. This inability to readily identify tutoring tools has become one of the primary challenges addressed in Scratch programming studies. To cope with this problem, we propose an innovative approach, which combines an Annotation‐based Scratch Programming (ASP) tool with the problem‐solving‐based teaching approach in Scratch programming pedagogy. The ASP tool was developed to enable students to create, review and share Scratch programming and homework annotations. In a quasi‐experimental study, we have evaluated Scratch programming pedagogy at a North Taiwanese elementary school to investigate the effects of instructional‐tools‐supported programming instructional modes on Scratch programming performance. The experimental results show that students who received ASP tool support in conjunction with a problem‐solving‐based teaching approach performed significantly better than the other groups. Based on our findings, the innovative approach was believed to play an important role in improving the learning patterns of younger pupils. Therefore, we suggest that teachers consider incorporating the innovative method into their teaching environments in order to boost students’ learning achievements in the area of Scratch programming and the subsequent learning process.     

工科学生创新能力培养体系调查与分析

创新能力的培养是大学素质教育的核心,大学生的创新能力培养问题已成为当前工科院校亟需解决的重要课题。本文从学生管理工作角度出发进行问卷调查,旨在了解大学生对创新能力培养的认知程度,明确阻碍大学生创新能力培养的各种因素,为搭建工科学校学生创新能力培养体系提供依据。研究发现由于学校教育和学生自身原因等因素的制约,工科大学生创新能力普遍较低,培养创新能力缺乏科学有效的手段与途径。笔者建议从第一课堂入手,从源头上加强学生创新能力的培养;通过第二课堂即校园科技文化实践活动的开展,为培养学生创新能力提供广阔的发展空间;通过深入开展创新教育,提高学生创新的源动力,以切实提高学生的创新能力。     

Expeditionary Learning in Information Systems: Definition,Implementation, and Assessment

In the natural sciences, collecting, cataloguing, and comparing living specimens have long been a popular, collaborative mode of discovery and learning. New species are discovered, and the relationships between species are theorized. From Aristotle's “History of Animals” to Darwin's “On the Origin of Species”, and beyond, this process of learning through expedition has yielded bountiful knowledge and insights to students of science. In this paper, we propose that expeditionary learning can be applied to a softer science: the field of information systems. In the field of information systems, specimens (information systems) are created by humans, evolving with great speed. Expeditionary learning—where students collaboratively discover, catalog, and compare rapidly evolving information system specimens—is an innovative approach for learners in the IS field, and is effective in increasing IS program visibility and delivering significant, measurable community impact. Our results indicate that learning by expedition has a strong, positive community impact through educating external learners (such as high school and community college students, and the general public), and compares favorably to conventional experiential and service learning styles. Though expeditionary learning does not yield improved course evaluations, we demonstrate that learners’ perceived self‐knowledge and intentions to pursue the subject area are improved.     

Motivational strategies to enhance effective learning in teaching struggling students

The challenges presented by students who struggle to connect with curriculum learning in school constitute an issue that confronts education systems worldwide. This article reviews ways in which such students can be encouraged to engage more positively in their own learning, a process that benefits both the child and the whole school community. In this article a range of strategies to do this is proposed, based on a set of theoretical considerations.