Hard Cash and Soft Skills: Experimental Evidence on Combining Scholarships and Mentoring in Argentina

Abstract

We evaluate a long-standing program run by one of the largest education foundations in Argentina that offers scholarships and nonacademic mentoring to secondary school students. We randomly assigned 408 grade 6 students within 10 public schools in the Province of Buenos Aires to either receive the program throughout secondary school or not to receive it. After three years, the program improved students’ academic behaviors (e.g., studying before an exam or catching up on missed work), but we find little evidence that these changes translated into broader improvements in students’ academic mindsets (e.g., self-beliefs about performance and efficacy), perseverance (e.g., grit), or learning strategies (e.g., metacognition). The program also improved students’ performance in school during the first year (e.g., grades, attendance, and passing rates), but we do not find similar gains in subsequent years. This may be due to a large share of treatment students being expelled from the program for not meeting its requirements. The program did not improve student learning or personality traits (e.g., conscientiousness). Finally, we find some heterogeneous effects for female students and students from low-income families.     

Salamanca 1994-2019: there is still a long way to Latin America

ABSTRACT

This article analyses the progresses and challenges in education in Latin America since the Salamanca World Conference on Special Needs Education. The main advances have been in the access to education of a greater number of students derived from a higher public expenditure. The challenges that still exist can be summed up through insufficient educational quality, especially with regard to the situation of teachers and the infrastructure of schools. It’s difficult to collect appropriate, rigorous and accurate data for special needs education. The article concludes by pointing out the importance of rebuilding three bridges to move faster in the inclusive process: first, a political bridge to agree on the improvement of the educational budget during the next decade; a social and cultural bridge that supports attitudes of citizens in favour of diversity and inclusion; and finally, an educational bridge with two fundamental pillars: education of infant and young children and training and professional development for teachers.     

Response to Intervention in Middle Schools: Practices and Outcomes

Response to intervention (RTI) is advocated in elementary school as a system‐wide, multitiered model of academic and behavioral interventions. Middle schools have begun adopting RTI models based on these existing elementary models. This investigation into current middle school RTI practices describes technical aspects as well as some of cultural and contextual issues surrounding implementation. The study included multiple data collection procedures including surveys, discussion groups, phone interviews, and site visits. Although many schools reported substantial progress with implementation, they recognized rigorous implementation of RTI posed such on‐going challenges as changes in staffing, curricular realignments, very limited selections of screening and progress monitoring tools aligned with their curriculum, and scheduling of secondary and tertiary level interventions.     

Place,community and information behavior: Spatially oriented information seeking zones and information source preferences

Even in a digitally advanced society, much of our daily lives is based in place, but information behavior research has largely ignored place as theoretically relevant to information behavior. This study explores the implications of a place-based approach to studying information practices, and examines factors that influence information seeking and sharing in place-based communities among parents of individuals with disabilities. Based on qualitative data gathered from 35 parents of individuals with disabilities, it proposes a spatial model of information source preferences based on the theory of information horizons, and discusses implications of the model for future research related to information seeking and places. It also presents substantive place-related findings about local information needs, including discussion of the local parent network as an information seeking system.     

Influence of football match time–motion parameters on recovery time course of muscle damage and jump ability

ABSTRACT

We analysed the time course of recovery of creatine kinase (CK) and countermovement jump (CMJ) parameters after a football match, and correlations between changes in these variables and match time–motion parameters (GPS-accelerometry) in 15 U-19 elite male players. Plasma CK and CMJ height (CMJ_H), average concentric force (CMJ_CON) and average eccentric force (CMJ_ECC) were assessed 2 h before and 30 min, 24 h and 48 h post-match. There were substantially higher CK levels 30 min, 24 h and 48 h (ES: 0.43, 0.62, 0.40, respectively), post-match. CMJ_ECC (ES: ?0.38), CMJ_H (ES: ?0.35) decreased 30 min post, CMJ_CON (ES: ?0.35), CMJ_ECC (ES: ?0.35) and CMJ_H (ES: ?1.35) decreased 24 h post, and CMJ_CON (ES: ?0.41) and CMJ_H (ES: ?0.53) decreased 48 h post. We found correlations between distance covered at velocities ≤21 km · h^?1 and changes in CK at 24 h (r = 0.56) and at 48 h (r = 0.54) and correlations between CK and distance covered >14 km · h^?1 (r = 0.50), accelerations (r = 0.48), and decelerations (r = 0.58) at 48 h. Changes in CMJ_CON 30 min and 24 h post (both r = ?0.68) correlated with impacts >7.1·G. Decelerations >2 m · s^?2 correlated with changes CMJ_CON (r = ?0.49) at 48 h and CMJ_ECC (r = ?0.47) at 30 min. Our results suggest that match GPS-accelerometry parameters may predict muscle damage and changes in components of neuromuscular performance immediately and 24–48 h post-match.     

What counts as science? Expansive learning actions for teaching and learning science with bilingual children

Cultural Studies of Science Education - Science education should help children acquire sophisticated understandings about science, how it is done, and how they can be scientists. Consequently,...     

Acceleration Nation: An Investigation into the Violence of Speed and the Uses of Accidents in Iceland

Abstract

There are two starting points from which this paper is constructed: first, Virilio’s observation that the wealth of societies is founded on their dromocratic condition, that the faster societies accelerate their citizens, commercial goods and communication the more political and economic power they have and, second, the links that he traces between technologies of speed and acceleration and the accident. We suggest that Virilio’s ideas on this invite and deserve a closer ethnographic scrutiny than they have so far received, scrutiny that highlights the varied ways in which speed, acceleration and the accident are articulated in different cultural contexts. To this end we offer an investigation into the dromocratic condition, the violence of speed and the uses of accidents in Iceland.     

Tres pies al gato: significado,sentido y cultura cotidiana en la educación

Resumen

Se pasa revista en este artículo a los tres ejes que conforman la línea de investigación de los autores en psicología de la educación, a saber, considerar la arquitectura, no sólo cognitiva, sino instrumental y cultural, del significado; la necesidad de unir en la investigación y en el diseño educativo las vertientes de significado y de sentido que caracterizan el funcionamiento psicológico de los individuos, y que solo se articulan sobre la base de sistemas de actividad; por último, la necesidad de contemplar las formas de representación humanas menos formalizadas y desdeñadas hasta hace muy poco por la psicología de la educación: las denominadas bajo el epígrafe de conocimiento informal. En torno a estos tres ejes, se exponen ejemplos de investigación y de intervención que conforman lo que hemos denominado diseño cultural.