¿Cómo desarrollar secuencialmente el conocimiento fonológico?

A partir de una revisión de los procesos que requiere la “conciencia fonológica”, necesaria para la lectura, se proponen aquí una serie de actividades para desarrollarla.     

Structure of cartoons,narrative skills and perception of values/countervalues in primary school / Estructura de los dibujos animados,habilidades narrativas y percepción de valores/contravalores en Educación Primaria

Abstract

This study analyses whether narrative skill and the perception of values/countervalues among students in primary school vary according to the structure (narrative vs non-narrative) of the episodes of fiction viewed, the grade age (third and sixth, 8–12 years old), sex and attentional level. With this purpose in mind, quantitative and qualitative methodologies were implemented. The most noteworthy results include the higher narrative skill and perception of values/countervalues of students in the sixth grade of primary school and those who viewed an episode with a narrative structure. The conclusion is that when addressing narrative skills and the education in values/countervalues from the formal and informal spheres, special importance should be attached to the structure of the fiction contents, given that it can to some extent help students make the messages meaningful in terms of values and countervalues.     

Looking Far And Looking Near: Student Insights On History,Language, And Power

ABSTRACT

Three community college students participated in a collaborative student/professor research project to experiment with new ideas in teaching. Under the direction of the instructor, the students studied the South African riots in Soweto, 1976, and how issues of language and power were connected to this event. This investigative process began with video information to introduce students to the key issues, and was then followed by student research and discussion. The students, who were particularly motivated to understand the conflict by relating it to their own linguistic circumstances, worked individually and together to find articles and video sources to support their personal interests and ideas. By reflecting on their experiences and perceptions about language and communication, students were able to become engaged in an unfamiliar historical topic, discover relevant academic information, evaluate sources, and formulate insightful responses.     

A Structural Equation Model at the Individual and Group Level for Assessing Faking-Related Change

This article proposes a comprehensive approach based on structural equation modeling for assessing the amount of trait-level change derived from faking-motivating situations. The model is intended for a mixed 2-wave 2-group design, and assesses change at both the group and the individual level. Theoretically the model adopts an integrative approach that relates the 2 main current conceptualizations of faking, and models the amount of trait change as an individual-differences variable. The model and procedures are used in an empirical study based on 512 participants. Some of the results are interesting and warrant further research. Overall, the methodology that is proposed provides new resources for the theoretical and applied assessment of faking. In particular, it provides the practitioner with new tools for clearly assessing faking at the individual level.     

Combining IRT and SEM: A Hybrid Model for Fitting Responses and Response Certainties

This article proposes a model-based procedure, intended for personality measures, for exploiting the auxiliary information provided by the certainty with which individuals answer every item (response certainty). This information is used to (a) obtain more accurate estimates of individual trait levels, and (b) provide a more detailed assessment of the consistency with which the individual responds to the test. The basis model consists of 2 submodels: an item response theory submodel for the responses, and a linear-in-the-coefficients submodel that describes the response certainties. The latter is based on the distance-difficulty hypothesis, and is parameterized as a factor-analytic model. Procedures for (a) estimating the structural parameters, (b) assessing model–data fit, (c) estimating the individual parameters, and (d) assessing individual fit are discussed. The proposal was used in an empirical study. Model–data fit was acceptable and estimates were meaningful. Furthermore, the precision of the individual trait estimates and the assessment of the individual consistency improved noticeably.     

Agents control in intelligent learning systems: The case of reactive characteristics

Intelligent learning systems (ILSs) have evolved in the last few years basically because of influences received from multi-agent architectures (MAs). Conflict resolution among agents has been a very important problem for multi-agent systems, with specific features in the case of ILSs. The literature shows that ILSs with cognitive or pedagogical agents are prone to arbitration methods, where as ILSs with reactive agents are much in favor of control mechanisms. For these kind of systems, different control types are proposed based on the different stimuli that these agents will receive. These stimuli are aspects to be evaluated during the teaching/learning process such as: (1) error analysis, (2) learning styles, (3) analogies, (4) social aspects, etc.

The paper reviews several ILSs, related to our work; different control mechanisms are proposed to solve the agents' intervention conflicts. Finally, the use of several mechanisms is exemplified by the results of a specific ILS.     

Municipal elections and cultural expenditure

The aim of this paper is to analyze the effect of electoral timing on municipal public cultural spending. We use a panel sample of all municipalities from the Spanish Region of Murcia for 1995–2008. Our results reveal that mayors adopt an opportunistic behavior, increasing cultural spending in the election year and reducing it in the second year after the election. We also investigate whether the electoral cycle in cultural spending is influenced by mayors’ ideology, political strength, willingness to run for re-election, and electoral competitiveness. In this regard, our study shows that when mayors expect close elections, political budget cycles’ size is greater. Concerning political leadership, the magnitude of the electoral cycle is influenced by mayors’ political ideology rather than mayors’ political strength and re-election willingness. Additionally, we seek to shed some light on the determinants of public cultural spending. We find that income and upper-level governments’ transfers have a positive impact on cultural spending. Finally, unemployment, young people’s proportion and elderly people’s proportion negatively influence cultural spending.