Representations over the Earth’s shape and the process of day and night from Nahua indigenous schoolchildren / Representaciones sobre la forma de la Tierra y del proceso día y noche en niños de escuelas indígenas Nahuas

This research presents the way in which children from a Nahua indigenous community build representations of the Earth’s shape, as well as the process that causes day and night. Concepts from school and local culture were studied. For the first case, a questionnaire was applied to 331 children, out of which 38 children were then interviewed on the topics from the questionnaire. For the cultural ideas, three teachers from the region and 30 children from the sample were interviewed. The results show that the representations depend on the form of questioning and the existence of three models: a flat structure with a celestial dome and mechanisms that hide or remove the Sun or the Moon in order to create day and night; a spherical structure with a surrounding sky, where the Sun and Moon rise and set; and a transitional model with a hollow sphere, flat surface and celestial dome. Cultural ideas do not appear to have any influence over these models, probably due to a loss of the community’s cosmogonic knowledge and the age of the children.     

Evaluation and impact of a reflective training process for rural extension agents

Purpose: This article assesses a non-traditional training methodology for extension agents, focused on the exchange of experiences among peers and the reflection on practice, with the aim of exploring its potential as a training strategy.

Design/Methodology/approach: A quali-quantitative investigation was conducted, which included interviews with extension agents, the use of different questionnaires, and recordings of the evaluation sessions carried out during each workshop.

Findings: This research allowed us to understand the importance of effective group coordination, a participatory climate, working in small groups, and the feedback loop between theory and practice for processes of experience sharing and reflection on practice. Some of the positive effects of the training observed were that extension agents acquired new knowledge and methodologies, reflected critically upon their practice, and put into question their own extension approach.

Practical Implications: Given its potentialities, implementing training processes focused on experience sharing and reflection on practice for rural extension workers, seems advisable.

Theoretical Implications: This article contributes to the understanding of how experience sharing and reflection on practice can generate transformations in rural extension agents’ approaches and positioning.

Originality/Value: This study systematically assesses the impacts that training has on extension workers, as well as the underlying processes that made it possible to generate them.     

Nuclear power plants? Yes or no? Thank you! The argumentative use of tables and graphs / ¿Centrales nucleares? ¿Sí o no? ¡Gracias! El uso argumentativo de tablas y gráficas

Abstract

The present paper deals with how eleventh grade high school students and university undergraduate students studying environmental science use evidence to write an argumentative text. They were presented with a dilemma with four sets of data (two pro and two anti nuclear energy). Half the sample was given the data in graph format and the other half in table format. The four sets of data differed according to their complexity. We analysed the structure of argument, the use of the evidence (either provided or their own) according to the participants’ position on the dilemma, and the presence of confirmation bias. Our results show a good argumentative competence that does not seem to be affected either by the students’ educational level or data format. We observed an effect of the complexity of the data in relation to the participants’ position.     

Predictor variables of written picture naming in the deaf

Studies conducted in recent years on oral andwritten language production show that the ageat which words are learned is the main variablethat influences lexical access in both hearingpeople and people who have suffered brainlesions. No studies have been done with deafpeople and, since they use sign language inaddition to oral language, differencesregarding hearing people might be found intheir lexical organization. The aim of thisstudy was to test which variables determine thelexical production of deaf people. For thispurpose, 40 deaf people between the ages of 13and 58 years were asked to write individuallythe names of 100 pictures. The regressionanalyses performed on a total of 4000 responsesshow that the main predictor variable ofperformance was also age of acquisition. It isconcluded that the organization of the lexicalsystem in deaf people is similar to that of hearing people, although the phonologicalrepresentations of deaf people may be moreinaccurate.     

Integrating technology in a field-based teacher training program: The PT3@ASU project

The Preparing Tomorrow’s Teachers to Use Technology (PT3) initiative has funded various efforts to improve and enhance the technology preparation of preservice teachers. At Arizona State University, these efforts have focused on providing preservice teachers with opportunities to develop, implement, and evaluate their own instructional activities that utilize technology effectively and appropriately in authentic situations, to give them the myriad of tools necessary to integrate technology into teaching and learning activities. This paper focuses on the integration of these efforts into the field-based elementary education program, and discusses our formative evaluation of the field-based technology integration model, through the following questions: What are the preliminary successes of the model with regard to student perceptions, attitudes, and integration of technology into instructional activities? and What components of the model require additions or modifications?     

Brazilian Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations

This paper relates and analyses the experience of various Brazilian institutions organized in a consortium with the aim of providing integration and unified access, via a web gateway, to full-text electronic theses already available at different Brazilian universities. The rise and impact of free electronic academic publishing on scientific communication and the development of science is analyzed. The results of a pilot programme, developed under the coordination of IBICT, as well as technical and technological aspects of information system models adopted, are presented. Aspects such as metadata sets and formats, protocols for automatic gathering of metadata, union catalogue databases, user interfaces and integration with other Brazilian STI systems, are analyzed. Finally, future developments and the enlargement of the Brazilian Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations are discussed.     

Does Media Consumption Make Us Happy? Evidence for Spain

This article concerns the study of the impact of media consumption on happiness in Spain using data from the fourth wave of the European Social Survey, distinguishing between watching TV, listening to the radio, reading newspapers, and using the Internet. A negative effect of TV watching was found on individual happiness, mainly among women; those with higher incomes; and those with paying jobs—that is, among those with a higher opportunity cost of time. However, this negative effect on happiness does not appear for radio listening, newspaper reading, or Internet usage.     

SEMDS: An R Package for Structural Equation Multidimensional Scaling

The aim of this article is to introduce the R package semds for structural equation multidimensional scaling. This methodology combines multidimensional scaling with latent variable features from structural equation modeling and is applicable to asymmetric and three-way input dissimilarity data. This key idea of this approach is that the input data are assumed to be imperfect measurements of a latent symmetric dissimilarity matrix. The parameter estimation is performed via an alternating least squares multidimensional scaling procedure that minimizes the stress. The latent dissimilarities are estimated as factor scores within a structural equation modeling framework. Applications shown in the article involve data associated with the banking crisis and data from avalanche research. The models fitted with the semds package are compared to related methods from multidimensional scaling. The R code to reproduce all the computations is provided in the supplementary materials.