El adolescente como historiador

Resumen

Este articulo presenta una investigación sobre el desarrollo del pensamiento hipótético-deductivo en tareas históricas. Se trata de una habilidad fundamental para dominar situaciones históricas complejas, tan frecuentes en los libros de texto. Los resultados muestran un escaso dominio de esta habilidad por parte de los adolescentes. Se analizan las causas y las implicaciones educativas de esta falta de pensamiento histórico científico.     

…Y,sin embargo,se puede enseñar ciencia

Resumen

En este artículo se resumen brevemente las condiciones psicológicas necesarias para el aprendizaje de conceptos científicos, partiendo de las posiciones de Lakatos y Piaget. Se analizan también las implicaciones de esas condiciones para el diseño de situaciones de instrucción destinadas a modificar las concepciones espontáneas erróneas de los alumnos.     

The development of referential communication: Improving message accuracy by coordinating private speech with peer questioning

In this study, we examine the development of referential communicative regulation, incorporating the Vygotskian notion of private speech. From this perspective, private speech may serve a regulatory role when the child speaker is focused on what to say when speaking to others. In a longitudinal study carried out with 10 pairs of children with a mean age of 4.5, 6.5, and 8.5 years, we analyzed the relationship between the capacity of the child in the speaker role to modify messages, increasing their informative quality, the presence of private speech embedded in the messages, and the emergence of prior questions by the child in the listener role aimed at clarifying some aspect of the message. We found that the number of modified messages, the mean frequency of private speech in the messages, and the number of peer's questions all increase with age. Only in the case of the modified messages by the speaker did we find a triple interaction among age, use of private speech, and the presence of peer's questions. At 8.5 years, the presence of peer's questions and subsequent use of private speech appeared together for the majority of the modified messages. This was not the case at the ages 4.5 or 6.5. In line with Vygotsky's theses, private speech would play an important role to allow communicators to reflect on the quality of their communicative utterances, and to modify and improve them accordingly. In this process, the capacity to improve message accuracy by coordinating private speech with peer questioning clearly emerges with age.     

Understanding the evolution of e-government: The influence of systems of rules on public sector dynamics

Electronic government has been defined as the use of information and communication technologies in government settings. However, it is neither a homogeneous nor a static phenomenon. Recent empirical studies have identified two important dynamics in e-government evolution. First, e-government in general has evolved from its initial presence on the Internet to more transactional and integrated applications. Second, at the aggregate level and as a general trend, national governments have started adding technological and organizational sophistication and state and local governments have followed. Based on the study of systems of rules, this paper argues that these two dynamics in the evolution of e-government are, at least in part, the result of pressures from public managers attempting to solve problems and from citizens, businesses, and other stakeholders, attempting to control the actions of public managers. Both forces, related to performance and accountability, respectively, have promoted change in the systems of rules governing the design, implementation, and use of e-government initiatives. Specifically, they have generated a cycle that continually increases technological and organizational sophistication in e-government initiatives and have also promoted the episodic and evolving adoption of similar features across levels of government. These two related evolutionary dynamics and the characterization of e-government as systems of rules and standards have some important policy implications, which are briefly discussed at the end of the paper.