Selection and evaluation of Internet information by adults with intellectual disabilities

Internet offers people with intellectual disabilities (ID) unique opportunities to access information and to participate in society. But concerns have been raised about the potential risks they face when accessing the Internet (e.g. giving credit to false information, being exposed to manipulative content). As part of the current debate between positive risk-taking and overprotection, our study empirically tested the extent to which 43 adults with ID identified and selected topically relevant as well as trustworthy web pages while searching the Internet for several topics (e.g. Can social networks use your pictures for advertisement?). Participants also justified their search decisions. Results revealed that while searching familiar topics (i.e. social networks), participants selected more relevant and trustworthy pages than irrelevant and less trustworthy ones. Searches of less familiar topics (i.e. daily health), were carried out randomly, that is, without applying a specific criterion. Results point to the importance of topic familiarity on people’s with ID performance on Internet searching tasks. This pattern of results suggests that, first, we should avoid overprotection when people with ID search for familiar topics and, second, they need more support when searching for information about less familiar topics.     

How students with intellectual disabilities evaluate recommendations from internet forums

Social networks enable people with intellectual disabilities (ID) to participate actively in society and to promote their self-determination. However, concerns have been raised regarding the potential limitations of people with ID to deal with untrustworthy information sources on the Internet. In an experiment, we assessed how adult students with ID evaluated recommendations in Internet forums authored by either self-reported experts or by users under pseudonyms who supported their claim either with documentary sources or their personal experience. We compared the performances of students with ID to that of students of similar ages but higher educational levels (chronological age-matched control group) and to younger students with similar verbal mental age (verbal mental age-matched control group). Participants were asked to evaluate to what extent a fictitious user should follow particular recommendations given in a forum and to justify their evaluations by writing a message to the fictitious user. Students with ID, as opposed to the two control groups, recommended the forum advice to a higher extent regardless of authorship and evidence used, and they included in their messages to the fictitious user a higher number of opinions and information sources not present in the forum without linking them to the actual discussion. The pattern of results suggested that students with ID have a limited ability to evaluate recommendations in forums and that they do not necessarily present a delay in the development of these abilities, but rather an atypical development. Finally, we discussed the potential implications for teaching digital literacy to students with ID.     

School counsellors in cultural diversity contexts. An analysis of their practice / El orientador escolar en contextos de diversidad cultural. Un análisis de su práctica

This article includes the assessments made by four counsellors of their work in cultural diversity management in Huelva (Spain). Using interviews and focus groups, together with other qualitative research techniques, we examined the counsellors’ intervention models and the relationships they maintain with other members of the educational community to address issues raised by the presence of immigrant students in their respective schools. The results of the experiment emphasize the predominant use of a clinical intervention model, along with limited and isolated collaborations with teachers and other education agents (administrators, social workers, families). However, in recent years, the institutional consolidation of counsellors in schools and their commitment to prevention and collaborative work creates opportunities for a new, more participatory intervention model that would better manage cultural diversity.     

Predicting bullying: maladjustment,social skills and popularity

In order to prevent bullying, research has characterised the adolescents involved in terms of their social skills, maladjustment and popularity. However, there is a lack of knowledge concerning the relationships between these variables and how these relationships predict bullying involvement. Moreover, the literature has focused on pure bullies and victims, despite the fact that bully-victims are known to be the most troubled. The aim of this work is to study the relationships between these variables and their predictive value, focusing on the bully-victim role. The sample (N?=?641) is made up of adolescents aged between 12 and 17?years. The results mainly indicate that the level of maladjustment and social skills predicts sociometric popularity, which is a significant predictor of bullying involvement. Differences in the social roles were observed, suggesting that social skills and maladjustment serve a different purpose for bully-victims than for the other roles involved.     

Grounding participatory action research in rural Colombia: a demonstration study on youth financial inclusion

ABSTRACT

Since the new millennium, the issue of financial inclusion of young people has increasingly gained recognition, especially in relation to those living in deprived circumstances. Financial inclusion can be promoted through education that specifically aims for the strengthening of young persons’ financial capabilities. In 2013, a participatory action research project was started in a rural region of Colombia to improve the research capacity of a local university through the development and implementation of a demonstration project on the financial inclusion of young people. University teachers, students and employees of a financial cooperative were trained in conducting qualitative methods with a specific aim of being responsive to the life stories of their interviewees. This paper shares the experiences from an international team of educational scholars who aim for the democratisation of research capacity and the dissemination of localised knowledge. This is done by working closely together with stakeholders and ultimately giving a voice to youth employed in the informal economy as they are usually the ones being most deprived from access to financial services.     

On Our Own: Starting an Interlibrary Loan Service From Scratch

In August 2009, the Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine Medical Library opened its doors to students, faculty, and staff. One of the many challenges before opening the library was developing a unique and autonomous interlibrary loan service for its patrons. This article examines the decisions in choosing the best document delivery system, the management of funds, and the selection of holdings for a new medical library. Along with these decisions, there is discussion on the significance of costs, turnaround times, and challenges going forward.     

Teaching heritage in Social Science,Geography and History textbooks in Compulsory Secondary Education / La enseñanza del patrimonio en los libros de texto de Ciencias Sociales,Geografía e Historia para ESO

Abstract

The role of heritage in Compulsory Secondary Education is analysed through the Social Science, Geography and History textbooks edited by the three most widely distributed publishing houses in three Spanish regions. The aim is to characterize the patrimonial outlook transmitted by these materials, detect the difficulties and obstacles in terms of heritage education and contribute to enable the integration of heritage education from a transdisciplinary, constructivist and socio-critical perspective. To this end, different research instruments are developed (progression hypothesis, sheets for observation and data collection, and category tables) to enable a systematic and rigorous analysis of the 24 textbooks studied. In general, the results allow us to confirm the initial hypothesis, highlighting the disciplinary use of heritage as an illustrative and educational resource. Historical and artistic elements stand out over other manifestations of heritage as a function of their stylistic and monumental values. No significant differences were found in content among the published materials in the different autonomous communities.     

Co-designing and piloting an Integrated Digital Literacy and Language Toolkit for vulnerable migrant students in higher education

Education and Information Technologies - This paper presents the process of co-design, co-production, piloting, evaluation and revision of an Integrated Digital Literacy and Language Toolkit for...     

Education returns of wage earners and self-employed workers: Response

This is a response to [Jordahl, H., Poutvaara, P., & Tuomala, J. (2009). Comment on education returns of wage earners and self-employed workers. Economics of Education Review 28]. We acknowledge that econometrics have improved since the time our original paper was written, so that the choice of accurate instruments is now more deeply founded. However, in this note, we argue that the differences in the estimates obtained by Jordahl et al. (2009) has been generated not only because the “sensibility of HT estimators to the choice of instrumental variables”, but also to the estimation metholology followed by them, in which rarely changing variables are considered to be time-varying.     

Simplifying informational text structure for struggling readers

Direct instruction of reading strategies, such as the ‘structure strategy’, is demonstrated to be effective for the development of more mature and skilled reading processes in struggling readers. This instructional intervention approach, aimed at directly improving reading ability, can be used in combination with text simplification. Text simplification is the modification of the text in order to make it more understandable or readable for target groups of readers. In this article, we discuss a theoretically-driven text simplification approach, inspired by cognitive models of reading comprehension. Differently from classical approaches to linguistic text simplification, the aim of cognitive text simplification is not simply to reduce the linguistic complexity of the text, but to improve text coherence and the structure of information in the text. This can be achieved by using rhetorical devices, like signaling or discourse markers, which specify relationships among ideas at a global level (macrostructural) and work as processing instructions for the reader, scaffolding reading comprehension. The goal of this paper is to discuss, in light of the literature, the effectiveness of these adaptations for improving struggling readers’ understanding and learning from informational texts.