Are determining factors of municipal E-government common to a worldwide municipal view? An intra-country comparison

The implementation of E-government aims at simplifying and improving the transactions between public administrations and their users or customers. The objective of this study is to analyze whether the factors behind the level of development of E-government among municipalities of a specific country are common to the improvement of digital administration in the largest municipalities from 81 countries worldwide. While previous studies provide evidence that municipalities from the same country, mainly those governed by left-wing parties, focus on differentiating themselves in the content of their Web sites, our findings emphasize that internationally, in the most important municipalities worldwide, all the political parties attempt to promote the development of a dynamic and participatory E-government.     

Disabilities and inclusive practices within Toronto preschools

A current objective in Canada is a provision of childcare services for all children. This objective has not been achieved as many children, especially those with disabilities, are often denied services from publicly funded daycare centres. The authors argue that policy discussions framed from an inclusive perspective provide a better understanding of how the Ontario child care system should function to ensure daycare services for children of disabilities. They interviewed the directors of 354 licensed preschools in Toronto about the inclusion of children with disabilities into their centres. Analysis revealed that only 2.4% of the students in these centres were identified as having a disability; the two most frequently identified disabilities were Autism Spectrum Disorders and speech and language disorders. The majority of directors stated that they would turn away a child because of a disability. The centres that were most inclusive had service providers come into the centre, but very few (17%) of these centres had resource teachers as support. The analysis further indicates a large number of centres that currently are not identified as capable of providing special need services and are not directly operated by the Ministry of Education. With staff development and funding, these centres have the potential to provide services to children of disabilities.     

La ética: Polémica en el curriculum escolar

Se analiza a continuación la polémica generada en torno a la educación moral y cívica a lo largo de las últimas décadas y, en especial, la derivada de la LOGSE al dotar a la Etica de un carácter transversal generando nuevos planteamientos y perspectivas que procuran su mayor sistematización en el curriculum escolar.     

Sobre lenguas y educación en Europa

Pasar de una cultura nacional cerrada en sí misma—incluso contraria a su propia diversidad—a formar parte del experimento cultural europeo, requiere que actualicemos nuestros esquemas de comprensión. Estamos viviendo, como ciudadanos, pero más aún como educadores y como estudiantes, uno de los procesos más interesantes del diseño cultural de la historia del planeta, en todo caso del continente. Y la ecuación cultura = lenguaje parece la clave del invento. Sin embargo, Miguel Siguán analiza y resume con claridad la situación de partida y nos subraya la pobreza de nuestro soporte educativo ante el desafío del plurilingüismo.     

Adaptation and evaluation of a learning analytics dashboard to improve academic support at three Latin American universities

Despite the success of academic advising dashboards in several higher educational institutions (HEI), these dashboards are still under-explored in Latin American HEI's. To close this gap, three different Latin American universities adapted an existing advising dashboard, originally deployed at the KU Leuven to their own context. In all three cases, the context was the main ruling factor to these adaptations. In this paper, we describe these adaptions using a framework that focuses on four different elements of the context: Objectives, Stakeholders, Key moment and Interactions. Evaluation of the adapted dashboards in the three different Latin American universities is conducted through pilots. This evaluation shows the value of the dashboard approach in different contexts in terms of satisfaction, usefulness and impact in academic decision-making and advising tasks. The main contribution of this paper is the systematic reporting of the adaptations to an academic advising dashboard and showing the value of an academic advising dashboard on academic decision-making and advising tasks.     

Secondary School Students’ Construction and Use of Mathematical Models in Solving Word Problems

This study focussed on how secondary school students construct and use mathematical models as conceptual tools when solving word problems. The participants were 511 secondary-school students who were in the final year of compulsory education (15–16 years old). Four levels of the development of constructing and using mathematical models were identified using a constant-comparative methodology to analyse the student’s problem-solving processes. Identifying the general in the particular and using the particular to endow the general with meaning were the key elements employed by students in the processes of construction and use of models in the different situations. In addition, attention was paid to the difficulties that students had in using their mathematical knowledge to solve these situations. Finally, implications are provided for drawing upon student’s use of mathematical models as conceptual tools to support the development of mathematical competence from socio-cultural perspectives of learning.     

Blind spot detection using vision for automotive applications

This paper describes a vision-based system for blind spot detection （BSD） in intelligent vehicle applications. A camera is mounted in the lateral mirror of a car with the intention of visually detecting cars that are located in the so-called blind spot and cannot be perceived by the vehicle driver. The detection of cars in the blind spot is carried out using computer vision techniques, based on optical flow and a double-stage data clustering technique for robust vehicle detection.     

Taking critical thinking,creativity and grit online

Technology has the potential to facilitate the development of higher-order thinking skills in learning. There has been a rush towards online learning by education systems during COVID-19; this can therefore be seen as an opportunity to develop students’ higher-order thinking skills. In this short report we show how critical thinking and creativity can be developed in an online context, as well as highlighting the importance of grit. We also suggest the importance of heuristic evaluation in the design of online systems to support twenty-first century learning.

     

Teacher training for secondary education and graduates’ entrance into the teaching profession

This study focuses on the relationship between teacher education and graduates’ intended and actual entrance into teaching. Moreover, it explores how this relationship differs for two types of initial teacher training for secondary education. A hypothetical model of graduates’ entrance into the teaching profession comprising empirically grounded variables was developed. Besides teacher education related variables, other factors (e.g., motivation and labour market) were included. Data for this study were based on a sample of 370 graduates qualified for teaching in secondary education. Logistic regression analysis indicates that intention to enter teaching, preparedness for teaching, employment opportunities and type of teacher training explain 43% of the variance in actual entrance into teaching. Furthermore, path analysis was applied to test the hypothetical pattern of (inter)relationships between the variables. Results are largely consistent across the two types of teacher training showing a small, although statistically significant, contribution of teacher education above other antecedents of graduates’ intention to enter teaching.     

Belief in a just world, justice concerns, and well-being at Portuguese schools

This article investigates the meaning of the belief in a just world (BJW) for justice cognition at school and for subjective well-being. We hypothesized that BJW should serve as a resource helping to maintain positive well-being and to assimilate experienced injustice. The results of two studies with Portuguese school students (7th–12th grade) and one with university students were consistent with our hypotheses. The more the students endorsed the BJW, the more they evaluated their school grades and their teachers’ and their peers’ behavior towards them as just and the more they were satisfied with life in general. Moreover, the more students felt fairly treated by their teachers, the less they felt distressed at school. Life satisfaction varied however independently of school-specific justice cognitions. This pattern of results persisted when controlled for achievement (grades) as well as for personality dispositions such as self-efficacy, self-esteem, and general trust. The implications of these results for further studies on adolescent development are discussed.