Improving Chilean In-service Elementary Teachers’ Understanding of Nature of Science Using Self-contained NOS and Content-Embedded Mini-Courses

Understanding nature of science (NOS) is considered critical to the development of students’ scientific literacy. However, various studies have shown that a large number of elementary and secondary science teachers do not possess an adequate understanding of NOS. This study investigated how elementary teachers’ understanding of NOS was impacted through a 1-year professional development program in Chile that included NOS instruction as a theme throughout two types of mini-courses in the program. Twelve teachers attended a 1-year development program focused on improving teacher content knowledge and included the instruction of NOS embedded in two self-contained NOS mini-courses (36 h) and two lessons (3 h each) within five science content mini-courses (30 h). The Views of NOS (version D+) questionnaire and interviews were used to assess teachers’ understanding of NOS at the beginning (January) and end of the program (December). Elementary teachers’ understanding of the creative, inferential, and tentative aspect of NOS showed improvement. According to the teachers’ perceptions, the most significant activities for improving their NOS understanding were decontextualized activities in both types of mini-courses (self-contained NOS and science content mini-courses). The implications for professional development programs are also discussed.     

Seeing Change in Time: Video Games to Teach about Temporal Change in Scientific Phenomena

This article explores how learning biological concepts can be facilitated by playing a video game that depicts interactions and processes at the subcellular level. Particularly, this article reviews the effects of a real-time strategy game that requires players to control the behavior of a virus and interact with cell structures in a way that resembles the actual behavior of biological agents. The evaluation of the video game presented here aims at showing that video games have representational advantages that facilitate the construction of dynamic mental models. Ultimately, the article shows that when video game’s characteristics come in contact with expert knowledge during game design, the game becomes an excellent medium for supporting the learning of disciplinary content related to dynamic processes. In particular, results show that students who participated in a game-based intervention aimed at teaching biology described a higher number of temporal-dependent interactions as measured by the coding of verbal protocols and drawings than students who used texts and diagrams to learn the same topic.     

Turning Ideologies Inside Out: Developing Young Readers’ Empathy for Critical Voices in Narrative Fiction

This article is located at the crossroads between two distinctive human traits, empathy and rational thought, with narrative emerging as a particularly powerful means to enable young readers to bring them together. Specifically, we discuss the role that critical literary exegesis plays in the development of empathic consciousness in literary readers. The discussion is conducted through the critical narrative discourse analysis of a short story that is widely read by Portuguese young students. The story deals with what has become a living experience for many students – emigration – and puts opposing social ideologies about this experience in a subtle dialogue. Narratological critical analysis provides an essential tool for readers to turn those ideologies inside out. It enables them to escape the main character’s conformist positioning and develop a liberating empathy, and hence a more sensitive perspective about the social reality that the narrator offers for our consideration.     

Determinants of the Web accessibility of European banks

This paper aims at identifying the factors influencing the implementation of Web accessibility (WA) by European banks. We studied a database made up of 49 European banks whose shares are included in the Dow Jones EURO STOXX® TMI Banks [8300] Index. Regarding the factors for the implementation, we considered three feasible reasons. Firstly, WA adoption can be motivated by operational factors, as WA can aid in increasing operational efficiency. Secondly, we expect large banks to have higher WA levels, as small firms face competitive disadvantages with regard to technology adoption. Lastly, WA can also be understood as a part of the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) strategy, so, the more committed a bank is to CSR, the more prone it will be to implement WA. Our results indicate that neither the operational factors nor the firm size seem to have exerted a significant influence on WA adoption. Regarding CSR commitment, results indicate a significant influence on WA adoption. However, the effect of the influence is contrary to that hypothesized, since more CSR-committed banks have less accessible Web sites. A possible reason for this result is that banks not included in the CSR indexes try to overcome this drawback by engaging in alternative CSR activities such as WA.     

Anticipatory strategies of team-handball goalkeepers

This study seeks to discover whether handball goalkeepers employ a general anticipatory strategy when facing long distance throws and the effect of uncertainty on these strategies. Seven goalkeepers and four throwers took part. We used a force platform to analyse the goalkeeper's movements on the basis of reaction forces and two video cameras synchronised at 500 Hz to film the throw using 3D video techniques. The goalkeepers initiated their movement towards the side of the throw 193 ± 67 ms before the release of the ball and when the uncertainty was reduced the time increased to 349 ± 71 ms. The kinematics analysis of their centre of mass indicated that there was an anticipatory strategy of movement with certain modifications when there was greater uncertainty. All the average scores referring to velocity and lateral movement of the goalkeeper's centre of mass are significantly greater than those recorded for the experimental situation with bigger uncertainty. The methodology used has enabled us to tackle the study of anticipation from an analysis of the movement used by goalkeepers to save the ball.     

Summation and transfer of negative occasion setting

Two experiments examined the summation and transfer of negative occasion setting in serial feature negative (X→A?/A+) and negative patterning discriminations (X→A?/X+/A+) in a discrete-trial operant task with rats. With both discrimination procedures, negative occasion setting transferred readily (but not perfectly) to cues trained as targets in another similar discrimination procedure, but not to cues that were separately trained. Furthermore, with both discrimination procedures, the negative occasion-setting powers of features from two individual discriminations summed, both when those features were trained with the same targets and when they were trained with different targets. After negative patterning discriminations, in which the feature (X) cues were separately reinforced, this summation of negative occasion setting occurred despite the concomitant summation of the features’ excitatory control in the absence of an explicit target cue. These data, which replicated and extended previously reported data from Pavlovian feature negative procedures, are discussed in the context of hierarchical, generalization, and network models of discrimination learning.     

Young people in the argentine education system: Their inclusion and exclusion

Graduate in political sciences, University of El Salvador. Post-graduate in education and society, Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO, Argentina). Co-ordinator for education and society, post-graduate professor of education and society and of the diploma in social sciences (educational management) for FLACSO. Invited post-graduate professor at the University of Bologna. Consultant to the OEI, CEPAL and INAP. Professor of educational policy at the National University of La Plata. Editor of the reviewPropuesta educativa [Educational offer].     

Schooling of Children with Rare Diseases and Disability in Europe

ABSTRACT

Inclusive education of disabled students has been promoted in European disability policies. However, the transition process from more segregated system is slow. The purpose of this study was to provide an insight about different types of schooling of disabled children affected by a rare disease across Europe and to evaluate their and caregivers’ well-being. We analysed data from a cross-sectional study (BURQOL-RD) of persons with rare diseases that cause intellectual and/or physical disability: Prader-Willi syndrome, fragile X syndrome, three types of mucopolysaccharidosis and Duchenne muscular dystrophy. The sample consisted of 359 children aged 6–17 and 269 caregivers from eight European countries. Results showed differences between countries in proportion of students placed in special schools, which are still valid option in countries such as Germany, France or UK. Within the inclusive education modalities, lack of special support for disabled students was observed especially in low-income countries. No association between the type of schooling and quality of life was observed, but the subjective caregivers’ burden seems to be higher in special schools. The study shows existent differences in implementation of inclusive education in Europe. More research is needed in the field of rare disease disability and educational needs.     

Studying mathematics problem-solving classrooms. A comparison between the discourse of in-service teachers and student teachers

In the article we compare the approaches of 3 in-service teachers and 3 student teachers when they tried to solve a verbal arithmetic problem in the classroom. Each interaction was studied using a System of Analysis that takes into account the cognitive processes involved in the solution of a mathematic problem and describes the interaction at different levels showing what is done and to what degree teachers and/or pupils are responsible for what is done. The results of the study suggest that both groups of teachers are different in how they direct the student’s attention toward the essential aspects implied in the resolution of word problem. On the one hand, the in-service teachers guaranteed students’ understanding of the problem before dealing with the solution, while students teachers only did so when pupils committed errors. On the other hand, the in-service teachers allowed a high level of student participation, while student teachers took a more prominent role so children’s participation was lower.