Children’s education and mental health in Spain during and after the Civil War: psychiatry,psychology and “biological pedagogy” at the service of Franco’s regime

Abstract

This article analyses the child psychiatry and psychology developed during the Spanish Civil War and immediate postwar period. The aim is to demonstrate that, despite the existence of a certain degree of disciplinary continuity in relation to the pre-war period, both disciplines were placed at the service of Francoism. This meant that the association of psychology and psychiatry with pedagogy in order to educate/cure children played a key role in legitimising the child intervention policies of Franco’s regime, and this strategy was best reflected in Vallejo Nágera’s proposal regarding “biological pedagogy”. Finally, it analyses how psychiatry and psychology were used outside the school context to re-educate and control an infant population trapped between two worlds as the result of the Civil War.     

The challenges of a high-performance student athlete

To become a top athlete requires time, commitment and carefully planned training. Optimum adaptation to training requires the careful balancing of stress and recovery. The student athlete has to balance all these demands with the additional requirements of an academic programme. This can bring unique stresses and challenges. This research aims to investigate the challenges of combining high-level sport with academic demands. Nine elite student athletes (three females, six males) took part in semi-structured interviews around how the student athletes balanced their training and sporting demands with the academic demands of their course of study. The interviews were transcribed verbatim and analysed using grounded theory. The results suggested that the athletes had each developed their own distinct approach towards training management. Most of the subjects had experienced setback in their study and athletic performance due to overtraining or burnout. The findings highlight the need to empower and educate not only the athlete but also the coach on the impact of overtraining. Key findings from this study were the need for open coach–athlete communication, in-depth planning and the need for adequate recovery.     

The Collective that Didn't Quite Collect: Reflections on the IALS

The concept and methodology of IALS obviously represent progress for literacy research. Nevertheless, this survey presents serious limitations. It prioritises the handling of data-based information as opposed to experiential and contextualized information, ranking at a higher position those who handle the first kind of information. The survey ignores how people solve problems in their life context. The competence of people cannot be understood merely through outside observation and a questionnaire situation. In the case of Poland, the interpretation of data manifests an ethnocentric Western attitude, tending to reduce cultural differences to a cultural deficit. Two IALS-inspired surveys conducted in Spain and Portugal mixed quantitative and qualitative methods in order to take into account the social relations in their cultural context. This article questions the role of research, which cannot be limited to the objectivation of reality, but should help to transform and improve it. The alternative model proposed is named "investigation action."     

Engaging With Quality Improvement Initiatives: A Descriptive Study of Learning in the Complex and Dynamic Context of Everyday Life for Family Child Care Providers

ABSTRACT

Research Findings: This article reports on family child care providers’ views about their engagement with professional development programs, including providers who were and were not participating in Quality Rating and Improvement Systems in Los Angeles, California. Most providers participating in the study were taking active steps to improve their work with children, but only a few providers described themselves as satisfied with the programs available. First, we report on why providers chose to engage (or not) in formal professional development activities; specifically, we explore the relationship between career phase and engagement and the levels of participation reported by seasoned providers. Second, we describe the way many providers strategically self-customized their quality improvement (QI) activities by drawing flexibly on available programs or by finding a coach who would work with them on their specific needs. Practice or Policy: Our findings suggest that in order to increase engagement with formal QI systems, designers of professional development supports must better align these supports with the needs and interests of family child care providers in terms of content and modes of delivery. We propose the concept of just-in-time professional development as 1 way to make QI offerings more responsive to some family child care providers’ needs.     

Certain Changes to Training Companies Due to Social Web Development

Companies use many different marketing strategies in order to make their products known and place their corporate images and brandings in the market. Besides, nowadays, being on the Intemet is a must for every company striving for success. The development and implementation of Web 2.0 or social web are threatening the basis of the ways of mixing with other people. A company devoted to open and distance learning, such as Master-D Corporation, a clear example of how a proper and planned use of the different possibilities offered by the Web 2.0, based on blogs, allows a company to achieve bigger market shares and brand positioning following the win-win principle. Blogs are, undoubtedly, channels of communication that prove the power of attraction of good information. These changes are affecting everybody and, in particular, companies and institutions related to people＇s education, teaching and training for their inclusion in society and labor market. This essay brings up some reflections in two ways： The first one deals with some reasons why education is also related to the concept of ＂company＂; and the second one deals with how these changes generated by Web 2.0 are affecting some training companies, represented in this case by Master-D,     

Exploring changes in student teachers’ meaning-oriented learning

This study reports on changes in student teachers’ meaning-oriented learning during teacher education and their perceptions of what enhances this learning. Students with a meaning-oriented learning pattern view learning as an active process of knowledge construction, are capable of regulating their learning, want to understand a topic thoroughly, form their opinions about it and draw their own conclusions. This study is situated in Dutch academic primary teacher education, covering student teachers’ entire study period. Quantitative data on changes in their learning patterns were collected using a pre-test/post-test design (N = 21). The student teachers’ perceptions of what enhanced meaning-oriented learning were explored by conducting semi-structured interviews after their graduation (N = 9). At the group level, changes were limited to an increasing use of deep processing strategies. At the individual level, changes varied from a moderate decrease to a high increase in meaning orientation. Increases appeared to be related particularly to student teachers’ perceptions of opportunities to learn from their own interests and to regulate their own learning; student teachers who reported having experienced such opportunities increased their meaning-oriented learning. The study indicates that student teachers could benefit from explicating and discussing these opportunities.     

Towards the development of an archival core curriculum: The United States and Canada

This study of graduate level archival education identifies core curricula and evaluates these programs in schools of library and information science as well as in history departments. It focuses on the idea of specialized knowledge and systematic theory where the knowledge and theories that educators have selected as an initial means of introducing new archivists to the profession has a significant bearing on what an educator considers ’x201C;core.’x201D; It presents data on programs, curricula, courses, and syllabi and by way of example, focuses on an in-depth analysis of introductory archives courses.     

Impact of Overt and Subclinical Hypothyroidism on Exercise Tolerance: A Systematic Review

Purpose: This systematic review describes the state of the art of the impact of hypothyroidism on exercise tolerance and physical performance capacity in untreated and treated patients with hypothyroidism. Method: A systematic computer-aided search was conducted using biomedical databases. Relevant studies in English, German, and Dutch, published from the earliest date of each database up to December 2012, were identified. Results: Out of 116 studies, a total of 38 studies with 1,379 patients fulfilled the inclusion criteria. These studies emphasize the multifactorial causes of exercise intolerance in untreated patients by the impact of limitations in different functional systems, with cardiovascular, cardiopulmonary, musculoskeletal, neuromuscular, and cellular metabolic systems acting in concert. Moreover, the studies affirm that exercise intolerance in patients is not always reversible during adequate hormone replacement therapy. As a consequence, despite a defined euthyroid status, there remains a significant group of treated patients with persistent complaints related to exercise intolerance who are suffering from limitations in daily and sport activities, as well as an impaired quality of life. An explanation for this phenomenon is lacking. Only 2 studies investigated the effects of a physical training program, and they showed inconsistent effects on the performance capacity in untreated patients with subclinical hypothyroidism. Conclusions: A limited body of knowledge exists concerning exercise tolerance in treated patients with hypothyroidism, and there is an insufficient amount of quantitative studies on the effects of a physical training program. To enhance exercise and sports participation for this specific group, more research in this forgotten area is warranted.     

Talking About Ourselves, Talking About Our Mothers: Latina Prospective Teachers Narrate Their Life Experiences

Through a Bakhtinian conceptual framework, this text explores Latina prospective teachers’ life histories—their experiences at home, in their K-12 schooling, on campus in a Midwestern university, and in their teacher education program. Further, it shows how often, when asked about their own experiences, Latinas responded with stories of their mothers’ past and present experiences. The author shows how drawing on stories of their mothers supported young women in rebutting discourses promulgated by white female peers regarding their cultural and language backgrounds, making them feel dismissed and unvalued. They used “mother stories” as ways to assert their strengths, knowledge, and understandings about schools and schooling.     

The Social Justice Consultation Corps: An interdisciplinary training initiative

The importance of preparing counselors to be social justice-oriented practitioners is established, though there is a need for models of social justice training. In this study, we describe a pilot program of the Social Justice Consultation Corps. We identify the theoretical foundations, describe activities, and present implications for future directions.