Regulation as both enabler of technology use and global competitive tool: The Gibraltar case

Distributed ledger technologies (DLTs) such as Blockchain appear to have disruptive economic potential to traditional finance-sector and non-financial markets as the success of crypto currencies demonstrates. While traditional financial and securities markets are highly regulated, DLT transactions and exchanges have so far widely remained unregulated, which potentially poses major threats to individual investors and, via money laundering, terrorist financing, and tax evasion, to society at large. Governments have been taking different approaches to monitoring and regulating the fledgling DLT provision arena. However, the small jurisdiction of Gibraltar, an affluent self-governed and self-financed British overseas territory with a population of 34,000 at the Southern tip of the Iberian Peninsula has taken a proactive approach. What makes this case stand out is that Gibraltar is not only is the first jurisdiction worldwide to regulate general DLT provision, but it is rather using the regulation as a competitive tool and a means for creating new public value. The study inquires the potential benefits and challenges to this particular approach to DLT provision regulation, and it investigates and presents the various facets of public value generation, which might serve as a poster child for fast and smart regulation in the digital age.     

Silence as Weapons: Transformative Praxis among Native American Students in the Urban Southwest

This article explores the benefits of verbal conflicts—contested storied spaces—in a Native American literature classroom composed of a multi-tribal and multicultural urban student body. Students in this course engage in whole-class verbal discussions focusing on contemporary and historical issues concerning Native American tribes and communities. Often these conversations focus on issues of oppression, colonization, and the unjust treatment of people of color. This article discusses the ways silence has been interpreted as a deficiency within standard schooling, then moves toward a view of silence as engaging, rich in identity construction, and filled with agency. Specifically, students who appeared to be silent during verbal exchanges in whole-class discussions were very much engaged and critical of the conversation, challenging dominant perceptions of silence as detrimental to education and learning. The conversations, herein, occurred within an ethnic studies course in a state that has banned the teaching of ethnic studies. Federal law protects Native American students from such dangerous legislation.     

Exploring socio-ecological factors influencing active and inactive Spanish students in years 12 and 13

This paper explores socio-ecological factors and their interplay that emerge from a qualitative study and influence adolescents' physical activity and sport participation. A total of 13 boys and 7 girls active and inactive adolescents, from years 12 and 13 and different types of school (state and private), participated in semi-structured interviews. It followed a purposeful sampling selection from participants who participated in a previous larger study on physical activity levels. Findings highlight the influence of personal and social interplay, such as perceived competence, obesity and teasing from peers, and new social demands and personal preferences in adolescents' (dis)engagement in physical activity and sport. They also stand out how social and environmental factors affect their participation, such as family, boy/girlfriends, physical education and rural/urban places of residence. These factors appear to have an important impact on the construction of (in)active identities during late adolescence. Policy makers, exercise professionals and educators should be aware of these factors in order to improve health promotion strategies and social policies. Some recommendations are also indicated in the paper.     

Intensive scaffolding in an intelligent tutoring system for the learning of algebraic word problem solving

The term intensive scaffolding refers to any set of conceptual scaffolding strategies that always allow the user to find the solution to a problem. Despite the many benefits of scaffolding, some negative effects have also been reported. These are mainly related to the possibility that a student solves the problems without actually engaging in their content. In this paper, we have used an intelligent tutoring system (ITS) to analyze the effect that intensive scaffolding has on the learning of algebraic word problem solving (AWPS). Two different versions of the ITS, which differ in the amount of scaffolding that they provide, have been created. These two versions were used by two groups of students in Secondary Education, in a quasi‐experimental study. The comparison of pre‐ and posttest scores shows a significant increase of the competence in AWPS in the group that used the ITS with intensive scaffolding.     

Motivational profiles as a combination of academic goals in higher education

The aim of the current study was to obtain information from students in higher education on different motivational profiles that resulted from the combination of three academic goals (i.e. learning goals (LG), performance-approach goals and performance-avoidance goals). Moreover, information related to the relevance of each goal within each motivational profile was explored to explain conditions closely related to the academic engagement. The sample consisted of 2556 students from five Spanish universities. Motivational profiles were obtained by using cluster analysis followed by a relevance analysis of each goal within each motivational profile. The results support the hypothesis concerning motivational profiles, and further suggest for motivational profiles with a predominance of LG to be more adaptive. According to our findings, high level of LG in one’s motivational profile appear to be a powerful protective factor in maintaining high interest in academic work, as well as high control beliefs and self-efficacy.     

The European Project Semester at ISEP: the challenge of educating global engineers

Current engineering education challenges require approaches that promote scientific, technical, design and complementary skills while fostering autonomy, innovation and responsibility. The European Project Semester (EPS) at Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Porto (ISEP) (EPS@ISEP) is a one semester project-based learning programme (30 European Credit Transfer Units (ECTU)) for engineering students from diverse scientific backgrounds and nationalities that intends to address these goals. The students, organised in multidisciplinary and multicultural teams, are challenged to solve real multidisciplinary problems during one semester. The EPS package, although on project development (20 ECTU), includes a series of complementary seminars aimed at fostering soft, project-related and engineering transversal skills (10 ECTU). Hence, the students enrolled in this programme improve their transversal skills and learn, together and with the team of supervisors, subjects distinct from their core training. This paper presents the structure, implementation and results of the EPS@ISEP that was created in 2011 to apply the best engineering practices and promote internationalisation and engineering education innovation at ISEP.