Not so altruistic? Some keys elements about the knowledge,perception and participation of university students in NGOs / ¿No tan altruistas? Algunas claves sobre el conocimiento,la percepción y la participación del estudiantado universitario en ONG

This article analyses the knowledge, perception and participation of university students in NGOs. The social group analysed has a very positive perception towards volunteering as well as a life situation and preparation that, in theory, facilitates their participation in such activities. However, their effective participation is much lower than the levels shown by potential volunteers who would like to participate. We have identified two elements that stand between the possibility and reality: the lack of information and the time available. In this sense, universities appear as institutions capable of connecting the needs and demands of NGOs and students.     

Successful secondary school principalship in disadvantaged contexts from a leadership for learning perspective

The paper we present here is part of the International Successful School Principalship Project (ISSPP), which is designed to analyse the characteristic traits of successful leadership in different contexts and countries [Day, C., and K. Leithwood. 2007. Successful School Leadership in Times of Change. Dordrecht: Springer-Kluwer; Day, C., and D. Gurr. 2014. Leading School Successfully. Stories from the Field. London: Routledge]. One subgroup of the Spanish research team participating in the ISSPP at the University of Granada has contributed to the project by carrying out a comparative study of the type of leadership for learning at four secondary schools in disadvantaged contexts. Following ISSPP data collection protocols and using a category system specially designed to analyse the leadership for learning carried out by the four principals, the results show that four secondary schools have principals with a similar traits, dispositions and value systems; however, the secondary schools with the best academic results employed practices and strategies more closely associated with leadership for learning than schools with poorer academic results. The data provided by this study confirm the traits and strategies that the ISSPP has been identifying in successful principals in disadvantaged contexts in various countries. It also serves as a source of reflection and discussion on the type of leadership for learning present in some disadvantaged secondary schools in Spain.     

Underemployment and employment among young workers and the business cycle in Spain: the importance of education level and specialisation

The objective of this paper is to identify the effect of education on young workers’ time-related underemployment as well as analysing whether education has been a defence mechanism against the recent crisis. Especially relevant is the analysis regarding field of study, which has not been addressed in the underemployment literature. Using data from the Spanish Labour Force Survey 2006–2014, bivariate probit selection models are estimated for three different periods. This methodology enables to analyse the evolution of underemployment among young people, simultaneously considering their probability of employment. The results indicate that underemployment is negatively related to education level for each period and tertiary education has smoothed the negative effect of the recession. Moreover, those specialisations that provide students with specific and work-oriented skills (sciences, technology and health) help workers avoid underemployment and enable them to handle the recession better. Conversely, more generally oriented fields (education, and arts and humanities) are associated with a higher probability of underemployment. Similar patterns have been found regarding unemployment, indicating education plays a similar role in both working time shortages.     

The Effectiveness of Mime‐Based Creative Drama Education for Exploring Gesture‐Based User Interfaces

User interfaces that utilise human gestures as input are becoming increasingly prevalent in diverse computing applications. However, few designers possess the deep insight, awareness and experience regarding the nature and usage of gestures in user interfaces to the extent that they are able to exploit the technological affordances and innovate over them. We argue that design students, who will be expected to envision and create such interactions in the future, are constrained as such by their habits that pertain to conventional user interfaces. Design students should gain an understanding of the nature of human gestures and how to use them to add value to UI designs. To this end, we formulated an ‘awareness course’ for design students based on concepts derived from mime art and creative drama. We developed the course iteratively through the involvement of three groups of students. The final version of the course was evaluated by incorporating the perspectives of design educators, an industry expert and the students. We present the details of the course, describe the development process, and discuss the insights revealed by the evaluations.     

Can telecollaboration contribute to the TPACK development of pre-service teachers?

This study examines the suitability of telecollaboration practices to enhance ICT integration in Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL)-based units by analysing the number and type of episodes related to students’ technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) produced in a telecollaboration whose aim was the design of a technology-enhanced CLIL unit. Results revealed a high number of episodes focusing on the domains and intersections of the TPACK framework, that pedagogical content knowledge was the main focus of attention and prompted most of the suggestions for change in the unit and that telecollaboration promoted collaboration and made participation more equal. Consequently, telecollaboration showed a great potential for directing students’ attention to their TPACK even though the scarcity of episodes focusing on the TPACK intersection also indicated there is ample room for more teacher training efforts to prepare pre-service teachers for technology integration.     

Wasting Talent: Using Counter-Storytelling to Narrate Dismal Educational Outcomes

A recent study illustrated that the educational attainment of Latina/o students has been dismal during the past decade and that many Latinas/os continue to “fall through the cracks” of the educational pipeline. Through storytelling, I juxtapose my educational trajectory as a high school graduate with that of my third-oldest brother, who “fell through the cracks” of the educational pipeline as an underclassman in high school. I provide examples of how being reprimanded for minimal misconduct negatively impacted my older brother’s overall school experiences, which ultimately prevented him from finishing high school despite his potential to succeed.     

Adivinanzas and Dichos: Preparing Prospective Educators to Teach Science by Incorporating Culturally Responsive Tools

Culturally relevant science pedagogy is seldom discussed in terms of infusion of literary resources, such as adivinanzas and dichos in the design of instruction. In this study, the authors narrate how a science methods course was infused with the use of culturally responsive tools to purposefully connect to the elementary science curriculum. Results indicate that prospective Latino teachers found multiple opportunities to address specific science objectives with adivinanzas and expressed the advantages of using these culturally responsive tools to introduce and summarize science concepts as they implemented lessons during field experience.     

The pedagogical foundations of primary school inspector Leonor Serrano (1914–1939)

This article aims to reconstruct the pedagogy of Leonor Serrano, a Spanish school inspector working and developing her theories between 1914 and 1939. We use an interrogative-analytical methodology based on content analysis of her texts to reconstruct her educational theory. The theoretical deductive elements are uncovered in the analysis of the answers Leonor Serrano gives to the “basic questions of education”, issues that provide the bases for the scientific field of the theory of education to define a specific pedagogy and are identified through a process of historical-educational review. The study outcome is an explanatory narrative. The paper ends with a discussion of the method and the results.     

Understanding of graphs in social science undergraduate students: selection and interpretation of graphs

How do university students understand the graphs that they read in their textbooks? How does their knowledge regarding the content and their statistical training influence this understanding? Does the kind of task demand also influence this understanding? To answer these questions, we asked a group of psychology students and a group of economics students to choose the most suitable graph for presenting the results of different psychological research studies (reports) (selection task) or to explain in words the results of the same reports shown by means of their graphic representations only (interpretation task). The results showed there were very few differences between groups. Most of the students were able to relate textual information to the adequate graph, but also revealed significant shortcomings and mistakes in their understanding of important syntactic aspects of graphs. They also interpreted the graphs correctly but their interpretation had different levels of complexity, which were not always optimal. We also identified significant differences regarding the difficulty of the reports and the kinds of misinterpretations of graphs. The two tasks thus revealed different pictures of students’ skills in reading and interpreting graphs and, consequently, how the characteristics of task demands influence their performance.     

RETRACTED ARTICLE: The moderating role of resilience in the relationship between academic burnout and the perception of psychological health in nursing students

The objective of this study was to analyse the role of resilience in the dimensions of academic burnout syndrome and psychological health in a sample of nursing students. A battery of questionnaires was administered to 218 nursing students, all of whom were in the second year of their degree at the University of Murcia (Spain). The applied protocol used the CD-RISC 10 scale for the measurement of resilience, the burnout scale MBI, and the GHQ-12 questionnaire to assess psychological health. The findings showed a significant relationship between resilience and burnout, emotional exhaustion and self-efficacy, as well as with psychological health. Moreover, three burnout dimensions were found to be significantly linked to psychological health in the way we had predicted. A stepwise regression analysis indicated the moderating role of resilience on psychological health in emotionally exhausting situations. We conclude that the psychological characteristic resilience moderated the effect of emotional exhaustion on the psychological health of the students. The practical implications of the results are discussed in order to introduce measures for the proper training of nursing students for professional practice; we also make several suggestions for future research in this field.