The state and higher education in Colombia

The development of higher education in Colombia is discussed in terms of its recent quantitative expansion and the accompanying qualitative differentiation. Beginning in 1980 with the University Reform of that year, the state sought to give shape to the system by policies intended (i) to improve its organization (ii) to expand it on more democratic lines and (iii) to improve its quality. The authors discuss the developments which marked attempts to implement these aims. Two critical policy areas emerged—the funding of the system and the administration of the public sector part of it. Current debates are analysed and the authors provide pointers to possible future developments including the development of a highly stratified system with little interaction between the top and the bottom.     

Conceptual Variation or Incoherence? Textbook Discourse on Genes in Six Countries

The aim of this paper is to investigate in a systematic and comparative way previous results of independent studies on the treatment of genes and gene function in high school textbooks from six different countries. We analyze how the conceptual variation within the scientific domain of Genetics regarding gene function models and gene concepts is transformed via the didactic transposition into school science textbooks. The results indicate that a common textbook discourse on genes and their function exist in textbooks from the different countries. The structure of science as represented by conceptual variation and the use of multiple models was present in all the textbooks. However, the existence of conceptual variation and multiple models is implicit in these textbooks, i.e., the phenomenon of conceptual variation and multiple models are not addressed explicitly, nor its consequences and, thus, it ends up introducing conceptual incoherence about the gene concept and its function within the textbooks. We conclude that within the found textbook-discourse ontological aspects of the academic disciplines of genetics and molecular biology were retained, but without their epistemological underpinnings; these are lost in the didactic transposition. These results are of interest since students might have problems reconstructing the correct scientific understanding from the transformed school science knowledge as depicted within the high school textbooks. Implications for textbook writing as well as teaching are discussed in the paper.     

Science teachers’ conceptions of teaching: Implications for teacher education

An analysis of recent science education research on student conceptions of natural phenomena, on science teaching and on science teacher planning carries implications for science teacher education. This suggests that the development of appropriate conceptions of teaching should be an important goal of science teacher education. Drawing the analogy between conceptions of natural phenomena and conceptions of teaching suggests guidelines for designing instruction in science teacher education courses. The importance of these guidelines is enhanced because teachers are likely to hold conceptions of teaching which are in conflict with those considered appropriate.

Activities in science teacher education which have attempted to identify and influence conceptions of science teaching are described and analysed. While these activities must be regarded as preliminary, they point to a powerful approach to thinking about the education of science teachers.     

Leisure Activities and Personality Traits of Medical Librarians

Objectives: This study examines medical librarians’ personality based on their leisure activities to find out which personal characteristics prevail among working medical librarians.

Methods: An electronic survey was administered among medical librarians of the New England/South East regions. The collected statistics was compared to the national leisure statistics and previously published studies on personality traits.

Results: The respondent group exhibited prevailing Artistic, Investigative, and Conventional types, with a slightly higher number of introverts.

Conclusions: Personalities of the respondents fit into the job environment quite well, which could positively influence their interaction with patrons and the overall quality of work.     

Open-domain conversational search assistants: the Transformer is all you need

Information Retrieval Journal - On the quest of providing a more natural interaction between users and search systems, open-domain conversational search assistants have emerged, by assisting users...     

Disrupting Eurocentric epistemologies: Re-mediating transitions to centre intersectionally-minoritised immigrant children,families and communities

In this article, I examine intersectionally-minoritised immigrant children’s transitions from community-based pre-kindergartens to elementary schools (kindergartens) in the most segregated school system in the US. Attending to issues of blockage and fragmentation inherent to transitions, I analyse transition supports, interpreting and critiquing them through the perspectives of Latinx immigrant teachers and mothers. Through interviews, I listen to, learn from and reposition Latinx immigrant teachers and mothers as important constructors of knowledge who hold valuable (albeit often disprivileged) perspectives for reorganising the ecology of transitions. Centering the experiences of immigrant mothers and their young children, I problematise dominant understandings and conceptualisations of transition, unveiling how these privilege dominant ways of being and behaving. In doing so, I shed light on the possibility of re-mediating transitions in ways that centre the perspectives of Latinx immigrants.     

Playing with power and privilege: Theatre games in teacher education

In preparing White teachers to educate a diverse society, teacher educators must help them see the veil which colors their views of the world and privileges them. This study explores the need for playing with power and privilege to deconstruct the concept of meritocracy and challenge the idea of one-ness, thereby fostering more conscious locations of White pre-service teachers. It proposes that Boalian theatre games can serve as powerful yet playful and innovative approaches for accessing values and beliefs shaping pre-service teachers’ views of the(ir) world, influencing their roles as teachers and the pedagogies in which they plan to engage.