Pauses,routines, and registers in composing a text

This article argues that features of the writing process have to be analysed in relation to describable linguistic structures of the written text. Activities before writing, distributions of writing pauses, and the structure of think-aloud-protocols indicate that planning processes are determined by the writers knowledge of the grammatical system. The role of syntactical structures, text-patterns (registers) and the auditive component of pre-texts is analysed.     

Education for sustainability in university studies: A model for reorienting the curriculum

A decisive factor for achieving a culture of sustainability is university training for future professionals. The aim of this article is to bring new elements to the process of reorienting university studies towards sustainability. Presented here is the ACES model (Curriculum Greening of Higher Education, acronym in Spanish), which is the result of a project involving a network of 11 European and Latin American universities. The methodology of the project is based on participatory action research. The ACES model is defined by 10 characteristics, detailed in this article, which can orientate a diagnosis of the level of curriculum greening and the design and application of the strategies and actions in order to facilitate incorporating the sustainability dimension in higher education. The potentialities and limitations found are also discussed. The ACES model has started a process for reorienting higher education studies towards sustainability.     

Effect of argumentative goals in the quality of argumentative dialogue and written argumentation / Efecto de la consigna argumentativa en la calidad del diálogo argumentativo y de la argumentación escrita

The inclusion of argumentative practices in classrooms as an epistemic tool to foster learning and reasoning has become widespread. However, studies on argumentation show that not all kinds of argumentation are equally effective in fostering this potential, and that argumentative goals are determining factors in the argumentative discourse — in particular, persuasive and deliberative goals, the latter posited as being the ones with the greatest epistemic potential. Eighty students in the Master in Secondary Teacher Training took up positions on an energy dilemma and wrote two argumentative texts, before and after a dialogue with a classmate who defended the opposite thesis. Of the total of 40 dyads, 21 conversed with a persuasive goal and 19 with a deliberative goal. The results show that the dialogue had a positive effect on the argumentative quality under both conditions. However, in the consensus group, the bias of the post-text diminished while meta-statements and counterarguments increased. A case study of one dyad under each condition illustrates these differences.     

Exploring the relationship among learning patterns,personality traits,and academic performance in freshmen

Providing information about how 1st-year students learn may help colleges plan actions aimed at increasing students' persistence in higher education programs. This research aims to assess 1st-year students' academic performance, using a path analysis to establish inter-correlations among students' personality traits, learning patterns, high school achievement, and objectively measured outcomes. Participants included 509 freshmen from different academic disciplines. Results show a causality relations model in which Conscientiousness positively influences Sequential and Precise learning patterns as well as academic performance. The path model also confirms Extraversion as a negative antecedent of the Technical learning pattern. It is argued that knowing students is a primary step to putting them in a position to become an active part of the learning process.     

Epistemological Foundations of School Science

Based on a synthesis of contributions from differentauthors, we present a theoreticalframework that provides some foundations for schoolscience, and we define someresearch problems. We start from what is already knownabout students' models andcognition in order to construct proposals of didacticalintervention. The cognitive modelof science, developed in the philosophy of science throughstudying scientists' activity,has allowed us to propose an analogous model for schoolscience in which experimentationand language play the key roles. We emphasise the relativeindependence of school scienceand scientists' science.