CHARACTERIZING THEMATIZED DERIVATIVE SCHEMA BY THE UNDERLYING EMERGENT STRUCTURES

This paper reports on different underlying structures of the derivative schema of three undergraduate students that were considered to be at the trans level of development of the derivative schema (action–process–object–schema). The derivative schema is characterized in terms of the students’ ability to explicitly transfer the relationship between a function and its first derivative to the derivative function and the second derivative. This conscious shift of properties of derivatives is differently manifested by the students in the trans level of development of the derivative schema and can be considered evidence of the different characteristics of the thematization of derivative schema. From here we suggest that there are different underlying structures in the constructed schema due to the consciousness in which students use the relations between a function and its derivative.     

Clusters,convergence, and economic performance

This paper evaluates the role of regional cluster composition in regional industry performance. On the one hand, diminishing returns to specialization in a location can result in a convergence effect: the growth rate of an industry within a region may be declining in the level of economic activity of that industry. At the same time, positive spillovers across complementary economic activities can provide an impetus for agglomeration: the growth rate of an industry within a region may be increasing in the “strength” (i.e., relative presence) of related industries. Building on Porter (1998, 2003), we develop a systematic empirical framework to analyze the role of regional clusters – groups of closely related industries operating within a particular region – in the growth of regional industries. We exploit data from the US Cluster Mapping Project to examine the effects of agglomeration within regional clusters after controlling for convergence at the region-industry level. Our findings suggest that industries located in a strong cluster register higher employment and patenting growth. Regional industry growth also increases with the strength of related clusters in the region and with the strength of similar clusters in adjacent regions. We also find evidence of the complementarity between employment and innovation performance in regional clusters: both the initial employment and patenting strength of a cluster have a separate positive effect on the employment and patenting growth of the constituent industries. Finally, we find that new regional industries emerge where there is a strong cluster. These findings are consistent with multiple types of externalities arising in clusters, including knowledge, skills, and input–output linkages.     

Torrance Test of Creative Thinking: The question of its construct validity

Some cognitive dimensions are internationally considered by psychologists to describe and to assess creativity. For example, (Guilford, P. (1976). Creatividad y Educación. Buenos Aires. Ed. Paidos) and (Torrance, E. P. (1977). Discovery and nurturance of giftedness in the culturally different. Reston, VA: Council on Exceptional Children) suggested fluency, flexibility, originality and elaboration are the main cognitive processes used to define and assess creativity. However, data from several empirical studies did not confirm a factor structure in accordance with such cognitive functions, despite of the wide use of TTCT (Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking) in different countries. In this paper, we present new data collected in Spain and Portugal with TTCT. According to our data, those cognitive functions supposedly present on a subject's performance are not so strong as to explain the variance in scores. Elaboration factors assume some variance explanation, but the main factors are identified with the products in each subtest, suggesting the importance of format, content and demand on TTCT specific tasks. Consequently, we suggest some reflections to amplify the debate concerning the definition of creativity and its evaluation in psychology.     

Influence of social cognitive and gender variables on technological academic interest among Spanish high-school students: testing social cognitive career theory

This study tested social cognitive career theory (SCCT) in the technological domain with 2,359 high-school students in Asturias (Spain). Path analyses were run to determine the influence of gender on the SCCT model and to explain the influence of personal (emotional state, gender-role attitudes), contextual (perceived social supports and barriers), and cognitive (self-efficacy beliefs, outcome expectations) variables on technological interest. The results almost entirely confirm the SCCT model for Spanish high-school students in both the boys’ and girls’ samples. Further, the results show that girls and boys do not differ significantly as far as the different variables are concerned.