Morningness/eveningness and school performance among Spanish adolescents: Further evidence

Adolescents shift their time of day preferences from morning to evening during puberty when school schedule becomes earlier. Given that a better performance is obtained when individuals are tested at times that are in synchrony with their chronotype, and optimal sleep duration is positively associated with academic performance, evening-types may obtain worse school performance because of both morning school schedule and a decrease of total sleep time. A group of 1133 adolescents (aged 12–16) participated in this study. School performance was evaluated using subjective level of achievement and self-reported grades measures. Controlling for total sleep time, more evening oriented young adolescents (12–14 years) performed significantly worse in school achievement. Girls among 15–16 years performed significantly better than boys. These results have important implications for intervention and prevention programs during school years.     

A view of rural schooling through the eyes of former students

Teachers who attended unitary rural schools in northwestern Spain were asked to relate their early school experiences in the form of a personal reflective and analytical narrative. Our analysis of these narratives revealed some strikingly difficult conditions; nevertheless, students tended to relate these hardships with a strong sense of nostalgia, focussing on the sense of community that they experienced. These results shed some light on the relevance of personal relations and the broader social and physical environment to the school ethos, and provides practice and design implications for urban as well as rural schooling contexts.     

Peer effects and measurement error: The impact of sampling variation in school survey data (evidence from PISA)

Investigation of peer effects on achievement with sample survey data on schools may mean that only a random sample of the population of peers is observed for each individual. This generates measurement error in peer variables similar in form to the textbook case of errors-in-variables, resulting in the estimated peer group effects in an OLS regression model being biased towards zero. We investigate the problem using survey data for England from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) linked to administrative microdata recording information for each PISA sample member's entire year cohort. We calculate a peer group measure based on these complete data and compare its use with a variable based on peers in just the PISA sample. We also use a Monte Carlo experiment to show how the extent of the attenuation bias rises as peer sample size falls. On average, the estimated peer effect is biased downwards by about one third when drawing a sample of peers of the size implied by the PISA survey design.     

Formación de profesorado en España orientada a la sostenibilidad: implementación y análisis de una ‘ecometodología’

Es indudable que la preocupación por el medio ambiente es una nueva seña de identidad de la sociedad al comienzo del siglo XXI. Pero ésta preocupación no siempre lleva aparejada los conocimientos, las actitudes y, sobre todo, la competencia necesaria para su protección. En este contexto, cobra sentido una educación superior orientada hacia la sostenibilidad que involucre a la comunidad universitaria, y en concreto a los futuros docentes, capacitándolos para participar, individualmente y colectivamente, a favor de la sostenibilidad. Para tal fin, la implementación de una ‘ecometodología’ basada en la aplicación de la Agenda 21 y el cálculo de la ‘huella ecológica’, se revela como una eficaz herramienta para avanzar hacia la sostenibilidad en la formación del profesorado en España, tal como pone de manifiesto el análisis y la discusión de los resultados del estudio realizado.

Teacher training in Spain towards sustainability: implementation and analysis of ‘ecomethodology’

There is no doubt that concern for the environment is a new feature of society’s identity at the beginning of the twenty-first century. But this concern is not always accompanied by the necessary knowledge, attitude, and above all competence to ensure its protection. In this context, it makes sense for higher education to be oriented towards sustainability, involving the university’s community, especially future teachers, and enabling them to participate, individually and collectively, in favour of sustainability. To this end, the implementation of an ‘ecomethodology’ based on the application of Agenda 21 and the calculation of the carbon footprint, is revealed as a powerful tool for progressing towards sustainability in teacher training in Spain, as shown by the analysis and discussion of the results of this study.     

Nativity Shifts,Broken Dreams,and the New Latino South's Post-First Generation

For game three of the 2013 NBA finals, 11-year-old Sebastian de la Cruz, a musical prodigy born and raised in the great state of Texas, opened the June game with a rendition of the Star Spangled Banner—a la mariachi. As the applause faded for the El Charro de Oro's [The Golden Mariachi's] performance, an outburst of racialized twittering hit the cloud. Although we watched the series of events that surrounded Sebastian de la Cruz's performances from thousands of miles away and despite the geographic distance between San Antonio and our communities, we recognized the hit-and-run commentary as all too familiar. In Georgia and the Carolinas, increasingly corrosive rhetoric surrounds Latino immigration—creating great obstacles to academic achievement including the navigation of a postcolonial nativist American landscape of K-12 education that continues to fail minoritized youth. Or, as Flores and Loss (2010) surmised, “Immigration policies and practices have been, and continue to be, riddled with contradictions. Close to the center of this sometimes bloody and always controversial issue is a fundamental, indeed enduring, question: Who is an American and what sorts of education should all Americans enjoy?” (p. 403). With these questions in mind, we argue that given an ongoing Latino nativity shift marked by 2010 Census analyses, the continued framing of post-first generation Latinos as perpetual foreigners whose academic achievement depends simply on the remediation of their English language proficiency is symptomatic a “national myopia” (P. R. Portes &; Salas, 2014). We conclude with the overarching proposition that educational policy paradigms for Latino achievement in and beyond the shifting demographics of the U.S. South need to be grounded in additive models of cultural identity development that advance inter-culturally distributed cognitions, attitudes, and affective-behavioral patterns that result in achieving broader, richer identities across a variety of social contexts.     

Serial position effects in social transmission of food preference: Retention/demonstration intervals

The effects of retention and demonstration intervals on serial position were evaluated in two experiments with Long-Evans rats. A list of 3 demonstrators that had eaten one of three flavored foods was presented to naive observers. In Experiment 1, there were four groups, three groups with a retention interval compared with one group with a zero retention interval or no retention interval. In Experiment 2, the demonstration interval was reduced. Intervals of 15, 5, 2, and 1 min were used. In Experiment 1, primacy decreased gradually in the four groups as the retention interval was increased in duration. In Experiment 2, primacy also decreased gradually, and recency occurred with the 1-min demonstrator interval. The increase in the duration of the retention interval reduced primacy. The reduction in the duration of the demonstration interval decreased primacy and produced recency.     

Enhancing self-regulation and approaches to learning in first-year college students: a narrative-based programme assessed in the Iberian Peninsula

A programme to enhance first-year college students’ self-regulated learning strategies is proposed and assessed in two samples, one from the University of Oviedo (Spain) and the other from the University of Minho (Portugal). Each sample was divided into two groups (experimental and control). The Spanish sample comprised 44 students in the experimental group and 40 in the control group, whereas in the Portuguese sample, the number of students was 48 and 44, respectively. The narrative-based intervention programme is organised around a set of fictional letters from a first-year college student in which he reports his own academic experiences. Each letter focuses on a learning strategy as an opportunity to teach and enhance the students’ deep approaches to learning and their self-regulated learning processes. In both samples, findings confirm the programme efficacy to teach efficient learning strategies and to promote self-regulation. Implications for college students and for teaching are discussed.     

Pre-Election Polls in Portugal: Accuracy, Bias, and Sources of Error, 1991-2004

This article examines the performance of the pre-election pollsin Portugal since 1991 and attempts to determine some of thecommon causes of poll inaccuracy in both National Assembly andEuropean Parliament elections. The analysis of poll resultsin this period reveals marked improvements in poll accuracysince 1991, which have brought it to levels that, today, arecomparable to those found in nations where the practice of bothsurvey research and opinion polling is longer and more established.No evidence of a systematic bias against any of the major partiesis found, and sources of error are congruent with those foundelsewhere. However, large errors remain the norm in polls pertainingto European Parliament elections, suggesting a shared inabilityof Portuguese polling organizations in dealing appropriatelywith the problems caused by low turnout and ‘landslide’elections.