Contexto y aprendizaje: el papel de la interacción en diferentes tipos de tareas

Resumen

Este trabajo analiza la incidencia del contexto material y social en el aprendizaje de niños entre cinco y ocho años. Se asume que puede existir una interacción entre estas dos dimensiones del contexto. Se presentan datos relacionados con el aprendizaje en una tarea causal y otra lógico-matemática considerando la eficacia de la interacción del niño con el adulto y/o los iguales. La muestra está formada por 96 niños, distribuidos en un grupo de control y dos grupos experimentales. Se realizan análisis cuantitativos y cualitativos. Los resultados muestran que la interacción individual con el adulto resulta especialmente eficaz en la tarea causal y, sobre todo, en los niños que tenían un nivel más bajo al comenzar el proceso de aprendizaje. Por otra parte, la interacción con los iguales produce mejores resultados en ambas tareas cuando los niños interactúan con otros niños más hábiles en la tarea. Finalmente, se observan diferencias en la eficacia de las estrategias de instrucción que utiliza el adulto en función del tipo de tarea.     

A computer-supported learning system to help teachers to teach Fuzzy Information Retrieval Systems

This paper describes a computer-supported learning system to teach students the principles and concepts of Fuzzy Information Retrieval Systems based on weighted queries. This tool is used to support the teacher’s activity in the degree course Information Retrieval Systems Based on Artificial Intelligence at the Faculty of Library and Information Sciences at the University of Granada. Learning of languages of weighted queries in Fuzzy Information Retrieval Systems is complex because it is very difficult to understand the different semantics that could be associated to the weights of queries together with their respective strategies of query evaluation. We have developed and implemented this computer-supported education system because it allows to support the teacher’s activity in the classroom to teach the use of weighted queries in FIRSs and it helps students to develop self-learning processes on the use of such queries. We have evaluated the performance of its use in the learning process according to the students’ perceptions and their results obtained in the course’s exams. We have observed that using this software tool the students learn better the management of the weighted query languages and then their performance in the exams is improved.

Identities, social representations and critical thinking

This comment on L. Simonneaux and J. Simonneaux paper focuses on the role of identities in dealing with socio-scientific issues. We argue that there are two types of identities (social representations) influencing the students’ positions: On the one hand their social representations of the bears’ and wolves’ identities as belonging to particular countries (Slovenia versus France for bears, France and Italy for wolves), in other words, as having national identities; on the other hand representations of their own identities as belonging to the field of agricultural practitioners, and so sharing this socio-professional identity with shepherds and breeders, as opposed to ecologists. We discuss how these representations of identities influenced students’ reasoning and argumentation, blocking in some cases the evaluation of evidence. Implications for developing critical thinking and for dealing with SSI in the classrooms are outlined.

Developing an instrument to characterise peer‐led groups in collaborative learning environments: assessing problem‐solving approach and group interaction

Collaborative learning is being used extensively by educators at all levels. Peer‐led team learning in a version of collaborative learning that has shown consistent success in science, technology, engineering and mathematics disciplines. Using a multi‐phase research study we describe the development of an observation instrument that can be used to assess peer‐led group learning. This paper illustrates the development of a classification system for peer‐led learning groups and an instrument based on this classification system. The instrument evaluates small learning groups on two important aspects of group learning: problem solving approach and group interaction style. We provide evidence of the factor structure of the two dimensions using both exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. We also provide information about the reliability of the two scales as measured by the Cronbach's alpha coefficient. Data from a large peer‐led learning programme was used to conduct the factor analysis. Results from the factor analysis confirmed that the instrument is actually measuring two key characteristics of small learning groups: problem solving approach and group interaction style, characteristics that have been linked to effective functioning of the group and to the student learning outcomes. This instrument may be particularly appealing to practitioners (faculty members, those running small‐group learning programmes, etc.) because it is easy to use and it does not require extensive time for analysis.     

Bathrooms without Borders: Transgender Students Argue Separate is not Equal

Title IX guidelines governing equal access to collide with state legislation around gender identity and multiple use bathrooms and changing facilities. This policy review of literature argues for a stronger voice from Washington, protecting the rights of all students to feel safe using private spaces at school. The many court rulings offer a fair perspective upon which to act. State laws are inconsistent and at times challenge the Constitutional limits on individual rights.     

¡No cierren nuestra escuela! farm worker mothers as cultural citizens in an educational community mobilization effort

Mexican immigrant farm-worker mothers’ class, race, citizenship status, and jurisdictional status of their town in a Northern California community rendered them invisible. However, when the school board decided to close the elementary school the mothers mobilized. Drawing on these mothers’ fototestimonios we examine how they, as cultural citizens, resisted local practices of educational inequity. They wanted to ensure an education for their children. The fototestimonios reveal how farm-worker mothers: (1) negotiated as a collective with the school board; (2) sought negotiation and schooling alternatives; and (3) expressed cultural citizenship through collective efforts to be included within the US polity.     

To valerse por si misma between race,capitalism, and patriarchy: Latina mother-daughter pedagogies in North Carolina

This article examines mujer-oriented mother-daughter pedagogies that are narrated and discursively embodied, improvised, and contested in the conversations and oral life histories of a group of Latina mothers in rural North Carolina. The teaching and learning that occurs between mothers and daughters through consejos (advice),cuentos (stories) and la experiencia (experience) are wrought with tensions and contradictions yet open with spaces of possibility. Latinas evoked patriarchal ideologies about being a mujer de hogar (woman of the home), while simultaneously negotiating these in discourses about knowing how to valerse por si misma (to be self-reliant). A conceptual framework built around ''funds of knowledge,'' educacion, and third space feminism serves to illuminate how mothers teach daughters to be submissive, rebellious and comforming, all at the same time, as they maneuver between race, patriarchy, and capitalism.     

Learning Gene Expression Through Modelling and Argumentation

There is emerging interest on the interactions between modelling and argumentation in specific contexts, such as genetics learning. It has been suggested that modelling might help students understand and argue on genetics. We propose modelling gene expression as a way to learn molecular genetics and diseases with a genetic component. The study is framed in Tiberghien’s (2000) two worlds of knowledge, the world of “theories & models” and the world of “objects & events”, adding a third component, the world of representations. We seek to examine how modelling and argumentation interact and connect the three worlds of knowledge while modelling gene expression. It is a case study of 10th graders learning about diseases with a genetic component. The research questions are as follows: (1) What argumentative and modelling operations do students enact in the process of modelling gene expression? Specifically, which operations allow connecting the three worlds of knowledge? (2) What are the interactions between modelling and argumentation in modelling gene expression? To what extent do these interactions help students connect the three worlds of knowledge and modelling gene expression? The argumentative operation of using evidence helps students to relate the three worlds of knowledge, enacted in all the connections. It seems to be a relationship among the number of interactions between modelling and argumentation, the connections between world of knowledge and students’ capacity to develop a more sophisticated representation. Despite this is a case study, this approach of analysis reveals potentialities for a deeper understanding of learning genetics though scientific practices.     

Customer’s role in knowledge management and in the innovation process: effects on innovation capacity and marketing results

Scholars have acknowledged customer knowledge management (CKM) as a key strategic resource for improving innovation and supporting long-term customer relationship management. This study provides a deeper understanding of the internal antecedents of business innovation capacity overcoming previous approaches. A model that had not previously been tested was used to analyse the role of customer collaboration and CKM – measured as a second-order construct – in innovation processes and marketing results. To test the model, structural equation modelling (partial least squares) was applied to a random sample of 210 Spanish companies. Results confirm that CKM and customer collaboration are antecedents of innovation capacity and marketing results. Furthermore, the effect of CKM is greater than the effect of customer collaboration. This paper provides a basis for managers to encourage innovation in their companies and explains how managers can improve marketing results.