Planning Inclusion: The Need to Formalize Parental Participation in Individual Education Plans (and Meetings)

Abstract

Inclusive education is promoted as an educational setting that brings together students with disabilities alongside non-disabled peers. As the rise in inclusive education continues, many recognize the Salamanca Statement of 1994 as an influencer. This paper discusses how the vision of inclusion grounded in “the need to work towards ‘schools for all’” remains unfulfilled through a lack of intersectionality. Centering the experiences of Spanish-speaking mothers of emergent bilinguals labeled as disabled, this paper presents how educators limit parents’ abilities to engage as equal stakeholders. Therefore, this paper explores the tensions culturally and linguistically diverse mothers encounter during Individual Education Plan (IEP) meetings and the possibilities that can come from reimagining IEPs and IEP meetings in ways that allow stakeholders to actively tend to the intersectional vision of inclusive education that Salamanca put forth and that emergent bilinguals labeled as disabled desperately need.     

Is accreditation ‘on the right track’? The views of Portuguese academics

In many countries, quality assurance systems rely on study programme accreditation. As with all quality assurance mechanisms, accreditation should also be continuously improved in order to maintain its relevance as a promoter of study programme quality. A way to move accreditation forward is by taking into account academics’ views, interests and needs about the process, since their support for it is paramount for its success and effectiveness. This paper analyses Portuguese academics’ knowledge and views on accreditation with the aim of understanding if the process is being supported and is on the right route for being effective. It is based on the analysis of 1484 academics’ answers to a questionnaire distributed in 16 higher education institutions. This analysis reveals a moderately positive attitude of academics towards accreditation, reflected in an only moderate knowledge of the process as well as in a mild agreement with its characteristics and implementation features. This suggests that there is room for improvement to bring this quality assurance mechanism closer to academics’ expectations and needs and therefore to improve accreditation’s effectiveness.

     

Warm elaborated feedback. Exploring its benefits on post-feedback behaviour

Abstract

This study provides evidence on the impact of including warm messages in elaborated feedback. These messages are aimed at the motivational process that can be mobilised by feedback and that which can condition its reception and the way students face the task (post-feedback behaviour). In a task where secondary school students had to learn a new strategy for improving their reading skills in a computer-based environment, we compared the use of elaborated feedback with the use of elaborated feedback enhanced with motivational messages (warm elaborated feedback) and a control condition (without feedback). The results showed that students receiving warm elaborated feedback revisited the text more often than those receiving only the elaborated feedback, and that both groups revisited the text more than the control group. This finding suggests that controlling the motivational aspects in feedback messages may increase the effectiveness of elaborated feedback.     

Privacy. An Intercultural Perspective

This paper deals with intercultural aspects of privacy, particularly with regard to differences between Japanese and Western conceptions. It starts with a reconstruction of the genealogy of Western subjectivity and human dignity as the basic assumptions underlying Western views on privacy. An analysis of the Western concept of informational privacy is presented. The Japanese topic of ‘‘denial of self” (Musi) as well as the concepts of Seken, Shakai and Ikai (as analyzed by the authors of the companion piece on privacy in Japan) give rise to intercultural comparisons. The paper addresses the question of privacy in cyberspace and mass media. Finally the question of freedom of speech is related to the Japanese concepts of Ohyake and Watakusi.     

An experimental study of vocational guidance (and decision making) in Spain

This article describes the procedure and methodology for a vocational guidance programme framed within the most recent conceptualised as a systematic process of intervention, that gradually optimise the subjects’ vocational conduct. The programme was applied to a population of 192 subjects located in seven secondary schools in the city of Granada, with proven effectiveness of the interventions. The three objectives of the programmes applied concentrated on the increase in the optimisation of self-awareness and self-concept for the subjects, training in strategies for searching for information, and training in decision-making.     

Ontology refinement for improved information retrieval

Ontologies are frequently used in information retrieval being their main applications the expansion of queries, semantic indexing of documents and the organization of search results. Ontologies provide lexical items, allow conceptual normalization and provide different types of relations. However, the optimization of an ontology to perform information retrieval tasks is still unclear. In this paper, we use an ontology query model to analyze the usefulness of ontologies in effectively performing document searches. Moreover, we propose an algorithm to refine ontologies for information retrieval tasks with preliminary positive results.