Students’ perspectives on the processes of supervision and assessment of undergraduate dissertations / Perspectiva del alumnado de los procesos de tutorización y evaluación de los trabajos de fin de grado

Abstract

The introduction of the European Higher Education Area means that undergraduate dissertations (UD) are now compulsory, which represents an important change for the Spanish university system due to the important consequences this will have on academic functioning. This study provides key information on the processes of supervising and assessing UDs, from the perspective of students, as well as consequent proposals to improve them. The results obtained indicate that initiatives need to be put in place, at least in the participating institutions where the study has been developed, focused on the improvement of the time periods, means and resources needed to develop the UD, the introduction of more adequate criteria than those currently used for assessment, better training for the tutors involved, more appropriate and precise prior information for students in relation to the UD, and more preparation for students to enable them to carry out the UD.     

Exploration of direct and indirect associations of system-level policy-amenable variables with reading literacy performance

As expectations of the economic impact of educational attainment are soaring (Hanushek & Woessmann, 2009 Hanushek E. A., & Woessmann, L. (2009). Do better schools lead to more growth? Cognitive skills, economic outcomes, and causation (NBER Working Paper, No. 14633). Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research.[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]) and conjectures about successful national educational reforms (Mourshed, Chijioke, & Barber, 2010 Mourshed, M., Chijioke, C., & Barber, M. (2010). How the world's most improved school systems keep getting better. Retrieved from http://www.mckinsey.com/client_service/social_sector/latest_thinking/worlds_most_improved_schools[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]) are welcomed by educational policy-makers in many countries, a careful assessment of the empirical evidence for these kinds of claims is needed. In this article, we present a methodology that was applied to an international data set. A multi-level model of education was used to present a hypothetical scenario, indicated as the “implementation scenario”. The scenario was tested on the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2009 data set by means of multi-level structural equation modelling. Although we find some evidence for direct effects and some support for straightforward implementation, the overall impact of malleable conditions at the system and school level appears disappointingly small. A theoretical strand of literature that would account for “limited malleability” is referred to in discussing these results.     

COLLEGE STUDIES AFTER 50 YEARS OF AGE: A QUEBEC EXPERIENCE

This article presents an examination of an academic program for older adults, offered at a junior‐college level educational institution in Montreal, Quebec. The authors recount the main events of the history of this francophone program and explain its underlying principles. They trace the evolution of the program within the college structure and examine its pedagogy. As well, they offer several results of the program and consider its future prospects. The authors conclude that the program, seen as a social practice, bears a significance for educational gerontology, for education, and for the larger context of contemporary society.     

The Role of Metacognition in Reading Instruction

A new approach to improve children's cognitive activities is to increase their awareness and regulation of the skills to be trained through thinking aloud. This study deals with how to utilize metacognition in teaching children to read for meaning (comprehension) and learning from texts (studying). First, the general theoretical issues and practical implications of the concept of metacognition are discussed. This is followed by a presentation of a cognitive training program, together with the effects of the program on sixth‐graders’ reading skill. According to the findings of the present study, the training program used has the potential of improving instruction in comprehension and learning.     

The Gender Question and the Study of Jewish Children

Although some researchers argue that a generation of feminist innovations and changes in American Jewish life has produced an egalitarian generation in which gender differences among Jewish children and adolescents are insignificant, this article argues that the salience of gender differences is a factor of the kinds of questions that children are asked by researchers. When the question of gender was explicitly posed to 67 Jewish children, subtle differences did emerge. Jewish girls were found to be more sensitive to issues of equal rights and sexism, more ambivalent about their proper roles, and more aware of the contributions of Jewish women than boys.     

Collaborative action research in Northern Canadian rural and Indigenous schools: learning about young children’s oral language in play contexts

This article reports on collaborative action research in twelve northern rural and Indigenous communities in four Canadian provinces. Pre-kindergarten, kindergarten, grade one, and Aboriginal Head Start teachers worked with university researchers in three universities to create action research projects with the aim of supporting children’s oral language and writing through play in their classrooms. Inductive analysis of focus group data shows that teachers gained understandings about play as a context both for supporting and for authentic assessment of young children’s oral language. The building of trusting relationships, built through ongoing collaboration with colleagues within their schools and across four provinces, in addition to collaboration with university researchers over a number of years, was viewed as particularly influential to teachers’ professional learning. Additionally, teachers talked about the value of opportunities to contribute to the development of teaching and assessment tools. Participating teachers came to see themselves as making valuable contributions to professional knowledge beyond their northern communities. The 4R’s for conducting research in Indigenous contexts (reciprocity, respect, relevance, and responsibility) provide a framework for deriving implications from this collaborative research. It is important that the results of collaborative action research conducted in rural and Indigenous schools be widely disseminated to provide alternative perspectives to curriculum, research and practice that tend to be urban-oriented.     

Dyslexia heterogeneity: cognitive profiling of Portuguese children with dyslexia

Recent studies have emphasized that developmental dyslexia is a multiple-deficit disorder, in contrast to the traditional single-deficit view. In this context, cognitive profiling of children with dyslexia may be a relevant contribution to this unresolved discussion. The aim of this study was to profile 36 Portuguese children with dyslexia from the 2nd to 5th grade. Hierarchical cluster analysis was used to group participants according to their phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming, verbal short-term memory, vocabulary, and nonverbal intelligence abilities. The results suggested a two-cluster solution: a group with poorer performance on phoneme deletion and rapid automatized naming compared with the remaining variables (Cluster 1) and a group characterized by underperforming on the variables most related to phonological processing (phoneme deletion and digit span), but not on rapid automatized naming (Cluster 2). Overall, the results seem more consistent with a hybrid perspective, such as that proposed by Pennington and colleagues (2012), for understanding the heterogeneity of dyslexia. The importance of characterizing the profiles of individuals with dyslexia becomes clear within the context of constructing remediation programs that are specifically targeted and are more effective in terms of intervention outcome.     

Exploration De La Résilience éducationnelle Chez Des Enseignants

AN EXPLORATION OF THE EDUCATIONAL RESILIENCE OF TEACHING STAFF – This study focuses on the degree of resilience displayed by teaching staff with the aim of promoting their professional development and preventing job-related exhaustion. Seven underprivileged schools in Montreal were selected, and 24 teaching staff with contrasting personal profiles were interviewed on the subject of their work. The Alceste software was used to analyse the conversations, which revolved around techniques applied when dealing with critical incidents. The main analysis identified five different discourses among the respondents. Three of these were associated with the more resilient of the teachers and two were associated with the more vulnerable ones. Resilient teaching staff characteristically discussed dealing with aggressive behaviour, the teaching-learning relationship and the subject of social relationships, whereas vulnerable teaching staff focused on work beyond the classroom, people in positions of higher authority and the community. The authors note that teachers who are just embarking on their careers appear more vulnerable than more experienced teaching staff, which suggests that more resources should be provided to support teachers in their profession.