Actitudes,valores y normas: aprendizaje y desarrollo moral

En este artículo se constata el creciente reconocimiento del campo del desarrollo moral en el marco de la investigación cognitiva, tanto desde la perspectiva psicológica como social. Se relacionan competencias psicosociales, procesos de maduración y procesos de aprendizaje, sugiriéndose pautas para la actuación del profesorado en torno a las actitudes, valores y normas.     

No Poor Child Left Unrecruited: How NCLB Codifies and Perpetuates Urban School Militarism

A critical theoretical framework is used to analyze the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) federal legislation and its role in codifying and perpetuating educational practices and policies that contribute to growing campus militarism in urban schools serving low-income African American and Latino students. The author argues that NCLB § 9528 is part of a broader strategy by the Pentagon to recruit low-income urban youth for the military. The article examines how NCLB's focus on standardized tests and punitive sanctions reinforces urban schools' already narrow curriculum, leading to the diminished capacity of students to question militarism and challenge social oppression.     

On not being able to read or speak Malayalam: language and region in Kerala

Abstract

This paper attempts to read aspects of language, history, and literariness historically from the perspective of both Brazil and Kerala. It is also an attempt to compare two very distinct places from within a framework centred on the South. Initially, region and nation are discussed, as well as modernity and development, and the issue of thinking South–South connections from an anthropological perspective. Next, the matter of the complex connected histories of Kerala within the Indian Ocean is mentioned, including Portuguese colonial history. The image and influence of Latin America in Kerala is briefly brought up, especially in what concerns literary influence. There follows an extended discussion of issues of literacy and the rise of the novel in Kerala as well as the historical intricacies of the construction of Malayalam as a modern medium. A contrast with the literary construction of modernity in Brazil is made, and the importance of English in Kerala is accordingly highlighted as well as the issue of the coloniality of the Portuguese within Brazil's complex creolized history. An analysis of the pioneering novel of Chandumenon is offered, and a comparison with a novel in Brazil is subsequently sketched. The different historical contexts of nineteenth century Brazil and Kerala are stressed. The close interrelatedness between issues of language, nation, and region is emphasised as well as the internal complexities of modernity in both regions.     

Preparing to transition to secondary education: perceptions of Dutch pupils with migrant backgrounds

Background: The transition from primary school to secondary school is a crucial period of time for children and this may be especially the case for pupils with migrant backgrounds. While there has been considerable research on the transition from primary to secondary school, more needs to be known specifically about the experiences of this group of pupils during their final year of primary school, as they prepare for their transition to secondary school.

Purpose: The study investigated how Dutch children with migrant backgrounds in their final year of primary school perceive the preparatory process for the transition to secondary school. In particular, we were interested in who the children felt were the important ‘actors’ (e.g. pupils, parents, teachers and others) in the preparatory process.

Sample: We collected data from 76 primary school pupils from three schools in an urban city in the Netherlands. The sample included pupils who, according to the Dutch system, were preparing to follow an academic pathway (i.e. the tracks known in this system as ‘HAVO’ or ‘VWO’) and those who were preparing to follow a vocational pathway (i.e. the track known as ‘VMBO’) in secondary education.

Design and methods: We used photo elicitation (N = 76) and also conducted semi-structured interviews with a subsample of the pupils (N = 25) to examine the roles of the important actors in the preparatory process. Data were analysed qualitatively; responses were coded and underwent pattern analysis in order to identify and describe repeating structures in the data. Data were grouped according to whether the pupils received school recommendations for an academic track or a vocational track.

Results: Findings suggested that the pupils perceived the most important actors to be the pupil, the classroom teacher and the parents. Both teachers and parents were considered valuable resources for pupils in the preparatory process. Patterns representing the participants’ perceptions of the roles of three actors – namely, (1) the child, (2) the classroom teacher and (3) the parents, were identified. Six patterns were identified with respect to the child, four with respect to the classroom teacher and two with respect to the parents. For some patterns, it was apparent that the responses of children in the vocational group and the academic group had different emphases.

Conclusions: The study highlights the importance for teachers and parents of children in their final year of primary school to be aware of the pupils’ perceptions of and feelings about their preparation for secondary school, so as to be in the best position to support them collaboratively.     

Computadores,comunicación y educación: una colaboración internacional en la intervención e investigación educativa

Resumen

El presente articulo describe y justifica teóricamente una actividad educativa que induye el uso de microcomputadores a través de una comunicación telemática. Esta actividad consiste en la redacción de una revista bilingüe (inglés-español) en la que colaboran niños de diversas culturas. A través de esta actividad se trabajan temas como la «alfabetización informàtica», la composición de textos y los idiomas. Esta intervención educativa viene acompañada de un intercambio de información científica a través de una red académica de comunicaciones telemáticas para el intercambio de información científica. El marco teórico en el que se desarrolla este trabajo se deriva del de la psicología vygotskiana y de alguno de sus desarrollos posteriores.     

Do farm advisory services improve adoption of rural development policies? An empirical analysis in GI areas

Purpose: The aim of the paper is to evaluate how advisory services stimulate the adoption of rural development policies (RDP) aiming at value creation.

Design/methodology/approach: By linking the use of agricultural extension services (AES) to policies for value creation, we will put forward an empirical analysis in Italy, with the aim of evaluating the capability of AES in bringing about higher access to rural policies for value creation in geographical indications (GI) contexts.

Findings: Results of our analyses evidence, on the one side, higher capability of funds attraction in GI areas. On the other side, path dependency schemes in accessing RDP are evident. Higher rates of access with the support of advisory services emerge, but only in traditional measure to fund farms’ investments. On the contrary, the use of AES does not facilitate access to other measures for value creation.

Practical implications: Our hypothesis is that AES include the support towards farm strategies of development through the adoption of RDP aiming at value creation in GI areas. Our analysis presents practical implications, in terms of a clear need for upgrading and broadening AES’ competencies in the field of projecting farm development and knowledge transfer in the field of funds to be obtained by RDP.

Theoretical implications: From a theoretical point of view, the paper may provide a contribution to theoretical debate by offering new insights into the role of advisory services in stimulating innovations and access to support policies.

Originality/value: This paper tries to fill a gap in the agricultural extension literature. We posit that the role of AES should comprehend a deeper knowledge (and knowledge transfer) concerning the opportunities provided by RDP.     

The challenges of setting up the evaluation of extension systems by using a systems approach: the case of Greece,Italy and Slovenia

Purpose: Considering current debates on ecosystem services’ effectiveness and the AIS/AKIS functioning, in this study we suggest a new, systemic way to evaluate extension systems (ESs). Using this model, we compared the effectiveness of ESs in three countries with essential differences but also characteristic similarities in their agricultural sectors: Greece, Italy and Slovenia.

Design/methodology/approach: Initially, we defined ‘extension system’ as a wide range of actors integrating resources with the aim of co-producing value (not for but with) farmers. To capture the value flow within this constellation of actors we distinguished between the notion of ‘value in production’ – i.e. the value embodied in service offerings – and the value emanating when service content is used in real settings or ‘value in use.’

Findings: Our approach revealed that, despite their structural and organizational differences, the ES in the three countries share common problems arising from a limited focus on the issue of value in use.

Practical implications: The application of a systemic approach – seeing farmers as co-creators and not as end-users of extension services – in the evaluation of ESs contributes to better understand the complexity of value flow within the system and can strengthen extension systems’ effectiveness.

Theoretical implications: The present study, by reconsidering traditional evaluation approaches and by focusing on value co-production, offers an alternative value-centric framework for the conceptualization of extension services and points out to the need for refining the evaluation criteria of ESs.

Originality/value: Our work, by emphasizing the reciprocal creation of value within ESs, and by adding the concept of value in use, offers a new systems approach worth considering when evaluating ESs within different organizational and sociocultural contexts.     

Looking at lived experiences of self‐advocacy through gendered eyes: becoming femme fatale with/out ‘learning difficulties’

In this article, we attempt to intersect the interdisciplinary characters of disability studies and gender studies, in order to make sense of the activism and lived knowledge of/with two women with the label of ‘learning difficulties’. Inspired by Deleuze and Guattari’s anti‐essentialist notion of devenirs‐particules, we find our multiple selves involved in cross‐cutting relational storytelling, as such destabilising essentialist, biological determinism towards women with/out the label of ‘learning difficulties’. Thus in becoming femme(s) fatale(s), we make the most of a science capable of grasping the continual interplay between agency, structure and context, creating a ‘becoming space’ where we, as activists with our academic allies, can think and act with one another.