Education and social change in Spain: from crisis to opportunity

This paper analyses a particular socio-educational experience in a marginalised neighbourhood in Malaga, Spain. This initiative came about as an institutional proposal to combat neoliberal austerity policies and is known as the ‘Casa de la Buena Vida'. It aims to generate new educational practices based on solidarity, dignity and justice. The methodology followed entailed carrying out an ethnography at this institution, participating in the initiative over a period of 4 years. At the same time, life histories of some of its most notable members were drawn up. In the results section we offer an analysis of the particular identities that are created as a consequence of the living conditions, social conflicts, multicultural nature and survival strategies that operate in a welfarist policy system. We also analyse this institution's socio-educational proposal using alternative social practices that enable other subjectivities to develop.     

“We do not know what is the real story anymore”: Curricular contextualization principles that support indigenous students in understanding natural selection

We propose a process of contextualization based on seven empirically derived contextualization principles, aiming to provide opportunities for Indigenous Mexican adolescents to learn science in a way that supports them in fulfilling their right to an education aligned with their own culture and values. The contextualization principles we empirically derived account for Nahua students' cultural cognition, socialization, and cultural narratives, thus supporting Indigenous students in navigating the differences between their culture and the culture and language of school while learning complex science concepts such as natural selection. The process of curricular contextualization we propose is empirically driven, taking culture and socialization into account by using multiples sources (cognitive tasks to explore teleology, ethnographic observation of students' community and classroom, and interviews with students and community members) and builds on the scholarship in Culturally Relevant Pedagogy and Indigenous Education. We used these principles to redesign a middle school biology unit on natural selection to make it more culturally relevant for Nahua students. The enactment of this unit resulted in students being engaged in science learning and achieving significant learning gains. The significance of this study lies in presenting evidence that learning science in culturally relevant ways supports the learning of challenging biology concepts. We provide evidence that Western science can be learned in ways that are more aligned with Indigenous students' Traditional Indigenous Knowledge, thus informing the implementation of educational policies aiming to improve the quality of secondary education for Indigenous adolescents. Our proposed contextualization principles can benefit students of all cultural identities who feel that their religion, language, or traditional knowledge are not aligned with school science, facilitating their access to culturally relevant science education.     

当前我国民族问题的成因及对策思考

文章论述了当前我国民族问题的表现特点及形成的原因,并根据当前民族问题的实际堤出了一些解决民族问题的对策建议。     

Experiences in education innovation: developing tools in support of active learning

The paper focuses on educational projects developed in the ETSII (Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingenieros Industriales) of the Polytechnic University of Madrid during the past few years. These projects were developed as new tools for enhancing the active role of students, for improving practical teaching, especially by means of virtual laboratories and different sets of problems and exercises, and for promoting self-learning. The paper analyses the use of ICT in teaching, with the case of a developed e-learning platform as a tracking system for subjects. The paper concludes by discussing the new educational trends in the Centre, devoted to develop an active role of students by activities such as peer mentoring and laboratory monitors programs, and competitions for achieving multidisciplinary engineering challenges.     

Role of teachers in influencing the development of adolescents’ possible selves

During late childhood and early adolescence, there is a dramatic increase in cognitive skills which influences how young people begin to think about their futures. The construct of possible selves has been used to help understanding of adolescents’ views of their future plans and goals by exploring their social perceptions to gain insight about how they think about the world and themselves. This study examined the role of perceived teacher support in adolescents’ development of possible selves. Results suggest that the four groups (White males, Latinos, White females and Latinas) in this study think in different ways about their future possible selves of graduating from a 4-year university. This study provides important theoretical as well as practical implications.     

PSYCHOLOGICAL ACCULTURATION: DEVELOPMENT OF A NEW MEASURE FOR PUERTO RICANS ON THE U.S. MAINLAND

Most instruments designed to measure acculturation have relied on specific cultural behaviors and preferences as primary indicators of acculturation. In contrast, feelings of belonging and emotional attachment to cultural communities have not been widely used. The Psychological Acculturation Scale (PAS) was developed to assess acculturation from a phenomenological perspective, with items pertaining to the individual's sense of psychological attachment to and belonging within the Anglo-American and Latino/Hispanic cultures. Responses from samples of bilingual individuals and Puerto Rican adolescents and adults are used to establish a high degree of measurement equivalence across the Spanish and English versions of the scale along with high levels of internal consistency and construct validity. The usefulness of the PAS and the importance of studying acculturation from a phenomenological perspective are discussed.     

CS preexposure: Latent inhibition and Pavlovian conditioning of heart rate and eyeblink responses as a function of sex and CS intensity in rabbits

Male and female rabbits received Pavlovian conditioning in which a 1, 216-Hz tone served as the CS and a 3-mA paraorbital electric shock train served as the US. Eyeblink (EB) and heart rate (HR) CRs were assessed. Half of the animals received prior exposure to the CS, while half were restrained in the chamber for a similar length of time but did not receive prior CS exposure. Different groups of each sex received three different CS intensities including 60, 75, and 90 dB (SPL) during both preexposure and conditioning. The results revealed that latent inhibition of the EB CR occurred only at the intermediate CS intensity, as indicated by a significant impairment of EB conditioning in this group. However, the magnitude of the decelerative HR CR was attenuated by prior CS exposure at all three CS intensities. Females showed faster EB conditioning than males, but latent inhibition occurred in both sexes. These results suggest that somatomotor and autonomic systems are affected differently by prior CS exposure.     

Students’ Emotions in the High School Mathematical Class: Appraisals in Terms of a Structure of Goals

Little research in the field of Mathematics Education is directed towards emotions of students beyond their emotions in problem-solving. In particular, the daily emotions of students in a mathematics class have been sparsely studied in the field of mathematics education. In order to fill this gap, this qualitative research aims to identify high school students’ emotional experiences in the mathematics classroom and identify the appraisal structures that support such emotional experiences. Focus group interviews were carried out until theoretical saturation of the data was achieved (N = 53 in nine focus groups interviews). Data analysis is based on the theory of cognitive structure of emotions, which specifies eliciting situations for each emotion and the variables that affect intensity. The emotional experiences in this structure are as follows: satisfaction, disappointment, hope, fear, joy, distress, boredom, interest, pride, reproach, self-reproach, like and dislike. These results show that the emotional experiences of students are based on their appraisals of events, objects and agents in terms of a structure of goals.     

What if privatising higher education becomes an issue? The case of Chile and Mexico

Over the last 30 years, Chile and Mexico have been implementing neoliberal policies to reform their higher education systems. This report compares the development and impact of those policies within three main areas in both countries, namely: (1) trends and characteristics of the growing private higher education sector, (2) commercialisation and business-like trends that private academia is experiencing and, finally, (3) it discusses how all this has created tensioning situations with assessment and accrediting agencies to ensure quality in their private higher education systems. This study shows that private higher education is facing the following challenges in both nations: (1) an uncritical implementation of neoliberal policies, (2) that there is a very unregulated legislation that has allowed many private institutions to profit within loopholes in the law, (3) that quality has become a central concern and some of the mechanisms applied to correct it have not been effective, showing a lack of a comprehensive system of quality assessment, and (4) that enrolment has grown but with several mismatches that challenge the initial goal of advancing economic development through human resources capacities. Alternative policies are discussed.     

Distributed leadership and middle leadership practice in schools: a disconnect?

This article reports on a small-scale collaborative research study on middle leadership (ML) in Iceland and Ireland. It explores the ML role using the theoretical lens of distributed leadership (DL). The majority of DL studies to date examine leadership as an organisational resource that can be cultivated and utilised to serve school improvement. This research, however, situates the teacher at the core of DL and commences a discourse on how MLs experience their leadership practice from a DL perspective. The empirical investigation is based on semi-structured focus group interviews across the range of schools in both education contexts. The findings indicate a disconnect between DL theory as outlined in the literature and ML practice as currently experienced in Ireland and Iceland. While a form of DL exists in both contexts, this is strictly at the gift of the Principal rather than a reciprocal relationship with teachers in relation to leading school activities. The findings also signal a need for a proactive approach in School Leadership Preparation Programmes and in Initial Teacher Education to facilitate school leaders and teachers in understanding and adopting a distributed mindset.