The journey of two Latino educators: our collective resilience

This article represents a journey into education undertaken by two Latino educators from diverse generations. Through the content of the narratives, we emphasize that success was achieved within the presence of oppression. The narratives reveal significant constructs that shaped our journey. For the first author, Pablo, role models, pivotal moments, and resistance had a powerful influence in his journey. Family lessons and self-sacrifice were key to the success of the second author, Yolanda. These constructs contributed to both of our resilience and success. We suggest that the aforementioned constructs have significant implications for Latino youth in the educational system.     

Strength in Numbers: A Model for Undergraduate Research Training and Education in the Social and Behavioral Sciences

This study describes a new approach to undergraduate science training that offers an alternate model to the national objective of scaling up scientific research interests and capabilities among undergraduate students. With this new focus, we seek to more effectively bring scientific research methods and experiences to larger numbers of students in non-elite educational circumstances. Our model has been designed and implemented, at the John Jay College and the Borough of Manhattan Community College, both of which are part of the City University of New York (CUNY), where we have a majority non-White and economically disadvantaged student body. We have successfully engaged large numbers of undergraduate students by linking multiple classes in the social and behavioral sciences to build collective cross-disciplinary research projects that give every enrolled student an opportunity to receive high-quality research training and create cumulative data sets over years that are cumulative, collaborative, and of professional value.     

Pathways to Achievement: Career and Educational Aspirations and Expectations of Latina/o Immigrant Parents and Early Adolescents

Drawing on sociocultural and related theories, 4 questions examined career and educational aspirations and expectations among 24 immigrant Latina/o early adolescents and their parents as predictors of students’ grades. First, adolescents’ career aspirations and expectations were correlated, and both parents and adolescents held educational aspirations that exceeded their expectations. Second, most adolescents and parents held congruent educational aspirations. Third, congruence between students’ career and educational aspirations was uncommon. Fourth, parents’ educational aspirations and adolescents’ career–education congruence predicted students’ grades. Discussion highlights students’ ongoing reconciliation between aspirations and academic skills and multiple ways immigrant Latino parents contribute to their adolescents’ future.     

Student perceptions of the cell biology laboratory learning environment in four undergraduate science courses in Spain

Cell biology is an academic discipline that organises and coordinates the learning of the structure, function and molecular composition of cells in some undergraduate biomedical programs. Besides course content and teaching methodologies, the laboratory environment is considered a key element in the teaching of and learning of cell biology. The aim of this study was to determine students’ opinions about the quality of the teaching and learning environment in cell biology laboratory practice. For this study, we used a short form of the Science Laboratory Environment Inventory (SLEI), which we adapted and translated into Spanish. The questionnaire, administered to students enrolled in four undergraduate programs, consisted of 24 questions divided into four scales: integration of content, clarity of laboratory rules, cohesion between students and teachers, and quality of laboratory infrastructures and materials. The results suggested that (1) students positively assessed the learning environment provided for cell biology practice, (2) the short Spanish form of the SLEI was a valid, reliable instrument for evaluating student satisfaction, laboratory activities, the degree of cooperation between students and teachers, and theoretical and practical organisation of content and (3) the questionnaire detected differential perceptions of the learning environment based on gender and the program studied.     

Orthographic similarity and phonological transparency in spelling

In a brief, exploratoryspelling intervention, second through fourthgrade students, divided in two groups of 70students, learned to spell Latin loan wordsthat ended in -ion with either alinguistically explicit or implicit method. The -ion words were chosen because theypossess similar orthographic structure inaddition to uniform pronunciation. In theexplicit instruction, linguistic andorthographic properties of the words weresimultaneously considered and non-overlappingdistributive patterns between sound andspelling were discussed, whereas in theimplicit instruction discussion was limited tothe orthographic pattern. The explicitinstruction was based on the Orton–Gillinghammethod. Linguistically explicit instructionimproved discrimination of /zh/ and /sh/sounds, spelling of word endings tion andsion and, most importantly, spellinggeneralization to novel words over implicitinstruction. These results were consistent pergrade. The children in each instructionimproved equally on spelling of the stressedvowel, which did not receive explicit attentionin the intervention, as well as on reading ofboth the stressed vowel and the word endings. Thus, the effectiveness of drawing explicitversus implicit attention was shown across andwithin type of instruction. The results appearto support sound-based spelling instruction.     

Argumentation and education: notes for a debate / Argumentación y educación: apuntes para un debate

Abstract

The objective of the present article is twofold. On the one hand, it aims to analyse the relationship between argumentation and education with a special emphasis on the difficulties that occur when defining and assessing argumentative skills. These difficulties are related to the thinking patterns underlying the argumentation models and, at the same time, are reflected in the educational models used to train and to assess students’ argumentative skills. On the other hand, this article presents and discusses common and distinctive aspects of the papers selected for this monograph.     

Performing intelligible genders through violence: bullying as gender practice and heteronormative control

The purpose of the present study was to analyse adolescents’ perception of bullying and particularly of the ways intelligible masculinities and femininities are performed through violence in the framework of Queer Theory. We conducted a qualitative study using focus groups. The sample was composed of 93 Spanish adolescents (48 girls and 45 boys, mean age 13.7 years) who attended 4 compulsory secondary education schools in Spain and participated voluntarily in the study. Students’ statements revealed that bullying is a strongly gendered phenomenon and an additional way of ‘doing gender’, that is, of performing hegemonic femininities and masculinities at school, imitating and reproducing gender norms and punishing those who transgress them.     

Research on Scaling Up Evidence-Based Instructional Practice: Developing a Sensitive Measure of the Rate of Implementation

Few evidence-based instructional practices achieve large-scale use, often remaining only in the schools directly involved in their development. Research on scaling up effective educational practice often lacks sensitive measures of the practice's implementation and the required research protocol. This article describes how we used rate of implementation as a sensitive measure to help identify barriers to implementation of class-wide peer tutoring (CWPT). Using communication technologies and a learning management system, we monitored the rate of CWPT implementation and its research protocol across nine schools in five states. Rate of implementation was defined as the number of weeks in which a school successfully completed the 12 implementation tasks required to reach full implementation. We discuss factors related to the variation in implementation rate (30-50 weeks) between schools, and implications of this measurement strategy for research on instructional practices and the technology used to facilitate scalability research.     

Images in biology: are instructional criteria used in textbook image design?

This paper analyses the extent to which textbook images are designed using the Instructional Criteria for Image Analysis (ICIA) model in textbooks. The ICIA proposed that learning through images involves interaction between the learner, the image, and the activities with images proposed to the student. Images from the main text and activity section of eleven primary and secondary school textbooks on the human body were analysed regarding the extent to which they fit the proposed criteria. Images in the main text were analysed according to size and type, presence of visual elements (graphical elements, colour, enlarged details), verbal elements (caption, labels) and reference to the image within the text, while images in the activity sections were analysed according to learning involved (task type, procedure, processing level). Results show unequal presence of these criteria in both primary and secondary school textbooks. There are some differences between primary and secondary levels (predominant image type, degree of image contextualisation and processing level required). Images should not be considered self-evident. Images should be designed based less on aesthetic and decorative criteria and more on instructional criteria such as ICIA proposed in order to support image-based learning processes and increase the potential value of images as learning tools.     

Intrafirm diffusion of new technologies: an empirical application

Research on the diffusion of new technologies has centred on the study of the interfirm rate of diffusion, paying much less attention to intrafirm aspects. This paper attempts to overcome this gap in the literature by analysing the factors that influence the speed with which a new technology, the ATM, is fully adopted. The data over which the hypotheses are tested belongs to the Spanish savings banks market. The results show that the rate of intrafirm diffusion is explained by innovation, firm and market characteristics. In testing our hypotheses we make use of both traditional methods and survival analysis techniques.