Contributions of Learning Through Analogies to the Construction of Secondary Education Pupils’ Verbal Discourse about Chemical Change

This article analyzes the relationship between pupils’ level of understanding of the analogies proposed in class while working with a model of chemical change and their competence at constructing a coherent verbal discourse of that model in both its macroscopic and submicroscopic representations. The study participants were 35 pupils in their 3rd year of compulsory secondary education (14–15 years of age) who had been studying chemical change for several weeks in their subject of Physics and Chemistry. The results suggested that the pupils generally understood the proposed analogies quite well, and that a good proportion of them assimilated adequately the verbal discourse inherent in the proposed model of chemical change. There was also a statistically significant association between modeling and analogical thinking. In particular, the pupils with greater understanding of the analogies being considered were also those who tended to show a greater ability to verbalize the model of chemical change and reason with it when solving the tasks they had been set. These results concur with the literature by suggesting that a link exists between analogical thinking and modeling, and that learning with analogies has a positive influence on the construction of the chemical change model.     

Investigación y práctica educativa en el desarrollo de la comprensión lectora

Resumen

Se revisan en este artículo los procesos de adquisición y uso del lenguaje y la lectoescritura en la escuela, como conformadores de los diversos mecanismos de comprensión. Se valora a continuación la aportación de los modelos teóricos de instrucción en la comprensión: esquemas, estrategias de resumen y extracción de ideas principales, técnicas de estudio y mecanismos metacognitivos de control, con vistas a una renovación de la didáctica de la lectoescritura.     

Qué se puede hacer con lo audiovisual en la educación La imagen: un problema trivial con implicaciones básicas

Lo audiovisual está vinculado a dos grandes y graves problemas de la cultura y la educación actuales: la continua renovación en el proceso de estructurar los significados, y las nuevas vías que buscan niños y jóvenes para identificarse y situarse en el mundo, para construir el sentido. Se aboga desde ahí por una renovación profunda de toda la educación y no por la incorporación de un tópico más al diseño curricular.     

Proyecto Mercurio: un instrumento institucional para impulsar la introducción de los medios audiovisuales en el currículo

No basta regalar la caña para formar un pescador ni el lápiz para enseñar a escribir. La introducción de la tecnología audiovisual, basada en medios más aparatosos que la lectoescritura, ha podido confundir medios y sistemas de representación, instrumento y código. La información precisa y de primera mano sobre el proyecto Mercurio del M.E.C. que se da en este artículo define un programa que va mucho más allá de los tradicionales objetivos de enseñar a utilizar los aparatos.     

Latinx* popular culture imaginaries: examining Puerto Rican children’s social discourses in interpreting telenovelas

Abstract

In this paper, we present a collaboration project within one urban Puerto Rican classroom, focused on constructing a critical literacy inquiry curriculum grounded in the students’ out-of-school literacy practices in their communities, including their experiences with media and popular culture. We focused on a critical literacy and media inquiry unit centered on the students’ self-selected subject of the telenovela. Here, we examine one student’s work to highlight two overarching findings: (1) the visibility of the students’ complex understanding of the media landscapes in telenovelas, particularly the construction of dominant social discourses across telenovela worlds, and (2) the ways that bringing children’s mediatized cultural imaginaries in their creative work supports an approach to literacy in classrooms, where explorations of discourses of power emerge from the students’ knowledge. In order to articulate how children actively examine and construct discourses across multiple social worlds, we examine these findings using the Four Resource Model, and elements of discourse analysis, as theoretical and analytical frameworks, focusing on the construction of identities, worlds and meanings in relation to the social discourses of telenovelas.     

Black women’s bodies,ideology, and the public curriculum of the pro- and anti-choice movements in the US

This paper explores how opposite sides of the abortion debate employ a discourse of endangerment to mobilise political support for their ideologies about black women’s bodies. I examine the role of black women within that rhetorical strategy through various rhetorical artefacts. To analyse these artefacts, I employ the theoretical framework of ideological or ideographic criticism. This framework helps us see how the artefacts used by both pro and anti-choice movements ‘condition’ the audience not merely to adopt a set of ‘beliefs and behavior, but a vocabulary of concepts that function as guides, warrants, reasons, or excuses for behavior and belief’. Though the two sides of the abortion debate differ in their overt political views, they turn out to share an implicit ideology about black women. This ideology prevents the voices of black women from being heard and valued in a debate that is nonetheless focused on black women’s bodies.     

Scale of attitudes of schoolchildren towards immigrant pupils

In the academic year 2004–2005, approximately 400,000 immigrant pupils were enrolled in Spanish schools and six-form colleges. The racial and ethnic diversity that Spanish society and schools present could be a source of new opportunities and social enrichment, for the national as well as the immigrant population. However, this contact between nationals and immigrants is not free of problems. School is one of the areas where attitudes towards different social groups begin to be formed, while at the same time being the main opportunity that our society has to create an environment of coexistence and attitudinal change. The first step to look at such a complex phenomenon in more detail is to have evaluation tools available that allow us to measure it. In this article we present the results referring to psychometric features, and we carry out a differential analysis of the Scale of attitudes of school-children towards immigrant pupils.