From diagrams to self-regulated learning: student teachers’ reflections on the construction of their PLE

This paper presents a study on the reflections on their PLEs by student teachers in an ICT subject of the fourth degree course in Teacher Education (Early Childhood Teacher Training) at the University of the Balearic Islands (UIB). There were four student teacher groups (n = 117) participating in this project, from the three Balearic Islands’ campuses (Mallorca, Menorca and Ibiza). The main research issues focused on in this study are: the topics highlighted from the reflections on the students’ PLEs and the reflection level achieved. To explore these issues, a content analysis technique has been used to interpret their final assignment of the students’ eportfolios, in which they had to carry out their reflections on their PLEs. For that purpose, two instruments have been designed: a system of categories and a rubric of assessment. Results show that the topics on which students reflect most are the conception of the PLE, its explicitness and its purpose. Although some improvement in students’ reflective skills was observed, conclusions lead us to the necessity of working further on the depth of reflections in order to adequately support self-regulated learning.     

Music Education at Hospital Schools in Spain and Sweden: Paths Between Governing and Knowledge

This paper focuses on some debates regarding music education within hospital schooling, an educational track that has developed in the course of the 20th century within Western education systems. Analysis and proposals are made with respect to the music education curriculum content in primary education, within hospital education tracks, in Spain and Sweden. In order to critically approach the changing definition of what is considered significant knowledge, we discuss how music education curriculum content is included in hospital schools located in the capitals Madrid and Stockholm.     

A probabilistic approach to student workload: empirical distributions and ECTS

The ECTS, European Credit Transfer System, is now widely used throughout higher education institutions as it facilitates student mobility within Europe and the comparison of study programs and courses. Most European institutions provide students with the number of ECTS each course and module is worth. A full-time student needs to complete 60 ECTS per academic year, which represents about 1500 to 1800 h of study. However, there is a lack of research showing that ECTS metrics have been properly implemented in different degrees and universities. The aim of this paper is to assess the relevance of the ECTS metric as a valid indicator of students’ and courses’ workloads. Detailed workload measurements have been taken in two Spanish universities, with 250,000 work hours monitored from 1400 students. This is the first study published with such a large dataset that includes a range of simultaneous courses and throughout a whole semester. Empirical distribution functions of workload indicators have been obtained. Evidence is provided indicating that nominal ECTS credit hours may be overestimated, that the variability of student workload could be too large for ECTS to sensibly characterize course workload, and that workload statistics of courses with same nominal ECTS are generally not comparable. Although the ECTS metric conception seems to be a valid metric to facilitate mobility between different institutions and higher education systems, in practice, according to this study, it requires revision, at least in the two institutions that have been included in this study. Further studies like the present one are required to test if this is a broader problem that has implications for the comparability of degrees across Europe.     

Relationship Between Flow and Athletic Identity: The Case of Three Elite Sportsmen

This study analyzes the personal narrative of flow experiences across three elite sportsmen within their particular sport autobiographical contexts. Using a holistic formal structure analysis to examine the participants’ self-narratives, five major themes emerged: (a) early socialization as the basis of a strong athletic identity, (b) withdrawal from sports as a threat to athletic identity, (c) the dramatic weight of the narrative plots within which the experiences of flow are inserted, (d) biographical sporting flow accounts, and (e) silences and devaluations in flow narrative. The results of the narrative analyses show a close relationship between the flow experiences and athletic identity. This study concludes that, in this case, the narratives of flow experiences have had an ontological role as they served to assert the participants’ threatened athletic identity. Hence, studying narratives as practices is a useful way to better understand not only the internal coherence of the narrative fragments into which flow experiences are inserted, but also the role that they play regarding the autobiographical narrative into which these are inserted.     

Nothing in the History of Spanish <Emphasis Type="Italic">Anís</Emphasis> Makes Sense,Except in the Light of Evolution

We describe, discuss and illustrate a metaphoric parallel between the history of the most famous Spanish liqueur, “Anís del Mono” (Anís of the Monkey), and the evolution of living organisms in the light of Darwinian theory and other biological hypotheses published subsequent to Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species. Also, we report the use of a caricature of a simian Darwin with a positive connotation, perhaps the only one ever produced. We conclude that, like some species in the natural world, Anís of the Monkey has evolved, adapted, survived and become the fittest and most successful anís in the Spanish market and possibly the world. We hope this paper will contribute a new useful metaphor for the teaching of biological evolution.     

Effectiveness of a Conflict Resolution Training Program in Changing Graduate Students Style of Managing Conflict with their Faculty Advisors

We investigated the conflict management preferences of graduate students with their faculty advisors and assessed the effects of participating in a conflict resolution workshop on those preferences. One hundred and twenty-one graduate students completed the pre-workshop surveys, and 69 participants completed the post-workshop surveys after seven workshops conducted over a 3 year period. Nineteen subjects participated in three post-workshop focus groups. The quantitative pre-workshop data showed that avoidance and accommodation styles for managing conflict were preferred among participants. Participants showed a trend towards a statistically significant increase in the collaborating score post-workshop relative to pre-workshop levels. The qualitative data indicated that students applied skills taught during the workshop, including interest-based principles, when interacting with faculty.     

Fixing a Misbegotten Biography: Ziryāb in the Mediterranean World

The generally accepted biography of the famous Cordovan musician and composer, Alī b. Nāfi? Ziryāb (d. 242/857), contains evident problems of chronology and content and is based almost entirely upon one source, al-Maqqarī's Naf[hdot] al- ?īb min ghu?n al-Andalus al-ratīb, written in the eleventh/seventeenth century. Modern scholarship generally has overlooked the fifth/eleventh-century source for this late version of his biography and has not taken other, earlier, sources into account. The result is a misbegotten biography that distorts both its subject and the Mediterranean world in which Ziryāb lived. This article refines the biography of Ziryāb by using the earliest available Arabic sources, including works by Ibn ?Abd Rabbih (d. 328/940), Ibn al-Qūtiyya (d. 365/977), Ibn [Hdot]ayyān (d. 469/1076), A[hdot]mad al-Tīfāshī (d. 651/1253) and Ibn Khaldūn (d. 803/1402). By comparing these accounts and attempting to reconcile their inconsistencies, the paper proposes a more logical chronology for Ziryāb's career that not only resolves obvious problems with the standard biography, but also portrays this important artist in relation to the network of political and economic institutions that united the eastern and western ends of the Islamic Mediterranean world in the early third/ninth century.     

Italian women's television coverage and audience during the 2004 Athens Olympic Games

This study aimed at determining the amount of Italian television coverage dedicated to men's and women's sport and the number of male and female viewers during the 2004 Summer Olympic Games. AUDITEL-AGB Nielsen Media Research Italia provided the TV airtime data for the sport events broadcast, which were classified into three categories: men-only, women-only, and mixed-gender. The viewer sample was divided by age and gender and included three audience parameters: mean audience, share, and appreciation index. The last item is calculated from the program duration, audience permanence, and the share related to programs broadcast by other Italian channels. In particular, the appreciation index was used to investigate the relationship between (a) the viewer's and sport participants' gender and (b) the effect of Italian participation and expectations for sport achievement. The data showed that Italian male athletes outnumbered their female counterparts. Women's sport was allotted significantly less airtime than men's sport, but this imbalance was not proportional to the gender difference in the overall athletes' participation in the Games. Although the female audience represented 45% of the total, a significantly higher male mean audience and share were found. On the other hand, the appreciation of men's and women's sport events was balanced after equating for differences in media coverage. Moreover sport achievement might have a positive effect on the trend toward equality of gender coverage, indicating that a global multisport event such as the Olympic Games is central to communicating a national image and identity independently of the athletes' gender.     

Focusing of visual attention at rest and during physical exercise in soccer players

In this study, we investigated the focus of visual attention in expert soccer players together with the effects of acute bouts of physical exercise on performance. In two discriminative reaction time experiments, which were performed both at rest and under submaximal physical workload, visual attention was cued by means of spatial cues of different size followed by compound stimuli with local and global target features. Soccer players were slower than non-athletes in reacting to local compared with global targets, but were faster in switching from local to global attending. Thus, soccer players appear to be less skilled in local attending, but better able than non-athletes to rapidly "zoom out" the focus of attention. Non-athletes generally showed faster performance under physical load, as expected according to the hypothesis of exercise-induced increases in arousal and/or activation and in resource allocation. In contrast, soccer players showed a more differentiated pattern of exercise-induced facilitation that selectively affects specific components of the attentional performance and is interpreted by referring to the role played by individual expertise and cognitive effort.