Survey development to assess parental satisfaction with adapted physical education teachers' abilities working with children with autism

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to systematically develop and validate an instrument to assess parental perceptions toward adapted physical education (APE) teachers, who work with children with autism.

Methods: Participants included two expert panels and parents of children and youth with autism. The survey used a Likert-scale design where parents rated their level of satisfaction regarding communication with, qualifications of, and rapport with the APE teachers.

Results: Based on α coefficients for each of the three subscales, it was concluded that the survey had high internal validity. Split-half reliability determined by the Spearman Brown Prophecy coefficient indicated high reliability.

Conclusion: Preliminary evidence demonstrated that the survey may be a useful tool in assessing parental perceptions of their child's APE teacher.     

Assessing the unidimensionality of the School and College Ability Test (SCAT,Spanish version) using non-parametric methods based on item response theory

The aim of this work is to analyze the dimensional structure of the Spanish version of the School and College Ability Test, employed in the process for the identification of students with high intellectual abilities. This test measures verbal and mathematical (or quantitative) abilities at three levels of difficulty: elementary (3rd, 4th, and 5th years in Primary school), intermediate (6th year in Primary school plus the 1st and 2nd years of Compulsory Secondary School or ESO), and advanced (3rd and 4th years of ESO plus the 1st and 2nd years of bachillerato – equivalent to High school). For each level there are two forms, X and Y. The research was undertaken with the results obtained from the application carried out for the validation and norming of the Spanish version of the test, and for which a representative sample of students from Navarre at these mentioned levels was taken. This study assessed the possible unidimensionality of the simplicity or the complexity of the structure of this test as an essential aspect of construct validity. To this end, the results were triangulated for the classic factorial techniques and non-parametric methods based on the item response theory.     

Development of human resources in and for bilingual intercultural education in Latin America

Worked as consultant for the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit on the Bilingual Education Programme of Puno (Peru). Professor of Andean Linguistics at the Universidad Nacional del Altiplano. Co-author (with Ingrid Jung) of Las lenguas en la educación bilingüe: el caso de Puno,and compiler of Pesquisas en linguística andinaand Pueblos indios, estados y educación.     

A Four Year Follow‐up Study of Low Socioeconomic Status,Latin American Children with Reading Difficulties

This paper presents the results of a follow‐up study of reading difficulties among Spanish‐speaking Latin American children of low socioeconomic background (SES) over four school years. The research started with a group of 93 children with reading difficulties (RD) by 2nd and 3rd grade teachers in four schools and a control group of 63 children without reading difficulties (ND), belonging to the same schools. Both groups were equivalent in age, grade, gender and SES. All children were tested on reading decoding and comprehension, reading and writing pseudo‐words, verbal abilities, visual perception, phonological processing, and the WISC‐R. Neither SES nor IQ accounted significantly for the reading difficulties in the RD group. The most predictive variables of the final reading level in the RD group were phonological processing, verbal abilities, and the initial level of decoding. After four years, 17% of the initial RD children had reached an average level of reading, but 11% of this group remained with severe reading difficulties and may be considered as dyslexic children. The RD children who became average readers were not significantly different from the control group in verbal abilities, nor in phonological processing. Nevertheless, they were significantly different in terms of IQ scores. The neuropsychological characteristics of the children with severe reading difficulties appear similar to those found in children with dyslexia in more developed countries.     

如你所知

After a while you learn the subtle difference Between holding a hand and chaining a soul, And you leam that love doesn't mean leaning And company doesn't mean security.     

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.     

Comparative education and education sciences: Variations on an old theme

where he teaches comparative education. Until 1988, President of the Comparative Education Society in Europe (CESE). Member of the World Council of Comparative Education Societies and Vice-President of the Spanish Comparative Education Society. Publications include: Fundamentos de Educación Comparada (1982, 1986), Problemas mundiales de la educación (1982, 1986), Sistemas educativos de hoy (1984, 1987), Primary Education on the Threshold of the Twenty-first Century(published in Spanish and French; 1986 and 1987) and Pedagogía prospectiva (1989). He has published numerous articles in scholarly journals of various countries.     

Brazilian Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations

This paper relates and analyses the experience of various Brazilian institutions organized in a consortium with the aim of providing integration and unified access, via a web gateway, to full-text electronic theses already available at different Brazilian universities. The rise and impact of free electronic academic publishing on scientific communication and the development of science is analyzed. The results of a pilot programme, developed under the coordination of IBICT, as well as technical and technological aspects of information system models adopted, are presented. Aspects such as metadata sets and formats, protocols for automatic gathering of metadata, union catalogue databases, user interfaces and integration with other Brazilian STI systems, are analyzed. Finally, future developments and the enlargement of the Brazilian Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations are discussed.     

Herramientas de autor para el desarrollo de software educativo

La gran muralla del ordenador para los educadores ha sido que imponía el juego que Goethe achacaba a los matemáticos: lo traducen todo a su idioma y ya se trata de algo distinto inasequible para la generalidad de los mortales. La informática separaba a los educadores de la informática. Los lenguajes «de autor» que traducen las posibilidades del ordenador a pautas de acción expresadas en códigos sencillos y naturales y que sirven para producir cursos, lecciones o didácticas fácilmente, permiten por primera vez que el educador pase a ser protagonista y no el anfitrión de una visita inoportuna, del papel del ordenador en educación.