Variables involved in personal, social and school adjustment in a sample of preschool-aged children from different cultural backgrounds

The continuing incorporation of immigrant populations into the Spanish educational system poses an important challenge in that all participants must cooperate toward creating the best possible adaptation process at the academic level as well as on the personal and social levels. A number of different factors appear to influence children’s adjustment during the preschool stage, and these factors are especially relevant since many studies have shown that this is a key period for the prevention of future difficulties. The present study examines the variables involved in the adaptation of a group of preschool-aged children from different cultural backgrounds in Spain. The results indicate that preschoolers, regardless of their background, have similar performance and learning potential, with language proficiency being the factor that most clearly affects the other variables investigated. It was also found that children’s attitudes toward learning were related to the presence of behavioral difficulties and with the quality and type of parental child-rearing practices. These practices appear to be related to a number of difficulties immigrant children may experience on personal and social levels.     

Identities, social representations and critical thinking

This comment on L. Simonneaux and J. Simonneaux paper focuses on the role of identities in dealing with socio-scientific issues. We argue that there are two types of identities (social representations) influencing the students’ positions: On the one hand their social representations of the bears’ and wolves’ identities as belonging to particular countries (Slovenia versus France for bears, France and Italy for wolves), in other words, as having national identities; on the other hand representations of their own identities as belonging to the field of agricultural practitioners, and so sharing this socio-professional identity with shepherds and breeders, as opposed to ecologists. We discuss how these representations of identities influenced students’ reasoning and argumentation, blocking in some cases the evaluation of evidence. Implications for developing critical thinking and for dealing with SSI in the classrooms are outlined.

Student explanations of their science teachers’ assessments,grading practices and how they learn science

The current paper draws on data generated through group interviews with students who were involved in a larger ethnographic research project performed in three science classrooms. The purpose of the study from which this data was generated, was to understand science teachers’ assessment practices in an upper-secondary school in Sweden. During group interviews students were asked about their conceptions of what were the assessment priority of teachers, why the students were silent during lecturing and their experiences regarding peer- and self-assessments. The research design and analysis of the findings derives from what students told us about their assessments and learning sciences experiences. Students related that besides the results of the written test, they do not know what else teachers assessed and used to determine their grades. It was also found that students did not participate in the discussion on science because of peer-pressure and a fear of disappointing their peers. Student silence is also linked with student conceptions of science learning and student experiences with methodologies of teaching and learning sciences.     

Underemployment and employment among young workers and the business cycle in Spain: the importance of education level and specialisation

The objective of this paper is to identify the effect of education on young workers’ time-related underemployment as well as analysing whether education has been a defence mechanism against the recent crisis. Especially relevant is the analysis regarding field of study, which has not been addressed in the underemployment literature. Using data from the Spanish Labour Force Survey 2006–2014, bivariate probit selection models are estimated for three different periods. This methodology enables to analyse the evolution of underemployment among young people, simultaneously considering their probability of employment. The results indicate that underemployment is negatively related to education level for each period and tertiary education has smoothed the negative effect of the recession. Moreover, those specialisations that provide students with specific and work-oriented skills (sciences, technology and health) help workers avoid underemployment and enable them to handle the recession better. Conversely, more generally oriented fields (education, and arts and humanities) are associated with a higher probability of underemployment. Similar patterns have been found regarding unemployment, indicating education plays a similar role in both working time shortages.     

Adivinanzas and Dichos: Preparing Prospective Educators to Teach Science by Incorporating Culturally Responsive Tools

Culturally relevant science pedagogy is seldom discussed in terms of infusion of literary resources, such as adivinanzas and dichos in the design of instruction. In this study, the authors narrate how a science methods course was infused with the use of culturally responsive tools to purposefully connect to the elementary science curriculum. Results indicate that prospective Latino teachers found multiple opportunities to address specific science objectives with adivinanzas and expressed the advantages of using these culturally responsive tools to introduce and summarize science concepts as they implemented lessons during field experience.     

Meanings given to algebraic symbolism in problem-posing

Some errors in the learning of algebra suggest that students might have difficulties giving meaning to algebraic symbolism. In this paper, we use problem posing to analyze the students’ capacity to assign meaning to algebraic symbolism and the difficulties that students encounter in this process, depending on the characteristics of the algebraic statements given. We designed a written questionnaire composed of eight closed algebraic statements expressed symbolically, which was administered to 55 students who had finished their compulsory education and who had some previous experience in problem-posing. In our analysis of the data, we examine both syntactic and semantic structures of the problem posed. We note that in most cases students posed problems with syntactic structures different to those given. They did not include computations within variables, and changed the kinds of relationships connecting variables. Students easily posed problems for statements with additive structures. Other differences in the type of problems posed depend on the characteristics of the given statements.     

Understanding of graphs in social science undergraduate students: selection and interpretation of graphs

How do university students understand the graphs that they read in their textbooks? How does their knowledge regarding the content and their statistical training influence this understanding? Does the kind of task demand also influence this understanding? To answer these questions, we asked a group of psychology students and a group of economics students to choose the most suitable graph for presenting the results of different psychological research studies (reports) (selection task) or to explain in words the results of the same reports shown by means of their graphic representations only (interpretation task). The results showed there were very few differences between groups. Most of the students were able to relate textual information to the adequate graph, but also revealed significant shortcomings and mistakes in their understanding of important syntactic aspects of graphs. They also interpreted the graphs correctly but their interpretation had different levels of complexity, which were not always optimal. We also identified significant differences regarding the difficulty of the reports and the kinds of misinterpretations of graphs. The two tasks thus revealed different pictures of students’ skills in reading and interpreting graphs and, consequently, how the characteristics of task demands influence their performance.     

A virtual experience to strengthen students' understanding of inference in experimental design

Although our students correctly define the terms p‐value, Type I and Type II errors, they sometimes misinterpret results from real data. In this work we present an assignment intended to clear up these misconceptions.     

Transparency and its determinants at Colombian universities

Over the past decade, one of the demands upon public institutions, among which we find universities, has been for transparency and improvement of accountability. In this context, Colombian universities are introducing different methods of management and governance aimed at addressing the demands of society generally in relation to transparency and quality in the activities that they carry out. The objective of the present study is to analyze and evaluate factors which affect the level of transparency at Colombian universities based on the rectors’ perception of these universities. The results obtained indicate that the level of transparency depends on the type of governance which is adopted, the level of prestige and the level of delimitation of its identity. Other questions such as size, budget or the public or private nature of the university have not proved to be significant explanatory factors of the degree of transparency.