School-based sexuality education in Portugal: strengths and weaknesses

Portugal, like many other countries, faces obstacles regarding school-based sexuality education. This paper explores Portuguese schools’ approaches to implementing sexuality education at a local level, and provides a critical analysis of potential strengths and weaknesses. Documents related to sexuality education in a convenience sample of 89 schools were analysed and findings confirm both the results of the few existing Portuguese studies on the subject and commonalities in sexuality education between Portugal and other European countries. These include strengths, such as the existence of teams in charge of sexuality education in schools and the provision of resources, but also weaknesses, such as too heavy a focus on health-related issues, difficulties in cross-curricular teaching, low levels of community participation and poor-quality evaluation. Findings point to the need for a greater sharing of information and good practice between countries, and the need for clearer guidelines. Suggestions are made for improving the quality of sexuality education in Portuguese schools.     

Effective practices in leadership for social justice. Evolution of successful secondary school principalship in disadvantaged contexts

ABSTRACT

This paper investigates the evolution of leadership for learning that has occurred in four secondary schools located in disadvantaged contexts in the province of Granada (Spain) over a period of 2 years, performing a comparative analysis on the values, qualities and strategies that characterize their principals during the academic years 2013–2014 and 2015–2016. The investigation uses case studies and conducts interviews with principals, teachers and education administrators. It is supported by the group-case method, as well as the longitudinal prospective method. The results show that only one of these principals has maintained a leadership aimed at learning and achievement of all students in the school, at the same time as students’ academic results have been improving. This paper concludes by providing information on values, qualities and strategies of successful leadership in disadvantaged contexts in Spain that distinguish them from other less successful leaders.     

Who benefits from mastery-approach and performance-approach goals in college? Students’ social class as a moderator of the link between goals and grade

Although approach forms of achievement goals (mastery and performance goals) have been shown to predict academic achievement in college, recent research underscores that these associations are rather weak and not consistently observed. The present study tests students’ social class (in the present research, generational status) as a moderator of the relationships between both mastery-approach goals and performance-approach goals and final grade. One hundred students (45 first-generation students and 55 continuing-generation students, M _age = 18.9, SD = 1.52) answered an achievement goal scale related to one of their classes at the beginning of the year. Their final grade for this class was obtained three months later. As expected, performance-approach goals positively predicted final grade only for upper-class students, while mastery-approach goals tend to do so for lower-class students, supporting the idea that different kinds of motivation could predict students’ achievement depending on their social class.     

Gender ratio and cognitive profiles in dyslexia: a cross-national study

The purpose of this study was to analyze possible gender-related differences in the prevalence of dyslexia. A cross-national comparison of Spain and Guatemala was conducted. Both countries speak the same language but have a different standard of living and educational level. A second purpose of this study was to analyze the cognitive profile of Guatemalan and Spanish males and females children with dyslexia. The log-linear analysis indicated that the number of dyslexics detected was different across the countries but there were no differences as a function of gender. Similarly, there were no significant or meaningful differences between dyslexic males and females in the cognitive processes involved in reading. Therefore, gender differences do not appear to be characteristic of developmental dyslexia.     

The quality of teaching staff: higher education institutions’ compliance with the European Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance—the case of Portugal

In recent years, initiatives for the improvement of teaching quality have been pursued both at European and national levels. Such is the case of the European Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance (ESG) and of legislation passed by several European countries, including Portugal, in response to European policy developments driven by the Lisbon Strategy and the Bologna Process. This paper is concerned with the institutional level implementation of European and national policies which target the quality of teaching staff. It reports on the findings of a study conducted in order to analyse if Portuguese higher education institutions are taking measures to improve and assure the quality of teaching staff in compliance particularly with the ESG. Findings suggest that this compliance is only partial. Although mechanisms exist for the selection, recruitment and appraisal of academics, other instruments and measures meant to continuously improve teaching staff quality, such as institutional support for skills development, pedagogic training, material infrastructure and motivation strategies, such as awards and recognition, are still incipient.     

Physicians’ willingness to share: a TPB-based analysis

Physicians’ willingness to share knowledge is a central antecedent of effective knowledge sharing within hospitals. This paper aims at supporting the micro-foundation of knowledge sharing with the identification of the factors that affect willingness to share and their classification according to a behavioural model grounded in the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB). The identification of antecedents and their classification is based on the review of the major contributions published on top tier and specialist journals. This study identifies 22 factors that affect physicians’ willingness to share. These factors are classified according to the TPB framework, which identifies three behavioural antecedents: attitude, subjective norm and perceived behaviour control. The organization of the factors allows appreciating the diffusion of knowledge-sharing behaviours as the result of three concurring perspectives: raising attention to the benefits of knowledge sharing, building up social pressures from relevant actors and designing appropriate organizational contingencies.     

READING MATHEMATICS REPRESENTATIONS: AN EYE-TRACKING STUDY

We use eye tracking as a method to examine how different mathematical representations of the same mathematical object are attended to by students. The results of this study show that there is a meaningful difference in the eye movements between formulas and graphs. This difference can be understood in terms of the cultural and social shaping of human perception, as well as in terms of differences between the symbolic and graphical registers.

     

Introduction to the Non-Cooperative Approach to Coalition Formation: The Case of the Blu-Ray/HD-DVD Standards' War

The concepts of the theory of endogenous coalition formation have not been utilized much to analyze issues in the field of applied economics. In this paper, we show how these concepts make a relevant and innovative contribution to these issues. We first illustrate the fundamentals of this theory and we present the concept of internal and external cartel stability. We provide an illustration of this concept through a basic example of an oligopoly in a cartelization situation. Then, we show the relevance of these concepts by analyzing the battle between the high-definition DVD-player standards: Sony's Blu-Ray and NEC/Toshiba's HD-DVD.