Implications of the learning environment in a professional Master’s degree in business administration in Brazil

Learning Environments Research - This study focused on the implications of a learning environment in a professional Master’s degree in business administration in Brazil. The study was...     

“UNIFIED”: Bridging the Researcher–Practitioner Divide in Mind,Brain, and Education

Mind, Brain, and Education (MBE) science is by definition transdisciplinary. However, the communication and collaboration between constituent disciplines needed for true transdisciplinarity remains relatively rare. Consequently, many of the potential benefits of MBE science remain unrealized for parties on all sides of the discipline. The present commentary first conducts an analysis of the current strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of transdisciplinary partnerships in MBE. A new, free, and international web platform (“UNIFIED”) is then proposed to broker relationships between researchers and teachers within schools. This website would allow users to form collaborations based on a system of tags indexing their research interests as well as practicalities such as their location. Such a website appears well placed to realize many of the opportunities, and mitigate the threats and weaknesses, of transdisciplinary MBE research. The article concludes with an appeal to interested researchers and schools to contribute to the development of the project.     

Time-frequency channel modeling and estimation of multi-carrier spread spectrum communication systems

In wireless communications, the channel is typically modeled as a random, linear, time-varying system that spreads the transmitted signal in both time and frequency due to multi-path propagation and Doppler effects. Estimated channel parameters allow system designers to develop coherent receivers that increase the system performance. In this paper, we show how time-frequency analysis can be used to model and estimate the time-varying channel of a multi-carrier spread spectrum (MCSS) system using a complex quadratic sequence as the spreading code. We will show that for this spreading code, the effects of time delays and Doppler frequency shifts, caused by the mobility of environment objects, can be combined and represented effectively as time shifts. The discrete evolutionary transform (DET), as a time-frequency analysis method, enables us to estimate the effective time shifts via a spreading function and to use them to equalize the channel. Using the effective time shifts, the time-varying channel can be represented simply as linear-time invariant system by embedding the Doppler shifts that characterize the time-varying channel into effective time shifts. The channel parameters are used to estimate the data bit sent. To illustrate the performance of the proposed method we perform several simulations with different levels of channel noise, jammer interference, and Doppler frequency shifts.     

Valuing indigenous knowledge: to call it “science” will not help

In this commentary on Brayboy and Castagno’s paper, published in this volume, we discuss, on the one hand, many points of agreement between their proposal of culturally responsive schooling for indigenous youth and El-Hani and Mortimer’s proposal of culturally-sensitive science education. On the other hand, we focus on a key disagreement, not only with Brayboy and Castagno, but with a whole body of literature on multicultural, postcolonialist, postmodernist education. The main point of disagreement lies in the fact that we are not sure that to broaden the concept of science so as to talk about “native science” or “indigenous science” is indeed the best strategy to attain a goal that we wholeheartedly share with Brayboy and Castagno, to value other ways of knowing for their own sake, validity, and legitimacy.

Do school entry laws affect educational attainment and labor market outcomes?

Age based school entry laws force parents and educators to consider an important tradeoff: though students who are the youngest in their school cohort typically have poorer academic performance, on average, they have slightly higher educational attainment. In this paper we document that for a large cohort of California and Texas natives the school entry laws increased educational attainment of students who enter school early, but also lowered their academic performance while in school. However, we find no evidence that the age at which children enter school effects job market outcomes, such as wages or the probability of employment. This suggests that the net effect on adult labor market outcomes of the increased educational attainment and poorer academic performance is close to zero.     

Institutional v. Technical Environments: Reconciling the Goals of Decentralization in an Evolving Charter School Organization

This article analyzes how macrolevel institutional forces persist and limit the expansion of decentralized schools that attempt to challenge normative definitions and practices of traditional school organizations. Using qualitative case study methodology, the analysis focuses on how one decentralized charter school navigated and reconciled its internal objectives linked to meeting the needs of a Latino, inner-city student population, with the institutional pressures and demands external to the organization. The findings suggest that decentralized school choice options which promise community-based participation and control are constrained by institutionalized rule-based demands that limit the expansion of alternative schooling models which may hold potential for promoting access, voice and equity for parents, students, and teachers.     

Life skills in educational contexts: testing the effects of an intervention programme

This study examined the effects of a training programme on students’ acquisition of life skills, life satisfaction, life orientation and expectations about academic achievement. Participants were allocated to either an intervention group (n?=?41) that took part in a life skills programme, or a control group (n?=?43). Participants completed the Youth Experiences Scale 2.0, the satisfaction with life scale, the life orientation test-revised and the expectations about academic achievement. Results showed that students who received the intervention reported having more developmental experiences related to life skills, greater life satisfaction and a stronger tendency to be optimistic. Expectations about academic achievement were higher for the intervention group before and after the intervention. In conclusion, there are benefits to providing life skills training to adolescents in educational contexts.     

The Nature of Science in Science Curricula: Methods and concepts of analysis

The article shows methods and concepts of analysis of the nature of science in science curricula through an exemplary study made in Portugal. The study analyses the extent to which the message transmitted by the Natural Science curriculum for Portuguese middle school considers the nature of science. It is epistemologically and sociologically grounded with particular emphasis on Bernstein's theory of pedagogic discourse and Ziman's conceptualization of science construction. The study used a mixed methodology and followed a dialectical process between the theoretical and the empirical. The results show that the nature of science has a low status in the curriculum with the exception of the external sociological dimension of science. Intra-disciplinary relations between scientific and metascientific knowledge are mostly absent. Recontextualization processes occurred between the two main parts of the curriculum. These results are discussed and their consequences in terms of scientific learning are explored. The mode of analysis used in the study has the potential of highlighting the level of a science curriculum, in terms of specific aspects of the nature of science.