Associations Among Mothers’ Depression,Emotional and Learning-Material Support to Their Child,and Children's Cognitive Functioning: A 16-Year Longitudinal Study

This study examined the associations among maternal depression, mothers’ emotional and material investment in their child, and children's cognitive functioning. Middle-class Chilean mothers and children (N = 875; 52% males) were studied when children were 1, 5, 10, and 16 years (1991–2007). Results indicated that highly depressed mothers provided less emotional and material support to their child across all ages, which related to children's lower IQ. Children with lower mental abilities at age 1 received less learning-material support at age 5, which led to mothers’ higher depression at child age 10. Mothers’ low support was more strongly linked to maternal depression as children got older. Findings elucidate the dynamic and enduring effects of depression on mothers’ parenting and children's development.     

The flexible role of the researcher within the changing context of practice: forms of collaboration

We discuss in the article the following issues: the strong relationship between collaboration and diversity; the need for understanding collaboration as a process of mutual acknowledgement and as a process of building in a democratic way; the strong influence for each participant of the concept of education over the process of building collaboration; the strong dependence of the process of collaboration on the institutional context, the school culture, and the requirements of the political and economical exponsors. This flexibility is a requirement for preserving the purpose of building a collaborative relationship in order to help improve the quality of practice through human development and institutional change. The basis for these reflections is the discussions we, as a group of researchers, had during the development of two action research-like projects in Malaga (Spain). An exploration of action research methodology in each of these two very different professional settings demonstrates how strongly action research methodology is determined by the culture of the participants and their institutions. As a consequence we conclude that every researcher has to take a flexible and changing role in order to meet the situational demands for building a collaborative relationship.     

Implementation of a cooperative methodology to develop organic chemical engineering skills

The objective of this work is to investigate how most of the competences required by engineering students may be developed through an active methodology based on cooperative learning/evaluation. Cooperative learning was employed by the University of Huelva's third-year engineering students. The teaching methodology pretends to create some of the most relevant engineering skills required nowadays such as the ability to cooperate finding appropriate information; the ability to solve problems through critical and creative thinking; and the ability to make decisions and to communicate effectively. The statistical study carried out supports the hypothesis that comprehensive and well-defined protocols in the development of the subject, the rubric and cooperative evaluation allow students to acquire a successful learning.     

Proyecto Mercurio: un instrumento institucional para impulsar la introducción de los medios audiovisuales en el currículo

No basta regalar la caña para formar un pescador ni el lápiz para enseñar a escribir. La introducción de la tecnología audiovisual, basada en medios más aparatosos que la lectoescritura, ha podido confundir medios y sistemas de representación, instrumento y código. La información precisa y de primera mano sobre el proyecto Mercurio del M.E.C. que se da en este artículo define un programa que va mucho más allá de los tradicionales objetivos de enseñar a utilizar los aparatos.     

Spiral and Project-Based Learning with Peer Assessment in a Computer Science Project Management Course

Different learning methods such as project-based learning, spiral learning and peer assessment have been implemented in science disciplines with different outcomes. This paper presents a proposal for a project management course in the context of a computer science degree. Our proposal combines three well-known methods: project-based learning, spiral learning and peer assessment. Namely, the course is articulated during a semester through the structured (progressive and incremental) development of a sequence of four projects, whose duration, scope and difficulty of management increase as the student gains theoretical and instrumental knowledge related to planning, monitoring and controlling projects. Moreover, the proposal is complemented using peer assessment. The proposal has already been implemented and validated for the last 3 years in two different universities. In the first year, project-based learning and spiral learning methods were combined. Such a combination was also employed in the other 2 years; but additionally, students had the opportunity to assess projects developed by university partners and by students of the other university. A total of 154 students have participated in the study. We obtain a gain in the quality of the subsequently projects derived from the spiral project-based learning. Moreover, this gain is significantly bigger when peer assessment is introduced. In addition, high-performance students take advantage of peer assessment from the first moment, whereas the improvement in poor-performance students is delayed.     

Accountability compliance,and student learning as competing rationales for assessment: a case study of us tuning in practice

Tertiary Education and Management - Despite the long presence of assessment and quality assurance in US higher education, questions and concerns about higher education quality in this higher...     

TSP and cluster-based solutions to the reassignment of document identifiers

Recent studies demonstrated that it is possible to reduce Inverted Files (IF) sizes by reassigning the document identifiers of the original collection, as this lowers the distance between the positions of documents related to a single term. Variable-bit encoding schemes can exploit the average gap reduction and decrease the total amount of bits per document pointer. This paper presents an efficient solution to the reassignment problem, which consists in reducing the input data dimensionality using a SVD transformation, as well as considering it a Travelling Salesman Problem (TSP). We also present some efficient solutions based on clustering. Finally, we combine both the TSP and the clustering strategies for reordering the document identifiers. We present experimental tests and performance results in two text TREC collections, obtaining good compression ratios with low running times, and advance the possibility of obtaining scalable solutions for web collections based on the techniques presented here.     

“You don't look like your profile picture”: the ethical implications of researching online identities in higher education

Social media sites and other contemporary technologies open the possibility for the construction of online identities that are loosely connected to physical bodies; this construction allows individuals to edit their identities constantly, in a continuous process of self-recreation. In parallel, universities utilise printed and electronic media to present themselves in the best light possible through the process of branding, which – it is argued here – constitutes an instance of hyper-real identity assemblage. This article explores the ethical implications of researching brand construction in university advertisements. The authors reflect upon the ethical implications of conducting educational research on university identities when such identities rely on the representations of racially minoritised students. Online identity construction through technology invites a discussion of postmodern notions of self and reality; this article presents an exploration of a postmodern ethics for educational research.