Students’ perspectives on the processes of supervision and assessment of undergraduate dissertations / Perspectiva del alumnado de los procesos de tutorización y evaluación de los trabajos de fin de grado

Abstract

The introduction of the European Higher Education Area means that undergraduate dissertations (UD) are now compulsory, which represents an important change for the Spanish university system due to the important consequences this will have on academic functioning. This study provides key information on the processes of supervising and assessing UDs, from the perspective of students, as well as consequent proposals to improve them. The results obtained indicate that initiatives need to be put in place, at least in the participating institutions where the study has been developed, focused on the improvement of the time periods, means and resources needed to develop the UD, the introduction of more adequate criteria than those currently used for assessment, better training for the tutors involved, more appropriate and precise prior information for students in relation to the UD, and more preparation for students to enable them to carry out the UD.     

Food Safety Practices Assessment Tool: An Innovative Way to Test Food Safety Skills among Individuals with Special Needs

Abstract: This article describes an innovative assessment tool designed to evaluate the effectiveness of a food safety skills curriculum for learners receiving special education services. As schools respond to the increased demand for training students with special needs about food safety, the need for effective curricula and tools is also increasing. A Food Safety Education for High School and Transition Special Needs Students curriculum served as the basis upon which our assessment tool was developed. The project was a collaborative effort by food safety and education professionals in Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts. This USDA‐funded initiative emerged from teacher‐generated data that identified critical gaps in food safety knowledge and skills among students with disabilities (SWD) receiving special education services. As an adjunct to this curriculum, a Food Safety Practices Assessment Tool was developed to: 1) conduct observations of students as they demonstrate food safety practices, and 2) use this information to design classroom‐based learning activities that are aligned with students’ Individual Education Plans (IEP). Pilot data suggest that the tool is valid and reliable for use in a kitchen‐based setting. This is the first known tool of its kind to test food safety skills of individuals with special needs in a real‐world environment. Further testing is needed to determine the usefulness of the tool for broader audiences.     

Perception of the Culture and Education Programme of the Youth Olympic Games by the Participating Athletes: A Case Study for Innsbruck 2012

The Youth Olympic Games (YOG) were introduced and officially inaugurated in Singapore in 2010, constituting the first new Olympic event to be staged since the 1924 Winter Olympic Games. The structure of the YOG is based on the model of the European Youth Olympic Festival, which was introduced three decades ago. Being a new international sports event targeting young athletes, a major innovation of the YOG is its unique Culture and Education Programme (CEP). To date, very little literature deals with the CEP and its influence on the athletes' overall experience. Thus, the objective of this study was to give a deeper insight into the athletes' perception of the CEP. A survey of 662 participating athletes as well as 6 focus groups with 43 athletes was conducted during the first 2012 Winter Youth Olympic Games in Innsbruck, Austria. The results of the focus groups corroborated the results of the survey: young athletes participating in the CEP liked it very much; nevertheless, the tight training and competition schedule represented an issue for many athletes. The findings of this study underline the necessity to plan the CEP more carefully and to raise interest in the CEP among coaches and Chefs de Mission.     

‘Warrant’ revisited: Integrating mathematics teachers’ pedagogical and epistemological considerations into Toulmin’s model for argumentation

In this paper, we propose an approach to analysing teacher arguments that takes into account field dependence—namely, in Toulmin’s sense, the dependence of warrants deployed in an argument on the field of activity to which the argument relates. Freeman, to circumvent issues that emerge when we attempt to determine the field(s) that an argument relates to, proposed a classification of warrants (a priori, empirical, institutional and evaluative). Our approach to analysing teacher arguments proposes an adaptation of Freeman’s classification that distinguishes between: epistemological and pedagogical a priori warrants, professional and personal empirical warrants, epistemological and curricular institutional warrants, and evaluative warrants. Our proposition emerged from analyses conducted in the course of a written response and interview study that engages secondary mathematics teachers with classroom scenarios from the mathematical areas of analysis and algebra. The scenarios are hypothetical, grounded on seminal learning and teaching issues, and likely to occur in actual practice. To illustrate our proposed approach to analysing teacher arguments here, we draw on the data we collected through the use of one such scenario, the Tangent Task. We demonstrate how teacher arguments, not analysed for their mathematical accuracy only, can be reconsidered, arguably more productively, in the light of other teacher considerations and priorities: pedagogical, curricular, professional and personal.     

Working With Students With Psychiatric Disabilities or Other Emotional Problems

The professional literature on gatekeeping in social work education has grown; however, there remains a dearth in the literature regarding how educators truly work to engage students who are experiencing a psychiatric disability or other emotional problem. This qualitative study explored the experiences of 26 social work educators from 22 colleges and universities in the United States. Practice wisdoms emerged as interwoven strategies which encourage proactive interventions that accentuate students’ strengths through socially just opportunities. Identified strategies include having an awareness of psychosocial and environmental stressors that students may be experiencing, recognizing warning signs, approaching students, and building appropriate faculty–student relationships.     

Preschool teacher attachment,school readiness and risk of learning difficulties

Attachment is the emotional bond between children and their caregivers (parents or otherwise). Infants and young children usually have more than one selective attachment, and all of these attachment relationships, including those between children and teachers, have important effects on cognitive and social development. Secure attachment to a preschool teacher may help children to improve their preschool experience. Recent studies suggest that the adverse effect of inadequate preschool experiences can lead to skill deficiencies that mimic the effects of basic cognitive deficits. This study evaluates the relationships among attachment to preschool teachers, school readiness, and the risk for developing learning difficulties in preschoolers using three measures: the School Readiness 4-5 battery, the Precocious Identification of Learning Difficulties, and the Attachment Q Set. This study examined 152 preschoolers. The results showed that attachment to preschool teachers is related to linguistic development level, the psychomotor skills involved in school readiness, and learning difficulty risk.     

Analyzing Fairness Among Linguistic Minority Populations Using a Latent Class Differential Item Functioning Approach

ABSTRACT

Differential item functioning (DIF) analyses have been used as the primary method in large-scale assessments to examine fairness for subgroups. Currently, DIF analyses are conducted utilizing manifest methods using observed characteristics (gender and race/ethnicity) for grouping examinees. Homogeneity of item responses is assumed denoting that all examinees respond to test items using a similar approach. This assumption may not hold with all groups. In this study, we demonstrate the first application of the latent class (LC) approach to investigate DIF and its sources with heterogeneous (linguistic minority groups). We found at least three LCs within each linguistic group, suggesting the need to empirically evaluate this assumption in DIF analysis. We obtained larger proportions of DIF items with larger effect sizes when LCs within language groups versus the overall (majority/minority) language groups were examined. The illustrated approach could be used to improve the ways in which DIF analyses are typically conducted to enhance DIF detection accuracy and score-based inferences when analyzing DIF with heterogeneous populations.     

On the acquisition of some basic word spelling mechanisms in a deep (French) and a shallow (Spanish) system

An experiment was carried out to compare the time course of the acquisition of two basic spelling mechanisms in Spanish, a shallow system, and French, a deep system. The first was lexical. It relies on the orthographic lexicon, a hypothetical structure containing the orthographic representations of words accessible for word spelling. To evaluate its contribution the participants were asked to spell words of high and low frequency containing phonemes which can take different graphemic values. The second mechanism relies on sub-lexical processes. Its contribution was evaluated asking the participants to spell words containing consistent phoneme-to-grapheme translation pairs which were identical in Spanish and French. Two contrasting predictions were considered, one derived from the Orthographic Depth Hypothesis (ODH, Frost, 2005) and the other from the Self-Teaching Hypothesis (STH, Share, 2004). According to the ODH, the orthographic lexicon should develop more rapidly in French than in Spanish because Spanish spellers can rely on phoneme-to-grapheme translation mechanisms to spell most words, meaning that they do not need to resort to the orthographic lexicon. In contrast, the STH suggests that effective identification of a word gradually generates its orthographic representation. The results revealed that both spelling mechanisms develop far faster in Spanish than in French. The fact that word frequency effects appeared earlier in Spanish than in French, indicating that the orthographic lexicon incorporates words more rapidly in a shallow than in a deep system, is clearly incompatible with the ODH and easier to handle in the context of the STH.     

Evaluación de la percepción visual en el jardín de infancia

RESUMEN

Se presenta una batería de evaluación de la percepción visual en la edad preescolar, momento clave para subsanar cualquier trastorno y valorar sus posibles incidencias en el aprendizaje de la lectoescritura. Basándose en los planteamientos con los que Frostig elaboró su test de desarrollo de la percepción visual se intentan evaluar las siguientes funciones: reconocimiento de la forma, distinción figura-fondo, orientación de un objeto en relación con el observador, transposición o reproducción de ángulos y líneas, y coordinación visomotora. A la vista de los resultados obtenidos en la aplicación de este test en una población escolar de 184 niños de párvulos y 93 del primer curso de EGB, se elaboran unos cuadros y gráficos de referencia y se describe el nivel de eficiencia y el rendimiento mínimo exigible en cada grupo de edad.