Heat and Kinetic Theory in 19th-Century Physics Textbooks: The Case of Spain

Spain was a scientifically backward country in the early 19th century. The causes were various political events, the War of Independence, and the reignof Fernando VII. The introduction of contemporary physics into textbooks was thereforea slow process. An analysis of the contents of 19th-century Spanish textbooks is presented here, centred on imponderable fluids, the concept of energy, the mechanicaltheory of heat, and the kinetic theory of gases.     

Grammar and text: an experiment in teacher training / Gramática y texto: un experimento en la formación de profesores

Abstract

The article describes an experiment in teaching training undertaken in the context of the Masters programme in Teacher Training (for primary school teachers) at the Lisbon College of Education. The training experiment was able to: (1) incorporate mother tongue teaching into the broader curriculum; (2) relate the teaching of texts and the teaching of grammar; and (3) integrate the theoretical and practical dimensions of teacher training. The didactic scheme adopted relies on theoretical assumptions such as the concept of the integrated curriculum, the model of didactic sequence and the principles of socio-discursive interactionism. This training experiment has proved to be particularly useful for all the participants in the process (teachers of the course; trainee teachers; children in the schools; and the form teachers of the classes where the trainees do their practice). As a result of it, there has been a clear improvement in the quality of the teaching provided by our trainees in the domains of writing and grammar. The main advantages of this approach are that: (1) it structures the teaching of writing and grammar; (2) it uses projects to socially contextualize writing tasks; (3) it develops various language skills in an integrated fashion, while at the same time working on different areas of knowledge; and (4) it defines forms of spiral progression.     

Estudio comparado del comportamiento de niños educados en medio familiar y niños educados en instituciones. Una perspectiva etológica

Resumen

Se ha realizado un estudio observacional con metodología etológica en niños de 4–5 años: Un grupo de 5 Ss. procedentes de una Casa Cuna y otro grupo de 7 Ss. procedentes de un ambiente familiar. El muestreo se llevó a cabo en un hábitat común para ambos grupos: el recreo de un preescolar, ubicado en otra zona, y en condiciones de juego libre, aunque controlado por monitores adultos. Los resultados obtenidos sugieren la existencia de diferencias entre ambos grupos, que podrían implicar una manera diferente de integración social de los niños cuyo hábitat primario no es la casa familiar, aunque no es posible establecer una relación de causalidad directa con la institucionalización.     

Dynamics of Acculturation, Enculturation, and Ethnic Identity: Influence of Psychocultural Constructs on Conscientiousness and Expectations of Higher Education Among Latinos

This study investigated the influence of psychocultural variables (e.g., acculturation, enculturation, ethnic identity) and personality characteristics in relation to educational expectations among 345 Latino middle school students in the U.S. Results from a path model indicate that 24.4?% of the variance of educational expectations was accounted for by all predictor variables included in the model. Age, acculturation, and conscientiousness had statistically significant direct effects on educational expectations. Findings also show that elements of ethnic identity and conscientiousness mediated the association from acculturation and enculturation to educational expectations. Implications of the findings for counselors are addressed.     

Redefining Interdisciplinary Curriculum: A Journey of Collaboration and Change in Secondary Teacher Education

When beginning to teach a secondary education course focusing on interdisciplinary curriculum together, four women teacher educators determined changes we hoped to make for the following semester. For example, we took up the notions of difference, arts integration, and collaboration all under the umbrella of interdisciplinary curriculum. We were in search of a model of interdisciplinarity that could incorporate our understanding of education and our teaching interests. We designed this model in order to guide our students into identifying themselves as educators rather than purely content-area specialists.Similarly, we saw this course as an opportunity to encourage collaborative practices. We could model team-teaching as our students planned interdisciplinary units together. Likewise, we could demonstrate to our students that transcending their own disciplines allows for more powerful teaching and learning. We saw redefining interdisciplinary curriculum as a route to encourage preservice teachers to teach for social justice and to show teaching's potential as a collaborative profession.This article narrates how we experienced the changes of crossing disciplines, co-teaching sections of the course, exploring arts integration, and providing practical experiences in four different voices. We use our varied voices as we hope the reader may then come to better understand our individual experiences as well as our collaborative journey. While we encountered several roadblocks on our travels, we also found that we offered opportunities for creating new knowledge among ourselves and our students.     

The anatomy of information cascades in the classroom: An observational study

Online learning platforms offer students the option of sharing content. They have become common tools in many universities over the last 10 years. But there is little information about how content spreads in the classroom, ie, how information cascades appear and evolve and what factors are relevant for the formation of cascades. This work analyses information cascades in the classroom, bringing new insights on student learning: students do not share much content, they prefer to share the content they find themselves as opposed to professor-given content, they share more data towards the end of the course and they do it in bursts. The paper also reveals different behaviour by high-performing students: their interactions are distributed more evenly over the term, their behaviour is more stable and they tend to share documents faster than low-performing students. Documents with high information tend to be less shared. Documents with fewer well-known entities are also shared fewer times. Paradoxically, high-performing students exchange more documents with high information, compared to mid- and low-performing students.