Educación y psicología

RESUMEN

El papel de la enseñanza sigue líneas distintas en los países capitalistas y en los socialistas. La tendencia del régimen capitalista parece ser la constitución de categorías sociales y esto repercute en las instituciones de enseñanza; la especialización es el objetivo. Pero el fin de la educación debe ser desarrollar al máximo el potencial de cada individuo. Este es el método de los educadores de los países socialistas, que se caracteriza por una educación integral que debe poner a disposición de todo ser humano toda la cultura de su tiempo. Se describen varias experiencias en escuelas soviéticas para la comprensión y desarrollo de las operaciones intelectuales. Se destaca la importancia de la figura del psicólogo escolar a la hora de analizar posibles deficiencias de una función superior en el aprendizaje.     

Representations of nature of science in U.S. science standards: A historical account with contemporary implications

This study evaluated the representations of nature of science (NOS) in U.S. state science standards, and examined the changes in these representations from documents advanced in the 1980s through 2016. Drawing from the consensus perspective on NOS and prior studies focusing on the analysis of textual content, documents were inspected for 10 target NOS aspects: the empirical, tentative, inferential, creative, theory-driven, and social NOS, in addition to the myth of “The Scientific Method,” the nature of scientific theories and laws, and the social and cultural embeddedness of science. Ninety-eight state documents from 48 states were analyzed and multiple editions were collected from 34 states. Additionally, relevant materials from the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) were assessed for their coverage of the same NOS aspects. Collected materials were scored as whole documents, including over 11,000 pages of text in total, on each target aspect, which reflected the treatment (naïve vs. informed) of NOS in text and the manner of presentation (explicit vs. implicit). Overall, surprisingly, state standards documents have improved very little with respect to their NOS coverage over the last 30 years. NOS standards documents remain silent on a majority of key aspects of NOS, and the number of aspects showing explicit, informed representations has held constant. The NGSS performed well compared to many contemporary documents, but they failed to address all target NOS aspects in a desirable manner. Further analysis raised concerns with the degree that states fully adopt and disseminate standards in manner consistent with the NGSS despite stated intentions, which may negatively impact NOS coverage in instructional resources and classroom enactments. To improve NOS representations in standards, recognizing the role these documents play in shaping instructional materials and teaching in the science classroom, exemplars from analyzed materials were highlighted with informed and explicit representations of multiple aspects.     

Implementation of a Curriculum-Integrated Computer Game for Introducing Scientific Argumentation

Argumentation has been emphasized in recent US science education reform efforts (NGSS Lead States 2013; NRC 2012), and while existing studies have investigated approaches to introducing and supporting argumentation (e.g., McNeill and Krajcik in Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 45(1), 53–78, 2008; Kang et al. in Science Education, 98(4), 674–704, 2014), few studies have investigated how game-based approaches may be used to introduce argumentation to students. In this paper, we report findings from a design-based study of a teacher’s use of a computer game intended to introduce the claim, evidence, reasoning (CER) framework (McNeill and Krajcik 2012) for scientific argumentation. We studied the implementation of the game over two iterations of development in a high school biology teacher’s classes. The results of this study include aspects of enactment of the activities and student argument scores. We found the teacher used the game in aspects of explicit instruction of argumentation during both iterations, although the ways in which the game was used differed. Also, students’ scores in the second iteration were significantly higher than the first iteration. These findings support the notion that students can learn argumentation through a game, especially when used in conjunction with explicit instruction and support in student materials. These findings also highlight the importance of analyzing classroom implementation in studies of game-based learning.

     

Sociología y educación

RESUMEN

Los métodos de la educación nueva, movimiento crítico frente a la escuela tradicional, muchas veces se oponen entre sí, en cuanto que parten de principios diferentes sacados de los errores observados en la enseñanza tradicional. Se repasan las ideas y métodos educativos de algunos autores de esta educación nueva. Montessori, por ejemplo, se centró en la motivación sensorial. Para Ferrière la enseñanza debe estar centrada en las iniciativas del niño. Decroly desea que el niño sea activo. Dewey, desde la escuela americana, propone una escuela organizada como una sociedad que se autogobierne. Makarenko, pedagogo de la Unión Soviética, habla de la escuela como colectivo escolar, que debe estar estrechamente unido con otros colectivos de la sociedad, y a través del cual el alumno se relacionará con el mundo circundante. Este autor consigue unir el aprendizaje con la integración social.