Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

Numerous studies have shown the impact of the economic crisis on social protection systems, especially in community or grass-roots social services. The efforts made by the Autonomous Communities and local authorities to finance these protection systems, and the consequent effect that this has had on social expenditure items, are two constants that appear in research on the subject. In this work, the focus has been on the economic benefits of community social services in Andalusia, to relate them to other economic benefits of other social protection systems and to observe the behaviour of all of them during the period of economic crisis. The increase in recipients and social expenditure on these economic benefits contradicts what is happening in absolute terms and, Clearly, it highlights a system that has had to go out and address situations of familial economic deprivation at the time of the Great Economic Depression.

The educational involvement of families is one of the main factors that affect the improvement of academic performance. With the modern technologies, the increasing importance that the use of interactive communication tools such as WhatsApp is having in the participation of families in school education, requires the realization of studies aimed at empirically analyzing it, since traditional participation is being displaced by new forms of interaction with important implications in school dynamics. The study shows the results of the validation of a questionnaire aimed at families whose objective is to gather information about two central dimensions related to their use and satisfaction. The final instrument, composed of 24 items, was applied to a sample of 200 fathers and mothers and, subsequently, the construct validation was carried out from an Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA). The results show high reliability values, as well as an adjustment of the proposed dimensions, validating the questionnaire for its final application.

In the current Spanish education system, the integration and inclusion of special needs students is a subject that generates conflicting opinions. This project is an empirical study that aims to analyze the concerns and attitudes of future teachers regarding the inclusion of students who exhibit some sort of disability in the classroom. Researching in this topic is necessary in order to make visible the right of equal education of people with functional diversity, and to detect training needs in future teacher. For this purpose, a survey was presented to 205 students of the undergraduate program in Primary Education of the University of Seville, using a Likert scale that showed good reliability and consistency rates. The results obtained indicated that this scale is reliable and valid. It was also verified if some personal characteristics of the university students influenced their perception. It was observed that the presence of students with special educational needs in the classrooms generates little concern in these university students regardless of gender, course in which they are, and the personal relationships they have had with people with functional diversity.

The selection of a communication channel for the performance of learning tasks is likely to affect how information and knowledge can be effectively transmitted. Anchored on the media richness theory, this study employed quasi-experimental design to examine the influence of media richness properties on learning performance user acceptance of web 2.0 technologies as learning tools. The quasi-experiment, which took place over eight weeks, was carried out with 100 undergraduate students who were assigned to two experimental groups (Facebook-based learning condition and Blogger-based learning condition) and a control group (paper-based learning condition). A focus group discussion was also done to reveal the participants’ insights after using web 2.0 technologies in performing the assigned learning activities.  No significant differences existed among the three learning conditions in terms of learning performance and between the two experimental conditions as regards user acceptance. Such findings indicate that the learning performance achieved from using the learning tools was perceived to be the same regardless of the features they offered. All groups may also have equal perceived level of usefulness and ease of use afforded by the learning mediums despite variations in their features. 

This research has used as a technique the analysis of the content, both of the language and of the images of the textbooks that have formed part of the sample, taking as a reference the criteria of the instructions of 14 June 2018 on textbooks. The focus has been on the number of images of men and women, as well as the use of language in the three publishers studied. The sample consisted of 3 textbooks used in the Social Sciences subject (Geography and History) of the 2nd year of Compulsory Secondary Education of the publishing houses Vicens Vives, Oxford and Santillana. Use of inclusive language, 158 images analysed for category 2. Diversity, and 286 images analyzed for category 3. Social roles. The results indicate that equality policies in Andalusia aim to achieve goals that are still far from being achieved, at least in the field of education and more specifically in the values that are transmitted, so it is necessary to continue working so that equality is reflected in the textbooks present in the school classrooms.  

This research is a first approach to the study of the self-perceived digital competence of Latin American students with a broad sample of 5 countries in the region.   For the collection of data we have used INCOTIC instrument adapted to the Latin American context. Variables under study are: Information literacy, technological literacy, multimedia literacy and communicative literacy; analyzing data by countries and comparing the results for each of them according to age and gender. It is detected that the country with the lowest score obtained in the analyzed literacies is Ecuador, with Chile and Colombia being the countries with the highest score. In addition, interesting differences are observed when deepening by gender and age in each literacy. Specifically, the highest DAI is in the age range between 24-31 years, and the DAT, DAM and DAC is in the range of 28-31 years. In the case of women, the highest DAI is in the age range between 20-27 years, and DAT, DAM and DAC are in the range of 28-31 years. It is expected to design the guidelines of a Digital Literacy Plan for university students with proposals for earch university that will be the input for researchers from each country to contextualize their realities with emphasis on informational skills, due to the importance they have in the achievement of studies university and subsequent work performance.

This work describes the implementation and results of a teaching innovation consisting in employing tools for comprehensive evaluation in a course in Applied Economics. To resort to an evaluation system that combines prospective, formative and summative instruments fulfills the needs of the new paradigm of teaching and learning the European Space of Higher Education and the most qualified expert voices in this field preconize. Particularly, we introduce tools for prospective (a level test), formative (a sample exam and a review test) and summative assessment (some more conventional instruments complementing the review test) in a course on Economics of the Welfare State. In order to judge the impact of our teaching experience, we perform an ad hoc survey among students and we compare the students’ academic performance before and after the introduction of these tools and the students’ satisfaction with course with the one reported in other similar courses. The students of the course where we implement the innovation show a higher degree of satisfaction with the strategy of comprehensive evaluation and we observe a positive correlation between the use of these methods and academic performance and students’ satisfaction, although it is risky to claim the existence of causal relationship. The results of our study suggest that the combination of assessment tools of a different nature (prospective, formative and summative) might mean an efficient strategy (effective and with a reasonable cost for the teaching staff) for improving the performance and the satisfaction with teaching of students.  

Learning analytics can be defined as a series of techniques for collecting, analyzing and granting processable data generated by students. Their objective is to develop appropriate strategies to improve the learning processes, the performance of the students or that of the institution itself. These types of techniques are especially useful to establish patterns of action that guide and guide the educational process in higher education. Under these premises, the present research aims to analyze the scientific production with the greatest impact on the use of learning analytics in higher education. For this purpose, a quantitative methodology has been followed, based on ten variables: year of publication, periodicals, authors, institutions, countries, type of document, publication format, publication area, language and most cited articles. The results project a research trend that is fully on the rise, especially due to the greater scientific production that has occurred in recent years (2015-2018), highlighting countries such as Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom. The publications, in their great majority, come from conferences and are published in English. The knowledge areas of Computational Sciences and Social Sciences stand out.  

Based on the Chilean reality about the Free Education Policy (2016), the article presents a study that addresses the reception sustained by higher education institutions regarding the mechanisms of application and control of the policy; taking as a sample the group of students at the University of Atacama with the benefit on the year 2018. The quantitative data analysis is carried out considering the faculties and careers, the route of entry of the students, type of establishment of origin, and academic's entry factors. It is concluded that without evaluation and monitoring mechanisms this benefit could become an item of the higher education budget without fruitful results for the country. Regarding the result, it is established that in the sample analyzed, students who enter by regular route or University Selection Test (PSU), the score range obtained in Middle School Grades (NEM), is lower than the PSU and Ranking scores, so it does not influence significantly as an academic income factor. This means that for a student with the benefit prevails the PSU score, independent where he has completed his secondary education, and to which career he enters.

This paper presents the results of a study on the influence of teacher leadership on the motivation of university students, of Division Academica de Ciencias Economico Administrativas from Universidad Juarez Autonoma de Tabasco, in Mexico. The evidences how here is the result of 120 undergraduate students in Administration, the instrument used for the measurement was a questionnaire on the Likert scale, applied during the period of August 2017 to January 2018. The information obtained that there are higher levels of motivation when the leader ship is democratic, however, it is necessary that all participants in the educational pyramid are committed and seek the necessary tools to train integral professionals that society demands.