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

Chilean educational policy promotes reflection to improve the quality of teacher training. Problems for teachers on defining reflection make them use it as synonym of other terms. The objective was to understand the significance that teachers in formation and their trainers give to pedagogical reflection, focusing on the links that are established with the moment when the reflection and the rationality that bases it, take place. The methodological approach was interpretive and a study of Instrumental Cases was used. 28 biology pedagogy students who developed their practice at the province of Concepción, 6 university trainers and 14 teacher guides from the students' practice centers, participated in the study. In-depth and focused interviews were developed. Through content analysis, the predominance of reflection as an evaluative process was observed, evidencing a technical rationality that separates theory and practice. A minority proposes deliberative significance, but any critical notion of reflection was found. It concludes that there´s a link between the rationality of the training plan, the significance of reflection and the moment in which this process occurs. This requires university trainers and teacher guides who share a notion of reflection and a favorable attitude towards practical and critical reflection. Likewise, the importance of reviewing the rationality of the study plan is recognized, which could constitute an obstacle for biology teachers in training to achieve a higher level of teacher reflection.

In the last decade, several international studies have shown that governmental efforts to equip schools with information and communication technologies (ICT) have not had the expected results of educational improvement. To contribute to the understanding of this phenomenon, the forms of appropriation of information and communication technologies (ICT) in public high schools were examined. This analytical perspective emphasizes the active role of students who put into play a set of interests and meanings when using technological devices in specific situations of their school contexts, often generating unforeseen practices, different from those projected (Laffey, 2004; Weber, Pisani y Francis, 2007; Crovi, 2013; Toboso-Martín 2013; Andrés, 2014). The study was carried out in seven high schools, located in four cities of the state of Jalisco, with a mixed methodological procedure that included the application of questionnaires, participant observation sessions and discussion groups. It was identified that the appropriation of ICT among students is defined by individualized and pragmatic uses, aimed at speeding up the accomplishment of school tasks under simplification strategies that involve rudimentary academic processes, such as the consultation of online sources of information and their referencing. This situation occurs in an institutional context where there is limited access to equipment and network connectivity, and deficient school requirements in academic information management matters. The educational implications of this situation are discussed in order to face the challenges they entail.

Academic extension courses represent an important social and Academia. Today, however, this concept has evolved to include Citizenship Education among university students. The objective of this study is to reflect on current university extension programs, analyze its theoretical foundation and how it serves as a dialogue incorporating both local grassroots and scientific knowledge from a more complex perspective. A rigorous literature review was done, for this purpose which makes contributions and theoretical recommendations regarding contemporary extension programs. It also looks at the need for sustainable university extension programs that include a more complex Bio-Eco-Ethical-Social dimension which reflects the evolving nature of human beings. Extension programs should, therefore, be capable of reflecting the dialogical and comprehensive nature of both a scientific and grassroots approach.

Humanism is one of the most complex and influential historical phenomena in the history of thought. However, there is a theoretical limitation in the formulation of a unique concept manifested in two tendencies. In the first one, the term humanism lacks theoretical referents supporting its definitions. In the second one, although it assumes it, defines humanism from different approaches. When analyzing the process of humanist training of physical culture professionals, theoretical differences were detected as well as the non-existence of a wide consensus to make generalizations about the definition of humanism and humanistic formation, its duties and tasks. The result of the analysis and the importance of knowing the essence of the object studied evidenced the need to revise the bibliography published related to the topic investigated. The idea was to clarify and argue the problem and, in addition, propose the design of a model, as a means and method, to represent the complex phenomena of the formative process from a theoretical coherently organized construction, based on valid theoretical references, that expresses its pedagogical nature in the transformation of the reality through a strategy to define the model.

On the basis of the existence of two personal theories about intelligence, the fixed and the modifiable, a descriptive investigation with the aim of identifying implicit intelligence theories was held with a group of children. To identify such theories, a scale about implicit theories was applied to 220 school children, 157 females and 63 males, with an average age of 11.53 years old  and a standard deviation of .568 .Data was basically worked with measurements. The results showed predominance of the theories about growth, the personal recognition of others, as well as the tasks performed and  the relationship between intelligence and learning.

This article presents findings from our research on best teaching practices of the History Department’s Faculty at the National University of Mar del Plata in Argentina. The study was based on surveys conducted among professors selected by their students as having been the most memorable and who significantly impacted their disciplinary and pedagogical training. The surveys probed at identifying actual teaching practices as conveyed through the voices and testimonies of the actual professors. The subjects were able to reconstruct their own experience through a biographical-narrative type methodology in which they recalled those moments that most resonated with their students as well as highlights of their professional careers. The professors emphasize that creating empathy with their students was an important aspect of good teaching practices. The faculty were also greatly concerned about developing skills within their students that involve historical thinking, interdisciplinarity and emotional issues that come into play when teaching.  A particularly noteworthy aspect of this study is how it gathers best college-level teaching practices from a standpoint where the subjects, through their narratives, play a central role in developing knowledge. Our findings, as revealed through the university faculty narratives, reveal the need for more regional dialogue to broaden perspectives on teacher training to address concepts such as teaching History and teaching practices within their concurrent social framework.

This study analyzes the effect of targeted game workshops aimed at developing motor skills to help teach preschoolers about the notion of shapes. The subjects involved in the study were children currently enrolled in the Transition Cycle of the Costa Rican Preschool Education System (Sobalvarro 2015). Research conducted for this study was based on mixed methodologies with a predominantly quantitative focus and a quasi-experimental inverse design approach. The study structure consisted of seven phases and a series of activities with end-results or outputs. The children involved in the study were enrolled in the Preschool Transition Cycle at Colegio El Rosario (El Rosario School) located in San Jose, Costa Rica. The students were grouped together into two randomly assigned groups – an experimental group (30 students) and a control group (31 students). The students in the experimental group attended 10 workshops which involved playing a series of 8 to 10 games. Each of the games were designed to develop motor skills and help the students understand about the concept of shapes. The corresponding metric assessment was made and recorded at predetermined timeframes. The results showed that the participants in the experimental group obtained significantly higher results compared to the control group with regards to their understanding of shapes. Thus, it can be concluded that learning about shapes through Geometry in Movement was more effective than learning through a methodology that does not incorporate movement.

The current research was developed as part of a doctoral training and its execution in pedagogical performance from 2013 to 2018. It is socialized through a scientific article, based on a mathematical training process. The methodological perfection of the formative process is possible, in order to raise the levels of cognitive systematization, based on a relationship established between scientific mathematical abstraction and investigative mathematical generalization; as an epistemological position to solve professional problems, focused on Science, Technology and Society (CTS). Its partial implementation was carried out on the students of the third and fourth academic year, in the careers of Civil Engineering, Information Technology, Electronics, Telecommunications and Information in the Institutions of Higher Education (IES) in Angola. In addition, the results achieved in the research with the use of the historical-logical method, the documentary analysis and the static randomized sampling technique are valued by some professors, who had a direct relationship with the mathematical training, and made possible to process the information, through the use of IBM SPSS Statistics 20 software. These results achieved a qualitative-quantitative transformation in the teaching-learning process of Mathematics, through research projections of greater relevance, taking into account social demands and the adequate implementation of scientific contributions recognized by the Scientific Community. This facilitated the insertion in the context, in order to solve the various problems of the profession and the territory where it resides, causing changes in the students’ role, the economy, and the service provision.

In the 1990s, the Universidad Veracruzana designed and implemented an educational model that produced important changes in the study plans. One of those changes included a new area of general training courses that had to be accredited in the first semesters of each career. The introduction of this new area altered the sequence of the curricula plans for each career. The objective of this article is to analyze the responses of the academics, to the new institutional dispositions and the organizational strategies that were formulated from their disciplinary frameworks in order to respond to the reform without neglecting the academic training of the students. Through a comparative and mixed methodological design, documentary information was recovered from the University's Integral Information System; a survey was designed for students and a semi-structured interview was applied to academics as key informants. To present the results, multivariate analysis techniques were used and the content of the interviews was analyzed. It was found that each career produces differentiated responses, which are configured based on the characteristics of their own discipline. This opens the debate on the way in which institutional policies are implemented without taking into consideration the disciplinary diversity and its modes of action. The results of the article allow us to acquire knowledge related to the social action of the academics through the answers they formulate towards the curricular changes and provide new elements for the analysis of the policies, tensions and conflicts that these produce. 

The objective of this article is to assess the current state of classrooms pertaining to the public primary schools and classrooms in the Central Pacific Region of Costa Rica and, furthermore, analyze their socio-emotional impact in promoting a meaningful learning environment. A total of 33 schools were analyzed as part of this study. The data collection instruments that we used were non-participatory, observation and questionnaires answered by school administrators, teachers and students. Research approaches were exploratory and descriptive with regards to the describing school architecture and classroom design aesthetics that directly influence emotional behavior and learning. The information collected serves as useful input for both school authorities and teachers to be able to reflect raise awareness and enhance their classroom designs to promote classrooms that are meaningful learning spaces.