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

In view of the new reality of a globalized world, two attitudes can arise that detract from fruitful interpersonal communication between individuals of different cultures. These two attitudes, which often are presented as opposed and contradictory, are ethnocentrism and cultural relativism. In this paper we argue that ethnocentrism can actually be a consequence of a radical cultural relativism. We give reasons for avoiding both ethnocentrism and cultural relativism and we propose a “non-radical cultural relativism” that can help understand other cultures. We also comment on some related moral issues

A challenge for European civic educators in the 21st Century will be to employ active, engaging teaching strategies which involve their students. Didactic strategies currently abound, but have the problem of not engaging students for active citizenship. Recent investigations into civic education suggest the essential characteristics of useful pedagogies include engaging students in forms of experiential learning (active engagement); deliberately involving values which are explained and defended (values enlightenment); encouraging critical thinking, reflection and involving students in taking and defending a position (values justification); and creating a classroom climate conducive to learning and actively participating in civics. These strategies in civics classes are more likely to encourage students to become active democratic citizens

The demand for higher levels of citizenship participation is becoming a common interest of researchers from several disciplines. At the same time, international institutions promote and facilitate it. The purpose of the present paper is to put on record this sensibility in Europe and specifically Spain. Some references to volunteerism as a way of promoting social participation are pointed out in the text, and their educational potentialities are analysed. The description of several educational initiatives carried out in Spain show opportunities for a further coordination between volunteerism and the formal educational community

This paper faces the methodological questions of research about how sex-related grouping (single sex vs. coeducational schools) affect several educational variables in students. Before-and-after studies, as well as national long-rage studies, are used. Since they are ex post facto studies, there is a concern about the internal validity. How can we control the odd variables associated to the pupil, the family or the school? These studies permit this control, because they are massive in sample and in variables. The paper maintains that the study must control only the variables not associated to the school model (single sex or coeducational). The external validity is considered less important.

In order to prevent despotism, Montesquieu indicates the importance of intermediary powers which serve to moderate a monarch’s power. Tocqueville applies these powers to modern times, but in this instance, they also fulfill a second function. They must struggle against a new evil belonging to these new times: individualism. These new intermediary powers must teach individuals to be citizens through participation in public affairs. One of these new powers is municipality.

This paper analyses the process through which pictures gradually became an integral part of school courtesy books from the mid-19th Century to the first third of the 20th Century. It was a long process involving important changes in illustration techniques and specially in the functions acquired by pictures in the different courtesy little treatises and primers. These changes are evidenced in a selection of pictures taken from different manuals of this school subject.

The pursuit and the promotion of participation, on the one hand, and justice, on the other, are two principles that foster and guarantee the quality of education. The key question is: “How are these principles reflected in the formal system of education in Navarra?” We would like to focus on the educational reforms that have been undertaken since 1990, particularly on the efforts to address the issue of diversity as a means to promote the equality of opportunities

The purpose of this paper is to present the view and experiences of the Department of Education of El Salvador on the educational development of this country and, specially, the field of technology and productivity. In summary, the paper presents on the one hand, the efforts made to provide an education of quality and fairness to our young people and adults; on the other, the reforms and educative policies used to promote the technical and technological education in our educational institutions

The epistemology of tacit knowing in the ethics of mentoring is meant to be grounding for intelligent action. The structural and functional models delineated above provide a conceptual map for such action. The structure of tacit knowing consists of subsidiary awareness and focal awareness and the two poles of from-to knowing. Subsidiary awareness is on the internal (personal) pole, focal awareness is on the external (objective) pole. The function of tacit knowing has three aspects: selective, heuristic and persuasive, each having a conative and cognitive mode or trait. The driving force of this model is “intellectual passion” which in ethics is the judicial attitude, keeping the principle of justice in sight. Since the epistemology of tacit knowing presupposes free will, it must choose a duty bound ethics2. Specifically, the analysis of tacit knowing model presented here hones the awareness of the adult about his own processes of knowing, doing and persuasive acts, deliberately focusing on these processes and their grounding in free will. The adult’s understanding then serves his nurturing function, the training of the young to attain awareness of these same functions in him. The ethical aspect is the duty to pass on this knowledge to enable the child to become intelligently autonomous, to train him to develop the judicial attitude. Thus, both the morality of traits, that is being, and the morality of principles, that is doing, are fostered. However, the key is the fostering of the will to do right, that is fostering the “intellectual passion” grounded in the judicial attitude

The paper was given on 26 october 2001 at the international congress on “unprotected time of young people in the EU”, held at the University of Bologna (Italy). It discusses the social problems connected to the time in which young people (10-15 years) are unprotected by the socialising agencies in everyday life. The policies designed so far in eu countries to combat these problems are analysed and evaluated. The author underlines the fact that time is not equal for all generations, because time undergoes very differing accelerations and decelerations depending on the position of each generation and therefore it acquires a very different value and meaning for each of them. For these reasons, to pose the problem of unprotected time for young people means entering into the problem of how the various generations live their own time and the time for relating with other generations. The paper ends by suggesting some proposals for EU educational policies.