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

Introduction. Guided by the work of Bandura on self-efficacy, this study seeks to determine the extent to which differences in students' expectations of higher education could be ex-plained by differing levels of confidence. Method. An Academic Confidence Scale (ACS) was constructed and used for a survey of level one students, to explore differences in confidence between two very different student groups. One group was further tested for their confidence later in the year and at the same time; they completed a Ladder of Aspiration (LofAsp), to validate the Academic Confidence Scale. With these data, the ACS could be explored further for underlying factors. Results. Factor analysis of the ACS yielded six factors (Studying, Understanding, Verbalis-ing, Clarifying, Attendance and Grades). The LofAsp provided validation of the ACS. From the LofAsp, a small group that rated themselves lower than the national average was identi-fied. This group was interesting both in terms of ACS scores and academic performance. ACS scores showed a significant reduction over time. Discussion. A comparison of the ACS scores between the two student groups suggests that confidence could only be responsible to a small extent for differences in students' expecta-tions of higher education. The reduction in ACS scores indicates that ACS is affected by stu-dent performance, rather than affects student performance. It also asks questions about stu-dents’ ability to reason with statistical data as well as their views on their likely performance on their course. 

This work presents different lines of intervention in the local, group, family and educational contexts aimed at prevention of some deviant behaviors - such as violence, theft and certain patterns of trafficking and use of legal and illegal substances – as practiced by a minority of young people and youth sub-culture groups. These interventions are based on the research work of our team over the course of more than ten years. The set of criteria proposed falls within the concept of "culture of violence", whose heuristic value lies in stressing the identity function of certain behaviors in contexts where there is a lack of social insertion. These criteria permit us, first of all, to interpret the phenomenon, and second, to carry out a possible differential analysis with respect to other phenomena. Proposals for intervention, of a markedly preventive nature, emphasize the need for active, responsible involvement and participation of all young people in managing their possibilities at a local level, and are therefore oriented towards construction of a strong civic identity as the most effective alternative dimension to violence.

Introduction. This study aimed to obtain a profile of the formative and socio-affective characteristics of freshman students from the different specialities of Education at the University of Granada.Methodology. A total of 203 students were evaluated in vocabulary, reading comprehension and spelling, self-concept and social skills. There were also collected data related with sociodemographic variables.Results. The analysis showed that a lot of students made reading comprehension, vocabulary and spelling mistakes; furthermore, a high percentage have social and family self- concept difficulties, as well as in certain social skills. As positive aspects to highlight are their integration into the Faculty, the good relations that exist between the students, a high number consider effort and motivation important for the proffesional success; instead, it seems worrying, that a high percentage not appreciated the discipline or honesty.Conclusions. We conclude by recommending workshops, or activities which address deficient areas and training in values and attitudes.

Introduction. For decades birth order and gender differences have attracted research attention.Method. Birth order, family size and gender, and the relationship with arithmetic achievement is studied among 1152 elementary school children (540 girls, 612 boys) in Flanders. Children were matched on socioeconomic status of the parents and administered a test on mental arithmetic skills and on number knowledge.Results. Our findings tend to favor boys and suggest that it is possible that only children and lastborn children in large families are less competent in arithmetic than first born children. In contrast with the prediction of Zajonc, in families with three and five or more children middle children did best. Moreover, our dataset was not compatible with the Admixture hypothesis.Discussion. The study was partially in line with the Confluence and the Resource Dilution hypothesis. The birth order differences might be explained by the advantage of tutoring younger children by first born or middle children, helping them to process information. However, our data provides evidence that birth order accounts for only two or three percent of the variance in arithmetic scores. Analyses of our dataset demonstrate that last borns have poorer scores in small (family size 2) and large (family size 5 or more) families. However, the last- born disadvantage and first born advantage was slight is not present in families with three or four children.

This article aims to give insight into the present situation of research in learning assessment in Higher Education. It is based on a study done by skimming through articles issued in prestigious periodical scientific publications. As a guide for the analysis of the content of the reviewed articles, three questions were taken into consideration: (i) What are the main problems related to learning assessment in the university that teachers and researchers are concerned about in the last decade?, (ii) How do they manifest in different university contexts? and (iii) What are the possible and pertinent solutions to improve learning assessment? The content analysis was based on the answers to these main questions. Information obtained from this analysis allowed us to make some inferences, perhaps of great interest, in respect to the problems that teachers and researchers are concerned about learning assessment in the last decade, how these problems are manifested in higher education institutions and the possible solutions suggested in the research works on the topic. Finally, an extensive, useful list of references is offered to all the teachers and researchers interested in the topic.

Self-efficacy, an individual’s belief about his or her ability to engage in a task and accomplish it, has been investigated across multiple domains of human action. Students’ perceived efficacy in school mathematics in particular, has been extensively explored by psychologists and educational researchers. We review literature from this field published prior to the year 2000 with the aim of extracting the fundamental themes that have drawn researchers’ attention. The topics presented include the relationship between self-efficacy and mathematical performance, the interplay of self-efficacy with self-concept, properties of self-efficacy measurements, the relationship between self-efficacy and goal setting and modeling, the accuracy of self-efficacy judgments, and gender differences and career choice with respect to self- efficacy beliefs. We review the important concepts and notable findings for each theme, and conclude with implications for educational practice and future research.

Translation has been excluded from the language classroom for many years due to the fact that new methodologies helped avoid the use of the mother tongue in the classroom at levels other than the initial stages of learning. This study is based on the assumption that the pedagogical use of translation L1-L2 in an LSP (Language for Specific Purposes) course can have a relevant role in L2 learning. The analysis examines to what extent translation activities consisting of short sentences designed  by the teacher can be a valid tool to improve the writing skills of two LSP groups of upper-intermediate level students: English native speakers who study Spanish as a second language and Spanish learners of English. These short sentences are aimed at learning the use of the article for generic reference and technical vocabulary in the field of computer science, which generally poses problems for this type of learners. An initial writing test and a final one together with an initial and final questionnaire designed accordingly show that translation can be a perfect tool to improve writing skills and that current LSP students value these tasks very positively. The comparison of the two groups of learners highlights the syntactic and lexical interferences each group experiences depending on their L1.

This paper reports on a corpus-based study that investigated the use of frequency adverbs in students’ posts in a goal-oriented virtual forum. The participants in the study were undergraduate students enrolled in two distance learning undergraduate degrees at the International University of la Rioja (Spain), and whose English language level was B1. The forum was part of one of the modules taught within a BEd program with a major in English Language Teaching. The study used a mixed-method approach and the results showed that the erroneous usage of the selected set of adverbs represents 7.47% of the total number of errors. For the classification of the errors, an error taxonomy was designed, including 9 error types. Findings revealed that the most common error types were those related to the position of frequency adverbs in the clause. The paper argues for the unique value of data gathered from virtual forums for the design of prevention-oriented teaching material, based on predictable errors.  

The present study focuses on analyzing the pedagogical functions of codeswitching (Milroy & Muysken, 1995; Canagarajah, 1995, 2011; Auer, 1998; Bista, 2010; García & Wei, 2014) as one of the most pervasive compensatory strategies used by lecturers in English-medium instruction at university. The corpus examined includes 8 lectures taught in English by two different lecturers and belonging to two subjects within a Business Administration degree in Spain. Findings suggest that there seems to be four pedagogical purposes as the main motivators behind codeswitching practices. In addition, results indicate that the personal teaching style of lecturers and the nature of the academic disciplines are likely to largely determine the use of this compensatory strategy

In the semantic field of fashion we can find several terms borrowed from English and French, since even though French has an older tradition in fashion, in recent years English has gained great prominence too. In this work I study English and French loanwords found in a corpus comprised of fashion articles in a Spanish language magazine. Based on the quantitative and qualitative analysis of 71 lexical entries, I analyze - from a synchronic perspective - the incorporation of the loanwords into Spanish, taking into account both their propagation and adaptation and the degree of acceptability assigned by speakers surveyed for that purpose. By way of conclusion, I value the relationship between the social norm and the prescriptive one. When considering the inclusion of the words in consulted dictionaries, their use in the corpus, their adaptation and acceptance, I realized that not all the words that have been spread, adapted and accepted in the recipient system have been standardized