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

Reseña del libro Gobernanza, transparencia y rendición de cuentas: un análisis de programas del autor Omar Valencia Dominguez.  

Teacher training contexts demand close dialogues with graduate populations, as this feedback translates into the improvement of education. A first step is to know the entry and socio-demographic profile, since this will later allow contextualizing professional perceptions, their needs and the impact of the curricula on the socio-educational and personal realities of the graduates. This article presents the results of a follow-up study of graduates of the bachelor’s and “licenciatura’s” degree program in English teaching at the West Campus, University of Costa Rica. The objective is to determine the sociodemographic profile, motivations for entering the career and situations that affect the time to graduation. Methodologically, this is a descriptive, non-experimental, longitudinal, quantitative study by survey. The general conclusions are: the population is quite young, single and mainly composed of women; that the graduation rates, as well as the level of satisfaction with respect to the time to graduation is more favorable for the bachelor’s degree than for the licenciatura’s degree, where aspects of career management delay graduation. Nevertheless, the career has had a positive impact on improving the socio-educational-economic conditions of graduates and their families.

The aim of the first phase for this Service Learning (SL) project was to provide the physical education teachers responsible of applying the SL model to the target group, with initial information about their predisposition prior to the intervention, serving as a meta-evaluative and reflective tool. Three university students of the Degree in Primary Education with mention in physical education (21 and 24 years old) and enrolled in the subject "The Game and Sport", voluntarily participated in this pre-intervention with 30 primary school students from the Naüm socio-educational project. The IMAPS-AFD-FI scale, designed to observe the degree of satisfaction of the students when participating in PES projects, was used to assess professional competencies. Positive tendencies were obtained (between 3.33 and 4.67 out of 5 points on a Likert scale), with minimal standard deviations, for the items belonging to the dimensions learning; pedagogical value; social impact; professional development; professional skills and experience opinion. The implementation of this SL project seems to have a positive impact on the pre-intervention predisposition of university student learners. This fact that could have repercussions on better prosocial behavior, sense of social responsibility, meaningful learning, as well as on an emotional level.

While a growing body of research has been carried out in the last decade to investigate how to develop students' feedback literacy in higher education, studies in English Language Teaching in secondary education are scanty. The main objective of this study, undertaken in the 3rd year of compulsory secondary education, is to investigate how pupils and the supervising teacher perceived feedback prior to a cycle of action-research interventions. Moreover, it aims at looking into the effects of the intervention on students' feedback literacy and writing competence in English.  To this end, the study was conducted combining both quantitative and qualitative research instruments: two Likert-scale questionnaires, a semi-structure interview and a writing portfolio. Feedback literacy, understood as the dispositions, understandings, and commitment to applying feedback, was trained to boost students' writing through feedback workshops. Learners engaged in activities to discuss, decode, and act upon the feedback they received after submitting three writing tasks. The results suggest that students gained strategies to spot and correct their own mistakes, developed writing fluency, and came to appreciate the usefulness of feedback in taking an active role in their own learning.

Despite the popularity of the flipped classroom, its effectiveness in achieving greater engagement and learning outcomes currently lacks substantial empirical evidence. This study analyzed the contributions of 54 students who participated in an inverted teaching environment in the Double Degree in Physical Activity and Sports Sciences, specifically in the subject of Biomechanics of Human Movement. A study with a qualitative approach was selected based on the contributions of the students through a reflective diary completed throughout the semester and semi-structured interviews. In general, students reported a more positive learning experience and greater participation in the flipped classroom. The analysis revealed six categories that students highlight as especially conducive to their learning; engagement with peers, being recognized, relationship with the teacher, physical learning environment, learning with peers and using videos to learn new content. The results indicate that the affective dimension of student participation is particularly prominent when students reflect on learning in the flipped classroom.

The advancement of discoveries at the brain level gives rise to emerging disciplines such as neurodidactics, allowing us bringing strategies based on the functioning of the brain to the classroom in order to optimize the teaching-learning process. The objective of this research work is to know to what extent English foreign language teachers in the Childhood and/or Primary Education use these strategies that have their origin in neurodidactics and that can be extrapolated to the English Foreign Language classroom. For this, a bibliographic review is carried out in order to know the current state of the subject and then a field work is carried out for which and ad hoc questionnaire consisting of 15 sociodemographic questions and 35 items valued on a gradual scale from 1 to 5 was designed. This is a descriptive study of quantitative nature in which 111 teachers from different Educational Centers in the Region of Murcia have been participated. The study results indicate that participants use neurodidactic-based strategies, both in face-to-face English language sessions and online sessions. Likewise, statistically significant differences were observed based on different sociodemographic variables such as sex or years of experience.

This study is the result of the work carried out in the teacher training program HIPATIA. The main objective is to work on group cohesion, self-concept and tolerance to frustration. To this end, an educational proposal was designed, implemented and evaluated for students of the Rural School Grouped Martin del Rio, with a total of 10 primary school students of various courses, 120 future teachers of the subjects of psychology of education and development of the degree of teaching in primary education of the University of Zaragoza, three teachers both university and educational center. A selective methodology with an ex post facto design is used, being the sociogram and the learning styles questionnaire the instruments used for data collection. The results indicate that when future teachers work in real cases using their learning styles and give practicality to the acquired knowledge, generate new ideas and strategies for the areas of interest requested by the school and directed for each student according to ways of acquiring knowledge. It concludes the need to incorporate the new teaching method, obtaining positive results, improving coexistence and the management of frustration in students.

The current technological advance generates new phenomena of school bullying such as cyberaggression. This type of harassment consists of using electronical media to harm, intimidate and bully other taking advantage of hidden identities; thus, generating feelings of defencelessness and vulnerability among students who receive it. This article questions, from an axiological approach, the subsidiary nature of technology and the consequent constriction of the socio-ethical-political sphere to which the education action is subjected. Cyber-aggressions introduce aggravating elements that anonymize and expand harassment, which make it necessary for the school to provide an effective response. Since students live conditioned by new technologies, teachers are responsible of developing mechanisms related to them from both, pedagogical perspectives (ICT) and from the need to link school action and students’ day-to-day reality. Particularly, some lines of action proposed here are: the involvement of the entire educational community, to promote strategies based on containment and foresight, and the promotion of a pedagogy of feelings that fosters empathy.