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

This study investigates agency-structure dynamics in students and teachers’ social activity in a novel design and making environment in the context of the Finnish school system, which has recently undergone major curricular reform. Understanding that agency is an important mediator of educational change, we ask the following questions: How are agency-structure dynamics manifested in the social activity of students and their teachers in a novel design and making environment? How do agency-structure dynamics create possibilities and obstacles for educational change? The data comprise 65 hours of video recordings and field notes of the social activity of students aged 9–12 years old (N = 94) and their teachers collected over a period of one semester. Our study shows how the introduction of the novel learning environment created a boundary space in which traditional teacher-centered activity patterns interacted and came into tension with student-centered modes of teaching and learning. Our study reveals three distinctive agency-structure dynamics that illuminate how the agentive actions of both teachers and students stabilized existing teacher-centered practices and, at other, times ruptured and broke away from existing patterns, thus giving rise to possibilities for educational change. 

The widespread availability of information and communication technologies (ICTs) has generated new activity contexts that provide opportunities and resources for learning, at the same time as expanding the learning potential of traditional contexts such as the family and schools. Within this framework the present study analyses the frequency with which students of three ages (10, 13 and 16 years) participate in ICT-mediated activities outside school, as well as the learning experiences associated with this participation. To this end, we used a multimethod approach combining administration of a questionnaire with focus groups and individual interviews. The analysis revealed low rates of participation in ICT-mediated activities outside school and showed that these activities were associated with limited learning experiences. These results highlight the importance of educational institutions building closer links between students’ learning experiences in and outside school, as well as the need to develop initiatives that can foster the acquisition of the digital skills required to maximize the learning potential of new activity contexts.

As digital technologies continue transforming the time and space boundaries that traditionally had been ascribed to different educational settings, the very notion of learning context also is being challenged in educational research literature. In this article, we contribute to this debate by offering an empirically grounded discussion on the contrast between customary notions of context—which emphasize self-containment—and the emerging notion of learning lives—which aims to capture the dialectical relation between continuity and transformation. We draw from empirical materials collected through a participant ethnography at an arts-based, community-oriented primary school, where we follow the learning life of a student participating at a theater project as she moves between the school and the home settings. Our analyses reveal how different conceptualizations and units of analysis lead to different characterizations of the ways digital tools foster (dis)continuities across settings and time.

This study explores learner identity (LI) in digital texts of identity (DTI) produced by college learners in English as a foreign language (EFL). In so doing, it aims to shed light on learners’ connections of their learning experiences across time and settings, and their impact on the various learner identities that form their LI. It also intends to elucidate how learners construct powerful learner identities in and through their digital discourses. To this end, 51 DTI were collected and scrutinized, following studies on LI, critical and poststructuralist discourse analysis, and “thematic” and “dialogic/performative” analysis within narrative research. Learners established connections between their family and daily life spaces, school, and the foreign language community that account for, and shape their construction of their identities as learners in general, and language learners in particular. Students also empowered themselves by identifying with an intercultural speaker, using authority claims, and, in general, enhancing their authoritativeness in and through their texts. These findings underscore the potential of DTI to reinforce learners’ identities, and create more equitable learning spaces.

Activity and learning contexts  in educational transmedia

This article presents some of the habits of young people in Colombia regarding the consumption and appropriation of audiovisual content produced by Youtubers. Based on an approach both qualitative and quantitative, the methodological design employs the survey and the focus group as instruments to collect the information. Among the results, it can be seen how the analyzed audience prefers YouTube over other social networks, recognises local youtubers and identifies with them, and looks for content mostly in a tutorial format. In conclusion, it’s possible to observe a change in the habits of appropriation, due to the identification with speeches and the light and spontaneous formats with creative narratives that young people consume simultaneously with the accomplishment of other tasks, and that they can repeat and share at any time and place.

This article presents the results of a pilot study on the cultural media consumption practices of young Colombian students. Its aim is to reflect on the role of the educational system in the development of media competence. To this end, an instrument was structured to characterize these practices, based on variables such as preference, reasons, time invested, form of access, company and consumption possibilities in different scenarios. The instrument does not yet have a statistical validation process, but the data obtained provide significant theoretical, conceptual and methodological elements.

Railway transport and its relationship with leisure and tourism practices are engaged in tourist trains. Throughout their itineraries, these trains connect cultural and natural landscapes. Train trips serve to get immersed into the places, cultural traditions, and local lifestyles communicate the authenticity and sense of place in a current context of global tourism. The aim of this article is to study the forms that the territory takes to communicate itself. To this end, the connections between railways, tourism and the communication of the sense of place are analyzed in the specific case of New Zealand. The analysis of territories from this perspective delves into how regions transmit their cultural identity, understanding heritage as a form of communication. In particular, local landscapes express a unique sense of place that communicates territorial identities to both visitors and tourists.

This research analyses quantitatively and qualitatively the communicative actions carried out by Spanish NGOs in support of Western Sahara, as well as their level of professionalism. An exploratory study was conducted based on content analysis of the websites of members of CEAS (State Coordinating Committee of Solidarity with Western Sahara Associations), and then subsequently carrying out semistructured interviews with their directors to delve deeper into the management of these NGOs’ communications. In conclusion, it has been observed that the level of professionalism is low, and there is a need to incorporate communication specialists in social media.

The main objective of this research paper is to carry out a detailed analysis of the educational curriculum of social media management in communication degrees at Spanish universities within the framework of the EHEA, as well as to verify whether the curricular content and methodology meet the needs of the labor market linked to different job profiles related to community management. Regarding the research methodology used, three analysis techniques have been selected to achieve the proposed objectives and to verify the hypotheses, and for this reason we have used a methodological triangulation for the study in order to give validity to the results. All of the above has led us to the main conclusion, which is that Spanish universities do not include specific subjects in social networks in a cross-curricular way in their degree programs. Furthermore, we must mention the fact that universities that offer specific subjects related to social networks do not adapt the design of these educational programs to the needs of companies in terms of the content they include and the skills they help their students to develop.