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

In 1920 and 1921 there were two events, one theoretical, the other aesthetic. Sigmud Freud published his writing Beyond the pleasure principle and Charles Chaplin premiered his film The Kid. They were both works of enormous influence in their respective fields. This article analyzes their points of contact, regarding the rights of the child, the issue of identity and death drive. Once again the cinema is presented as a supplement to the theoretical questions, allowing us to lucidly discuss current issues in relation to children and adolescents.

An important research field in family studies relates to the role parenting practices can have on several domains of children’s development. Regarding to parenting styles, it was Baumrind’s conceptualization that was responsible for a relevant research boost in this area. She proposed a model contemplating three different styles: authoritative, authoritarian, and permissive. The aim of our study was to examine the factor structure, internal consistency and others psychometric properties of the Portuguese version of the Parenting Styles and Dimensions Questionnaire (PSDQ). The participants were 424 parents (mainly mothers, 81.2%) from Algarve (South of Portugal), that answered to PSDQ and a sociodemographic questionnaire. The instrument comprises 32 items: 12 questions regarding the authoritative style, 15 questions regarding the authoritarian style, and 5 questions regarding the permissive style. Several competing models (i.e., one and three-factorial, and another where latent variables were organized in a 1st and 2nd order factors) were tested in regards to PSDQ factor structure using confirmatory factor analysis. A fourth model, contemplating inter-correlations between item 7 and 8 was also proposed, which showed adequate fit and internal consistency. These findings support the PSDQ original structure. Implications concerning the use and contributes to social and emotional child’ adjustment are discussed.

One of the most pressing concerns today in our society is how to ensure that students are able to adapt to the ever-changing context in which they live, and one of the ways of achieving this is to ensure good school adjustment. This study analyzes whether this adjustment is influenced by students (and their parents) place of birth, gender and age. The sample group comprised 828 secondary school students (Mean age=14.83; SD=1.81) from the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country (BC) in Spain. The results indicate that students born in the BC to native parents have higher levels of affective engagement and achieve better academic results; however, contrary to expectation, not all natives born to immigrant parents were found to score higher for the different dimensions of school adjustment than those born outside the BC. Also, in general, girls were found to have a higher level of adjustment than boys, and students in the last two years of secondary school had lower levels of performance and engagement than both those in the first two years of secondary school and those in higher education. These results are then discussed in the final part of the paper.

Many variables have been analyzed in relation to school adjustment. However, only a few studies have explored the relationship between this construct and parental socialization styles, particularly in Spain. This work aims to examine the role played by maternal and paternal socialization styles in school engagement and academic performance. Participants were 737 secondary school students from the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country, aged between 11 and 18. All students completed the Affect Scale (EA-H) and the Rules and Demands Scale (ENE-H), as well as the School Engagement Measure (SEM), and performance was calculated on the basis of their average grades in mathematics and Spanish. The results indicate that, in the case of academic performance, a permissive style by both parents has the most positive effect on the grades obtained, while in the case of school engagement, it was both the permissive and democratic styles by both parents (with small variations between maternal and paternal styles in accordance with the dimension analyzed) that were most closely associated with a higher level of engagement. The educational implications of these results are discussed.

This article presents an instrument for the evaluation of reading attitudes and interests of Spanish students who have just started to read, that derives from the scale developed by Meirisuo-Storm & Soinien (2012). Attitude and motivation can be one of the main reasons why most readers read and possibly the main reason why many do not read. The important role that they play, however, has often been ignored. The questionnaire assesses five dimensions related to reading: motivation towards reading, reader’s interests, attitudes toward social reading, perception of reading competence and motivation towards learning or study. A confirmatory factor analysis was carried out with a sample of 1135 second graders, with an age between 7 and 8.4 years old (median 7.7 and standard derivation=0.99). This analysis shows a good fit of the five factor model to the data. Also invariance studies have been done to prove that the instrument can be applied without significant biases to 2nd grade boys and girls. Once the main sources of invariance were eliminated, the analysis showed some significant sex differences: girls showed greater motivation towards reading and more positive attitudes toward social reading, while boys showed a better perception of their reading competence. Also interesting differences in reader’s interests were observed. It is concluded that this instrument can be useful as it can help teachers estimate levels of attitude and motivation of their students in a reliable manner, as well as for the evaluation of specific students and for the estimation of the changes that occur in attitudes following intervention programmes.

Morphological awareness can play an important role in the process of literacy refers. It presents an experimental validation study with a sample of students pre-readers in kindergarten and first students of Primary Education on Instrumento de Evaluación de la Conciencia Morfológica Oral (IECMO) designed for study Spanish and focuses on the evaluation of the three dimensions of morphological awareness: a) the morphology inflexional, b) derivacional morphology, and c) compound words. This study involved a total of fifty students belonging to the last year of kindergarten and first grade education. Their ages ranged from 5 to 7 years. In conjunction with experimental validation study presented the initial results of reliability testing for internal consistency, item analysis and stable test-retest analysis and the validity of the proof, or apparent conflict of content and construct or theoretical. The results obtained in the analysis of the psychometric properties of the instrument to verify verify both the validity of content and construct, as the reliability of IECMO. This tool can be very useful, since teachers should take into account the role of morphological awareness in learning and mastering different metalinguistic skills.

The aim of this study was to analyse the predictive power of school refusal on high levels of anxiety about school punishment (ASP). In order to do this, a study was conducted on a sample of 1003 school children from 8 to 12 years of age Primary Education. The measurement tools used were the School Anxiety Inventory for Primary Education (SIPE) and the School Refusal Assessment Scale for Children-Revised (SRAS-R-C). The results of the logistic regression analysis showed that school refusal to avoid stimuli that cause negative emotions acted as a statistically significant predictor of ASP in the total sample, as regards gender samples (boys and girls) and in the academic courses samples (3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th years of Primary Education). On the other hand, school refusal to avoid social aversion or evaluation situations and school refusal to seek significant others’ attention influenced positively on high levels of ASP in boys sample and in 4th grade of Primary Education, respectively. These results show the importance of assessing the school refusal behaviour because of the influence that it could exert on the appearance of high levels of anxiety about school punishment.

University dropout has serious consequences not only for the student who gives up, but also for the host society itself. This has led to an increase in studies aimed at analysing and preventing dropout, implemented under different methodologies that are reported in this article. In addition to this trend, the authors – as members of the European Project ALFA GUIA – have developed a study using a holistic ex-post facto approach targeted at identifying those variables that play a fundamental role in university student? persistence. The sample used for the statistical analyses excluded students who had left one degree course to enrol on another (since there were no significant differences compared to the group that continued), and the cases with missing values. This resulted in a final sample of 677 subjects (198 who had dropped out and 479 who had persisted). A sample of 1300 university students was interviewed; the information was collected using a questionnaire collaboratively designed by the Project partners, and – in this case – by means of computer assisted interview. A descriptive and correlational analysis was carried out, as a first approximation to data, helping to identify the main relationships between variables. Based on these results, a binary logistic regression analysis was performed. The results confirmed that vocation is the variable that most influences persistence on the studies started. Therefore, this variable (vocation) can act as a protective factor against university dropout, once the remaining variables are controlled.

Few studies have been performed on strategies used for coping with daily stress and its associated factors, such as self-concept and emotional intelligence in this context. This study aims to analyse the relationship between strategies used for coping, as well as self-concept, social skills, and emotional intelligence. With this in mind, the study assessed the different strategies used for coping with daily stress, self-concept, social skills, and emotional intelligence. The sample consisted of a mixture of 154 secondary school pupils and students on other training courses. The results showed no statistically significant differences between students in secondary school education and those on training courses in relation to any of the variables in the study. Students with a greater use of productive coping strategies (i.e. active solutions, search for information and guidance, and positive attitude) scored higher in the self-concept academic variables, social skills and emotional intelligence. Inverse relationships were observed between academic self-concept and the strategy ‘indifference’, and between emotional intelligence (emotional repair) and aggressive behaviour. There are positive direct effects of social skills and some dimensions of self-concept in relation to the use of productive coping strategies, such as ‘search for information and guidance’. There are negative direct effects of social skills and self-concept in relation to unproductive coping strategies (social skills in aggressive behaviour and physical self-concept on behavioural avoidance).