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

The author of the editorial reflection of this issue is the Spanish pedagogue Agustín de la Herrán Gascón, a researcher at the Autonomous University of Madrid, creator of the radical and inclusive Pedagogy perspective, who critically analyzes and proposes radical issues ignored in the educational world and pedagogical, or orbiting it in an ephemeral way, decimating the strength of its theoretical or praxeological approaches. This is the case of prejudices from and towards pedagogy, education and the pedagogue, for what he pleads, among other aspects, for the passage of the ego to consciousness, and to a clear awareness of what we do not know. It is desirable that there be, not only in Spain, but also (we would say, in Latin America) a greater openness, attention, information and training around the specificity of the pedagogue, in order to better impact the processes related to the educational act and the world of education, also strengthening Pedagogy and its social function. To say it with the author, with a strong Pedagogy the whole society wins, because the sense of the society coincides with the sense of its own education.

Pedagogy is the science that studies education, teaching, training and everything related to them. Unfortunately for Spanish society - and possibly for others - and despite its long and fertile history, it is not well known. At the same time, pedagogues are professionals and researchers still prejudiced by some. Behind these stubbornness there are, well ignorance, well egocentric interests. In this brief essay some observations and reflections on the subject are collected, with the aim of contributing to the awareness of a social and scientific situation with whose normalization would gain education and, therefore, society as a whole.

The topics Training, Research and Learning Environments, represent the central themes of volume XIV, inherent in investigative and reflexive processes. All of them make it clear that education is an adventure. Some chapters address reflections and experiences in terms of training, both in research and in other fields and practices of knowledge and knowledge. Some more analyze topics related to research and the processes of appropriation, generation and use of knowledge. And others more orbit on didactic and methodological experiences and processes with the technological resource and other devices, to strengthen the learning in given domains of knowledge.

At present, the professionals who demand the work environment must be able to put into practice the acquired knowledge, gives functionality to the theoretical aspect in their immediate work environment and, in as much, demonstrate the competences and skills, acquired in their training as professionals. The concern of higher education institutions is to provide professional training according to these demands of the globalized society. In particular, the learning, practice and mastery of the English language allows engineers to be more competitive and, according to the labor demand, to improve the productive processes in companies. The possession of a second language will provide graduates with multiple advantages: access to ample sources of information, better employment opportunities, high competitive quality and the ability to respond to the demands of their environment on a personal, social, work and professional level; otherwise, they will have few employment opportunities, low wages and unfavorable working conditions.  

In the modern era, where important changes in science and technology have taken place, which in a certain measure have changed society, human capital plays an important role, since this transformation was driven by knowledge-based man. In this way, knowledge applies not only to the productive processes and services to achieve economic growth, but also in the knowledge itself to advance more quickly. The scientific-technological advances that occur today are moving at an incalculable speed and the clearest way to achieve development is to move from an industrial society to a knowledge society, where technology and organizational innovation centers are the platform for a more dynamic and less unequal world, if there is human capital prepared (specialized labor), it can be said that there are firm bases to generate economic growth with a view to the development of the regions.

In the present work a national panorama of inclusive education is given to then focus on the status of the Universidad Autónoma del Carmen (UNACAR), to include people associated or not with a disability. The study took into account the conceptualization that the students of the Faculty of Educational Sciences have about inclusion in their university.

The learning styles have served to make significant changes in the educational process, they have helped both students and teachers to understand that each human being learns in a different way, and that there is no correct or erroneous way of learning.  On the other hand, academic performance is a fundamental part of the teaching and learning process, because it allows us to identify if the student meets the learning standards set forth in the education curriculum to be promoted at the level. The objective of the research was to identify the styles of learning preferred by the students and analyze their influence on academic performance. The research had a qualitative approach. It was composed of a population of 46 students. For the data collection, the Test of Honey and Alonso was applied, which was structured by 86 questions. The dominant style was the reflective one, which corresponds to 42.30% of the population. It was concluded that learning styles do influence academic performance, but there are also a variety of factors that contribute to poor student performance.

In the canton of Naranjito, province of Guayas, there is a large group of microentrepreneurs who still do not know the advantages and disadvantages of the influence of social networks for the promotion of their current and new products and services. Traditional communication such as radio, television, print media. But thanks to the advancement of technology, we have another means of communication by which they can make their products or services known at low cost and even worldwide because billions of people daily use social networks not only to interact But also to search for sales pages of products and services, although the microentrepreneur must take into account the advantages and disadvantages of using these means, since this depends on whether the product or service has a high or low reception by the client.

The objective of this study was to motivate students to develop high thinking skills, specifically “creating” through online discussion forums. For this purpose, a proposal was presented; the first step was to create a Virtual Classroom for students to actively interact in the discussion forums. The proposal lasted 15 weeks and during the intervention students had to post and participate in 5 discussion forums about different topics related to the English Center syllabus for Level Four. The sample were 30 students from the English Center at Escuela Superior Politécnica de Chimborazo who filled an initial and a satisfaction survey and took a pre-test and a post-test. There were two research groups, the experimental and the control one. Once the intervention concluded, the scores of the experimental group in the pre-test, post-test were analyzed, at the same time, the pre-test, and post-test of the experimental group and control group were compared. The students’ participation in the online discussion forums was assessed by applying a rubric. The statistic Chi-square was used to prove the hypothesis. The teacher’s effective feedback, the time students had to participate in the discussion forums, and the environment (virtual) played an important role in this research. It was concluded that the students interaction in the online discussion forums influence positively in the developing of the “creating” thinking skill.

Surprisingly positive have been the changes introduced in the Ecuadorian university in the last seven years, first and foremost, due to the priority given to scientific research as a unifying agent of knowledge and contemporary development. However, there are important flaws that undermine the fundamental purpose of didactic work in this area. The article exposes the experience of the authors as advisors of 137 undergraduate and master theses from 64 national universities, from their daily work with the students and a personal interview at the end of the exercise. Among the main conclusions is that the processes of teaching scientific research in the undergraduate do not prioritize the formative research, so that when obtaining their corresponding professional title, the already professionals, do not remain motivated with this activity in breach of the main objective of the research subject for this academic stage.