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

According to reports in the literature, males score higher on certain mental rotation tests and complex problem-solving exercises than females. This study analyzes the types of errors made in the Primary Mental Abilities (PMA) space relations sub-test test by 328 secondary school students (ages 13 to 16), 143 of whom, having exhibited complex mathematical problem-solving abilities, were participating in a mathematical talent enhancement programme. The error types detected are defined in terms of angle of rotation of the object and the presence of symmetries in the items of the test. The findings show significantly higher performance in the more mathematically gifted students. Gender differences are only evidenced in the total score of the test and the number of non-answered items, where boys got higher scores than girls. Moreover, there is no significant interaction between the independent variables gender and complex mathematical problem-solving abilities. The conclusions drawn from those findings introduce nuances in the understanding of the gender difference traditionally identified in visualisation, particularly in connection with geometric properties in mental rotation tests. It is stressed that educational research focuses on other aspects, like emotional or behavioural ones that can impact test execution, like speed or the use of less efficient strategies.

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a deterioration in the quality of life and, particularly, the mental health of university students. This situation highlights the need to offer coping programmes and preventive mental health measures. The effectiveness of self-care programmes designed to increase well-being in students has hardly been studied, although promising effects have been found in some studies in the work context (Gomez- Borges et al., 2022). In line with JD-R theory, we conceptualize and empirically examine two resources, self-care activities and Psychological Capital (PsyCap), as antecedents of academic engagement as a positive state of well-being or fulfilment. These personal resources, self-care and PsyCap, can play an important role in meeting demanding situations such as those encountered by students and, thus, contribute to their well-being. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to analyse the mediating role of PsyCap in the relationship between self-care and academic engagement. The participants were 397 university students from two Spanish universities (77.8% women; mean age 26.08 years). The data collection was carried out during the COVID-19 pandemic. We used structural equation modelling (SEM), and the results showed positive relationships between academic engagement and self-care, on the one hand, and PsyCap, on the other. However, the total mediation model obtained better fit and results, highlighting the mediating role of PsyCap. Based on the results, we discuss the importance of self-care activities for university students and, above all, programmes to develop personal resources such as PsyCap, in order to enhance their effect on academic engagement.

The recent global pandemic has raised institutional awareness around the world concerning the importance of having high quality online learning options for students. Learner engagement is often correlated with quality outcomes such as student academic success and student satisfaction. Learner engagement is commonly thought of as having three important dimensions: affective engagement, behavioral engagement, and cognitive engagement (ACE framework). Engagement is also enabled or limited by facilitators/barriers. Three important categories of facilitators/barriers are learner characteristics, personal environment, and course environment. Elements in each of these three areas enable or are barriers to students fully engaging in a course. This research explored what the barriers are to students fully engaging in their online courses at a Brazilian university to determine which areas will be most productive for the university program administrators and designers to focus on increase student academic engagement. A survey was applied to students from the Brazilian university under graduation online programs. It included items related to engagement facilitators barriers in the three areas described in the ACE framework and received 429 valid responses. The affective and behavioral dimensions were perceived by students as the lower engagement indicators in the ACE framework. Among facilitators or barriers for engagement, the ones under the course environment category were predominantly perceived as barriers, while learner characteristics and student environment were perceived as facilitators. However, all three categories were more barrier than facilitator for over 40% of the students. Although course environment is the barrier most under control of the institutions, understanding students´ personal environment and characteristics of learning can help them to provide support and facilitate full engagement in online courses.

Cybervictimization is a social phenomenon in which a victim receives an intentional and aggressive act of harm from an aggressor/s, through technologies, from which victims cannot easily defend themselves. Victims present physical health symptoms, as well as low levels of psychological well-being and even higher levels of suicidal ideation and attempts. The alarming prevalence of cybervictimization in Primary Education in Spain ranges from 6.6% to 13.4% and has increased due to the COVID-19 confinement. For all these reasons, it is crucial to investigate the risk and protection factors that allow us to prevent them, especially those less studied in this educational stage, such as family sociodemographic variables. The objective of the study is to analyse the relationship between parental sociodemographic factors (age, gender, educational level, immigrant background, family composition, and degree of rurality of the municipality of family residence) and cybervictimization of their children in Primary Education. A sample of 1169 families with children in grades of 5th and 6th of Primary Education was selected, using a self-administered questionnaire (α = .84). Association studies were performed using binary logistic regression. The multivariate model followed a stepwise procedure, with the stepAIC function, selecting the best predictive model. The bivariate analysis identified the parental educational level as an individual risk factor for cybervictimization (p < .05). In addition, single-parent families reached almost double the risk of two-parent families. The results of the multivariate analysis showed that gender, parental educational level, and family composition are jointly significant predictors of cybervictimization in Primary Education. It is concluded that there are family sociodemographic factors that predict cybervictimization and the results are analyzed for their implications for educational practice.

The events that the health pandemic has brought with in recent times have accentuated the importance of personal and emotional factors in the training trajectories of students. For this reason, the study of resilience has become an important topic in the context of higher education, given the importance of this ability to cope with adversity and academic stress. In relation to this topic, the objective of this research was aimed at verifying whether students with greater resilience capacities had lower intentions of abandoning university education. The initial hypothesis was that those students with a low level of academic resilience had a higher risk of failing and abandoning the studies they had started. Following an ex-post-facto quantitative research approach, a questionnaire was applied to a sample of (n=412) students from all undergraduate degrees at the Faculty of Education of the University of La Laguna. The results showed that students with higher levels of resilience show a higher intention to drop out and vice versa (less resilience, higher intention to drop out). At the same time, it was shown that a high percentage of students with low resilience expressed their intention to drop out, which highlights the predictive value of resilience in relation to academic performance. These results can help to have an understanding of the importance of this factor in the training trajectories of students, developing training and guidance actions that improve said competence and prevent situations of failure and academic dropout.

In this article, we describe and reflect on models of representation in the construction of an ethnographic documentary, and we account for how collaborative ethnography permeated part of the process. These reflections, intertwined in concrete situations and with socially situated people, allow us to challenge more normative knowledge about the implications of participation and intervention when working with people in extreme situations. We share aspects that can contribute to similar projects, in relation to starting points, incorporation of the results of previous ethnographic research, intervention activities, as well as the presence of anthropologists and filmmakers alongside the interlocutors on the scene. We will show that the mediation of the camera creates a reflective dialectic that complicates the interactions of those involved in an audiovisual production. Likewise, we analyze the importance of confronting the visualities involved in audiovisual projects to orient themselves towards a politicization of images.

This article discusses Franco Berardi's theoretical contributions on communication in the contemporary context. Based on the cultural transformations linked to digitalization, it reviews the main axes which, from the author's perspective and in dialogue with other authors, allow us to rethink basic categories of communication theories. First, the concept of semiocapitalism is addressed. Then, the expansion of technosemiotic automatisms as a decisive aspect of the contemporary power regime, characterized in terms of governance, is analyzed. Finally, the demarcation of communication framed in the tension between "conjunction" and "connection" is recovered. Thus, with the predominance of the latter, there would be a tendency to produce the "swarm effect".

Disinformation has acquired great relevance in recent years, which has led to the emergence of journalistic projects that have specialized in verifying content that work with a methodology verified by international networks of fact-checkers. In the context of these work methodologies, open journalism applies mechanisms that promote transparency and participation in professional routines and that can be beneficial for the development of these verification initiatives. In this research, two pioneering initiatives in Spain in content verification, Newtral and Maldita.es, are studied, with an analysis of the content of their platforms and in-depth interviews with their managers, with the aim of verifying the level of application of open journalism in their platforms. work routines, as well as to evaluate the possibility of this current to favor media education and improve the production of journalistic content in a context of disinformation.