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

This article aims to point out that Plato’s criticism of Sophists and rhetoric is not a condemnation of them, but a distance from traditional rhetoric in order to introduce his proposal for a philosophical rhetoric. For this objective, the aim is to: 1) outline the definition of the concepts ‘rhetoric’ and ‘sophistic’, and characterize the principles of ‘sophistic rhetoric’; 2) To address Plato’s criticism of the sophists from the Gorgias, pointing out the arguments with which Plato criticizes the rhetoric and the Sophists; 3) To analyze the dialogical method of the Sophists (eristics) and how it opposes the philosopher’s method (dialectic); 4) Finally, to point out, starting from the Phaedrus, Plato's foundations for the consolidation of a ‘philosophical rhetoric’, that is, of a genuine philosophical dialogue that serves as an overcoming of traditional rhetoric.

The article proposes and illustrates a methodological framework that aligns with the action-research models and utopian methodology in particular, although it represents a more substantial leap forward, especially regarding the distributed nature of decision making in the different processes of research/intervention, and its multiple and systematic nature (linking theory, practice and politics). It is developed through four main phases: i) collective identification of the needs and the object of the study, ii) expansive co-design of the action-research, iii) dynamic and multiagency implementation, and iv) critical and participatory reflexive evaluation. It is examined more specifically how the phases proposed here can be illustrated by an ongoing project called 360Education Alliance (“Aliança Educació 360”) conducted in the context of Catalonia, Spain. It consists of a partnership presented in January, 2018, that currently involves more than 300 entities for promoting a community vision of education based on improving equity and social justice. Some opportunities deriving from this methodology are mentioned in the conclusion, emphasizing the transversal role of self-criticism as permanent inquiry of multiple agents involved in the process, including the participants themselves.

A student's academic performance is conditioned on factors within the pupil or outside, in the environment. The Western body of knowledge emphasizes the positive role of ‘Self’ and related variables such as self-esteem, self-efficacy, self-confidence, and others on the academic performance of students. An Indian counterpart to the concept of self is ‘Aham’. The present study aimed at qualitatively understanding the role of Ahamkara in the academic performance of school students. For this purpose, a semi-structured interview technique was utilised for data collection. A total of 11 interviews were recorded and transcribed. Thematic Network analysis framework forwarded by Attride-Sterling (2001) was utilized for data analysis. Based on the analysis 4 global themes emerged. They are: Formation and maintenance of a sense of self through Identification; Active engagement of Self in the learning process leads to growth; Ignorance of Self, a path to failure; and Failure an opportunity to maintain the optimal sense of self.

Scientific literature about neuromyths has proliferated in the last few years. However, there is a gap of knowledge around neuroedumyths. While neuromyths are based on hoaxes about the brain, neuroedumyths use neuroscientific concepts but state consequences for education that are false. This article presents, for the first time, research about neuroedumyths among teachers. This study has applied the innovative methodology of Public Lectures’ Debates Analytics (PLDA), in its ex-post modality. This has meant the analysis, by the twelve participants interviewed in this research, of the conclusions of public lectures’ debates on neuroscience and education. The results show the presence of four neuroedumyths among teachers: The brain needs to be bored to develop; Violence resides in masculine genes; Brain develops almost completely the first three years of life; and There are right-hemisphere students and left-hemisphere students. While neuromyths have been spread among teachers by trainers specialized in education but lacking scientific information about neuroscience, neuroedumyths have been spread among teachers by neuroscientists lacking scientific information on education. Differently to some previous studies which approached this problem as teachers’ errors or ignorance, the results of our study show that the problem is the errors of some teachers’ trainers.

Music and the arts are of growing interest in promoting success in school and psychological development of young people in general. However, there are few studies focused on the relationship between music and, more specifically on school engagement of vulnerable students. Thus, this exploratory study aims to understand the perceived impact of student participation in a school percussion group on school engagement. The research followed a qualitative methodology through individual semi-structured interviews. Six pupils aged between eleven and fifteen, two teachers of these pupils and two of the percussion group facilitators took part in the study. The results reveal a positive impact perceived by the participants arising from participation in the percussion group, with emphasis on the behavioural dimension of school engagement. Considering the relation between school engagement and learning processes, promoting school engagement through musical activities could be an innovative strategy to promote school success.

This article describes the implementation of Thinking Aloud protocol in its Active Intervention modality as an evaluation phase of a virtual reality environment. It supports the therapist during rehabilitation sessions with patients who have lost mobility in the upper limb due to a stroke. This strategy is low cost, and the qualitative results allow us to understand the quality of the software in the first instance. The test was aimed at therapists specializing in physical therapy, who serve as the main users of the virtual environment and who will configure the therapies that their future patients will carry out. As a result of the test, it was possible to collect 19 usability problems classified by gravity and correction priority, considered two of High Priority, five of Medium Priority and twelve of Low Priority, the latter oriented to small modifications at the interface level. In this way, a first approach to the end user's expectations regarding the evaluated virtual environment was achieved, in order to obtain a new iteration of software development that allows reducing or canceling problems, which suggests, on the one hand, the mechanisms for immediate refinement of the software, and on the other, a background that allows the evaluation procedure to be adapted to other software intended for rehabilitation.

In a software development, the documentation plays an important role for knowing the origin, details and reason to be, among other factors of a project. Its utility is wide and is extended even as support for future developers can continue the development with less difficulty. The code of a software is one of the most complex elements to understand, since each developer has their own style of programming. The best way for making the code understandable is accompany it with good comments all of them complete and consistent. In this article, we propose a rubric to evaluate the quality of code comments in Java. This rubric is divided into categories according to the type of comment to be assessed: copyright comment, class comment, method comment, and code snippet comment. Each category defines a set of rules that must be met to declare a comment has quality. Through the increment of readability and maintainability of code in software projects that are currently in use after using the rubric will help us to validate its effectiveness. Once this effectiveness has been verified, it will help the teams to have correctly commented codes and to reduce costs in the work of understanding and maintaining the code, since it will be more readable and descriptive.

The interaction within the world constitutes one of the main ways in which learning is generated, as it is the way by which we obtain information from the environment and we experience cause-effect relationships. This idea of learning through interaction is a fundamental issue in many learning theories and, in this paper, we will address a computational approach called Reinforcement Learning (RL) and we will build in a progressive and simple way its mathematical basis, as well as its main solution methods. Lastly, applications and algorithms that are relevant in the industry and research are presented.

El Índice de Confianza Empresarial (ICE) mide la percepción y expectativas del sector empresarial en cuanto a su actividad económica. Para su cálculo se analiza a las empresas más representativas de la provincia de Chimborazo de los sectores económicos (comercio, construcción, industria y servicios). Se utiliza la metodología establecida por el Banco Central del Ecuador, con información primaria recolectada a 145 empresas, mediante encuestas mensuales de opinión empresarial (julio –agosto 2021). Los resultados evidencian que el ICE global en la provincia alcanza 27.19 puntos en el mes de julio 2021, lo que evidencia que la confianza por parte de las empresas locales en el entorno económico es favorable. Las empresas del sector servicios e industrial presentan un ICE positivo con 67.36 y 67.61 puntos respectivamente, por lo que se denota confianza por parte del sector empresarial debido a un incremento en la demanda de bienes y servicios. Los sectores del comercio y construcción poseen una puntuación del ICE de -40.19 y -54.10 puntos respectivamente, debido a los limitados incentivos y a las políticas de austeridad del gasto implementadas por el gobierno.