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In the context of the current debate regarding the best school setting (single-sex schooling v. coeducation) several advocates of coeducation have published emblematic papers that implicitly suggest that the debate should be considered as finished and that further research regarding this topic is not needed. This essay aims to refute the combined arguments of those articles using methodological and empirical facts, and show that the debate about this question and research into it should not be seen as complete, but instead should be promoted. At the same time, the essay identifies certain features in the aforementioned articles that present a risk of distorting science by moving towards arguments of an ideological nature, and it underlines the problem this represents for the debate itself and for science in general. The article does not seek to defend single-sex education, only the need for further research into it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

MOOCs are seen as the latest development in online learning and since their launch in 2008 they have become an integral part of university course curricula. We are currently at an early stage in the development of MOOCs; few studies have been published on their assessment so far. Consequently, this paper is based on a literature review, using the main academic databases JCR and Scopus, on 33 articles published between 2013 and 2015 with the objective of determining the educational quality of MOOCs. The methodology is based on a literature review procedure in which seven categories were distinguished when carrying out the analysis: course planning, contents, methodology, resources and activities, motivation, communication, and assessment and certification. The results of this study show that the assessment of the quality of MOOCs refers to a slightly higher than average quality, except for the three variables of content, resources and activities, and assessment. However, it warns of a lack of studies that assess the pedagogical quality of MOOCs and so we suggest further studies are needed with greater methodological rigour to obtain conclusive results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is a reply to José Luis Gaviria's paper «The Priority of the Philosophy of Education over the Empirical Disciplines in Educational Research. A response to Gil Cantero and Reyero». The main arguments to be discussed are as follows: Education is an action, not an object, nor a closed mechanism made of programmed inputs and outputs which can be probabilistically considered. Education is essentially constituted by value orientations; the complex reality of the human is not limited by what is real, current or empirical. What is possible is relevant too. Hope takes part of educational knowledge; the hope that what is unexpected finally happens. Judgment in education is a kind of unveiling, it is an empathic adequacy, it is the subjective experience of an educational ideal which appears to us as a whole coherent with a particular sense of reality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to provide evidence on the relevance of the feedback teachers receive in their professional practice. More specifically we study the relationship between observations that teachers have received from different agents (school principals, other teachers, etc.) and the teaching procedures and practices they use in the classroom. We carried out this analysis based on the 2013 TALIS Spanish teachers sample responses. The first result shows that, in this sample, 25% of teachers say they have never received from anyone any comments or evaluation of their work (feedback), a proportion that rises to nearly 30% in the case of public schools. Second, evidence indicates that teachers who receive feedback more frequently and by diversity of actors, develop more innovative practices focused on students' active learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an overview about the ICT applications in evaluation research. There isn't a balance of uses, or an analysis of its current impact, but rather seeks to make some remarks to serve as prospective. To this end, we analyze the use of ICT for different purposes: people assessment (students, teachers and other education stakeholders), program assessment and educational institutions and systems assessment. The conceptual position presented focuses on assessing the impact of ICT in research evaluation. We understand that the development of ICT is higher than their actual use, and requires thinking about the elements that we need to improve to produce ICT effective integration in these processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nowadays, University needs to assess the university teaching activity in a framework where new ways of learning are being carried out. ANECA offers a model and set of procedures that guide the activities of the university, without prejudice to the autonomy of it. Therefore, as the new settings are not being analyzed in depth, this paper makes a research proposal for assessment of university teaching in virtual learning environments, that includes four componentes: planning and content of the course, teacher's activity, interaction with peers and environment. These factors have been identified through the development of a causal model and its estimation using a structural equation analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]