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Europe has introduced an institutional strategy in the University to move from an educational model, focused on teaching, to another, focused on learning, applying the necessity of evaluation in order to improve academic performance. This technique analyzes the evaluation system's effect, based on the development of different activities, which stand out a teaching innovation technique --named one minute paper-- from the academic result trough probit and tobit models. Results show that students satisfactorily participate in all the activities, which have a positive influence on the probability to pass the subject on the first official summon and on the obtain grade. One minute paper demonstrated its utility in order to improve the academic results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Feedback on teaching practices is an essential part of teachers' professional development. The objective of this paper is to evaluate the impact of the use of rubrics to improve the quality of feedback on teachers' performance in the classroom. The study sample comprised 32 participants randomly assigned to an experimental or a control group. The experimental group worked together to design their rubric to support and give feedback on teacher performance in the classroom, while the control group was assigned a standardized rubric. The results point to significant differences in the quality of feedback in favor of the experimental group, whose feedback was more formative and offered greater guidance. The research concludes that rubrics, providing direction for reflection on teaching practice and promoting teachers' professional development and a transformation of the teaching-learning process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the results of a comparative study that seeks to identify conceptions of the importance of four types of formal content in history teaching (periods of history, cross-cutting themes in history, history of places, and national historical processes) among a group of Colombian (M = 764) and Spanish (N = 648) students in the last year of compulsory education in the cities of Bogotá and Murcia, respectively. A descriptive approach was followed based on a closed-ended questionnaire relating to historical consciousness, with item responses measured on a Likert scale. The results support the idea that the interest shown by students in the formal content proposed is an indicator that calls for a critical review of the structure and organization of history curricula in the two contexts studied. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents the representations that future elementary school teachers have in a University of Ñuble region for the family and parental roles assigned to them in education. In line with the objective, a comprehensive interpretive study using qualitative methodology is developed. Among the most important findings we found that roles that subjects assign families are located in two clearly defined dimensions; on one hand, support on the educational field through the completion school duties and, secondly, the inculcation of habits that facilitate the establishment of a classroom climate in favor of learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the different solutions proposed by a group of 15 mathematics teachers to a routine arithmetic problem, with the aim of identifying the contribution provided by multiplesolution tasks in the training and continuing education of teachers. The theoretical background of this work is based on the identification and discussion of solution routes to strengthen teachers' knowledge of mathematics and didactics, in addition to promoting a critical approach to their professional practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a general analysis of science teaching and learning and scientific research in elementary schools in Mexico. A standardized questionnaire was given to 1,559 students, and interviews were carried out with 74 teachers and 35 principals from 35 public and private elementary schools in 14 cities across the country. The questionnaire and interviews encompassed both the teaching of natural sciences and scientific inquiry in other subjects. The results point to an outlook that is both encouraging and demanding: encouraging because students show a positive attitude and a favorable view of science, and teachers and principals show an interest in teaching research; but also demanding because some areas were identified that needed strengthening, such as the importance of cross-disciplinary research teaching, the suitability of teaching and learning activities, the use and incorporation of informal science education activities and education management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the basic requirements for education in the future is to prepare learners for participation in a network, because in the information society knowledge will be the most critical resource for social and economic development. This paper addresses how the project-based learning was designed and then implemented in a course for graduation on computer teaching at Universidad Nacional del Centro at Argentina. The focus of the course was to engage students to produce projects that were authentic, meaningful, and intended for future teaching and professional use. Interaction has also been taken into consideration as two types of interactivity in computer-mediated learning, individual interaction (interaction with content) and social or interpersonal interaction. This paper describes the course design, provides an overview of the processes involved in developing the project-based learning activities, and reports the responses of students in the course. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although there is a wide variety of perspectives and models for the study of online education, most of these focus on the analysis of the verbal aspects of such learning, while very few consider the relationship between speech and elements of a different nature, such as images and hypermediality. In a previous article we presented a proposal for a comprehensive semiotic analysis of virtual learning environments that more recently has been developed and tested for the study of different online training courses without instructional intervention. In this paper we use this same proposal to analyze online learning environments in the framework of courses with instructional intervention. One of the main observations in relation to this type of analyses is that the organizational aspects of the courses are found to be related to the way in which the input elements for the teaching and learning process are constructed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article attempts to show why Varela (1995) bases his theory on the vision of ethics and the development of the virtuous person established by Meng Tzu (Mencius)—a Confucian who lived around the fourth century—in order to determine what is meant by a competent person, implicitly furnishing a promising conceptualization of competence. This paper aims to identify the aspects of Varela's theory that approximate or differ from the positions of some authors who have studied issues related to learning, namely Piaget (1986) and Freire (1987), as well as in relation to the author's own doctoral thesis on what constitutes competencies and how they are developed (Silva, 2004). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mexico's business structure has been characterized by the presence of microenterprises, particularly those averaging two workers, representing 65% of establishments in 2008 and 18% of employment. This makes them important for equity and welfare improvement of their members. This paper analyzes the performance of a group of 227 microenterprises in the state of Baja California, by the use of a practical application of the concept of learning curve arranged to incorporate returns to scale. The results indicate that in 48% of cases there is evidence of learning processes and 58% exhibited increasing returns to scale. This allows evaluating the development potential of these microenterprises and the design and implementation of proactive programs that encourage their learning and consolidation in the market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The manner in which knowledge is approached seems to be an issue that inhibits our possibility to change in order to confront uncertainty and complexity, the essential signs of these times. In this respect the following question arises: In complex and uncertain contexts in which knowledge is rapidly being discarded, what demands will the new ways of learning establish, that will be required for the emerging paradigms of complex science? The answers to these questions lead us towards a gnoseology of cognoconscious dialogic unlearning. In this paper the activation of cognoconscious subjects as persons capable of learning to unlearn because they have a dialogic type of conscience, is proposed. That is to say, persons capable of realizing the path opposing the route traveled in the process of building their own reality, because they are conscious of themselves, the other and the whole at the same time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]