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This work presents a literature review of research journals in science teaching in Latin America and the Caribbean with the aim of identifying, describing and characterizing the main lines of research. The documentary basis is made up of 15 scientific journals and 490 papers that report work in educational research. From the abstracts of the papers it was possible to identify the problems addressed, which were grouped into five dimensions: learning science, teaching science, the science curriculum, science teachers and students of science teaching. The results show that teaching and learning science is the main problem addressed by most studies conducted in Latin America and the Caribbean. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is part of a larger research study; AECID'S Project A/024180/09, and pertains to an assessment of the autonomy of schools in Chile. The aim of this paper is to examine the potential for institutional development in schools in the Fifth Region of Valparaiso, Chile, by analyzing the discourses of classroom teachers and management teams from a qualitative perspective. To this end, we conducted a descriptive study with a qualitative design in five schools in the region of Valparaíso. Six focus groups were formed to collect the data, which was subsequently analyzed using discourse analysis. The results showed consensus regarding the strengths and weaknesses of the teaching-learning processes; organizational strengthening and openness toward the school's educational community. The results obtained are relevant to the national educational field and for guiding future intervention by government authorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Competencies have been the subject of considerable discussion in pedagogy, particularly in relation to the mandate of the education system. In the last decade, a different view has emerged, from a capability and human development approach. On the one hand, this paper seeks to question the sense of a competency-based approach to education and, on the other hand, present the capability approach as an opportunity to establish a humanistic and alternative view of education. Thus, by using the hermeneutic arc as a methodological approach -- specifically the ‚explaining' and ‚understanding' processes described by Ricœur -- a critical conceptualization of competencies is described in order to show that people are subjects of capabilities rather than competencies. It is concluded that any educational endeavor that pursues human development must be firmly rooted in the realization of people as subjects-agents of capabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the value of schooling for students of elite high schools in Mexico City. The study begins by documenting the fact that these students' academic performance is poor in comparison to students of similar socio-economic status in other countries, and on the basis of their results in standardized national tests. Clearly, such unsatisfactory academic performance by these students, who attend private institutions with a wealth of resources, cannot be attributed to financial hardship and a resulting lack of educational opportunities. This work explores the hypothesis that, for young students from this social circle -- who enjoy vast inherited wealth -- educational merit and talent do not play a key role in their conception of life or professional development. To support this hypothesis, this study explores the value placed on schooling both by parents and the directors of elite private schools. [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]

This paper seeks to construct a particular approach to human research ethics with respect to research practices carried out by teacher trainers and their students in communities in Mexico and Bolivia. It presents the theoretical elements of research ethics and the categories generated on the basis of answers from 79 teacher trainers to an open question on protective factors that should be considered with regard to study participants. The question is part of a qualitative questionnaire administered between March and June 2015. The study concludes that when asked about protective factors, teachers are able to clearly state key aspects of research ethics, although their core focus is on training new basiclevel education teachers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to describe and comprehend the motivations of teacher-researchers in two public state universities in Mexico to participate in knowledge and technology transfer processes. Ten subjects interested in knowledge transfer processes were considered for this study; in-depth interviews were conducted to understand their readiness to produce and transfer knowledge. The results reveal that subjects develop a disposition and the skills to seek changes in social reality based on values such as altruism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the teaching practices and beliefs of university teachers in the city of Temuco in Chile. To that effect, twelve university teachers working with fourth and fifth-level students in a health degree were asked open-ended questions. Data analysis followed the principles of grounded theory (GT) methodology. Open coding was used for the analysis, which produced the category 'Teaching practices and beliefs' and four sub-categories: 1) educational planning, 2) teaching methodology, 3) an epistemological model of teaching, and 4) the micro-curriculum. The results of the study show that, as part of their teaching beliefs, teachers place value on practices that make it easier for students to participate and be active in class, but which are also inflexible and restricted by aspects such as planning and previously established programs. Consequently, they need to examine the basis of their beliefs and pedagogical knowledge more thoroughly to inject new meaning into their work in the classroom, thus improving education at this level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work offers an analysis of the development of the concept of educational justice in Mexico from the mid 1970s to the first decade of the 21st century. Based on a perspective underpinned by conceptual history and hypotheses on the externalization of the compared education approach, this paper highlights a reemergence and sedimentation of the concept of educational justice during the 1990s, both in academia and official discourse. This is explained in part by growing social and educational inequalities and the externalization of national discourse, which have fostered an original hybridization that points towards a renewal of optimism in schools, and the possibility of more just - or simply less unjust - societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to describe the development of children's understanding of metaphors and the type of part-whole relationships they are capable of establishing when solving puzzles. The study was carried out with 30 students from a federal elementary school in the state of Querétaro, Mexico: 10 second-year students, 10 fourth-year students and 10 sixth-year students. They were asked to answer four metaphorical puzzles and explain what information they had taken into account to arrive at their answers. The results show that: a) children's understanding of metaphors increases with their school year, and b) participants from higher years tend to establish more comprehensive and coherent part-whole relationships than students from lower years, which allows them to better understand metaphors in puzzles. The results confirm findings by Calderón (2012) and Calderón, Vernon and Carrillo (2012). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Secondary education is currently the subject of many transformations, policies and debates. These call into question its historical function, the organization of its curriculum, teachers' work, and the way it gives meaning to adolescents' academic experience. This paper offers the results of a research project that sought to determine how teachers perceive these changes, the problems they identify, and how their professional identities may be repositioned as a result. With that in mind, the study considered the inclusion processes for new adolescents and ICT integration in secondary schools, and analyzes the challenges in teacher training and professional development. The study was carried out from a sociocritical perspective, and applied extended information collection methods and a semi-structured questionnaire. The open-ended questions were systematized with the software Atlas.ti for qualitative data analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers the results of an analysis of the level of mathematical anxiety, understood to mean a feeling of discomfort experienced when someone is required to take mathematics classes, as displayed in students of secondary education in Costa Rica. The study was performed with a sample of 3,725 students in public secondary education in Costa Rica in 2013. The results show statistically significant differences between the sexes in the level of mathematical anxiety, with female students experiencing moderately higher anxiety levels. Differences in anxiety levels are also determined by the student's educational level, with significant differences found between third-cycle students (7th, 8th and 9th grades) and diversified education students (10th and 11th grades); the latter displayed moderately higher anxiety levels. Nonetheless, the study concludes that despite the differences observed, only 22.4% of students show high or very high levels of mathematical anxiety. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a descriptive study of two topics: 1) the correspondence between conceptions on co-teaching and the teaching practices of teachers at the School of Education in a private university in Lima; 2) the conditions that favor and restrict co-teaching, from the teachers' perspective. Through interviews and documentary analysis, the idea of co-teaching as "team teaching" was found to be dominant, even though in practice, autonomy was favored, and teachers are beginning to use a combination of the "station teaching" and "one teach, one drift" models. The courses praised most highly by students were one course developed as "team teaching" and two developed with different degrees of autonomy. The main facilitating factors were personal ones; the main restricting factors were students' ability and aspects relating to management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to analyze first drafts of a coaching service to schools (SATE, for its acronym in Spanish) in the context of current educational reform in Mexico. To this end all legal documents and various program documents that have been released throughout 2013 and 2014 relating to basic education were analyzed. The paper is organized in three sections. The history of this type of service in Mexico is presented first; the second section includes information on the SATE as included in the legal documents of the current educational policy. In a third section some comments on what have to be taken into account for the proper implementation of a service of this nature are made. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

European education policy is based on the principle of subsidiarity on common goals for the year 2020 among the member countries of the European Union. This article explores the educational context in Spain and the method used to achieve the European objectives. Currently we are living in a system of political decentralization and have experienced important legislative changes in recent years. Consequently, through a documentary analysis of the reports and papers produced by the Ministry of Education, the proposals for the Educational and Social Covenant of 2010 and Territorial Cooperation Programs, we identified the commitments that the Spanish government has undertaken to work in conjunction with the European objectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents advances in understanding the influence of Mexican education on the perceptions of the adult population regarding their health. The analysis forms part of the OECD conceptual model for understanding the connections between education and social—but not economic—outcomes. Data from the 2006 National Survey on Health and Nutrition is employed to build a logistic model. The study confirmed the idea that people tend to feel healthier as their educational level rises, regardless of their economic condition, ethnicity, age, gender or whether they reside in a rural or urban area. The findings also showed that education is the single most positive influence on the perception of feeling healthy, more so even than economic situation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies educational inequality in Mexico, examining educational differences between the country's states. To carry out this analysis, an adaptation of the statistical measure known as the Gini coefficient was used. The results show marked differences between Mexican states with regard to education. There are large inequality gaps between the states in Mexico that have persisted over time despite the fact that the data indicate that education has become more equal in all of the country's states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to promote teacher reflection on the use of discursive strategies. Four biology professors participated in the study; content analysis was used to categorize each professor's reflection on his or her teaching practice. First, we found it necessary for the four teachers to understand the student's learning-related interests as well as the intention of self-recognition and the monitoring of their own practice. Secondly, we found that the reflection of three of the four professors concerned the contextual deficiencies of the classroom, their questioning of the instrument in relation to their practice and, lastly, their self-justification for not using some strategies, promoting discursive changes in their teaching practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to present an experiment of mixed evaluation (summative/formative) of questions formulated by students in a distance-education environment carried out in the Total Quality Management course in the B.S. degree in Industrial Engineering offered by Mexican public universities. Questions generated by students were evaluated using a specially-designed quantitative tool: Matrix Observation of four criteria with binary scoring. The experiment showed: (1) how is it possible to enrich the evaluation process, and formalize students' skills hardly recognizable with traditional forms of assessment; and (2) how the teacher-student interaction can be increased significantly by the technique mixed evaluation of questions in reverse, i.e. by the students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is an attempt to offer a diagnosis of the magnitude and characteristics of educational segmentation, through social inequality in access to educational resources in both public and private education. It shows how children and adolescents in the same educational level have unequal access to resources (rights) according to their socioeconomic status. Taken as an indicator of learning segmentation is the educational offer to which children and adolescents have access in primary and secondary school, aspects promoted in the National Education Law (Law No. 26,206). As well, we will explore social representations concerning the quality of education in public and private schools based on the evaluation made by parents and/or guardians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper inquires if the school supervision is in decadence. Dr. Waite responds that the answer will depend on which perspective you look at it. Dr. Waite suggests taking in consideration three elements that are related: the field itself, the expert in the field (the professor, the theorist, the student and the administrator), and the context. When these three elements are revised, it emphasizes that there is not a consensus about the field of supervision, but there are coincidences related to its importance and that it is related to the improvement of the practice of the students in the school for their benefit. Dr. Waite suggests that the practice on this field is not always in harmony with what the theorists affirm. When referring to the supervisor or the skilled person, the author indicates that his or her perspective depends on his or her epistemological believes or in the way he or she conceives the learning; that is why supervision can be understood in different ways. About the context, Waite suggests that there have to be taken in consideration the social or external forces that influent the people and the society, because through them the education is affected. Dr. Waite concludes that the way to understand the supervision depends on the performer's perspective. He responds to the initial question saying that the supervision authorities, the knowledge on this field, the performers, and its practice, are maybe spread but not extinct because the supervision will always be part of the great enterprise that we called education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]