Search

Increasingly, school principals face unique challenges to improve the educational quality of their schools. Given the vital role of educational leaders in this process, this study presents the case of a city with distinctive features due to its geographical location bordering Africa and Europe: Melilla, Spain. Based on a literature review and in-depth interviews with primary and secondary school principals, this study analyses the initial and continuing training, requirements, and procedures to become a school principal, as well as the motivations, skills, and knowledge required of educational leaders in principalship positions. The results reveal that the training school principals receive in educational leadership is often scarce and not very useful for addressing the realities they encounter in their schools. In addition, the interviewees highlight the multitude of administrative tasks they are required to perform, which often precludes them from engaging in pedagogical practices and exercising educational leadership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The development of students' digital skills is essential to access the labour market and interact with society, being especially important in disadvantaged socioeconomic contexts affected by the digital divide. Objectives: The investigation has two objectives. On the one hand, to study the integration of ICT in disadvantaged contexts and, on the other, to know the critical use that is made of them in schools as a source of educational change. Methods: In this research, eight international experts in education are interviewed on what they consider to be the best way of implementing new technologies in disadvantaged contexts to achieve educational improvement. A mixed methodology has been used, qualitative through semi‐structured interviews and quantitative through a text mining analysis of the interviews' transcripts with the R programming language. Results and Conclusions: The results show that the teaching staff is the key element. The curriculum, objectives and school director's help are also highlighted, as well as the collaboration of the students who have to be provided with the necessary digital resources. At the state level, greater funding and support from universities are needed to support research and the quality of teacher training. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In multicultural contexts, school principals and educators face unique challenges integrating disadvantaged and immigrant youth. We investigate how these leaders advocate, design and implement social justice pedagogies for inclusion. Drawing on an interdisciplinary literature and in-depth interviews with school principals in Melilla (Spain), we further explore the social justice ideologies and practices of leaders in culturally diverse, minority-majorityschools. The findings reveal that intercultural education and ICT both enhance the inclusion of students and families, transforming schools into more open, democratic, learning environments. However, scarce funding resources, exacerbated by Melilla's remote location from its Central Ministry of Education and the limited bargaining power of leaders, often truncate social justice initiatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While research about the significance of parent participation in school is expanding, research about the role of Parent Associations (PA)/Parent and Teacher Associations (PTA) in the integration and participation of immigrant families in schools is limited. This is still the case in Spain and the U.S. despite the continued growth of the immigrant population and that of a scholarship linking parental involvement in school with the improved educational outcomes of their children. This study explores the role of PA/PTAs leaders in the school integration and participation of immigrant families, many of whom are considered 'hard-to-reach.' The objectives are twofold: to contribute new insights with a description of immigrant families' participation in PA/PTAs in two different national contexts; and to bring new insights from the views of PA/PTAs leaders about how to engage and improve the participation of 'hard-to-reach', immigrant families in schools. We compare results derived from in-depth, semi-structured, face-to-face interviews with PA/PTAs leaders in 26 public schools in Granada and New York City. The study yields two main findings: the importance of immigrant families' active participation in the enrichment of schools; and the strategies used by PA/PTAs leaders in the participation and integration of parents in their children's schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The socio-educational integration of immigrant families is one of the pillars of multicultural, and multiethnic society and it generates opportunities for all. The study presented was conducted in a suburban neighborhood of strong immigrant reception in the city of Granada (Spain), and it seeks to compare the current legislative framework with the resources that immigrant families can find available to encourage an adequate incorporation to schools and their participation in the education of their children. A qualitative approached was used with interviews to immigrant families, field observations and a literature review. The results highlight a suitable host despite the difficulties found. However, regarding the educational context, it is necessary to improve the information for parents to avoid exclusion within the school. Also a greater involvement and commitment of teachers and families within parents and teachers associations as main organizations for family participation is needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current education needs to adapt to the changes that take place and have taken place in society. In this way teachers face different challenges in order to achieve quality in education according to current needs. Teaching-learning processes where the student is the protagonist, creating spaces for dialogue where the active role of students in society promotes the opening of schools to its context, the appropriate use of information and communication technology and the attention to cultural diversity of students, are some of the tasks that the teacher responds today and on which we reflect in this paper. For this purpose the improvement of initial and lifelong training of teachers at all educational levels is needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of prosocial competencies in university students can be attained through the implementation of Service-Learning (S-L) methodology by carrying out a community service to groups of foreign unaccompanied minors (FUM). Physical Education Teacher Education (PETE) and Sport Science (SS) students involved in an S-L experience normally develop a critical way of thinking as they face social conflicts. Besides, social justice education and S-L attempt to help in favour of social inclusion of vulnerable groups. This study aims to assess the development of prosocial competencies in PETE and SS students taking a Dual Degree Program in Physical Activity (PA) and SS and Primary Education. This is done through S-L methodology, by carrying out a community service to groups of FUM. A total of 21 male and 9 female PETE and SS students participated in this study. The methodology used is of a qualitative nature. Reflective diary is used as an instrument for data collection, and content analysis as an information analysis technique. It has been observed an improvement in the prosocial competencies of the PETE and SS students involved in the S-L experience. The competencies with the greatest number of references and, therefore, those with a greater presence in their testimonies, include organisation, proactivity and optimism, self-esteem, and tolerance and respect. The S-L is capable of undertaking a transformative role which enables PETE and SS students to acquire prosocial competencies in contexts relating to cultural diversity and social justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last decade, research on "sexting" has undergone an exponential increase, giving rise to the publication of numerous studies clarifying its meaning, offering information of educational value, and favoring a good use of technology to prevent problems caused by this exchange of sexual information. The aim of this article was to analyze the production, performance, impact, and content of scientific articles evaluating the "sexting" thesaurus (title, abstract, and/or keywords) between 2009 and September 2019. Articles were sourced from two internationally recognized databases: Scopus and Web of Science. A scientometric study was then carried out on a sample of 641 articles that met the established inclusion criteria. The main findings indicate that "sexting" is a very recent research focus, but one in full growth phase, with scientific production related to the topic likely to double over the next few years. Although "sexting" has been researched worldwide, the scientific production of the US and American authors is the most notable. There were also some differences between the Scopus and Web of Science databases, mainly in the volume of production and the trend. However, the studies do show a common research line, "cyberbullying," and a common target population: adolescents. Therefore, the content analysis reveals that research on "sexting" is mostly carried out with adolescents and takes into consideration other themes such as cyberbullying, dating violence, and sexuality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the turning point of education theory beyond modernity (Mo) and postmodernity (PoMo) era. The need for subaltern-liquid knowledges in education to be critical and reflective of both imperial global designs and anti-colonial nationalist strategies is tackled. The significance of education to be re-oriented towards a flexible curriculum which attends to diversity and promote the integral development of people in their learning is also explored.

This article describes the positive influence of leadership in the processes of institutional self-evaluation in an organization that seeks to raise a diagnosis of participatory management, promoting the collaboration of all agents involved, whose goal is to correct the weaknesses and needs detected and then make collegial and distributed decisions. and agreed on for the benefit of people and therefore the organization. To achieve participatory management, it is necessary that the institution has a self-assessment methodology and, through qualitative and quantitative techniques, it is possible to implement it periodically, according to the processes of strategic planning and accreditation that each organization is obtaining. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current discussions about education suggest that a transformative pedagogy that goes beyond the acquisition of knowledge and skills is needed. However, there is no agreement as to the inputs needed for a correct development of the educational model. In this sense, we can identify the presence of two different approaches to human and social capital which embody distinct educational worldviews. On the one hand, the 'Marketable Human Capital' or 'Personal Culture' approach, and on the other hand, the 'Non-Marketable Human Capital' or 'Civic Culture' approach. The first, which is linked to mainstream economic theory, sees education as any stock of knowledge that contributes to an improvement in the productivity of the worker and individual well-being. The second, which is rooted in the Mediterranean tradition of political thought, highlights the role of civic virtues, reciprocity, and public action within the educational process and its influence on public happiness. In this article, we analyse these connections in order to introduce the eighteenth-century Mediterranean tradition of economic thought into discussions about human and social capital theories and the role of education in them. Focusing on education through these prisms, national and international agendas must be reoriented towards the integral development of people to include broader global debates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current discussions about education suggest that a transformative pedagogy that goes beyond the acquisition of knowledge and skills is needed. However, there is no agreement as to the inputs needed for a correct development of the educational model. In this sense, we can identify the presence of two different approaches to human and social capital which embody distinct educational worldviews. On the one hand, the ‘Marketable Human Capital’ or ‘Personal Culture’ approach, and on the other hand, the ‘Non-Marketable Human Capital’ or ‘Civic Culture’ approach. The first, which is linked to mainstream economic theory, sees education as any stock of knowledge that contributes to an improvement in the productivity of the worker and individual well-being. The second, which is rooted in the Mediterranean tradition of political thought, highlights the role of civic virtues, reciprocity, and public action within the educational process and its influence on public happiness. In this article, we analyse these connections in order to introduce the eighteenth-century Mediterranean tradition of economic thought into discussions about human and social capital theories and the role of education in them. Focusing on education through these prisms, national and international agendas must be reoriented towards the integral development of people to include broader global debates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From a comparative intergenerational analysis, this article examines the use of ICTs in the workplace by working-age Spaniards. To do so, it uses the 2012 PIAAC survey administered to 6,055 Spaniards on the variables related to the use of ICTs in the workplace. Descriptive and inferential analyses were carried out, taking the categories of digital immigrant and digital native as the reference, and adding another variable: pre-digital immigrant. Broadly speaking, the results show that ‘pre-digital immigrants’ (who started to use ICTs late) use ICTs less at work compared to ‘digital immigrants’ (who started to use ICTs via an adaptation process that began in their early or mid-adulthood), although they use them more than ‘digital natives’ (who started to use ICTs at a very young age). Finally, we discuss the implications of the results considering today’s society, and we offer potential avenues of future research. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]