Comparison of multiple intelligences in children from schools with different pedagogical models

The purpose of this research was to apply a test that measures different multiple intelligences in children from two different elementary schools to determine whether there are differences between the Academicist Pedagogical Model (traditional approach) established by the Costa Rican Ministry of Public Education and the Cognitive Pedagogical Model (MPC) (constructivist approach). A total of 29 boys and 20 girls with ages 8 to 12 from two different public schools in Heredia (Laboratorio School and San Isidro School) participated in this study. The instrument used was a Multiple Intelligences Test for school age children (Vega, 2006), which consists of 15 items subdivided in seven categories: linguistic, logical-mathematical, visual, kinaesthetic, musical, interpersonal, and intrapersonal. Descriptive and inferential statistics (Two-Way ANOVA) were used for the analysis of data.  Significant differences were found in linguistic intelligence (F:9.47; p < 0.01) between the MPC school (3.24±1.24 points) and the academicist school (2.31±1.10 points).  Differences were also found between sex (F:5.26; p< 0.05), for girls (3.25±1.02 points) and boys (2.52±1.30 points). In addition, the musical intelligence showed significant statistical differences between sexes (F: 7.97; p < 0.05).  In conclusion, the learning pedagogical models in Costa Rican public schools must be updated based on the new learning trends.

Modelos, lenguajes y abstracción (ING)

Every construction process (whatever buildings, machines, software, etc.) requires first to make a model of the artifact that is going to be built. This model should be based on a paradigm or meta-model, which defines the basic modeling elements: which real world concepts can be represented, which relationships can be established among them, and son on. There also should be a language to represent, manipulate and think about that model. Usually this model should be redefined at various levels of abstraction. So both, the paradigm an the language, must have abstraction capacity. In this paper I characterize the relationships that exist between these concepts: model, language and abstraction. I also analyze some historical models, like the relational model for databases, the imperative programming model and the object oriented model. Finally, I remark the need to teach that model-driven approach to students, and even go further to higher level models, like component models o business models.