Individual returns to education in the Spanish tourism sector during the economic crisis

This paper analyses individual returns to education in the Spanish tourism sector. The results, which are robust to different specifications of Mincer earnings regressions, show that the earnings returns to schooling for tourism workers are only half those for all other sectors, and that the difference in returns between these two groups has increased significantly during the economic crisis. This has happened at a time when the earnings range between those with lower and higher qualifications has narrowed in tourism while it has remained stable in other sectors, and when tourism has been capable of retaining most of its workforce while the rest of the economy has experienced a sharp decrease in employment.

La migración residencial de noreuropeos en España

El proceso de unificación europea ha facilitado la aparición de nuevos flujos migratorios entre los distintos Estados. Uno muy significativo lo forman los noreuropeos (británicos y alemanes, principalmente) que se trasladan a los países mediterráneos. En este artículo se analizan los problemas que enfrentan los inmigrantes residenciales noreuropeos en el sur de España a la hora de establecer vínculos con la sociedad española. Con este fin, se lleva a cabo un estudio en el municipio de San Miguel de Salinas, ubicado en el sudeste del país. La perspectiva metodológica articula la investigación cuantitativa con la cualitativa. Los hallazgos obtenidos muestran cómo la barrera idiomática esconde en realidad un entramado de relaciones entre aspectos socioespaciales, políticos y económicos. Se configura así un sistema que dificulta el establecimiento de interacciones entre los residentes españoles y los noreuropeos, generando además procesos de fragmentación social.

Perspectivas sobre educación en valores en tiempos de crisis

En medio de la actual crisis económica mundial, todas las instituciones de la sociedad están afectadas por la crisis moral, de manera que existe una evidente y preocupante contradicción entre ellas. Esta crisis moral implica la carencia de valores personales y ciudadanos, que afectan, significativamente, al desarrollo del individuo y a la convivencia social. Tratamos de verificar si hay indicios de ello en la realidad escolar con relación a la axiología curricular y su desarrollo. Para analizar la situación de la enseñanza-aprendizaje de los valores en la educación española, hemos aplicado una encuesta a 1320 profesores de educación secundaria, con el fin de averiguar los objetivos, los tipos de valores y las habilidades personales y sociales, que desarrollan en el aula. La situación nos indica que son necesarios nuevos enfoques de educación en valores, que se adapten a estos tiempos. La formación axiológica debe estar incorporada en todos los ámbitos del conocimiento y ha de ir a la par que la formación de la inteligencia. El binomio actividad intelectual-actividad moral ha de formar un todo insociable. En esta propuesta, reflexionamos en torno a la aplicación de un nuevo paradigma axiológico que se separe del racionalismo mecanicista, y que se oriente a una educación personal holística, sistemática, interdisciplinaria y transversal a todo el currículo educativo.

Controversy between curriculum design and curriculum development of online "highly specialized" education in the field of construction

Nowadays, on a global level, the Higher Education System has a complex and broad horizon of curricular tools to use in the teaching and learning process. In addition to these new educational instruments, full of possibilities, we face specific socio-economic conditions that affect in a significantly way the Curriculum Development in certain knowledge areas (areas traditionally built on a methodology based on a physical presence of students in the classroom). Some areas such as Restoration, Rehabilitation or Construction Pathologies, and the construction sector in general, require very defined and particular knowledge that only a small number of experts claim as specialized training. All these aspects condition the teaching methodology performed in a physical classroom at a university campus (the only option used until recent years) and made us consider the integration of online teaching in these areas too. The present work shows the teaching methodology used for the development of two online courses, where we offer distance learning for "highly specialized" formation in the Edification area (an area where traditionally there was only classroom training). At the beginning, both courses were designed by classroom training, but got a really small number of applications due to the specialized topic proposed. Later, we proposed a "Curriculum Redesign" of the contents, offering an online modality, which implied a significant demand both within and outside the university area. A notable feature of this educational experience is the great spectrum opened for attendees of both courses in the online version. This situation improved significantly the "Curriculum Development" for the student and implied an interesting new proposal on the offered contents and materials (what would have been really difficult to get in a face to face classroom). In conclusion, the absence of certain types of specialized contents in the academic university curricula makes essential to raise new methodologies to save the gap in this area through additional training courses as those analyzed in this paper. Thus, our experience opens a debate on the appropriateness of implementing online training in relation to the face to face training in constructive content subjects and, especially, presents a new scheme, not without controversy, for the curriculum design.