Victorian Fairy Tales to develop the speaking skill for children of sixth level of basic education at Maria Auxiliadora High School

Este trabajo de investigación analiza los resultados de un estudio realizado en el Colegio Privado María Auxiliadora en la ciudad de Cuenca, en el uso de la narración como una estrategia comunicativa para mejorar la habilidad de hablar Inglés de los estudiantes de Inglés como lengua extranjera. En este trabajo se intentará demostrar que la narración es un método pedagógico adecuado para desarrollar las habilidades de hablar en estudiantes de sexto nivel que están inscritos en las clases de inglés como lengua extranjera. Los resultados significativos se reportan usando una Rúbrica dos veces: antes del proceso y después del mismo. La prueba estadística utilizada fue de Wilcoxon y el valor crítico fue 0,05. Los resultados mostraron una mejora en todos los cinco componentes diferentes de la rúbrica. La conclusión más importante es que los cuentos de hadas victorianos pueden ser incluidos dentro de la clase y que motiva a hablar el idioma Inglés.

A New Concept of Interprofessional Education in Planning Programmes: Reflections on Healthy Urban Planning Project

Although widely debated, some of the defining professional characteristics of planners appear to be competencies in coordination , mediation and multidisciplinary working. Despite this, there is little pedagogical reflection on how interprofessional skills are promoted in planning programmes. This paper reflects on the experience of bringing together undergraduate students from medicine and planning to explore the concept of Healthy Urban Planning in a real life context of an urban motorway extension. This reveals a number of unexpected outcomes of such collaboration and points to the value of promoting interprofessional education, both as a way of increasing interest in some of the key challenges now facing society and in order to induce greater professional reflection amongst our students.

The Effectiveness of Outdoor Education on Environmental Learning, Appreciation, and Activism

The main objective of this research was to determine the effectiveness of outdoor education on student knowledge retention, appreciation for nature, and environmental activism in a college level course on south Florida ecology. Six class sections were given quizzes on four course topics either post-lecture or post-field trip. Students were also given pre-course and post-course opinion surveys. Although mean quiz scores for the post-field trip were higher than for the post-lecture, statistical analysis determined that there was no significant difference in quiz scores for location taken (post-lecture or post-field trip). Survey results show a correlation between knowledge of environmental issues and environmental activism. Even though student survey responses point to outdoor education and field trips being the most effective method of learning and influential on appreciation for nature, the quiz scores do not reflect such.

Globalization and the Public Provision of Higher Education: Empirical Evidence from Selected Countries

This research study was designed to examine the relationship between globalization as measured by the KOF index, its related forces (economic, political, cultural and technological) and the public provision of higher education. This study is important since globalization is increasingly being associated with changes in critical aspects of higher education. The public provision of education was measured by government expenditure and educational outcomes; that is participation, gender equity and attainment. The study utilized a non-experimental quantitative research design. Data collected from secondary sources for 139 selected countries was analyzed. The countries were geographically distributed and included both developed and developing countries. The choice of countries for inclusion in the study was based on data availability. The data, which was sourced from international organizations such as the United Nations and the World Bank, were examined for different time periods using five year averages. The period covered was 1970 to 2009. The relationship between globalization and the higher education variables was examined using cross sectional regression analysis while controlling for economic, political and demographic factors. The major findings of the study are as follows. For the two spending models, only one revealed a significant relationship between globalization and education with the R2 s ranging from .222 to .448 over the period. This relationship was however negative indicating that as globalization increased, spending on higher education declined. However, for the education outcomes models, this relationship was not significant. For the sub-indices of globalization, only the political dimension showed significance as shown in the spending model. Political globalization was significant for six periods with R2 s ranging from .31 to .52. The study concluded that the results are mixed for both the spending and outcome models. It also found no robust effects of globalization on government education provision. This finding is not surprising given the existing literature which sees mixed results on the social impact of globalization.

Student’s Perceptions of the Community Impact of Social Education Degree Internship

Evaluating the impact of an intervention is a very important stage in social educators’ practice, since it allows them to improve the quality of socio-educational projects. The aim of this study is to rethink the internship of the social education degree through students’ perceptions about the impact of their projects in the community. This is a qualitative and exploratory study using documental analysis of 50 internship final reports of a social education degree from a Portuguese polytechnic higher education institution and whose emerging categorical content analysis was performed with NVivo software. The analysis revealed four distinct indicators linked to the project (accomplished objectives, evaluation of activities, sustainability and innovation), the target group (participation, motivation and benefits), the institution (satisfaction of collaborators, improved dynamic, routines and space enhancements), and the students (relational, reflexive and planning skills; satisfaction). It also revealed instruments, feedback, observation, document analysis and case reports as means of verification. The use of indicators related to the project’s objectives, the changes perceived from the benefits in the target-group and in the institution, and the interveners’ level of satisfaction should be noted as positive. Given the inconsistency in the use of formal assessment instruments, the results show the need to strengthen students’ mobilisation of project assessment skills in order to improve the quality of undergraduate education.

The Integration of Foreign Students in the Portuguese School of the 1st Cycle of Basic Education: the Case of a School Grouping in the Municipality of Viseu

The present study aims to understand whether the foreign students who have different nationalities but the Portuguese are integrated into the school of the 1st Cycle of Basic Education. With this purpose, a descriptive and phenomenological research was conducted, making use of documental analysis, as well as semi-structured interviews and sociometric tests. These two data collecting tools were applied to students attending from the 1st to the 4th school years, in three 1st Cycle of Basic Education schools, within a school grouping in Viseu. The data obtained through the interviews allow us to conclude that foreign students, in general, feel integrated both in the school and in the class they belong to. However, the analysis of the results of the sociometric tests reveals other data, allowing us to conclude that one of the students is neither integrated in the school, nor in the class he is part of.

When theories become practice—a metaphorical analysis of adult-education school-leaders’ talk

Marketization has changed the education system. If we say that education is a market, this transforms the understanding of education and influences how people act. In this paper, adult-education school-leaders’ talk is analysed and seven metaphors for education are found: education as administration, market, matching, democracy, policy work, integration and learning. Exploring empirical metaphors provides a rich illustration of coinciding meanings. In line with studies on policy texts, economic metaphors are found to dominate. This should be understood not only as representing liberal ideology, as is often discussed in analyses of policy papers, but also as representing economic theory. In other words, contemporary adult education can be understood as driven by economic theories. The difference and relation between ideology and theory should be further examined since they have an impact on our society and on our everyday lives.

The Acknowledgment of the Education in the Construction of the School Project

This article collects the main ideas constructed during a research process that allowed an approach to the study of the construction of school identities. The approach undertaken starts off not only from an analysis of the way in which the identities that converge in the dynamics of an educational institution and their relationship with the national educational proposal are constructed and articulated, but also the identification, starting from that analysis, of some possible lines of action on the formation of education professionals.