Proyectos empresariales: una alternativa curricular con enfoque en competencias para la formación profesional en turismo

El presente trabajo se centra en la justificación de proyectos empresariales como parte curricular de la formación profesional para el turismo, puesto que, aunque existe de alguna manera la práctica de este tipo de ideas, se carece del planteamiento académico que lo sustente. Por lo tanto, se propone revelar si una empresa puede ser parte de un currículo con enfoque en competencias y demostrar que puede ser planificada, ejecutada y evaluada de forma académica, así como generar valiosos beneficios para la formación y el aprendizaje. El objetivo general de este trabajo es diseñar una estructura curricular para la formación en turismo, que aplique el enfoque en competencias y destaque la creación de proyectos empresariales. Los objetivos específicos son: analizar y proponer los aspectos teóricos en la formación profesional por competencias para el sector turismo, diseñar los principales componentes curriculares con enfoque en competencias para la formación profesional en turismo y establecer la estructura curricular por competencias en la cual se identifique la ubicación de los proyectos empresariales. Es una investigación de carácter descriptivo y propositivo, que se ha basado principalmente en fuentes secundarias como la revisión de libros, revistas especializadas y sitios web, con cuya información se procedió a recopilar datos y realizar interpretaciones que ayudaron a crear la propuesta. Las fuentes consultadas, en su mayoría de origen ecuatoriano, colombiano, mexicano y español, se relacionan con los conceptos de educación superior, enfoque en competencias y gestión. A través del análisis de la formación profesional en turismo, el diseño de componentes curriculares y la identificación de los proyectos empresariales en la estructura curricular, se demuestra que la relación entre enfoque por competencias y educación turística, resulta una combinación interesante y coherente que puede y debe existir en la formación profesional a nivel universitario. Esta relación ayuda a replantear o crear nuevas y efectivas ofertas educativas para el turismo, además de identificar que los proyectos empresariales pueden convertirse no solo en valiosos elementos curriculares, sino en importantes laboratorios de aporte a la academia y al sector turismo.

La concepción de la interculturalidad en el proyecto de turismo comunitario San Clemente

El trabajo de investigación presenta un estudio de caso del proyecto de turismo comunitario en San Clemente (Imbabura-Ecuador). Las reflexiones versan sobre el eje de la interculturalidad crítica y se operativizan a partir de las siguientes categorías: fortalecimiento organizativo comunal, gestión del territorio, revitalización cultural y economía solidaria. Estas como aristas que permiten medir el impacto de este emprendimiento en la vida de comunidad luego de esta incursión de autogestión colectiva.

Cómo manejar la comunicación interna en un proceso de planeación estratégica. Caso: Ministerio de Turismo

La comunicación es una variable de toda organización que influye de diversa manera en todos sus procesos, sea que exista una gestión planificada de la misma o un manejo empírico. La finalidad del estudio es la de determinar el estado del manejo actual de la comunicación interna en el Ministerio de Turismo, y como interactúa con el proceso de planeación estratégica. La investigación partió de la recopilación bibliográfica para la construcción del marco teórico. Se llevó a cabo una investigación de campo descriptiva, bajo un enfoque cualitativo y cuantitativo. Las técnicas utilizadas fueron la entrevista y la encuesta, esta última aplicada a una muestra de 153 servidores públicos de una población total de 251 personas. Los resultados mostraron la prevalencia de una comunicación descendente con poca retroalimentación y dando al personal operativo poca participación en las decisiones organizacionales. Las encuestas también muestran que el Ministerio cuenta con diversos recursos para comunicación pero no todos son utilizados de forma frecuente o de forma eficiente. Se realizó una propuesta consistente en un cambio de modelo de comunicación, de uno lineal a uno circular, donde se incremente la retroalimentación a cada nivel, y se mejore la coordinación interna entre áreas. Se concluyó que, en el Ministerio de Turismo existe una gestión empírica de la comunicación interna, dándose relevancia únicamente a la comunicación externa lo que afecta a los procesos de planeación estratégica a disminuir la frecuencia y calidad de las comunicaciones entre los equipos de trabajo encargados de planificar, socializar y ejecutar las estrategias de la organización.

Brief and precarious lives: Infant mortality in contrasting sites from medieval and post-medieval England (AD 850-1859)

This study compares the infant mortality profiles of 128 infants from two urban and two rural cemetery sites in medieval England. The aim of this paper is to assess the impact of urbanization and industrialization in terms of endogenous or exogenous causes of death. In order to undertake this analysis, two different methods of estimating gestational age from long bone lengths were used: a traditional regression method and a Bayesian method. The regression method tended to produce more marked peaks at 38 weeks, while the Bayesian method produced a broader range of ages and were more comparable with the expected "natural" mortality profiles. At all the sites, neonatal mortality (28-40 weeks) outweighed post-neonatal mortality (41-48 weeks) with rural Raunds Furnells in Northamptonshire, showing the highest number of neonatal deaths and post-medieval Spitalfields, London, showing a greater proportion of deaths due to exogenous or environmental factors. Of the four sites under study, Wharram Percy in Yorkshire showed the most convincing "natural" infant mortality profile, suggesting the inclusion of all births (i.e., stillbirths and unbaptised infants).

The social life of ruins: sites of memory and the politics of a Zimbabwean periphery

This article explores conflicts over a series of ruins located within Zimbabwe's flagship National Park. The relics have long been regarded as sacred places by local African communities evicted from their vicinity, and have come to be seen as their ethnic heritage. Local intellectuals' promotion of this heritage was an important aspect of a defensive mobilization of cultural difference on the part of a marginalized minority group. I explore both indigenous and colonial ideas about the ruins, the different social movements with which they have been associated and the changing social life they have given the stone relics. Although African and European ideas sometimes came into violent confrontation - as in the context of colonial era evictions - there were also mutual influences in emergent ideas about tribe, heritage and history. The article engages with Pierre Nora's notion of 'sites of memory', which has usefully drawn attention to the way in which ideas of the past are rooted and reproduced in representations of particular places. But it criticizes Nora's tendency to romanticize pre-modern 'memory', suppress narrative and depoliticize traditional connections with the past. Thus, the article highlights the historicity of traditional means of relating to the past, highlighting the often bitter and divisive politics of traditional ritual, myth, kinship, descent and 'being first'. It also emphasizes the entanglement of modern and traditional ideas, inadequately captured by Nora's implied opposition between history and memory. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Effect of pH on the development of acidic sites in clayey and sandy loam Oxisol from the Cerrado Region, Brazil

Titration curves were determined for soil from horizon samples of a clayey and a sandy loam Oxisol by (a) adding NaOH to soil suspensions and (b) incubating moist soils with Ca(OH)(2). The organic fraction was primarily responsible for buffering in both soils. Humic acids were more important than fulvic acids in buffering against NaOH additions. With Ca(OH)(2), greater buffer capacities were found due to carboxyl sites, primarily on fulvic acids, becoming complexed with Ca2+ so that in the clay soil humic and fulvic acids were equally important as buffering components while fulvic acids were more important in the sandy loam soil. The buffer capacity of organic matter against Ca(OH)(2) additions was 1.1 mol(c) kg(-1) pH(-1). In the incubated soils, exchangeable cations were also determined and changes in the amounts of exchangeable and non-exchangeable Ca2+ acidity and effective cation exchange capacity were calculated. Up to half the added Ca2+ became complexed and was nonexchangeable. Aluminum complexed by organic matter appears to be an important buffering component, together with non exchangeable H+. With the increase of pH the dissociated sites from the carboxyl groups could complex Ca2+. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Estimating uncertainty in terrestrial critical loads and their exceedances at four sites in the UK

Critical loads are the basis for policies controlling emissions of acidic substances in Europe and elsewhere. They are assessed by several elaborate and ingenious models, each of which requires many parameters, and have to be applied on a spatially-distributed basis. Often the values of the input parameters are poorly known, calling into question the validity of the calculated critical loads. This paper attempts to quantify the uncertainty in the critical loads due to this "parameter uncertainty", using examples from the UK. Models used for calculating critical loads for deposition of acidity and nitrogen in forest and heathland ecosystems were tested at four contrasting sites. Uncertainty was assessed by Monte Carlo methods. Each input parameter or variable was assigned a value, range and distribution in an objective a fashion as possible. Each model was run 5000 times at each site using parameters sampled from these input distributions. Output distributions of various critical load parameters were calculated. The results were surprising. Confidence limits of the calculated critical loads were typically considerably narrower than those of most of the input parameters. This may be due to a "compensation of errors" mechanism. The range of possible critical load values at a given site is however rather wide, and the tails of the distributions are typically long. The deposition reductions required for a high level of confidence that the critical load is not exceeded are thus likely to be large. The implication for pollutant regulation is that requiring a high probability of non-exceedance is likely to carry high costs. The relative contribution of the input variables to critical load uncertainty varied from site to site: any input variable could be important, and thus it was not possible to identify variables as likely targets for research into narrowing uncertainties. Sites where a number of good measurements of input parameters were available had lower uncertainties, so use of in situ measurement could be a valuable way of reducing critical load uncertainty at particularly valuable or disputed sites. From a restricted number of samples, uncertainties in heathland critical loads appear comparable to those of coniferous forest, and nutrient nitrogen critical loads to those of acidity. It was important to include correlations between input variables in the Monte Carlo analysis, but choice of statistical distribution type was of lesser importance. Overall, the analysis provided objective support for the continued use of critical loads in policy development. (c) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.