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The paper by Palacios published in this journal issue, commenting our previous paper (Fernández, Álvarez, and Bravo, 2003) on the assessment of the long term outcome of children in residential child care, poses an interesting opportunity to debate not only the study methodology and research results, but also the very concept of residential care and the role of this kind of social services for child protection. The paper replies to issues raised by Palacios on: the limitations of our research, the generalizability of the results, the methodology employed, and the aims of residential care. Our reply poses the need for new methodological designs and the difficulty of finding cause-effect relationship in residential care, the use of a new terminology to overcome old concepts such as “institution” or “institutionalised”, the rationale of these programmes, and a clear set of functions for residential care. Nevertheless, the paper supports and agrees with Palacios' proposal of giving priority to developing family foster care arrangements and thus reducing residential care to specific cases [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The main objective of this review is to argue the need to investigate university teachers' education from an integrated approach. This analysis should take into account the immediate and delayed impact of such training: from an individual and intra-psychological perspective regarding participants in training, from a group and inter-psychological perspective regarding students of trained teachers, and from an institutional perspective regarding teaching team mates and the different organizational structures to which trainee teachers belong. On the other hand, it is argued that the analysis of this impact should include both the construction processes developed and the products achieved through training. To support this perspective, the paper discusses the need for research on university teacher training, and reviews and analyses the categories of analysis used in the main meta-analyses conducted on the topic in recent years. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The aim of this paper is to analyze the main factors facilitating and hindering the transfer of teaching skills in the context of teacher training in Spanish universities. The Questionnaire on Factors Conditioning Teachers' Training Transfer is applied to a sample of 1,026 teachers from 18 universities who enrolled in 81 training activities. The results indicate that the teacher training design and the learning achieved by the participants is a factor that acts as a strong transfer catalyst, especially in long courses where teachers develop all sort of teaching skills in an integrated manner. While teachers do not find resistances to transfer, there are personal and structural limitations in the immediate working context. The main limitation to training transfer is the teacher's personal organization. It is likely that teachers set other priorities before planning the transfer of what has been learnt in the training courses and, therefore, the acquired knowledge and skills have a limited application and impact in the pedagogical practice. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The notions of I-positions and voices are proposed as analytical tools for studying how two university teachers use both of these narrative resources to construct and negotiate possible professional identities. The aim of this paper is to answer three questions based on the analysis of semi-structured autobiographical interviews: What I-positions and voices can be identified in academics' narratives about their professional practice? How are these resources related? How do these narratives contribute to the construction of their professional identities? We develop a conception of identity as a continuous and evolving narrative in which the self is constituted as a multiple, dynamic and constantly in negotiation reality from which individuals define who they are. Two interviews are analyzed. Here, the interplay of the different positions adopted by the participants in the interviews, as well as the voices that articulated these positions, are examined in terms of its source or level of generality. We conclude that the professional identities of these experts in education are being constructed in a specific cultural and ideological context. Finally, both benefits and limitations of the current investigation are discussed with regard to possible future studies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The aim of this paper is to explore the relationship between forms of planning and organising work adopted by small groups of students in a computer supported collaborative learning environment and the quality of their achieved learning. We observed three small groups of undergraduate students on two consecutive instructional sequences. The sequences correspond to the practical credits of a compulsory course of the Psychology degree. We identified three typical coordination forms within the groups –“jigsaw coordination”, “star coordination” and “chain coordination”. The jigsaw coordination form was systematically associated with initial phases of collaborative knowledge construction, while star coordination and chain coordination were sometimes, but not always, associated with more advanced phases of collaborative knowledge construction. Thus, some patterns of planning and organising work in small groups seem to be a necessary but not sufficient condition to achieve high levels of collaborative knowledge construction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses comparatively the quality of family contexts in groups of traditional, single, step, adoptive, same-sex, and multiple births families. The lowest quality of family context was observed in stepfamilies and the highest in same-sex households. The results lead us to conclude that it is not the family structure itself, but the interactive and sociodemographic variables associated with them, which shape the quality of family contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper reviews how gestures influence the working memory of students with mild intellectual disability. Our general hypothesis is that retention of verbal information in working memory will vary as a function of the use made of gestures in children with mild intellectual disability, i.e., gestures congruent with the speaker's verbal expression will facilitate memory processes. To test this, we designed an experimental research study with 120 children with mild intellectual disability attending basic levels either in special education schools or mainstream schools. The results show significant differences (p < 0.05) in the immediate recall of the gesture associated to the verbal discourse. Children recalled a greater number of words and phrases when they were presented with a congruent gesture. It is concluded that congruent gestures facilitate memory tasks, and that non-verbal language is crucial in learning contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Data and conclusions of the paper by Fernández, Álvarez and Bravo (2003) are discussed, and some alternative explanations and interpretations are offered. It is suggested that the study sample might be more representative of past rather than present residential care in Spain. It is proposed that the role of institutional alternatives should be kept to a minimum and that, for those for whom this type of arrangement is the only available alternative, their life circumstances while in institutions should be seriously improved [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The paper presents an investigation of two modes of compensatory education programmes in elementary schools in Spain, integrated and segregated, and it effect on students' development. For this purpose an ethnographic study using case-study methodology was undertaken in two school in Madrid with students from cultural minorities. Five students from each school participated in the study (one from each school stage, between 4 and 14 years of age). Assessment included language and mathematics learning tests, reading, a self-concept scale (Piers-Harris) and a sociogramme. The tutors, other professionals of the same centre and the pupils' families were also interviewed. The results were analysed both qualitative and quantitatively. They show that neither mode of education offers an adequate educational response. However, overall, the school centre with an integrated approach achieves better results. Finally, the results are analysed from Bronfenbrenner's bioecological theory (1997), and some suggestions to improve educational practice in compensatory education are put forth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

En el presente artículo se pretende avanzar en el conocimiento de las características que poseen propuestas de evaluación de la comprensión lectora y la composición escrita, que pueden considerarse innovadoras. Para ello se procedió al análisis y contrastación de dos situaciones de evaluación de la comprensión de una novela que tuvieron lugar en aulas de 2º curso de Educación Secundaria Obligatoria. El análisis de las situaciones se realizó mediante un instrumento que permite caracterizar las prácticas de evaluación de forma global, así como distinguir sus peculiaridades. La aplicación de este instrumento puso de relieve diferencias entre ambas situaciones, tanto a nivel de su organización general, como en relación a las características de la actividad de evaluación en sí misma. Las conclusiones se refieren al interés que reviste poder caracterizar la situación completa de evaluación, y a las dimensiones que diferencian una propuesta evaluativa concebida no sólo para acreditar a los alumnos, sino también para ayudarles a regular sus aprendizajes, de otras propuestas centradas exclusivamente en la acreditación. The aim of the paper is to further current knowledge of the characteristics that reading comprehension and writing composition assessment proposals should have to be considered innovative. For this purpose, two assessment situations aimed at evaluating text comprehension were analysed and compared in two 2nd year Secondary Education classes. An instrument that allows assessment practices to be characterised as a whole while distinguishing their peculiarities was used in the analyses. This instrument highlighted differences in the general organisation of the two situations, as well as in the specific features of each one. Conclusions deal with the importance of being able to characterise the assessment situation as a whole, while underlining the dimensions that distinguish an assessment proposals conceived, not only to grade pupils, but also to help them regulate their own learning processes from proposals exclusively centred on grading them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some of the more important theories grouped under Cultural Psychology are explored in the paper, and similarities and differences between them are analysed. The different cultural approaches have been divided into two main groups that differ in their origins and focus of interest. The first group includes cultural-historical approaches, that have their origin in cross-cultural psychology, and within this group, as a starting point reference is made to Vygotsky's and Leontiev's ideas. These ideas have left their mark in Cultural Psychology. Here, M. Cole's theory is analysed in more detail. The second group, whose origins can be traced back to the Romantic rebellion against Enlightenment and to Folk Psychology, includes the symbolic approaches developed by J.S. Bruner and R. A. Shweder and the Symbolic Action Theory proposed by E. E. Boesch and L. H. Eckensberger, from Saarbrücken. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a microethnographic analysis of a speech event known as la ronda, a common activity in many preschool and primary classrooms, during which children present narratives of their personal experience to the class. The study was conducted in a public preschool classroom for five year olds in Madrid, Spain; the speech event was followed up during a full academic year. The results support that this communicative event is instrumental in transforming the class into a moral community (Shweder, 1996). This process is reflected in the way emotionally charged topics are handled, establishment of out-of-school behaviour norms, construing shared experiences, and the rights and duties governing social interaction during the speech event. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]