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This paper analyzes the institutional model and curriculum of Mexico's Agricultural High Schools, where young people in rural settings obtain an agricultural education by working on school farms. The article reviews the distribution of these schools throughout Mexico, their farming conditions, teachers, financing, and students (including their distribution among the areas of concentration offered, the scope of production, the role of the school co-op, and student participation) as well as some of the results: possible learning, dropout rates, graduation rates, certification, and opportunities for graduates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes job training strategies oriented to young people, as carried out by organizations in Mexico's civil society. The objective is to share experiences that can enrich proposed high school curriculums. These experiences discuss alternative methodologies rather than traditional pedagogical techniques, and turn to the value of students' own knowledge and background. The text concludes by presenting reflections on the potential and challenges that these organizations face, as well as recommendations for policies, institutional management, alliances, and financing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper has two objectives: to identify the supply of non-scholastic government programs related to job training for high school students; and based on the review, to make a diagnosis of the main characteristics of that supply at the federal, state, and municipal levels. The strategy included a documentary review, and in some cases took information from interviews with program directors. The analysis of the review indicates that the job training policy for young people aged 15 to 17 is limited in comparison with the size of the problem. In addition, the available information is insufficient for determining the impact of interventions on improving employability or jobs for the defined segment of the population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article shows the results of a qualitative/documentary study on intercultural education carried out in the mountain region of Guerrero, Mexico. The paper analyzes in particular the Universidad Intercultural de los Pueblos del Sur, which has been able to develop a project in intercultural education and even expand it to five municipalities in the state of Guerrero. The university represents a space of informal education for indigenous youth, using an educational model oriented to the rural perspective and encouraging abilities in communities and families through technical assistance by transferring technology and specialized knowledge in agricultural activities. The paper concludes by making recommendations that orient intercultural educational practice, taking into account the evidence contributed by research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intercultural higher education in Mexico works toward the creation of new professional, cultural, and linguistically pertinent profiles that empower indigenous youth and their communities. This paper presents the empirical results of a research project that ethnographically accompanies young graduates from an intercultural Mexican university, Universidad Veracruzana Intercultural. The objective is to describe the way this institution develops knowledge/activities by opening up to other types of knowledge; an analysis is made of the characteristics of the university's recent graduates, and their academic and community knowledge is presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the epistemological diversity and indigenous praxis present in intercultural education, through the case of Instituto Superior Intercultural Ayuuk (isia) in Jaltepec, Oaxaca, Mexico. The main objectives are to outline the range of conceptions of intercultural education, describe its key articulations, and explore the way that knowledge is conceived, constructed, and transmitted in this institute. Two arguments are stated: a) The lack of a predetermined meaning in intercultural higher education allows people from diverse backgrounds to become interested in and form part of this project, enabling new epistemological diversity; b) Although isia uses the praxis and social organization of the Ayuuk people, a more profound dialogue is still lacking among diverse types of knowledge and epistemological frameworks. Therefore, isia represents an important case for exploring the negotiation among diverse perspectives to construct a unique vision of intercultural higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a study carried out in the rural communities of San José Navajas, Jesús María, and Chichimequillas in the municipality of El Marqués, in the state of Querétaro, Mexico. Taking into account the theory of mental spaces, the objective was to discover and explain the community members' perception of their filling the jobs created by the opening of the international airport and two industrial parks in the region. Twenty-three semi-structured interviews were conducted with qualified respondents in the communities. The results show that independent from their precarious economic situation, the inhabitants recognize the importance of the relation between education and work in obtaining better jobs. The observation is made that the respondents' social image and individual perceptions recognize that education is a factor in personal development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses processes of sociocultural appropriation in the federal school project, as verified in rural locations in the eastern part of the Valley of Mexico, during the expansion of the Secretariat of Public Education between 1922 and 1940. Documentation includes incidents of cultural conflict involving neighbors and users of schools featuring the so-called pedagogy of action used in federal schools. The analysis is centered fundamentally on the conflict surrounding practices of teaching for life, coeducation, and the growth and encouragement of the new measures that schools inspired by such pedagogy were expected to understand. The analysis of incidents reveals not only the forms of resistance generated by rural nonconformity but also the negotiating processes that molded the local cultural appropriation of the school project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a transversal study with a predominantly qualitative methodological profile that describes the evolution of academic self-concepts during adolescence. The sample consisted of 150 young people from various schools in the state of Sinaloa: fifty students per age group (twelve, fifteen, and eighteen years old), divided equally between males and females. Three instruments were used: a) a Piagetian critical clinical interview, b) self-concept questionnaire form 5, and c) profile of self-perceptions. The results show that change undergone in the academic self-concept has a flexible nature during adolescence and decreases at age fifteen; as in other studies, no differences by gender were seen. In spite of their provisional nature, the results may serve in the design of strategies that contribute to configuring adolescents' self-concept, that improve their performance as students, and that stimulate their personal development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents an educational experience carried out with 17 graduate students in pedagogy at Mexico's Universidad Nacional Autónoma. The objective was to encourage the students to appropriate strategies for writing and communicating scientific/academic texts; concretely, strategies linked to writing and communicating dissertations, scientific articles, and papers for congresses, with attention to the canons of the scientific/academic community of which they are members. The students reflected on their habitual processes of composition and communication and applied concrete strategies to their own texts. The evidence collected during the educational experience showed improvement in students' processes as well as in their final products. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reports on an experience of intervention focused on teaching argumentative essays, in which two teachers and twenty-five undergraduate students in Applied Linguistics participated. The paper presents the theoretical/pedagogical principles and describes the didactic design of the intervention. The qualitative results show the students' and teachers' experiences with respect to the processes of teaching and learning written argumentation in their discipline. The conclusions offer some pedagogical lessons learned to orient the design of educational interventions that help university students to become competent producers of argumentative texts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The essay by Backhoff and Contreras published in issue 63 of Revista Mexicana de Investigación Educativa offers solid evidence of bias in the results of the enlace test. The authors conclude that the "inflation" of scores can be explained by "testing conditions and the consequences associated with scores". Both elements, which are not developed in the authors' work, are a reminder of the context of implementing teacher evaluations in recent years, by means of a system of political interactions between educational authorities and the teachers' union. This paper attempts to offer some explanatory elements of the relation between the Secretariat of Public Education and the National Union of Workers in Education, with regard to this subject. The guiding idea--which various authors have developed in depth--stipulates that for several decades, the form and content of basic educational policies in Mexico have arisen from such relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How can we research our practices as educational researchers from a post-foundational perspective? How can we build tools of intellection that explain the historical and biographical conditions of the individual who performs research in the educational field? This paper centers on the subject of a biography as a discursive/textual and political subject from a post-foundational perspective. The conceptualization turns to the categories of discourse (Laclau) and text (Derrida) as a theoretical enclave, and based on current research on the academic trajectories of educational researchers, four dimensions of analysis are developed: collective experience, academic professionalization, institutional life, and biographical educational experience. The purpose is to show some examples of the emergence of the subject of biographies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this paper is to research children's and teenagers' understanding of signatures, in terms of formal characteristics and the way this knowledge is made manifest during the challenging process of producing a signature of one's own. The data we present show that in the age range under study (7-15 years old), the participants have made precise reflections on signatures and the type of resources and graphic elements necessary in writing of this type. The analysis focuses on three main areas for articulating the participants' process of constructing their signature: legibility, graphic appearance, and the conservation or omission of elements from the name itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The is paper shows the constitutional fundamentals of the moral education of citizens, considering the origin of Mexico's independent constitutionalism. The study is based on the moral meaning of fundamental rights for determining which ethical/legal principles the Constitution of 1824 instituted as a project for society and citizens. Analysis is centered on the Constitution and the preceding foundational legal texts, especially the Constitutive Act of the Mexican Federation, in order to identify the legal principles and values of the national educational project. The conclusion is that since education was recognized as a public matter, its moral principles were not established in a detailed, systematic manner; however, the constitutional principles of liberal, federal, representative, and massive education indicated the orientation of moral development through good government and the enlightenment of citizens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article outlines the production of autobiographical texts in education during the last decade in Mexico. We have divided the paper into two sections. In the first section, based on the idea of field, we show the referents that have been valuable for us in approaching the biographical/educational field in Mexico, and the way biographies are disseminated in Mexican culture. h e second section centers on areas or interests in the biographical field, organized as three topics of broad interest for the academic community: biography/autobiography; oral histories/stories/life histories and trajectory. The article concludes with some reflections: the diversification of autobiographies; rel ection on experience and theory; the issue of truth in the biographical field; traditions regarding the utilization of sacred authors and the author's word in autobiographical research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we study the normative framework for equity in the policies of the Mexican state, especially policies directed to higher education. Th e empirical referent was a set of documents that regulate and orient actions on inclusion and equity for attaining social cohesion in Mexico, based on the idea that our nation is constituted by diverse peoples and indigenous inhabitants, handicapped people, "alternate" movements, and other groups, and therefore must be governed according to the characteristics of all citizens. Th is document forms part of a broader research project referred to as the "Inter-University Framework Program for Equity and Social Cohesion Policies in Higher Education", within the work of the Latin American Research Network in Educational Policy (RIAIPE). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the antecedents in the field of intercultural bilingual education (ibe) carried out by the Teachers Union of New Education for Mexico (unem) in collaboration with research centers and national and international financing agencies. An analysis is made of the collaborative design process of the “unem Curriculum Model of Intercultural Bilingual Education” (Bertely, 2009). Th e article shows, based on a critical statement of interculturality (Walsh, 2002; Gasché, 2008 a and b), the construction of an intercultural rooted methodology inspired by the postulates of critical theory (Denzin and Lincoln, 2005), collaborative ethnology (Lassiter, 2005; Rappaport, 2007), and constructivist theory (Charmaz, 2000; 2006). Th e result is the intercultural co-theorization intercultural of an ibe model sustained by sociocultural and territorial rootedness in the educational work of teachers/aids, children, and members of the community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a review and the results of the Seminar on Regional Educational Research in Oaxaca, held in the city of Oaxaca, Oaxaca, Mexico. The seminar, a space of academic, inter-institutional, and multidisciplinary exchange, represented initial efforts to discover and analyze collectively a set of educational research studies produ¬ced in the region on the topic of "Individual Development in the Educational Field in Contemporary Societies of South/Southeast Mexico". The presented papers offer a view of the primary theoretical concerns and methodological alternatives used, as well as the process of integrating local and regional academic networks. The review analyzes the main questions posed at the seminar, its lines of analysis, methods, and focuses of research, in order to begin to classify part of the regional production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the result of an educational intervention in a private university in Mexico, in which the students and their teacher developed blogs, participating collaboratively in a search for information, reading, and writing oriented to the elaboration of a critical essay. With virtual ethnographic interviews and two online questionnaires, an analysis was made of students' perceptions of the blogs' influence on their academic literacy, the links and tensions between the two types of writing, and the possible lessons for educational innovation in the area. In light of this case, the article argues the need, from a sociocultural perspective, for higher education to encourage practices of reading and writing that recover the genuine social, dialogical, and identity-related meaning of all academic writing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper evaluates graduate students' reading comprehension of the polyphony and intertextuality of scientific texts, from a socio-cognitive perspective. Reading comprehension is a process of integrating experience, previous reading, information processing, and the systematization and analysis of empirical data. This type of reading becomes an indicator of the level of reading comprehension, which is reflected at other moments in scientific work, such as the interpretation of research results or writing. From this perspective, an analysis is made of the reader's mental associations in appropriating knowledge in the educational field. The research contributes to the characterization of scientific texts in education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within the tradition of studies on the use or influence of research, this paper presents work on the relation between research and policy, based on the evaluation of higher education. The results show that educational research in Mexico has influenced the political agenda, by including arguments and reorienting debate, and even by modifying initiatives and programs; contributing factors have been the type of research, as well as the assumption or expansion of academic roles into circles of political decision-making. The report also identifies traits of interaction between researchers and government employees, while contributing to the comprehension of the use of research by weighing some of the involved elements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article attempts to show how organizational structure operates as a source of emotional and functional stability for the production of scientific knowledge, as well as the logic of change, in successful scientific research groups in academia and the public sector. The paper presents the results of the organizational structure of two research groups--Immunochemistry and Immunology--in two dimensions: a) functional stabilization and relative permanence of a group, including composition, orientation, normative action, differentiation and leadership, and b) emotional stabilization, whose dimensions are belonging, in which the group member calculates the costs and benefits of being a member to attain ends, the construction of an ethos, roles, identities, and power in the logic of interaction. Also shown is the process of conforming a new group in Immunology during the consolidation of the trajectory of the Immunochemistry group, as a process of reproduction of research groups in new lines of specialized knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the effects of the relation between young people's education and employment in the labor market. We started by assuming that a difference exists between individuals who are working in the occupation for which they were educated, and individuals who were not educated for their work. The hypothesis is that a high degree of correspondence between education and occupation implies better performance and earnings. The methodology was based on empirical ex-post observation at a given moment in time. To measure the effects of the relation between education and employment and to observe young people's performance in the labor market, use was made of Gini indexes and a wage model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyzes how and why, in the early 20th century, women came to constitute the majority of elementary school teachers in Mexico City. A study is made of the statistical tendencies during the time period, the criteria for hiring and promotion, and the professional profile of teachers by sex, as well as the discourses on women and teaching. In 1875, 56.8% of all teachers were women; thirty years later, out of 1,046 teachers, 76.2% were women. Two factors were decisive: a) educational opportunities were created for girls to attend elementary school in numbers equal to their male classmates, reflected in employment opportunities for female teachers; and b) men became uninterested in attending normal school, while a large numbers of female teachers were certified. In conclusion, I analyze the discourses on sexual difference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper distinguishes between two models of online learning: transmission and the generation of knowledge. The first model includes access to exhibitions, readings, tutorials, exercises, and tests, and is associated with superficial results of learning. The second model offers resources and functions of active, constructive, cumulative, and self-regulated learning. The proposal is made to operate a model of generating knowledge through a setting of learning called meta-tutor, which offers a variety of resources and high interactivity, and promotes the construction of knowledge and self-regulatory skills. The model was evaluated empirically in a psychology course. The results indicate that students who learn in this setting show significantly higher achievement in pre-test and post-test comparisons and in comparisons with a control group. The implications for designing online instruction are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews some of the particularities of the social reality of a group of professors who train teachers. Such aspects reveal diverse characteristic traits, and permit an understanding of the genesis of training processes. For this purpose, a direct line has been drawn to the origin and education of their parents, followed by indicators of gender, age, and incorporation into the subsystem. Lastly, the relations among the professors' positions are distinguished; at times, these relations show more homogeneity than differences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article synthesizes the trajectory of secondary education in Mexico during the first half of the 19th century, from the perspective of the government policies of the times. A broad explanation is given of the transformations and customs of secondary education as part of the process of conformation of the Mexican educational system. The paper is based on a review of the historically determined concept of secondary education, and studies the stages of the institutionalization of secondary school in the public sector. Consideration is given to colonial precedents, illustrated reforms, the changes generated by the Independence, and modifications promoted by central and federalist systems of government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]