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Copyright of Revista de Historia Económica / Journal of Iberian & Latin American Economic History is the property of Cambridge University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The aim of this paper is to describe Dewey's reception in the Spanish-speaking countries that constitute the Hispanic world. Without any doubt, it can be said that in the past century Spain and the countries of South America have been a world apart, lagging far behind the mainstream Western world. It includes a number of names and facts about the early translation of Dewey's works in Spain, Chile, Cuba, Mexico and Argentina in the first half of the century and a brief explanation of the decline of Dewey in the second half. To a great extent, Dewey's conception of education was immersed in the international movement of reform that started at the turn of the century and would eventually slowly but surely, renovate the structure of the educational system throughout the entire century, including that of South America. But it is equally clear that the Spanish-speaking countries have displayed a general ignorance of Dewey and, by extension, of American pragmatism during most of the century. In spite of mutual incomprehension, a deep affinity between Dewey's pragmatism and Hispanic philosophy is suggested in this paper, anticipating that the gradual process of democratization of Spain and the Hispanic countries of South America may be in some sense related to the rediscovery of Dewey and to the application of his key ideas in education. After decades of neglect of Dewey and of his contribution, there is a strong feeling not only that his conception of things is important to understand the last century but that Dewey--along with Peirce and other American classical pragmatists--may very well prove to be a key thinker for the XXIst century also in the Hispanic world. Along this vein, the recent resurgence of pragmatism can be understood not as the latest academic fashion but the occasion to start to close the gap between the two worlds.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to review the link between public education policies and institutional practices in Argentina throughout history and today. Design/methodology/approach: The methodology used is in line with socio-educational management studies oriented to analyse educational practices qualitatively from an institutional perspective. Findings: The review allows a wider discussion about the characteristics of the traditional organizational structure in relation to the rules, order, purposes and homogeneity of educational institutions. Furthermore, the paper shows there are some experiences and practices developed nowadays in Argentinian secondary schools that constitute a guide for social inclusion. Research limitations/implications: Throughout Argentina's education history, secondary school has supported its policies on a bureaucratic institutional structure rationally oriented to serving interests of a minority. Today, social inclusion policies and compulsory secondary schooling are presented as an opportunity to democratize the management of educational institutions. Practical implications: In the early 2000s, the education system in Argentina kept a traditional bureaucratic structure based on a selective education policy. In this regard, statistics are quite revealing as regards the degree of social exclusion in secondary school: only 11 per cent of the students that begin first grade, finish secondary school. In 2006, after the enactment of the compulsory secondary education law, educational management is faced with the challenge to renew its institutional practices in order to make inclusion feasible. In this sense, the paper shows that secondary schools are implementing certain management practices aimed at achieving greater social inclusion. Originality/value: The paper focuses on the notion that the characteristics of management practices are related to the social interests of education policies. In this sense, the educational management of Argentinian secondary schools is undergoing a process of transformation from traditional selective practices towards more inclusive practices.

Purpose: In this paper, the knowledge dynamics of the farmer-rural extensionist' interface were explored from extensionists' perspective with the aim of understanding the matchmaking processes between supply and demand of extension services at the micro-level. Design/methodology/approach: Forty semi-structured interviews were conducted with extensionists whom work in the North-Eastern, Argentine provinces. Findings: Two different, general types of knowledge dynamics were identified: one moderately diffusionist, based on a hierarchical relationship and the prioritisation of experts' knowledge, and the other constructivist, based on horizontal processes of co-construction. Interestingly, some extensionists support beliefs pertaining to both approaches. They also highlight the importance of unceremonious trainings, interpersonal trust and making recommendations that take into account farmers' rationale. Practical implications: Results show the persistence of diffusionist rural extension and that extensionists have different, even contradictory, extension approaches, which renders inappropriate any attempt to generalise their perspectives. Theoretical implications: This study suggests that farmers' demand is the result of a constructive, interactive process, and thus is not prior to the interaction between the demand side (farmers) and the supply side (extensionists). Consequently, the knowledge and power dynamics that take place within the farmer-extensionist interface should be considered the nucleus of demand construction and the matchmaking process. Originality/value: This paper addresses the dynamic matchmaking process between supply and demand of extension services at the micro-level, suggesting it is a constructive process and showing the core role played by power dynamics.

This paper compares the development of International Baccalaureate (IB) schools in four different settings: Argentine, Chile, Spain and Ecuador. The global comparative approach used in this study, based on actor-network theory (ANT), allows us to analyse the connections and interactions between global actors and the plurality of national, regional, municipal actors in a common conceptual frame--the IB network. The IB network includes mainly global actors, such as the Diploma Programme (DP), IB schools and the IB organisation, IB schools associations but also a myriad of local actors such as political leaders, national education administrations and local authorities. The paper examines two central assemblages: the institutional assemblage and the curricular assemblage. The institutional assemblage relates to who promotes and funds the DP in each country. While in Argentina and Chile an IB-private school assemblage prevails, in Spain it was an IB-public/private schools assemblage and in Ecuador an IB-government one. These assemblages condition the main point of passage of the IB network--the DP as a means to access to university--which further necessitates new assemblages between the DP and the official curriculum--the curricular assemblage.

This paper concerns the identification of teaching strategies that enhance the development of 4th grade students' experimental design skills at a public primary school in Argentina. Students' performance in the design of relevant experiments was evaluated before and after an eight-week intervention compared to a control group, as well as the persistence of this learning after eight months. The study involved a quasi-experimental longitudinal study with pre-test/post-test/delayed post-test measures, complemented with semi-structured interviews with randomly selected students. Our findings showed improvement in the experimental design skills as well as its sustainability among students working with the inquiry-based sequence. After the intervention, students were able to establish valid comparisons, propose pertinent designs and identify variables that should remain constant. Contrarily, students in the control group showed no improvement and continued to solve the posed problems based on prior beliefs. In summary, this paper shows evidence that implementing inquiry-based units involving problems set in cross-domain everyday situations that combine independent student work with teacher guidance significantly improves the development of scientific skills in real classroom contexts.

This paper provides the first evidence of maternal speech--motherese--in Wichi, an indigenous language with a complex morphology spoken in the Gran Chaco region of Argentina. The corpus consists of 22 hours of video recordings from the daily life of three children, starting from their one-morpheme utterance period (MLU = 1) to the onset of combining early morphemes (MLU = 2.30). Employing a mixed methodological approach, results allowed us: (a) to create an observational system of specific categories for the analysis of the maternal speech in Wichi; (b) to identify motherese in Wichi, noticeably stable across cases and organized into constellations of lexical, pragmatic-discursive and prosodic features with changes and continuities during the developmental target period. The results are discussed cross-culturally in the light of a renewed cultural approach, while limitations and future directions are addressed. [Translation from Spanish by Jennifer Martin.]

This paper assesses how Argentine public universities responded to the crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic in three dimensions: teaching and learning, scientific research and community engagement, and internationalization activities. For each of the dimensions, the actions developed, and the challenges encountered are presented. I argue that the response was quick and consistent: it is related to an academic culture that is framed in the right to university, both individual right (access, permanence, and graduation to all citizens) and collective right (benefit socio-community development). The article concludes with a preliminary analysis of the agenda items to advance regulations and policies. On several occasions a self-reflective exercise is carried out, as part of a community that is going through this situation of extraordinary urgency.

Between 2005 and 2015 a series of science, technology and innovation policies were deployed in Argentina among which academic research collaborations with industry was particularly fostered. This paper studies the effect of those policies on newer researchers, defined as those with PhD or postdoctoral scholarships, looking at their motivations to collaborate and, to some extent, at their actual collaborations with Industry. Our hypothesis is that those policies had a positive effect on young academics' perception of collaborations with industry, now conceived as a dimension of their job, and also on actual collaborations. To conduct our study, we used an original database constructed from an online survey answered by more than 600 newer researchers. Empirical results partly confirm our hypothesis: a direct policy encouraging collaborations by providing collaborative grants was not associated with actual collaborations, while orienting research towards strategic areas -- defined by the Science and Technology Ministry- is.

Feeling at home on the field of play offers insights into sport as a social experience between humans and the non-human world. Players, in whatever sport, but especially outdoor team sports, engage with each other and their environment. Take soccer, for instance. Beyond the mercenary dominance of FIFA and the competitive machismo of many player and fans, a universal cultural experience remains -- one that is contingent on environmental circumstances. A key aspect of the game's lingua franca is the transferable joy of outside play -- something experienced across ages and genders. For those working in physical education, where dominant sports will likely remain so, the question is whether the joy of codified outdoor play can be celebrated and taught above imperatives to produce fit and competitive selves. This paper contends that it can. By reflecting on a regular after-work soccer game at an elite school in Argentina, with the aid of soccer phenomenology and nature writing on joy, it is shown that momentary experiences emerge that celebrate social connections reliant on fragile material conditions. The game, which was prima facie welcome to all, was an event in which histories of soccer were evident in players from around the world. Such histories converged on the field each week as provisional delight and sincere congeniality. Contradictions inevitably remained within this space -- inclusion and exclusion, environmental spoliation and appreciation, justice and injustice -- just as they do in all encounters between the human and non-human. Yet the act of playing together outside contained the promise of lives not determined by human domination of each other and, crucially, the world around them.

This article draws on the Language Learning Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence Program 2012 thanks to which Dr. Suresh Canagarajah from Pennsylvania State University lectured at Universidad de La Plata in Argentina in May of that year. He delivered a talk open to language teachers, students and the community in general and also taught a postgraduate seminar at the School of Humanities and Sciences of Education. He kindly agreed to be interviewed by me after the event was over and this article presents this interview.

Copyright of Journal of Human & Society / İnsannsan ve Toplum is the property of Scientific Studies Association and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper sets out to provide a preliminary descriptive account of an important subsector of the Argentine education system: those schools locally known as "bilingual schools" or "colegios bilingues". As the authors will show, the label "bilingual" has, at times, been applied rather loosely to a number of institutions. For current purposes, the authors limit this description to those schools that aim to teach through the medium of two languages. These schools may be characterised both in terms of the shared features that set them apart from other schools in Argentina, and in terms of the distinctions among them, which make this a diversified sub-sector. The authors also argue that these schools have been transformed since they were first founded in the 19th century, evolving from what were originally Heritage Schools to Dual Language Schools and, ultimately, to a new form of Bilingual school that the authors label the "Global Language School". Finally, the paper surveys some recent trends within this sector and suggests avenues for further research.

Many scholars across the world have studied the knowledge, skills and dispositions needed to use digital media. Yet as digital texts have proliferated and evolved, there has been much conjecture over what it means to be 'digitally literate'. As literacy researchers from Australia, Sweden and Argentina we are concerned with the drive to standardise definitions of 'digital literacy' despite notable differences in the cultural politics of education in each country. This paper analyses how the term digital literacy has been conceptualised and applied by scholars in these three language contexts. To do this, we analyse the most cited publications on digital literacy in the English-speaking; Scandinavian; and Spanish-speaking contexts. In the analysis the variety of definitions across "and" within each context, the key tensions and challenges that emerge and the implications for digital literacy education are explored. Our findings reveal that similar tensions and challenges exist in all three contexts, however, the path to resolution varies given contextual differences. The article concludes with suggestions for educational research that acknowledges and advocates the need for local conceptualisations of digital literacies in increasingly globalised educational systems.

Reading logs are regularly used in foreign language education since they are not only critical in the development of reading comprehension but may also be instrumental in taking readers beyond the referential into the representational realms of language. In this paper we offer the results of a qualitative analysis of a series of reading logs written by advanced students for a literature course in an English language teacher education program in Argentina. The logs were coded according to the different literature teaching models followed in the program, which let us ponder on the applicability and usefulness of reading logs, and on the need to promote diversity in literature teaching in English language teacher education.

The ECO European Project funded by the European Commission is dedicated to bringing MOOCs to a new dimension by taking advantage of the new possibilities offered by the Social Web (O'Reilly, 2005). This paper focuses on the intercreative aspects of MOOCs. It takes a look at the characteristics of the new ECO MOOCs to see if they are designed and implemented within an intercreative environment. The methodology is quantitative and data collection was conducted using self-administered questionnaires with closed or semi-closed questions. This study includes the so-called sMOOCs, which stress intercreativity to work towards collective intelligence.

The expansion process of Latin American higher education systems experienced in recent decades has drawn the attention of many scholars. Its impact has been assessed in relation to the broadening of access to education for the low-income sectors and the reduction of social inequality; likewise, the market's capacity to absorb a greater number of qualified workers has also been analysed. Therefore, it has been suggested that the consolidation of a process of 'credentialism' may be gaining momentum whereby: despite a moderate success rate in the expansion of access to higher education, inequalities would not have been reduced; rather, only a deterioration in the value of degrees would have taken place. This paper centres around the expansion process in the Argentine public university system and addresses these topics. We will argue that, despite taking a distinct course of its own, this expansion process falls within the phenomenon of institutional diversification which swept Latin America in the 1960s. The diversification of the Argentine higher education system developed with particular intensity within the university system, where the characteristics and performance of the different universities vary greatly. This, in turn, facilitated the advancement of labour-power differentiation.

This paper summarizes the development and evaluation of an assessment instrument for children ages 7-12. The CHILD CARRE measure is a semi-structured interview with 7 domains. Children from the USA and Argentina (N = 134) completed baseline and follow-up assessments. Substance use occurred at an average age of 8. Almost 33% of the children were taking medications for medical issues, more than 50% of them said that medical problem gets in the way of doing things they like to to do and almost 64% of the children stated that they would like to feel better. On average, children completed third grade in school, 56% of them knew how to read and 26% of the children started making money at age 8. Most children (74%) saw someone drunk or high and 23% of children reported alcohol or psychoactive substance use. Among these children using substances, such substance use occurred at an average age of 8, and in the past 30 days they used these substances an average for 5 days. The rating of level of risk on the part of the interviewer placed these children in the "risky" to "very risky" categories. Most children reported seeing their family members smoking (83%) or using alcohol (67%), and 49% reported seeing their family members high on drugs. Few children (10%) had conflicts with the law, while 46% of their family members had legal problems. Some children (30%) reported having serious problems getting along with family members, neighbors, or friends. These results suggest that this measure can serve as the first comprehensive measure to assess multiple life domains for young children at risk for or using psychoactive substances.

In Latin America the development of early childhood education has been uneven and mixed. In some countries, the public education system includes kindergartens (for 4 to 6 year olds), early childhood schools (for children from birth to 5/6), nurseries (from birth to 3) schools and/or playschools. Working days vary in length, with daytime and late-afternoon shifts. This paper aims to analyze a range of factors, including: the role of the State in ensuring the right to education, as provider and/or as a regulatory body; the role of social and political actors; gender issues; how children and childhood are understood in each society; current laws and whether they are enforced. In Argentina, during periods of deep economic crises, such as that of the late 90s which is being traumatically repeated today, there is an "infantilization of poverty." This means most of the poor are children, and most children are poor. Describing the limits and possibilities of early education in Argentina today, within a Latin American perspective, presents the political and pedagogical challenge of thinking about the present while also imagining possible changes in the relationships between childhood, equality and education; not just as a rhetorical exercise, but as an investment in the future.

The importance of teachers' capacity to integrate and exploit computer mediated communication (CMC) in the foreign language classroom has been recognised by many of the leading publications in foreign language teacher education, including the European Profile for Language Teacher Education (2004) and the European portfolio for student teachers of foreign languages (EPOSTL) (2007). One of the essential CMC activities in foreign language education is undoubtedly telecollaboration. This is the application of online communication tools to connect classes of language learners in geographically distant locations with the aim of developing their foreign language skills and intercultural competence through collaborative tasks and project work (O'Dowd, 2007). This paper begins by presenting a model of competences for the telecollaborative teacher, which has been developed and verified by this author (2013) using the Delphi technique. The paper then presents UNICollaboration (www.unicollaboration.eu), an online platform, which has been developed reflecting these competences and a sociocultural approach to teacher education. Following that, the findings of four qualitative case studies of novice telecollaborators are used to inform the design of tools and training courses for educators in this complex activity of online foreign language education.

Purpose: This paper reflects upon the practice of Argentine rural extensionists working in the extension public system through the process of identifying different rural extensionists' types of mindsets and comparing them with transfer of technology extension approach, dialogical processes of horizontal knowledge exchange, participatory perspectives and innovation system approach. Design/Methodology/approach: A quali-quantitative investigation was conducted. Surveys containing closed and open questions were sent via email to rural extensionists. This allowed the researcher to identify their beliefs about different issues connected to extension practice. The sample was incidental (n = 219; 143 men, 76 women). Qualitative data was categorized and quantified. Finally, a two-steps cluster analysis was implemented. Findings: Two types of rural extensionists' mindsets were identified, one of which relates to the transfer of technology approach and other to the dialogical/horizontal model, yet neither of them fitting the ideal of the most important extension institution of the country, which supports an innovation system approach. Practical implications: Extensionists' practices and institutional ideals do not coincide. Reflexive training processes are required to make beliefs about rural extension explicit in order to build a contextually suitable extension proposal. Originality/Value: Through a quali-quantitative approach to the issue of rural extensionists' mindsets, this paper contributes to a better understanding of Argentine rural extensionists' practices.

Elite schools around the world aspire to produce perfect students and yet there are always obstacles to this perfection being achieved. In this paper, we suggest that this process of perfectionism and obstruction can best be understood using a methodology that looks to the creative arts, rather than the usual social science orthodoxies. Our focus in this paper is therefore not on methodology as a technique, but rather methodology as a resource for thought. Using Lars Von Trier's film "The Five Obstructions" as a point of departure, we suggest that the quest for perfect students, or indeed perfect humans, is one that ignores the inherent obstacles that block pathways to perceived perfection. Our research draws on ethnographic fieldwork from six elite secondary schools in Argentina, Australia, Barbados, England, Hong Kong, and South Africa. We posit a creative methodology permits a coming to terms with the abstractions required when analyzing and interpreting large amounts of data from a multi-sited ethnographic study. This approach makes it feasible to draw some conclusions about a common characteristic--perfectionism--among elite schools around the globe.

Purpose: This paper aims to present an approach to achieve accessible and inclusive Virtual Education for all, but especially intended for students with disabilities. This work proposes main steps to take into consideration for stakeholders involved in the educational process related to an inclusive e-Learning. Design/methodology/approach: The paper pays particular regard to accessibility in Virtual Education. This work is based on the activities prepared from years 2012 to 2015 within the initiative called ESVI-AL. This initiative was carried out in conjunction with Latin American and European Universities; for this paper, experiences and best practices from the initiative were used to prepare the proposed approach. Findings: The aim of ESVI-AL initiative was to offer products that can help in the development of an accessible and inclusive e-Learning education. Among the main results were reports, case studies, practical guidelines, training courses and software to install virtual campuses with accessibility features. Social implications: Nowadays, few countries have laws promoting and enforcing accessibility for e-Education and e-Society. This work aims to sensitize educators from different countries and raise awareness on the importance of working together toward an inclusive society based on accessible e-Learning. Originality/value: Based on a literature review and ESVI-AL initiative results, a descriptive overview was prepared as a starting point for the four identified main actors of an educational project, namely, educators, technical staff, quality auditors and students, with special emphasis on students with disabilities.

Solving systems of equations at school, at least in Argentina, is usually a task that students are given as a series of techniques that "allow" them to find a solution. How to overcome educational obstacles that are generated from a fragmented approach of knowledge? What can DGS do, in particular the CAS environment? What epistemic and instrumental value (Artigue, 2002) these techniques acquire to work with software? Do they redefine work with pencil and paper? Specifically, this paper attempts to examine a series of dynamic problems (Bifano andVillella, 2012) and study the manipulation of different parts of the same equations and reflections that have emerged from experience working with teachers who analyse and solve such problems. Using the notion of instrumental orchestration (Trouche, 2004) we considered the different types of didactical performance as a result of the workshop experience.

This paper presents the results of a research, which proposes the introduction of the teaching by Research and Study Paths (RSPs) into Argentinean secondary schools within the frame of the Anthropologic Theory of Didactics (ATD). The paths begin with the study of "Q[subscript 0]: How to operate with any curves knowing only its graphic representation and the unit of the axes?," which was implemented for two consecutive years by 14-17 year-old students. The results of part of the paths that allows the study of the polynomial functions in the frame of RPS are hereby described. These results justify the introduction of a new pedagogy into schools as proposed by Yves Chevallard in order to study Mathematics in conventional courses of Secondary Education schools in Argentina. The scopes relative to the attitudes of the students, which are necessary to face a questions-based education, are outlined in this work.

The paper analyzes through a genealogical discourse analysis how religion as a cultural practice escapes into the borders of state institutions. While most studies about secularization focus on institutional aspects, such approaches tend to link state secularist policies with cultural secularization. This essay argues that state promotion of religious institutional secularist policies needs to be rethought. The institutionalization of republicanism in Argentina exemplifies this problem. In order to shape a secular Argentinean citizen the government promoted an array of secularist policies (1860-1910). The article aims to problematize such linear historical account by showing how Catholic religious principles became part of the "secular" Argentinean citizen. In fact, religious connotations such as salvific narratives or dogmatic qualities were reenacted in seemingly secular state discursive spaces. Nowadays, several states are enacting secularist state policies to ban nonwestern religious manifestations from public spaces such as schools. In unraveling the Argentinean processes, the article aspires to highlight the impossibilities of banning religion from the narratives that shape the republican citizen.

We present partial results of the design and implementation of a study program for the Mathematics Teacher Training. The research is developed in the light of the Anthropological Theory of the Didactic. This paper we analyze what gestures of the research and world questioning pedagogy are identified in a group of future teachers that study an essential issue to the mathematics teacher profession: "how to teach mathematical knowledge?" The work was carried out with futures mathematics teachers of the third year of a careen university in Argentina. The main results indicate that the future teachers, at the beginning of the study program, do not seem to carry out the distinctive didactics gestures of the research and questioning the world pedagogy.

This paper offers a method for examining elite schools in a global setting by appropriating Theodor Adorno's constellational approach. I contend that arranging ideas and themes in a non-deterministic fashion can illuminate the social reality of elite schools. Drawing on my own fieldwork at an elite school in Argentina, I suggest that local and global determinants in the school's past contribute to its current, and relatively recent, elite status. Moreover, all of these factors can be arranged to elucidate the school in a history of global capitalism that coincides with Argentine nationalism, British "informal" imperialism and Presbyterian educationalism.

The papers in this special issue examine the relationships between language, sexuality and affect. Using examples of language use from Argentine cinema, bounce music performance, a university classroom, a BDSM community, and Black women's urban queer space, the papers show how various forms of linguistic practice allow affect to remain comfortably nested on "the cusp of semantic availability" (Williams 1977: 134), rather than being reduced to tightly defined categories or messages. The discussions of these examples also show how various forms of linguistic practice allow sexuality to unfold as a messy formation (Giffney 2009, Manalansan 2014), thereby remaining resistant to boundaries and precise definitions. The basis for these parallels between affect and sexuality are explored in these papers, as are their implications for future studies of language, affect, and sexuality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista de Metodos Cuantitativos para la Economia y la Empresa is the property of Universidad Pablo de Olavide and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In recent years, a more sophisticated vocabulary has emerged in the field of higher education. Categories such as" socially relevant research"; "knowledge mobilization"; "research impact"; "innovation"; and "university priorities" have appeared. At first glance, these words may appear neutral, simple and free from conflicts of interest. However, I argue that each of them requires deeper analysis, especially in relation to current scientific and university public policies, as their use has consequences and/or impacts both at the institutional level (higher education institutions) and actor-level (scholars, project managers, etc.). Therefore, by shedding light on the fact that "social relevance" of university is a commonly addressed category in documents regulating university activities, I postulate that such categories indicate a reductionist notion of "relevance" that is used haphazardly as a substitute for the ideas of meaning, mission, and the aims of a university. In order to pinpoint and discuss these new terms and categories that are used as measures of academic knowledge, the paper focuses on public university systems in Argentina and Canada. From a comparative perspective, I aim at grasping a better understanding of the changes in knowledge mobilization.

This work forms part of a larger project that proposes the reformulation of content structures and pedagogic practices at the School of Humanities of the University of Mar del Plata. The project has a twofold objective: To improve the retention rate of 1st year students by implementing actions related to the disciplinary and institutional areas and by developing mechanisms that would help the undergraduates in the process of "becoming college students"; and to strengthen the links between secondary and higher education in order to improve the students' possibilities of accessing and remaining in university. This presentation reports the work done so far in relation to the first objective. The different courses of studies offered by the School of Humanities show a high rate of dropouts among 1st year students. In a survey carried out among students and teachers the main reason for these dropouts was reported to be the lack of academic training with which students enter university. This paper will address the reasons that generate a kind of silent violence that is manifested in the difficulties students have in getting adapted to the university context, both socially and academically, and which derives in exclusion and self-exclusion when the students find too many obstacles to pursue their studies and, therefore, drop out. From a social perspective, these students belong to low-income groups; they come from marginal secondary schools and have parents who lack a university education. Our aim is to exchange viewpoints and experiences with colleagues from different universities on the different issues that relate to this sort of hidden exclusion.

This paper argues that ideas about tax matter as much as interests and institutions for understanding social attitudes and responses to attempts by the state to raise revenues for development agendas. Tax is a profoundly political problem, reflecting different and sometimes opposing ideas about the role of the state, the market and business-state relationships, and tax rises in developing countries can become linked to wider conflicts of development. Using the case of Argentina, the paper examines, empirically, the attempts by the government of Cristina Kirchner to finance state expenditure and social welfare via raising taxes on commodity exports after 2008. It argues that ideas of tax became embedded with deeply contested ideas of what the state's role in development should be. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper assesses the degree of equality of educational opportunities across Argentina's public primary schools. The main finding is that there are inequalities between jurisdictions, but even greater inequalities within them, suggesting the existence of serious problems in the distribution of resources at the sub-national level. Following the recommendations of the specialized literature, estimates of school quality and measures of disparity in educational opportunity were calculated. While school differences were found across provinces, even greater discrepancies were found among public schools located within provinces, which are responsible for the provision of primary education. Most importantly, inequality among public schools is found to be associated with factors that are considered socially unacceptable, such as the student's socio-economic status even among schools financed by the same governmental unit.

How should we define "equity and justice" when it comes to communities and countries with historical, political, and economic trajectories different than ours? In the article "Rethinking equity: standpoints emerging from a community project with victims of violence and abuse in Argentina," Castaño Rodríguez, Barraza, and Martin argue that it is crucial to define and implement situated views of equity and justice, especially ones that build on Freire's "Pedagogy of Hope". Leveraging feminist standpoint theory, Castaño Rodríguez and her colleagues described how a sanctuary for non-human animals in rural Argentina tried to support the socioemotional growth of a group of youths who faced domestic violence. The analyses led the authors to propose a "glass half-full" definition of equity that recognizes and builds on the resources, resilience, and positive outlook on difficult situations of the oppressed. On first approach, I agreed with Castaño Rodríguez, Barraza, and Martin's call for the need to remain vigilant about how we define equity and operationalize it when working with historically marginalized communities. However, as I detail in this forum piece, my endorsement of the authors' "glass half-full" situated vision of equity was undermined by tensions I experienced related to: (1) the article's theoretical underpinnings; (2) its methodological approaches, particularly inhabiting a kind of "view from nowhere"; and (3) (unintended) implications of their conclusions about hope in the face of cycles of violence. While the work calls our attention to key ideas and methods, such as situated definitions of equity and the role of feminist standpoint theory, I conclude the authors' "glass half-full" definition of equity sidestepped the structures that undergirded the violence youths and their community experienced and, therefore, did not realize its full potential.

Reading difficulties of children growing up in poverty contexts have not received as much attention as those of children from middle-income families. This paper analyzes the reading-related cognitive profiles of Argentine, Spanish-speaking, low-SES children with reading difficulties (RD), by comparing them with chronological age- (CA) and reading age- (RA) matched children from the same socioeconomic background. Ninety children (30 in each group) participated in the study. Testing included reading, spelling, verbal memory, phonological sensitivity, rapid naming, letter knowledge, and vocabulary measures. Results showed that children from the RD group performed significantly worse than their same-age peers. These findings would suggest the presence of a cognitive vulnerability in children with reading difficulties. Interestingly, when compared with children from the RA-matched control group, children in the RD group only obtained significantly lower scores in phoneme segmentation and letter-sound recognition tasks. Cognitive profiles of low-income children growing in poverty differ from cognitive profiles described for middle-income children with dyslexia. Given that teaching of letter sounds is not included in Argentina's mandatory curriculum, it is possible that letter-sound teaching constitutes an environmental factor that interacts with other risk factors to produce reading difficulties in poverty contexts.

This paper reports a bilateral university project designed to promote intercultural citizenship and foreign language development simultaneously. It is concerned with developing active and responsible citizenship through content-language integrated learning within an ordinary foreign language classroom. The need and rationale for broadening the scope of language courses and combining them with intercultural citizenship or human rights education has been explained elsewhere and empirical studies reporting on classroom practice are recently available. These studies have connected both types of education (language and citizenship/human rights) and have demonstrated growth in self and intercultural awareness, in criticality and social justice responsibility, as well as the emergence of a sense of community of international peers during the projects. However, the concern remains as to whether this combination leads to language learning and this article addresses this issue. The article describes one transnational intercultural citizenship project in the foreign language classroom in Argentina and the UK and focuses on the research question: Does an intercultural citizenship project lead to language learning? Findings -- taken from the Argentinean data -- show that students developed procedural knowledge by using the foreign language with a genuine need, engaged in multiliteracies practices and developed their plurilingual competence within a translingual orientation.

This article shows the potential of the Council of Europe's Autobiography of Intercultural Encounters and Autobiography of Intercultural Encounters through Visual Media to develop quality education in the (foreign) language classroom in Higher Education. Whereas the literature focuses on their contributions to fostering intercultural awareness and reflection as one step to develop intercultural communicative competence in language education, the purpose of this paper is to show that they have a broader significance in terms of the development of three capacities leading to quality education according to Nussbaum, namely critical thinking, imaginative understanding and world citizenship.pro

In this paper, we estimate the causal effect of an extra year of schooling on mathematics performance for seven Latin American countries based on PISA 2012. To that end we exploit exogenous variation in students' birthdates around the school entry cut-off date using both sharp and fuzzy Regression Discontinuity designs. We find strong effects of an extra year of schooling in most countries, which amount to a 30% increase in PISA test scores in Brazil, 18% in Uruguay, 7% in Argentina and 6% in Costa Rica. These effects differ from the typical estimates obtained from simple regressions or multilevel models and are large enough to allow 15-year-old students to reach higher proficiency levels, suggesting significant potential gains of reducing dropout rates in the region. Finally, we stress the importance of taking into account the effects of school entry cut-off dates on PISA samples to avoid making unfair international comparisons.

The importance of social capital as a resource for rural development, especially in the context of projects involving joint participation of state and civil society, is widely recognized today. This paper analyzes the obstacles confronted by local players--small farmers and government organizations--in the development of an irrigation area through the implementation of a social colonization project in the Upper Colorado River Basin (Argentina). After reviewing theoretical perspectives on social capital and development, the paper deals with the difficulties faced by economic agents in building social capital and the impact of this process on the productivity of farms and the progress of the territory. Finally, it discusses how public policies and institutional design has hampered the formation of social capital. Additionally, we stress the importance of this kind of analysis to critically revise the current role of these areas from the perspective of local and regional development. (Contains 1 table and 1 figure.)

As Argentina presents problems of malnutrition, the federal in-school feeding program has become a key policy because it provides an important nutritional intervention during a relevant growth period. This paper estimates the effect of the program on academic performance--measured by standardized test scores--with a difference in difference model, which exploits the change over time in the supply of the in-school feeding program during the end of the nineties. We build an original panel using the ONEE corresponding to the years 1997, 1999 and 2000. Our findings suggest that the program has successfully targeted the most disadvantaged schools. However, only partial improvement in school performance has been found. Language test scores were the only ones to show a statistically significant improvement, with no noticeable effects reported in math scores. These results are consistent with the characteristics of the federal in-school feeding program in Argentina, which do not compensate for the nutritional deficit the children bring from their homes. This implies that having an in-school feeding program--even that reaching the most needy populations--does not necessarily address the desired goals of compensating for nutritional deficits and correlating to improved test results for students. (Contains 5 tables and 13 footnotes.)

The Changing Academic Profession (CAP) international survey was designed in part to consider the effects of globalization on the work context and activities of academics in 19 countries or regions around the world. This paper draws from a subset of these data to explore the extent to which academics are globally connected in their research and teaching, and the ways this connectedness relates to global migration. Across multiple measures, immigrant academics (i.e., academics working in countries where they were not born and did not receive their first degree) were more globally connected than national academics (i.e., those working in the countries of their birth and first degree). Global migration by academic staff is clearly a major contributor to the internationalization of higher education institutions, yet there was no evidence these contributions led to enhanced career progress or job satisfaction for immigrant academics relative to national academics. The international expertise and experience of immigrant academics may not be sufficiently recognized and valued by their institutions.

Many studies have explored the contribution of different factors from diverse theoretical perspectives to the explanation of academic performance. These factors have been identified as having important implications not only for the study of learning processes, but also as tools for improving curriculum designs, tutorial systems, and students' outcomes. Some authors have suggested that traditional statistical methods do not always yield accurate predictions and/or classifications (Everson, 1995; Garson, 1998). This paper explores a relatively new methodological approach for the field of learning and education, but which is widely used in other areas, such as computational sciences, engineering and economics. This study uses cognitive and non-cognitive measures of students, together with background information, in order to design predictive models of student performance using artificial neural networks (ANN). These predictions of performance constitute a true predictive classification of academic performance over time, a year in advance of the actual observed measure of academic performance. A total sample of 864 university students of both genders, ages ranging between 18 and 25 was used. Three neural network models were developed. Two of the models (identifying the top 33% and the lowest 33% groups, respectively) were able to reach 100% correct identification of all students in each of the two groups. The third model (identifying low, mid and high performance levels) reached precisions from 87% to 100% for the three groups. Analyses also explored the predicted outcomes at an individual level, and their correlations with the observed results, as a continuous variable for the whole group of students. Results demonstrate the greater accuracy of the ANN compared to traditional methods such as discriminant analyses. In addition, the ANN provided information on those predictors that best explained the different levels of expected performance. Thus, results have allowed the identification of the specific influence of each pattern of variables on different levels of academic performance, providing a better understanding of the variables with the greatest impact on individual learning processes, and of those factors that best explain these processes for different academic levels.