Search

The present research analyses the impact that the time spent on the Internet by primary school (3rd and 6th grade) students may have on their academic progression in terms of test scores. In order to go beyond a correlational analysis, we have applied a time fixed-effects estimation using a recent longitudinal database of 15,974 students from the Spanish region of the Canary Islands. Our results show that, in general, an increasingly frequent use of the Internet has a negative influence on students' academic achievement progression, with higher use of instant messaging applications being particularly linked to girls' poorer mathematics academic performance progression. This negative influence may be a consequence of replacing time to academic activities (e.g., reading books or homework) with time using the Internet, which can also ultimately lead students to adopt unhealthy study habits that can affect their future academic success. Furthermore, we find that there is not a negative impact of playing videogames on the mathematics competence, as the development of spatial-visual (digital) skills possibly counterbalances the negative influence of time substitution between academically oriented tasks and the Internet.

Research on topics related to educational leadership is evolving rapidly. A scoping review was conducted to investigate research on teacher leadership in Spain searching online databases (WoS, ÍnDICEs-CSIC, SCOPUS, Google Scholar) to identify papers published between 1990 and 2022, of which 39 were included. Through a thematic and contextual analysis, the review concludes that teacher leadership is an emerging topic in Spain; it has a much stronger empirical position and has expanded related to distributed leadership and leadership for social justice. Nevertheless, further research is needed to develop this area and make it more useful for academics, practitioners, and policymakers.

Although there is interest on educational leadership in Spain, research has focused on principal leadership and little has been investigated about teacher leadership. In the context of the International Study on Teacher Leadership (ISTL), this study aims to develop understanding of the concept of teacher leadership in institutional documents in Spain and to explore and analyze the dominant values and assumptions that can be identified. The review of the documents revealed a limited understanding of the critical importance of teacher leadership. Findings identified some aspects in the teacher leadership literature reviewed such as teamwork, accountability, openness to change, reflection, and advocacy, whereas inclusiveness, risk-taking, shared vision, and stability are scarcely identified. The increasing emphasis on teacher leadership dimensions in recent institutional documents note the need to go further with support for teachers' secondary roles as a consequence of the required modernization of the teaching profession.

As children spend more and more time on electronic devices and social networks, there is a growing concern about the influence that these activities may have on their development and social well-being. In this context, the present research is aimed at analysing the influence that Internet use may have on 6th grade primary school students' academic performance in Spain. In order to do so, we have employed a methodological approach that combines econometric and interval multiobjective programming techniques, which has let us identify the traits and Internet use patterns that allow students to maximise their academic performance in terms of scores in four competences. Our results show that, while daily use of the Internet to listen to music or search for information about other topics of interest can favor the maximization of educational outcomes, the use of social networks should be limited as much as possible to avoid hindering the educational process.

Copyright of DYNA - Ingeniería e Industria is the property of Publicaciones Dyna SL 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.)