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Mathematics is a challenging subject for most students in technical and vocational institutions. The institutions apply great effort towards developing mathematics knowledge and skills, mainly by influencing students' motivations. This study tries: (1) to present evidence for the validity of an instrument for measuring students' motivational beliefs as their beliefs, self-efficacy, and intrinsic-extrinsic goal orientations regarding mathematics; (2) to explore the relationship between institutional context and the instrument’s scores as students’ motivational beliefs. The data collected from 1,239 students from two different Chilean institutions were analyzed. The psychometric analysis provided evidence of the reliability and validity of the instrument. The instrument suggests differences in the level of motivational beliefs associated with students' age and the type of institutions. The instrument allows educators to study the relationships between motivational beliefs and the institutional context of technical and vocational schools. It can also be used for the prediction of student success in their mathematics course by the understanding of their motivational beliefs towards mathematics.

In this introduction, the guest editors present an overview of the 11 articles that make up the special issue on student experience in Latin American higher education. The introduction provides context about the higher education sector in Latin America, draws attention to the main features of the articles, and highlights common themes across them. The guest editors also comment on the parallels and contrasts with the student experience discussed by the literature from other geographical locations. Based on the preparation and publication of the special issue, suggestions for further research are provided.

Chile implemented a new national quality assurance system for its higher education institutions in 2006 that included a set of policies and procedures for graduate education. Ten years after its implementation, this study looks at the perceived alignments and misalignments between the national accreditation goals and the graduate programs’ visions of improvement. By using the concept of loosely coupled systems, we studied eight science and technology master’s and doctoral programs at four research-oriented Chilean universities. In total, we conducted 26 interviews, visited all campus sites, and analyzed related documents. The results indicate that the national accreditation system improved academic quality across programs by strengthening the influence of university central administrations and raising faculty productivity standards. In particular, the accreditation meant a push for internationalization, which was welcomed at all institutional levels. However, after a decade, the accreditation system seems misaligned with programs’ new improvement efforts, such as the promotion of multidisciplinary work. To some extent, accreditation standards, based on strong disciplinary orientations, penalize a diverse student body and curricular innovation and do not consider the challenges of publishing multidisciplinary research.

Los pioneros de la Iglesia Adventista del Séptimo día vieron el cumplimiento de las señales cósmicas de Mt 24:29; Mr 13:24-25; Lc 21:25; 1 P 3:10; Ap 6:12-14 en eventos literales ocurridos en los siglos XVIII y XIX, anunciando la pronta segunda venida de Cristo. Algunos intérpretes adventistas ahora sugieren que la comprensión tradicional no es relevante. Este primer artículo analiza la información bíblica en cuanto a las señales cósmicas en su contexto veterotestamentario. Las señales cósmicas parecen ser eventos literales relacionados a juicios divinos sobre Israel y las naciones. Aparecen como parte del día del Señor, en el cual el pueblo de Dios es juzgado, vindicado y restaurado. El trasfondo del Antiguo Testamento debiera ser la base para la aplicación escatológica de las señales cósmicas. Una segunda parte de este estudio analizará el uso de este motivo en el Nuevo Testamento y su cumplimiento escatológico.

β-Strand mediated protein–protein interactions (PPIs) represent underexploited targets for chemical probe development despite representing a significant proportion of known and therapeutically relevant PPI targets. β-Strand mimicry is challenging given that both amino acid side-chains and backbone hydrogen-bonds are typically required for molecular recognition, yet these are oriented along perpendicular vectors. This paper describes an alternative approach, using GKAP/SHANK1 PDZ as a model and dynamic ligation screening to identify small-molecule replacements for tranches of peptide sequence. A peptide truncation of GKAP functionalized at the N- and C-termini with acylhydrazone groups was used as an anchor. Reversible acylhydrazone bond exchange with a library of aldehyde fragments in the presence of the protein as template and in situ screening using a fluorescence anisotropy (FA) assay identified peptide hybrid hits with comparable affinity to the GKAP peptide binding sequence. Identified hits were validated using FA, ITC, NMR and X-ray crystallography to confirm selective inhibition of the target PDZ-mediated PPI and mode of binding. These analyses together with molecular dynamics simulations demonstrated the ligands make transient interactions with an unoccupied basic patch through electrostatic interactions, establishing proof-of-concept that this unbiased approach to ligand discovery represents a powerful addition to the armory of tools that can be used to identify PPI modulators., Dynamic ligation screening is used to identify acylhydrazone-linked peptide-fragment hybrids which bind to the SHANK1 PDZ domain with comparable affinity to the native GKAP peptide as shown by biophysical and structural analyses.

Protein–protein interactions (PPIs) are central to biological mechanisms, and can serve as compelling targets for drug discovery. Yet, the discovery of small molecule inhibitors of PPIs remains challenging given the large and typically shallow topography of the interacting protein surfaces. Here, we describe a general approach to the discovery of orthosteric PPI inhibitors that mimic specific secondary protein structures. Initially, hot residues at protein–protein interfaces are identified in silico or from experimental data, and incorporated into secondary structure-based queries. Virtual libraries of small molecules are then shape-matched against the queries, and promising ligands docked to target proteins. The approach is exemplified experimentally using two unrelated PPIs that are mediated by an α-helix (p53/hDM2) and a β-strand (GKAP/SHANK1-PDZ). In each case, selective PPI inhibitors are discovered with low μM activity as determined by a combination of fluorescence anisotropy and 1H–15N HSQC experiments. In addition, hit expansion yields a series of PPI inhibitors with defined structure–activity relationships. It is envisaged that the generality of the approach will enable discovery of inhibitors of a wide range of unrelated secondary structure-mediated PPIs., Small-molecule protein–protein interaction inhibitors were prioritised on the basis of shape similarity to secondary structure-based queries incorporating hot-spot residues.

Over the past 30 years, Chilean faculty’s progress in terms of size, academic training, and research productivity has been outstanding. In the last decade, the number of faculty in Chilean higher education increased by about 40%, and the number of them holding doctorate degrees doubled. This progress has occurred in the context of multiple national initiatives and policies attempting to migrate the country from an economy based on the exploitation of natural resources to one based on knowledge and innovation. This chapter describes these changes and explores the challenges and opportunities for faculty members in the emerging Chilean knowledge economy and its innovation system. In particular, we discuss issues and new demands surrounding faculty’s research work. This building of research capabilities includes modernizing doctoral education, increasing the participation of women in leadership positions and STEM fields, navigating internationalization, and meeting new demands for outreach with industry and society.

Curriculum analytics (CA) emerged as a sub-field of learning analytics, aiming to use evidence to drive curriculum decision-making and program improvement. However, its overall impact on program outcomes remains unknown. In this context, this paper presents work-in-progress of a large research project to understand how CA could support continuous improvement processes at a program-level. We followed an approach based on design-based research to develop a CA tool: The Integrative Learning Design Framework. This paper describes three out of four phases of this framework and its main results, including the evaluation of the local impact of this CA tool. This evaluation consisted of an instrumental case study to evaluate its use to support 124 teaching staff in a 3-year continuous improvement process in a Latin American university. Lessons learned indicate that the tool helped staff to collect information for curriculum discussions, facilitating the availability of evidence regarding student competency attainment. To generalize these lessons, future work will consist of evaluating the tool in different university settings.

International audience; Over the past two decades, external influences over continuous curriculum improvement have increased, so universities have implemented centralized approaches to respond to external accountability demands, such as national and international accreditations. These approaches have diminished teaching staff engagement with continuous curriculum improvement, without necessarily improving student outcome attainment. To illustrate mechanisms that engage and disengage teaching staff, we present a case study of a 3-year continuous improvement process implemented in a selective university in Chile. Throughout the process, 61 teaching staff members were involved in outcome assessment tasks and curriculum discussions. By triangulating three sources of evidence (97 assessment plans, 27 meeting minutes and 11 interviews), we identified engagement mechanisms that were related to staff members’ motivation to improve student outcomes, and disengagement mechanisms that were related to their reticence towards misaligned and externally imposed policies. Teaching staff’s perspectives on continuous improvement were discussed for further generalization of these mechanisms.

espanolRESUMEN La tasa de desercion en primer ano del sistema de educacion superior tecnico profesional (ESTP) en Chile es superior al 30%. Una de las principales razones academicas para el abandono es el aprendizaje y ensenanza de las matematicas. Las instituciones entienden esto y proponen distintas politicas para mejorar estos indicadores. Sin embargo, es escasa la investigacion sobre el efecto de estas iniciativas en los profesores de matematicas en general. Este articulo busca entender la relacion entre el contexto institucional y lo que sucede con los profesores de matematica en la ESTP, usando la perspectiva de las obligaciones profesionales y del hacer sentido. Mediante entrevistas y grupos de discusion de directivos y profesores, concluimos que las politicas institucionales no estan pensadas para apoyar el trabajo del docente y en ocasiones traban un buen trabajo en aula. Este articulo discute estos resultados y plantea recomendaciones para el conjunto del sistema de ESTP. EnglishAbstract First year dropout rates in the system of technical and vocational higher education (ESTP) in Chile is greater than 30%. One of the main reasons of this rate is the teaching and learning of mathematics. Institutions understand this and promote different policy in order to improve this indicator. However, there is little research on the effect of these initiatives on mathematics teachers in general. This article seeks to understand the relationship between the institutional context and what happens with mathematics teachers in ESTP, using the perspectives of professional obligations and sensemaking. Through interviews and group discussions with administrators and teachers, we found that institutional policy is not designed to support teachers’ work and sometimes obstruct good classroom work. We discuss implications and recommendation for the whole ESTP system.

As globalization has expedited mobility of faculty across nations, faculty hiring is taking place at an international level. Institutions and governments often perceive hiring faculty who were trained in different countries as a strategy for reaching the status of world-class universities. The major assumption behind this hiring strategy is that faculty who are educated in prestigious universities in foreign countries will bring cutting edge knowledge and networks that will lead to future research collaborations. Yet, a dearth of research empirically investigated the assumption that institutions that train future foreign faculty and those that hire faculty with foreign degrees will have greater presence in the international networks of research collaboration. Filling this hole, this study examines this assumption from an international perspective, using the case of industrial engineering departments at selective research universities in Chile and Korea. Based on the unique data that document faculty hiring (degree attainment institutions) and research collaboration (co-authorship), and institutional prestige (global ranking positions), we analyzed the relationship between faculty hiring network and research collaboration network, as well as their association with institutional prestige. The results provide strong evidence of the positive relationships between doctoral training and future research collaboration, and the strong presence of institutions with global prestige. These relationships result in homophilic networks that suggest a concern about a reduced diversity in theoretical perspective and research methods within the disciplinary field.

Los pioneros de la Iglesia Adventista del Séptimo día vieron el cumplimiento de las señales cósmicas de Mt 24:29; Mr 13:24-25; Lc 21:25; 1 P 3:10; Ap 6:12-14 en eventos literales ocurridos en los siglos XVIII y XIX, como anunciando la pronta segunda venida de Cristo. Algunos intérpretes adventistas ahora sugieren que la comprensión tradicional no es relevante. El primer artículo de esta serie analizó la información del Antiguo Testamento sobre las señales cósmicas. Esta segunda parte analiza sus menciones en el Nuevo Testamento. El día del Señor debe ser entendido no como un evento único, sino como una serie de eventos que incluyen el juicio y la segunda venida de Cristo. Las señales cósmicas anuncian la intervención divina en los asuntos humanos a través del juicio durante el día del Señor. La interpretación tradicional aparece confirmada como el anuncio del inicio del juicio pre-advenimiento en 1844.

We consider the problem of designing affirmative action policies for selecting the top-k candidates from a pool of applicants. We assume that for each candidate we have socio-demographic attributes and a series of variables that serve as indicators of future performance (e.g., results on standardized tests). We further assume that we have access to historical data including the actual performance of previously selected candidates. Critically, performance information is only available for candidates who were selected under some previous selection policy. In this work we assume that due to legal requirements or voluntary commitments, an organization wants to increase the presence of people from disadvantaged socio-demographic groups among the selected candidates. Hence, we seek to design an affirmative action or positive action policy. This policy has two concurrent objectives: (i) to select candidates who, given what can be learnt from historical data, are more likely to perform well, and (ii) to select candidates in a way that increases the representation of disadvantaged socio-demographic groups. Our motivating application is the design of university admission policies to bachelor's degrees. We use a causal model as a framework to describe several families of policies (changing component weights, giving bonuses, and enacting quotas), and compare them both theoretically and through extensive experimentation on a large real-world dataset containing thousands of university applicants. Our paper is the first to place the problem of affirmative-action policy design within the framework of algorithmic fairness. Our empirical results indicate that simple policies could favor the admission of disadvantaged groups without significantly compromising on the quality of accepted candidates., 10 pages

We study how teacher interactions with student groups relate to team’s problem-solving capabilities in the teaching of mathematics in open-access institutions of higher education in Chile. We define a teacher interaction as the moment in which a teacher visits a group of student working on a problem-solving activity. The data is based on 25 videos of classroom teaching of 11 teachers. Through the analysis of about 700 interactions observed in videos, we described and measured items such as the number of students who talk during the interaction or whether the teacher interacts mostly with questions. We also created a variable we called depth of the solution, which indicates whether a team solved the problem and how far they went in further problem extensions. This measure was used as the dependent variable, regressed on multiple teachers’ interaction variables, and controlled by several teachers and team characteristics. We used the idea of scaffolding as a framework to analyze and discuss the data. We found evidence that the fewer teachers interrupt student groups, the further students go into the mathematics content of the problem-solving task.

Este artículo presenta los primeros resultados para Chile de la encuesta internacional de la profesión académica APIKS (Academic Profession in the Knowledge-Based Society), aplicada a los académicos de 11 universidades entre fines de 2018 y principios de 2019. Las universidades participantes incluyen los tres tipos principales de universidades en Chile: estatales, privadas con aporte estatal (conocidas también como G9) y privadas sin aporte estatal. Respondieron la encuesta, de manera completa, 1.258 académicos y académicas. Se presentan aquí, descriptivamente, los resultados de los siguientes módulos de la encuesta: distribución del tiempo de los académicos en las diversas funciones universitarias, características de la labor de docencia, características del trabajo de investigación y perfil de las actividades de vinculación con el medio. También se informan los resultados de la experiencia de los académicos en etapas formativas de sus carreras: profesores instructores y asistentes. Los principales resultados sugieren que la docencia de pregrado sigue siendo la labor central de los académicos en todos los tipos de universidades, que una cuarta parte del tiempo se dedica a la gestión, que los modos de producción de conocimiento, con altos niveles de colaboración nacional e internacional, enfatizan la publicación de artículos en revistas por sobre otras formas de comunicación científica, y que los vínculos con el medio privilegian, como socios, a otras universidades, al gobierno y a las ONG, en desmedro de la empresa privada. También aparece que los apoyos de las universidades a sus académicos, en etapas formativas, son aún incipientes.

In the context of globalisation, higher education institutions not only have to be global in their internal practices, but also have to appear as international hubs to their constituencies. International partnership has been an essential part of these strategies. Partnerships help institutions in creating practices that are costly, as well as enhancing reputation by partnering with prestigious schools. Moreover, different spectrums of partnerships require varying degrees of commitment. Noting that the motivation for and engagement in partnerships is particularly strong in business, and the region of Latin America as well as Asia and Oceania, this study attempts to depict how institutions engage internationalisation, revealed as the exchange network and dual degree network of the 20 best MBA programmes in the two regions. Employing social network analysis, we found that schools have different levels of engagement in building partnerships and the region and reputation of schools matter for partnerships. Top-ranked MBA programmes tend to have more exchange partners and have a higher level of popularity in the exchange network. The dual degree network was more restricted in terms of the number, country, and prestige. Asian and Oceanian MBA programmes tend to have more exchange partners but are less likely to engage in dual degree partnerships, compared to the Latin American MBA programmes. Some institutions focus their dual degree network on a particular region. As higher education institutions actively engage in various types of collaborations, the findings provide meaningful implications for understanding the patterns of international partnership among higher education institutions.

We report on a qualitative investigation of the ways in which 14 faculty members in the mathematics department at a community college described their approaches to teaching and contrasted those with analyses of their mathematics lessons. We characterized instructors’ teaching approaches as traditional, meaning-making, or student-support and classified framing talk and mathematical questioning in the classroom. We found an association between instructors’ descriptions of their approaches to teaching and their enactment in the classroom through framing talk but no association between these approaches and instructors’ use of novel mathematical questions. Categorizations of teaching approaches that include classroom data to describe the interactions between students, content, and instruction can provide actionable information to influence teaching practice in higher education.

A conceptual framework grounded on procedural justice theory was created to explain how judgments about the fairness of tenure decision-making evolved among faculty who had not yet undergone the review. The framework posits that faculty beliefs about fairness are influenced directly by their workplace experiences and both directly and indirectly by their socio-demographic characteristics. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to assess the proposed direct and indirect effects with data from 2,247 pre-tenure assistant professors at 21 research universities. The results substantiate the importance of perceived campus and department conditions in shaping faculty members’ views of tenure reviews and as mediators of faculty members’ socio-demographic characteristics. Equitable treatment of junior faculty at the department level and effectiveness of feedback have the strongest relationships with beliefs about the equity of tenure decision-making. Generally speaking, an individual’s sense of control during the process of constructing the tenure dossier predicts his or her judgments about the fairness of tenure reviews. Practical suggestions for campus leaders regarding the conditions that inform faculty beliefs about tenure reviews and implications for future research are discussed.

The present study identifies characteristics of individuals and work settings that influence Asian international faculty members’ intentions to continue their employment in US research universities. Given the demand for researchers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields (STEM), the higher rate of turnover among untenured faculty, and the replacement costs associated with turnover in STEM, the sample is limited to assistant professors employed in these areas. Multinomial regression analyses are conducted to identify variables that “pull” and “push” uncertain faculty toward intentions stay and leave their current institutions. The results suggest that faculty who are more satisfied with time available for research and those who express stronger organizational commitment are more likely to say they will stay. Those dissatisfied with the fairness of work evaluations and believe tenure decisions are not merit-based, are more likely to say they will leave.

Chirality of the monomeric residues controls and determines the prevalent folding of small oligopeptides (from di- to tetramers) composed of 2-aminocyclobutane-1-carboxylic acid (ACBA) derivatives with the same or different absolute and relative configuration. The cis-form of the monomeric ACBA gives rise to two conformers, namely, Z6 and Z8, while the trans-form manifests uniquely as an H8 structure. By combining these subunits in oligo- and polypeptides, their local structural preference remains, thus allowing the rational design of new short foldamers. A lego-type molecular architecture evolves; the overall look depends only on the conformational properties of the structural building units. A versatile and efficient method to predict the backbone folds of designed cyclobutane β-peptides is based on QM calculations. Predictions are corroborated by high-resolution NMR studies on selected stereoisomers, most of them being new foldamers that have been synthesized and characterized for the first time. Thus, the chiral expression of monomeric building units results in the defined secondary structures of small oligomers. As a result of this study, a new set of chirality controlled foldamers is provided to probe as biocompatible biopolymers.

Several oligomers constructed with (1R,2S)-2-aminocyclobutane-1-carboxylic acid and glycine, β-alanine, and γ-amino butyric acid (GABA), respectively, joined in alternation have been synthesized and studied by means of NMR and CD experiments as well as with computational calculations. Results account for the spacer length effect on folding and show that conformational preference for these hybrid peptides can be tuned from β-sheet-like folding for those containing a C(2) or C(4) linear segment to a helical folding for those with a C(3) spacer between cyclobutane residues. The introduction of cyclic spacers between these residues does not modify the extended ribbon-type structure previously manifested in poly(cis-cyclobutane) β-oligomers.

α-(trans-Vinyl) phosphonamides with different substituents at the β-position were stereoselectively synthesized in high yields by treatment of β-substituted α-epoxy-α-trimethylsilyl phosphines with oxidizing agents. The corresponding phosphonamides were unstable in most cases and underwent reductive elimination affording desilylated vinyl derivatives. In turn, α-epoxy phosphines resulted from the [1+2] addition of [bis(diisopropylamino)phosphino](trimethylsilyl)carbene 2 to aliphatic, aromatic, and heteroaromatic aldehydes. In this way, a great variety of vinyl compounds have been efficiently prepared through one-pot procedure.

α-(trans-Vinyl) phosphonamides with different substituents at the β-position were stereoselectively synthesized in high yields by treatment of β-substituted α-epoxy-α-trimethylsilyl phosphines with oxidizing agents. The corresponding phosphonamides were unstable in most cases and underwent reductive elimination affording desilylated vinyl derivatives. In turn, α-epoxy phosphines resulted from the [1+2] addition of [bis(diisopropylamino)phosphino](trimethylsilyl)carbene 2 to aliphatic, aromatic, and heteroaromatic aldehydes. In this way, a great variety of vinyl compounds have been efficiently prepared through one-pot procedure.