Epistemic Beliefs and Pre-service Teachers’ Conceptions of History Instruction

This study investigates the difficulties pre-service history teachers face in understanding and implementing a history curriculum focused on historical reasoning. Based on the general hypothesis of beliefs exerting a direct influence on teachers’ actions, this phenomenographic study provides a qualitative analysis of the epistemic and learning/teaching conceptions on which pre-service teachers base their reflections and decisions when they have to produce a teaching plan for a specific situation, taking n = 72 pre-service teachers from the Master’s Degree in Teaching in Secondary Education at the University of Zaragoza (specialty Geography and History) as statistical sample. The outcome of the first phases of the analysis was a new theoretical reference framework that innovated by simultaneously analyzing epistemic and educational conceptions. On the one hand, the analysis results include a considerable number of pre-service teachers who use epistemic beliefs identifying history and the past when addressing the curriculum. On the other, none of them, not even those with advanced epistemic beliefs, think about the curriculum in terms of an inquiry-based approach to historical problems, and, therefore, they display a transmissive–reproductive conception of history instruction. Consequently, the main contribution is observation of a twofold threshold that pre-service teachers must cross to understand and accept an interpretive history curriculum: they must overcome the identification between past and history and instead immerse themselves in the necessarily interpretive nature of any history; and they must stop viewing learning as knowledge internalization and reproduction and, instead, embrace a conception of learning as inquiry and reasoning. Copyright © 2022 Paricio, García-Ceballos and Rubio-Navarro

El valor de la historia. Estudio de alternativas curriculares en Secundaria (3): aprender a pensar desde múltiples perspectivas

Explorar y debatir múltiples perspectivas sobre los acontecimientos del pasado es una orientación curricular tan aceptada entre los investigadores, como poco frecuente en nuestras aulas de historia. Como en entregas anteriores de esta serie de artículos, se analiza aquí esta orientación curricular a la luz de las investigaciones y experiencias publicadas, tratando de esclarecer en qué consiste, sus claves, sus prácticas más habituales y por qué resulta valiosa para los estudiantes. La multiperspectividad está en la misma esencia de la historia como disciplina. Se opone a la memoria, caracterizada por relatos cerrados que imponen una única versión del pasado. En esta tensión entre disciplina y memoria, la práctica de la enseñanza de la historia ha apostado habitualmente por la segunda. Pero aprender a analizar, valorar y debatir las distintas versiones del mundo del pasado (y del presente) tiene mucho más valor curricular. Multiperspetividad no sólo significa comprender la verdadera naturaleza polémica, abierta y crítica de la historia, sino que es la misma base de la ciudadanía democrática

“Competency-based design”... was this what we needed?

[ES] Se propone una revisión crítica del diseño por competencias, tal y como se ha venido entendiendo y practicando de forma generalizada en las universidades españolas. Con este fin, se ha realizado un estudio cualitativo del perfil de competencias específicas de salida declarado por las 80 titulaciones de ADE que se ofrecen en España. Se toma como punto de partida la concepción de currículo basado en competencias que desde hace ya décadas vienen argumentando autores de referencia en el tema como Tardif, Perrenoud, Le Boterf o Zabalza. Los resultados muestran que la noción de competencia que se utiliza equivale en la práctica a casi cualquier objetivo de aprendizaje: conocimientos, capacidades, actitudes, competencias transversales…, todo se mezcla habitualmente en larguísimos listados de supuestas competencias. El perfil de salida, la “clave de bóveda” de un diseño por competencias, queda así reducido a una mera acumulación heterogénea de cosas, con lo que pierde todo su sentido y función como eje organizador e integrador del currículo. La competencia, lo que caracteriza a un experto, ha sido interpretada por la cultura académica desde una concepción ingenua, de naturaleza acumulativa y cuantitativa: lo que hace competente a una persona es, en esencia, saber mucho. El resultado son listados de conocimientos y capacidades de todo tipo. Se ha obviado así la naturaleza necesariamente holística e integradora de la idea de competencia y con ello se ha malogrado todo el potencial que incorporaba para transformar los currículos de nuestras titulaciones.[EN] A critical review of competency-based curricular design, as it has been widely understood and practiced in Spanish universities, is proposed. To this end, a qualitative study has been carried out of the specific competencies declared by the 80 ADE degrees offered in Spain as their graduates attributes. The starting point is the conception of a curriculum based on competencies that for decades have been argued by reference authors in the field such as Tardif, Perrenoud, Le Boterf or Zabalza. The results show that the notion of competence being used in practice is equivalent to almost any learning objective: knowledge, skills, attitudes, transversal competencies... everything is usually mixed in very long lists of supposed competencies. The competency-based exit profile, the “keystone” of a competency-based curricular design, is thus reduced to a mere heterogeneous accumulation of things, thus losing all meaning and function as the organizing and integrating axis of the curriculum. Competence, that which characterizes the expert, has been interpreted by academic culture from a naive conception, cumulative and quantitative in nature: what makes a person competent is essentially knowing a lot. The result is lists of knowledge and skills of all kinds. The necessarily holistic and integrative nature of competence has thus been ignored, and with it all the potential that the idea of competence incorporated to transform the curricula of our degrees has been spoiled.Paricio Royo, J. (2020). "Diseño por competencias" ¿era esto lo que necesitábamos?. REDU. Revista de Docencia Universitaria. 18(1):47-70. https://doi.org/10.4995/redu.2020.13205OJS477018

Interdisciplinary debate: participative processes in the design and execution of the urban project

Procesos participativos y espacio público constituyen dos de los ámbitos que más diversidad reúnen a la hora de trabajar sobre la ciudad contemporánea. Desde el usuario del barrio hasta el académico, desde el técnico al artista, desde el político al trabajador social… la multiplicidad de visiones que confluyen con un mismo objetivo, la mejora de la polis, constituye al mismo tiempo su mayor riqueza y su mayor dificultad. Este debate, realizado de forma virtual a través del software Skype, entre profesionales provenientes de distintas disciplinas, muestra ese mismo enfrentamiento a la vez que trata de encontrar posicionamientos comunes. El proceso participativo es abordado como fuente de complejidad, cuya gestión presenta toda una serie de cuestiones metodológicas. La educación, el espacio público como lugar de ejemplaridad, el movimiento 15-M y la responsabilidad política, son todos temas básicos en esta materia que serán tratados desde distintas experiencias y puntos de vista técnicos, académicos y sociales. Por otro lado aparecerán cuestiones no tan comunes pero de gran interés, como la relación entre identidad, participación y responsabilidad, o la estética propia de los procesos participativos

Vulnerability and Resilience Assessment of Power Systems: From Deterioration to Recovery via a Topological Model based on Graph Theory

Traditionally, vulnerability is the level of degradation caused by failures or disturbances, and resilience is the ability to recover after a high-impact event. This paper presents a topological procedure based on graph theory to evaluate the vulnerability and resilience of power grids. A cascading failures model is developed by eliminating lines both deliberately and randomly, and four restoration strategies inspired by the network approach are proposed. In the two cases, the degradation and recovery of the electrical infrastructure are quantified through four centrality measures. Here, an index called flow-capacity is proposed to measure the level of network overload during the iterative processes. The developed sequential framework was tested on a graph of 600 nodes and 1196 edges built from the 400 kV high-voltage power system in Spain. The conclusions obtained show that the statistical graph indices measure different topological aspects of the network, so it is essential to combine the results to obtain a broader view of the structural behaviour of the infrastructure

Sobre la compresión Neógena en la Cordillera Iberica

We argue about micro and macrostructural data published in the paper in question supporting the hypothesis of some compressive regime being present in the Iberian Chain during the Miocene; at the same time, new data from other localities are presented. All these allow us to design a model of stress field characterized by a near N-S horizontal compression axis. After the LowerMiddle Miocene, E to ESE regional extension linked to the rifting of the eastern margin of the Iberian Peninsula is superposed. As a consequence, each point within the resulting stress field can register either compressive or extensive stress states at different times.En este artículo se hacen algunas precisiones acerca de los datos micro y macroestructurales que se aportaron en el trabajo citado en apoyo de la idea de un régimen compresivo vigente durante al menos una parte del Mioceno en la Cordillera Ibérica, al tiempo que se ofrecen datos nuevos procedentes de otras localidades. Todos ellos permiten diseñar un modelo de campo de esfuerzos caracterizado por una dirección de comprensión horizontal próxima a N-S, al que se superpone, a partir del Mioceno inferior-medio, una distensión E a ESE relacionada con el rifting del margen mediterráneo de la Península. La suma de ambos campos puede manifestarse, en cada momento y en cada lugar, por estados de esfuerzo tanto comprensivos como extensivos

Helping pregraduate students reach deep understanding of the second law of thermodynamics

Pregraduate students often have low success expectations toward their thermodynamics courses, which are often considered too abstract and remarkably difficult to understand. For this reason, they may not even try to reach any level of comprehension while settling for reproducing mathematical calculations and memorizing definitions to pass the exams. Traditional lectures on thermodynamics, focusing on mathematical deductions while neglecting the qualitative characterization of the concepts behind the equations, do not help in this respect. Aiming at a change in the teaching practice and focused on the second law of thermodynamics, the main goals of this work are to characterize the way of reasoning of the expert; to present a review on the most important learning difficulties encountered by students and categorize them into three groups: the disregard of qualitative understanding, the inherent conceptual difficulties, and those related to the students’ previous knowledge; and to propose some suitable teaching practices to assist instructors in this difficult but rewarding task