Good practices, innovation or scientific research in education? A conceptual reflection

In this work a conceptual delimitation of "good teaching practices", "educational innovation" and "educational research" is proposed, based on both the experimental design and the quality of the evidence provided by these studies. This terminological clarification should help teachers to recognize the scientific research specific to pedagogy, in order to distinguish them from studies that do not have enough elements to be considered fully scientific although, occasionally, they may work for some teachers. Thus, in a near future, an educational science should be established in which teachers can trust.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

The infochemical core

Vocalizations, and less often gestures, have been the object of linguistic research for decades. However, the development of a general theory of communication with human language as a particular case requires a clear understanding of the organization of communication through other means. Infochemicals are chemical compounds that carry information and are employed by small organisms that cannot emit acoustic signals of an optimal frequency to achieve successful communication. Here, we investigate the distribution of infochemicals across species when they are ranked by their degree or the number of species with which they are associated (because they produce them or are sensitive to them). We evaluate the quality of the fit of different functions to the dependency between degree and rank by means of a penalty for the number of parameters of the function. Surprisingly, a double Zipf (a Zipf distribution with two regimes, each with a different exponent) is the model yielding the best fit although it is the function with the largest number of parameters. This suggests that the worldwide repertoire of infochemicals contains a core which is shared by many species and is reminiscent of the core vocabularies found for human language in dictionaries or large corpora.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Historia de la ciencia y la tecnología en la formación del profesorado de tecnología

The pre-service teacher (pre-teacher) of technology, a student who enrols in the master course of teacher training (for secondary education, specialised in technology), has a solid technical background, as these students come primarily from the various degrees of engineering and architecture, but a less humanistic education, especially in the field of history of science and technology. This communication presents our experience as teachers of the subjectPeer ReviewedPostprint (published version

El liderazgo como criterio de calidad en la educación inclusiva.

El artículo presenta los resultados de un estudio que explora las competencias, aspectos o estrategias utilizadas en el ejercicio del liderazgo, relacionados con el Modelo de Excelencia de la EFQM, que promueven y desarrollan buenas prácticas en centros de orientación inclusiva. A partir de un diseño de investigación de estudios de casos, desarrollamos el trabajo de campo en cuatro centros públicos de Educación Secundaria Obligatoria, de la Comunidad Autónoma de Andalucía (España), seleccionados por desarrollar prácticas educativas de orientación inclusiva. Empleamos el análisis documental, cuestionarios y entrevistas en profundidad como estrategias de recogida de información. Entre los resultados obtenidos destacamos que el desarrollo de buenas prácticas viene determinado por la influencia que ejerce el liderazgo directivo sobre el análisis de las necesidades de la comunidad educativa, las motivaciones del profesorado, sus habilidades y capacidades profesionales, y las condiciones de trabajo en las cuales realizan sus labores.The article presents the results of a study exploring the skills, aspects and strategies used in the exercise of leadership, related to EFQM Excellence Model which promote and develop good practice in inclusionoriented schools. From a research design of case studies, we developed fieldwork in four public Secondary Education Compulsory schools of the Autonomous Community of Andalusia (Spain), selected to develop inclusive educational practices guidance. We employed document analysis, questionnaires and in-depth interviews and data collection strategies. Among the results, we highlight that the development of good practice is determined by the influence of managerial leadership on the analysis of the needs of the educational community, teacher motivation, their abilities and professional skills and working conditions in which they work.Ministerio de Educación y Cienci

RDF-TR: Exploiting structural redundancies to boost RDF compression

The number and volume of semantic data have grown impressively over the last decade, promoting compression as an essential tool for RDF preservation, sharing and management. In contrast to universal compressors, RDF compression techniques are able to detect and exploit specific forms of redundancy in RDF data. Thus, state-of-the-art RDF compressors excel at exploiting syntactic and semantic redundancies, i.e., repetitions in the serialization format and information that can be inferred implicitly. However, little attention has been paid to the existence of structural patterns within the RDF dataset; i.e. structural redundancy. In this paper, we analyze structural regularities in real-world datasets, and show three schema-based sources of redundancies that underpin the schema-relaxed nature of RDF. Then, we propose RDF-Tr (RDF Triples Reorganizer), a preprocessing technique that discovers and removes this kind of redundancy before the RDF dataset is effectively compressed. In particular, RDF-Tr groups subjects that are described by the same predicates, and locally re-codes the objects related to these predicates. Finally, we integrate RDF-Tr with two RDF compressors, HDT and k2-triples. Our experiments show that using RDF-Tr with these compressors improves by up to 2.3 times their original effectiveness, outperforming the most prominent state-of-the-art techniques

¿Libro de texto o material digital? ¿Aprendizaje autónomo o dirigido? : La enseñanza de la tecnología en distintos entornos personales de aprendizaje

El objetivo de este estudio fue comparar diversas metodologías de aprendizaje (autónomo o dirigido por el profesor) según el material usado (digital o libro de texto tradicional), creando un Entorno Personal de Aprendizaje diferente para cada grupo de alumnos. El alumnado evaluó finalmente la propuesta docente, valorando las carencias y puntos fuertes de cada metodología. Esta experiencia piloto realizada en secundaria será el punto de partida para su extensión a la enseñanza universitaria // The aim of this study is the comparison between different learning methodologies (autonomous or explained by the teacher) according to the materials used (digital or traditional textbook), creating a Personal Learning Environment specific to each group of students. Finally, all the students evaluate each proposal, detailing aspects that they missed in the methodology. This previous work on secondary school is the starting point of a more extensive work to be carried out at the University level.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

José María de Oleza Arredondo, S.J. (1887-1975)

A short piece on the life of José María de Oleza Arredondo S.J., one of the founders of Quantitative Linguistics in CataloniaPeer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Plant polyamines in stress and development: an emerging area of research in plant sciences.

Compelling evidence indicates the participation of polyamines in abiotic and biotic stress responses in plants. Indeed, genetic engineering of polyamine levels in plants has successfully improved biotic and abiotic stress resistance in model plants and crops. We anticipate that many of the current challenges in agriculture to cope with climate change and maintain nutritional quality of fruits and vegetables can be approached by considering the polyamine pathway..

Material Magic: una proposta per a ludificar l'ensenyament de la ciència de materials a la materia de tecnologia

En aquest treball s’ha dut a terme una activitat pensada per a secundària en la que s’ha desenvolupat un joc de cartes, Material Magic, com a eina de ludificació per a explicar els continguts i conceptes que es demanen al currículum de tecnologia sobre ciència de materials. L'activitat s’ha portat a la pràctica en quatre grups de segon d’ESO, d'uns 17 alumnes per grup, tots de la mateixa escola i de nivells homogenis. Tanmateix es revisaran, per tal d'entendre més profundament els motius que poden animar als docents a ludificar l’ensenyament de la tecnologia, repassarem les possibilitats que ens donen els jocs a l'hora de fer classe, analitzant de manera crítica l'efectivitat dels jocs en l'educació i veurem algun exemple previs de jocs de cartes per a ensenyar la ciència de materials. Com es veurà més endavant, els resultats obtinguts han mostrat una motivació extra general per part dels alumnes de secundària a participar en el joc durant les hores lectives de classe, agraint que aquesta fos una activitat divertida, diferent i original, trencant la rutina habitual del dia a dia. Els resultats també han mostrat que no hi ha cap correlació entre les notes de tecnologia dels alumnes amb les notes obtingudes específicament durant el joc, el que anima a pensar que Material Magic pot ajudar a motivar a alumnes acadèmicament menys brillants o menys motivats en la matèria.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Compression principle and Zipf’s Law of brevity in infochemical communication

Compression has been presented as a general principle of animal communication. Zipf’s Law of brevity is a manifestation of this postulate and can be generalized as the tendency of more frequent communicative elements to be shorter. Previous works supported this claim, showing evidence of Zipf’s Law of brevity in animal acoustical communication and human language. However, a significant part of the communicative effort in biological systems is carried out in other transmission channels, such as those based on infochemicals. To fill this gap, we seek, for the first time, evidence of this principle in infochemical communication by analysing the statistical tendency of more frequent infochemicals to be chemically shorter and lighter. We analyse data from the largest and most comprehensive open-access infochemical database known as Pherobase, recovering Zipf’s Law of brevity in interspecific communication (allelochemicals) but not in intraspecific communication (pheromones). Moreover, these results are robust even when addressing different magnitudes of study or mathematical approaches. Therefore, different dynamics from the compression principle would dominate intraspecific chemical communication, defying the universality of Zipf’s Law of brevity. To conclude, we discuss the exception found for pheromones in the light of other potential communicative paradigms such as pressures on successful communication or the Handicap principle.Peer ReviewedObjectius de Desenvolupament Sostenible::14 - Vida SubmarinaObjectius de Desenvolupament Sostenible::15 - Vida d'Ecosistemes TerrestresPostprint (author's final draft