La evaluación de programas en el marco de la educación de calidad

El artículo presenta una concepción de la evaluación caracterizada como integral, Integrada e Integradora, orientada por dos principios básicos: un enfoque radicalmente pedagógico, educativo, y un planteamiento unitario, armónico y coherente, tanto entre la evaluación de los diferentes objetos como entre ésta y el conjunto de elementos que integran los procesos educativos de calidad.____________________________________ This article shows a conception of the evaluation characterised as Integral, integrated and integrator, guided for two basic principles: a radical, pedagogical and educational approach and a harmonic, coherent and unitary approach, of the evaluation of the different objects and the elements that take part in the quality educational processes

Colloidal Synthesis of Gold Semishells

This work describes a novel and scalable colloid chemistry strategy to fabricate gold semishells based on the selective growth of gold on Janus silica particles (500 nm in diameter) partly functionalized with amino groups. The modulation of the geometry of the Janus silica particles allows us to tune the final morphology of the gold semishells. This method also provides a route to fabricating hollow gold semishells through etching of the silica cores with hydrofluoric acid. The optical properties were characterized by visible near-infrared (vis-NIR) spectroscopy and compared with simulations performed using the boundary element method (BEM). These revealed that the main optical features are located beyond the NIR region because of the large core size

La evaluación externa y sus implicaciones. Aspectos técnicos, prácticos y éticos

By Ramón Pérez Juste, Professor at the National University for Non-Attendant Students and President of the Spanish Society of Pedagogy. The present article, focused on external evaluation, has been written on special request of the magazine Managing Board. The author's outlook upon evaluation in pedagogical contexts regards evaluation as an essentially formative procedure, and, consequently, a type of permanent formation, focused on the improvement of every human segment with a part to play in Education, such as teachers, managing boards, families, staff at school and even students themselves as they realize their personal concern in their own qualification process. External evaluation must facilitate functions of control, accountability and permanent educational benefits to people with responsibility in educational systems or educational organizations. When so, external evaluation gains importance and defines itself as a kind of evaluation carried out by highly-experienced professionals whose duties must start by checking out the fulfilment of professional ethics and technical requirements which, in most cases are included in evaluation quality standards. The author suggests the convenience of setting a frame for external evaluation, with the aim of producing in the first place organizations committed to a permanent learning process, secondly, a tendency to unify external models, whenever it is possible, and finally, an approach between the latter and evaluating frames of educational organizations. According to him, this would facilitate an optimisation of funds and human resources, which would eventually contribute to the improvement of people, institutions and the educational system.El presente artículo, centrado en la evaluación externa, se escribe por invitación de los responsables de la revista. Para el autor, la evaluación en contextos pedagógicos debe ser eminentemente formativa y, por tanto, continua, y orientada a la mejora de los destinatarios de todos los esfuerzos que realizan los poderes públicos, los profesionales de la educación (directivos, profesores y especialistas) las familias, el personal de los centros y hasta los propios educandos a partir del momento en que toman conciencia de su necesaria implicación en la propia formación. Sin embargo, la evaluación debe servir, también, a funciones de control, de rendición de cuentas y de servicio a los responsables de los sistemas educativos y de las organizaciones educativas. Ahí cobra protagonismo la evaluación externa, en principio una evaluación realizada por profesionales expertos, cuyo hacer debe estar presidido por el cumplimiento de determinadas exigencias técnicas y éticas, muchas de las cuales están contenidas en los estándares de calidad de las evaluaciones. El autor pasa revista a la problemática apuntada, sugiriendo la conveniencia de formativizar, en lo posible, la evaluación externa, de orientarla a lograr organizaciones que aprenden, de buscar, hasta donde sea posible, la convergencia de los modelos externos y, todavía más, de estos con los modelos evaluativos de organizaciones educativas, facilitando así la optimización de medios y recursos y el logro de contribuciones relevantes a la mejora de las personas, de las instituciones y del sistema educativo

¿Quo vadis, evaluación? Reflexiones pedagógicas en torno a un tema tan manido como relevante

This paper introduces some reflections on evaluation from truly pedagogical points of view, with a special focus on the implications which a particular view may have on the quality of education. The author stands for a unified, harmonious, coherent approach of evaluation of learning and teaching, as well as of programme evaluation and institutional evaluation, which may be applicable to other bodies such as university curricula and educationl systems. The latter, however, may have other implications which will not be addressed in the text.Keywords: quality of education, well-rounded education, conception of evaluation, integrated evaluation. En este artículo se presentan una serie de reflexiones sobre la evaluación desde perspectivas radicalmente pedagógicas en las que el autor pretende analizar las implicaciones que una determinada concepción de la misma, concretada en unos principios básicos, representan para un buen hacer al servicio de la calidad de la educación. El autor defiende un enfoque unitario, armónico y coherente de la evaluación del aprendizaje y de la enseñanza, de los programas y de los centros educativos, extensible a otras manifestaciones como pueden ser los currículos universitarios y los sistemas educativos, aunque estos últimos tengan otro tipo de implicaciones que aquí no corresponde abordar

the role of adenosine monophosphate

Funding Information: The authors acknowledge financial support from the European Innovation Council (Horizon 2020 Project: 965018—BIOCELLPHE), the MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 (grant PID2019-108954RB-I00), the FSE (“El FSE invierte en tu futuro”), the Xunta de Galicia/FEDER (grant GRC ED431C 2020/09), the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), and the Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia and Ministério da Ciência, Tecnologia e Ensino Superior, FCT-MCTES (grants UIDB/50006/2020, UIDP/50006/2020 and Met4cat, EXPL/QUI-COL/0263/2021). J. F.-L. thanks FCT-UNL for the research contract through the Program DL 57/2016−Norma Transitória. S. N. thanks the FCT-MCTES Portugal for her doctoral grant associated with the Chemistry PhD program (SFRH/BD/144618/2019). C. F.-L. acknowledges Xunta de Galicia for a predoctoral scholarship (Programa de axudas á etapa predoutoral). C. L., A. F. L., S. N and J. F. L thank the financial support of the PROTEOMASS Scientific Society (Portugal) (General Funding Grants 2022-2023) and the Associate Laboratory Research Unit for Green Chemistry-Clean Processes and Technologies - LAQV/REQUIMTE. This work was carried out in part through the use of the INL Advanced Electron Microscopy, Imaging and Spectroscopy Facility and Microscopy Facility at CACTI (Universidade de Vigo). The authors thank Dr. Jamila Djafari for her assistance with the graphical abstract. Publisher Copyright: © 2023 The Royal Society of Chemistry.The seed-mediated growth of gold nanostructures is known to be strongly dependent not only on the gold seed nanocrystal structure but also on the presence of different additives that may influence the morphology, and therefore the crystalline structure of the final nanoparticle. Among the different additives or capping ligands, biomolecules are an interesting family due to their potential biomedical applications such as drug delivery, bioimaging, biosensing, phototherapy, and antimicrobial activities. Here, we develop a seed-mediated strategy for synthesizing uniform Au nanostars with tuneable optical properties which involves adenosine monophosphate (AMP) as a capping ligand. The experimental data reveal the key role of AMP not just providing colloidal stability and directing the reduction of the gold precursor via complexation but also mediating the anisotropic growth of the Au seeds via its selective adsorption on the different crystalline facets of Au nanoparticles. These observations agree with theoretical simulations carried out using molecular dynamics and density functional theory (DFT) calculations. Interestingly, the obtained Au nanostars showed high thermal stability as well as colloidal stability in polar organic solvents, which allowed their direct silica coating via the Stöber method. Importantly, we also explored the mimic enzymatic activity of the resulting gold nanostars and observed a superior catalytic activity compared with other gold nanoparticles reported in the literature.publishersversionpublishe

The role of self and peer assessment in Higher Education

Self-assessment and peer assignment have clear advantages for the training of responsible, critical, and reflective professionals. In recent years, self and peer evaluation have also been shown to be even more effective than lecturer evaluation when we assure anonymity through online platforms learning tools. Therefore, self and peer assessments are to become a core aspect of student-centred evaluation processes in Higher Education. In the present work, we compare the formative evaluation from the lecturer with the self and peer assessments through a virtual learning environment. The subject of study if formed by assessments prepared by students in a first-year course in a Social Sciences degree at the Universidade de Vigo, Spain. We find a strong concordance between peer assessment and lecturer assignment, and a moderate agreement between self-assessment and lecturer assignment. These results show that students perform well as peer evaluators, with peer assignment being a procedure with high validity and reliability.Agencia Estatal de Investigación | Ref. ECO2017-82241-RXunta de Galicia | Ref. ED431B 2019/34Xunta de Galicia | Ref. ED431C 2016/04

Patología cardiaca en el síndrome Cornelia de Lange

El síndrome Cornelia de Lange es un trastorno congénito del desarrollo con una incidencia que oscila entre 1:10.000 a 1:30.000 nacidos vivos. De herencia autosómica dominante o ligada al cromosoma X, es esporádico en la mayoría de los casos. En la actualidad se conocen cinco genes causales del síndrome que codifican proteínas del complejo de cohesinas: NIPBL, SMC1A, SMC3, HDAC8 y RAD21. La clínica se caracteriza por: aspecto craneofacial distintivo, discapacidad intelectual, retraso de crecimiento y del desarrollo, malformaciones de las extremidades superiores, hirsutismo generalizado y afectación multisistémica. Aunque estos pacientes presentan una alta incidencia de malformaciones cardíacas no se considera esta patología como un criterio diagnóstico principal. En este trabajo se estudia por primera vez una población española de 148 pacientes con SCdL de los que 51 presentan patología cardíaca (34.46%). Las malformaciones congénitas más frecuentes son la estenosis pulmonar y los defectos septales, con una incidencia del 27.05% y 47.05% respectivamente. Estas cifras coinciden, con pequeñas diferencias, con los estudios de Selicorni en población italiana y Chatfield en población americana. Sin embargo, se observa por primera vez que el gen que más se asocia con cardiopatía congénita no es el NIPBL sino el HDAC8, aunque la baja casuística recogida recomienda aumentar el tamaño de la muestra. Además, a pesar de ser considerados como defectos menores, el foramen oval permeable y/o el ductus arterioso persistente cerrado espontáneamente, son alteraciones cardíacas muy prevalentes en estos pacientes