Guadalupe Acle Tomasini

Caracterización de los conocimientos de las madres sobre la discapacidad de sus hijos y su vínculo con la dinámica familiar

The purpose of this study is to enquire about the knowledge, as well as about the family and community dynamics of mothers of children with disabilities, as a basis to implement intervention programs. Participants were 42 mothers aged between 19 and 49 years (M= 31.14) who attended a Childrens Rehabilitation Center belonging to the National Defense Secretariat in Mexico (SEDENA, for its Spanish acronym). Semi-structured interviews were used to assess the mothers knowledge on the disability of the child and the family and community dynamics. Mothers reported receiving no training on how to treat their children, though they considered the importance of acquiring expertise to understand and treat the child. Mothers who do not have the necessary knowledge about their childs disability are not able to understand or accept the childs condition, leading to a denial of the problem, dissatisfaction, guilt and depression. It was noted in the study that proper preparation of the mother after the birth of her child, in terms of the disability can provide a better interaction and functioning of these families.

SOCIAL VALIDITY BY PARENTS OF SPECIAL EDUCATION PROGRAMS BASED ON THE ECOLOGICAL RISK / RESILIENCE MODEL

Social validity is focused on analyzing how goals, procedures, and outcomes associated to an intervention program benefit target individuals, and whether the potential of the program’s objectives itself is in turn achieved, including expectation assessment, behavioral changes, opportunities and development of new skills, abilities and strategies. In this sense, the instrumentation of the Ecological Risk/Resilience Model proves to be of great importance, particularly in special education programs focused on reducing risk factors and encouraging resilient behaviors in students with special educational needs (SEN), their parents and teachers. The purpose of this study was to validate –through parents- the acceptability, educational significance and social importance of special education intervention programs based on the above mentioned model. The Social Validity of Special Education Programs Questionnaire was completed by 45 mothers, 10 fathers, and 5 grandfathers of 30 elementary school children identified as having SEN. The main findings showed that fathers noticed increased changes of resilient behaviors in students both at school and at home. Statistically significant differences in some features were found between male and female participants and in every dimension (i.e., acceptability, educational significance and social importance) between participants from both schools. Differences between participants regarding the type of SEN addressed by the programs were not found, which emphasizes the educational relevance of programs developed under this model.

Posturas epistémicas de la Historia en estudiantes de la licenciatura en educación primaria. Un estudio de caso

Las creencias en torno a que es el conocimiento y como se conoce influyen en la manera en que los sujetos se posicionan ante el conocimiento mismo. El proposito del estudio del que se desprende este articulo fue describir las posturas epistemicas de la Historia de estudiantes normalistas. En este articulo se exponen los resultados del analisis de un grupo conformado por ocho participantes. Se utilizaron entrevistas, cuestionarios y analisis de producciones escritas, con un tratamiento cualitativo y cuantitativo de los datos. Para dar cuenta de su postura ante el conocimiento historico se construyeron cuatro categorias: objetivista, relativista, interpretativaidentitaria y critica-constructivista. Se encontro la combinacion de postulados de diferentes posturas tanto a nivel individual como grupal, lo que da indicios de diferencias individuales, posiblemente relacionadas con el contexto social e ideologico de los participantes. Beliefs as to what knowledge is, and how it is known, influences the way in which the subjects position themselves with regard to knowledge itself. The aim of the study that this article is based on was to describe the epis temic postures of History of teaching students. This paper presents the re sults of the analysis of an eight-member group. Interviews, questionnaires and the analysis of written work were used, together with a qualitative and quantitative treatment of the data. To account for the posture of each student, with regard to their historical knowledge, four categories were constructed: objectivist, relativist, interpretative-identity and criticalconstructivist. A combination of postulates of different positions were found on both individual and group levels, thus providing evidence of individual differences due possibly to the social and ideological contexts of the participants.