José Antonio Sánchez Medina

Literacy and the Formation of Cultural Identity

In this article we offer both a conceptual and a methodological proposal for the study of cultural identity by cultural-historical psychology. First we will develop a conceptual framework in which we define acts of identification as a suitable unit of analysis for cultural identity. Acts of identification integrate dynamically social and individual components, both of them necessary in the explanation of cultural identity. To study identity empirically we adopt a rhetorical perspective: we can study cultural identity through the analysis of the discursive processes that people use to persuade an audience and themselves. Secondly, we will present empirical research based on the conceptual ideas explained previously. In this research we will analyse the acts of identification performed by various groups of Andalusian people who differ in their literacy experience. Results of this empirical research are presented, concluding that literacy affects the way people discursively construct their cultural identity.

EVALUACIÓN DEL DESARROLLO DE LA FUNCIÓN EJECUTIVA EN ESCOLARES: USO DE LA PRUEBA DIMENSIONAL CHANGE CARD SORT (DCCS) EN UNA MUESTRA ESPAÑOLA.

Executive function (EF) has been studied from different perspectives, with the medical or neuropsychological approach has been the most deployed in the field of science, based on the effects that certain damage to the frontal lobes cause to human actions such as planning, impulse control or goal-directed action. Currently, there are studies of EF focused on defining the development and acquisition of skills relating to the components of this function. Therefore, the search for effective and simple tools that allow the detection of students who may have difficulty in control functions, planning, working memory tasks or evaluation, is a necessary resource in the work of detection and diagnosis of the school counselor. This study analyzes the development of executive function (EF) in school populations through the application of the test Dimensional Change Card Sort (DCCS). We used a sample of 82 students in kindergarten and primary (4 to 7 years) of public schools in western Andalusia. We analyzed the test results and its relationship with age and sex of subjects. The results observed showed a progressive domain, as hierarchical stages, of the EF tasks, being the most complex task, the combined use of several rules, the last to achieve. This pattern of solution of the tasks in a stepwise and hierarchical process shows that the DCCS is appropriate to observe the developmental level of EF, becoming an useful tool for early diagnosis of students with possible deficit related to self-control, mastery rules and attention problems such as attention-deficit hyperactivity or pervasive developmental disorder.

La argumentación en el debate: una ilustración sobre la aplicación de la retórica para el estudio del razonamiento en educación de adultos

The aim of this work is to describe and illustrate the use of different kinds of arguments in a communicative setting as the focus group. We will show the pertinence of studying ways of deliberation in relation to ways of arguing in the debate. After that, we will analyse the architecture of arguments displayed by a group of women attending an adult literacy course, extracted from a research ran in Seville (Spain), about the relation about adult literacy and different ways of reasoning. We found that the educative level influences the way these women argue about a topic they are interested on. We will then use a rhetoric perspective in the study of cognitive processes.