José Manuel Suárez Riveiro

Optimistic and defensive-pessimist students: differences in their academic motivation and learning strategies.

In addition to cognitive and behavioral strategies, students can also use affective-motivational strategies to facilitate their learning process. In this way, the strategies of defensive-pessimism and generation of positive expectations have been widely related to conceptual models of pessimism-optimism. The aim of this study was to describe the use of these strategies in 1753 secondary school students, and to study the motivational and strategic characteristics which differentiated between the student typologies identified as a result of their use. The results indicated a higher use of the generation of positive expectations strategy (optimism) (M = 3.40, SD = .78) than the use of the defensive pessimism strategy (M = 3.00, SD = .78); a positive and significant correlation between the two strategies (r = .372, p = .001); their relationship with adequate academic motivation and with the use of learning strategies. Furthermore, four student typologies were identified based on the use of both strategies. Lastly, we propose a new approach for future work in this line of research.

Perceptions of inclusive education in schools delivering teaching through learning communities and service-learning

ABSTRACT Schools need to rethink their educational approach in order to cater for increasing student diversity in the classroom. The inclusive education model has emerged in response to this need, which encompasses practices such as learning communities and service-learning projects. In this study, we examined the perceptions of different education stakeholders regarding inclusive education in schools that have adopted these practices, with a view to identifying areas for improvement. We administered seven adapted questionnaires to the four main education stakeholders. The sample consisted of 757 participants (215 families, 446 students, 81 teachers and 15 management team members), and we performed descriptive and inferential analyses of the data they provided. The areas for improvement perceived by them concerned overcoming architectural barriers, promoting student participation in the organisation and planning of school activities and training for the educational community in specific educational measures targeting particular groups, such as immigrant students and students with motor and sensory disabilities. However, stakeholders appreciated positively some aspects like the new ways of collaborative working and the increase of family participation. Our results also indicated that teaching staff’s perceptions were more critical for all the variables except relations between students, where families were the most critical.

El uso de los errores como herramienta del aprendizaje autorregulado en estudiantes de secundaria

Este estudio tuvo como objetivo investigar las relaciones entre la facilidad con que los estudiantes de ciencias de secundaria detectan sus errores, su precision en la autoevaluacion y las variables motivacionales y cognitivas implicadas en el proceso de autorregulacion. Tanto en la variable de deteccion de errores como la de autoevaluacion se estudio el efecto de la utilizacion de guiones de evaluacion. En la investigacion participaron un total de 151 estudiantes de secundaria. Las variables cognitivas y motivacionales se midieron empleando el cuestionario MSLQ. Los resultados indican que no existe una relacion directa entre los procesos de autoevaluacion y los de deteccion de errores. Durante estos ultimos se invocan mas estrategias cognitivo-motivacionales que en los primeros. El uso de los guiones de auto-evaluacion mejora ambos procesos.