Argentine University Research Articles

Preliminary Development of an Item Bank and an Adaptive Test in Mathematical Knowledge for University Students

In the last decades, the development of computerized adaptive testing (CAT) has allowed more precise measurements with a smaller number of items. In this study, we develop an item bank (IB) to generate the adaptive algorithm and simulate the functioning of CAT to assess the domains of mathematical knowledge in Argentinian university students (N=773). Data were analyzed from the Rasch model. A simulation design created with the R software was used to determine the necessary items of the IB to estimate examinee ability. Our results indicate that the IB in the domains of mathematical knowledge is adequate to be applied in CAT, especially to estimate average ability levels. The use of CAT is recommended for rapidly generating indicators of the knowledge acquired by students and to design educational strategies that enhance student performance. Results, constrains, and implications of this study are discussed.

Disciplinary approaches and theories in Argentinian public relations undergraduate programmes

The purpose of this study is to verify the utilisation of the existing public relations general approaches and theories at a global scale in the public relations undergraduate programmes of the five leading Argentinian universities. A qualitative approach with an exploratory scope that employs data collection techniques such as the qualitative content analysis of academic documents, semi-structured in-depth interviews and structured surveys for ascertaining theoretical loading are used. Results reveal that public relations undergraduate programmes in Argentina present a markedly professional character and prefer theoretical frameworks linked to the functionalist tradition.

Discourses on sustainability in a network of Argentine universities: exploring representations, cultural roots and transformative processes

PurposeThe paper aims to reflect on the function(s) served by the network of Argentine universities for environmental management and social inclusion (UAGAIS), including sharing information, empowering its members and fostering political action. To these functions, the authors add that networks play a prominent role in promoting culturally and locally meaningful representations of sustainability, and as rhetorical devices for positioning universities within the national, regional and international context.Design/methodology/approachDrawing upon a constructionist and cultural approach, two analyses were conducted: the first an analysis of the institutional webpages of selected UAGAIS universities; the second, a discursive analysis of five in-depth interviews conducted with UAGAIS representatives. Both analyses looked at local and cultural specificities of sustainability in higher education, perceptions of the sustainable development goals (SDGs) and the role of UAGAIS for individuals, universities and other social actors involved.FindingsResults show how sustainability is used in institutional communication and in the interviews to frame the role of the university in the community. The network serves information and empowering functions, as the same time acting as an amplifier of the activities performed under the “Extensión” framework. Such a culturally situated approach to sustainability is used to engage different social actors and to stress commitment of universities with the environmental and social needs of local communities.Originality/valueThe results underline the role played by networks in transformative process. Anchored to the culturally rooted “Extensión” concept, the examined network serves as a place to advance the social commitment and the local understanding of sustainability. Moreover, it is rhetorically used to challenge the status quo and advocate for systemic change.

The Educational Purpose of Language Teaching at University: Giving Voice to Native Communities

This paper reports the findings of a case study carried out in an English for specific purposes class with student tour guides at an Argentinean university. The main objective of this research project was to analyse how the teaching practices in the English language classes favoured intercultural exchanges. Data were gathered through document analysis, surveys, and interviews with students and with core-subject professors. Results were analysed qualitatively. We conclude that we must foster a friendly and safe learning environment to give voice to learners from native communities so that they can express their own identities and thus give way to enriching intercultural dialogue.

Factor Structure and Internal Consistency on a Reduced Version of the Revised Test of Need for Cognitive Closure.

The need for cognitive closure is a construct postulated by Kruglanski that explains the motivational aspects which influence decision-making and its impact on the social environment. Initially, it was assessed through a unidimensional scale, later criticized for its poor satisfactory reliability and validity. Regarding these criticisms, Pierro and Kruglanski developed a new 14-item scale to measure two dimensions, which were not previously evaluated: urgency tendency and permanence tendency. Although the Revised Test of Need for Cognitive Closure is more economical in terms of assessment time, it would be optimal to develop a reduced test that can assess faster while maintaining validity and reliability. The present research aims to reduce the Revised Test of Need for Cognitive Closure scale to the Argentinian context. To this end, we worked on a non-experimental design, assessing this scale within a sample of 690 Argentinian university students (Women = 81.16%, Men = 18.84%), and proceeded to perform reliability, as well as confirmatory factor analysis, convergent validity, and factorial invariance analysis. The results indicate a bi-factorial structure of a Need for Cognitive Closure instrument with eight items and two dimensions: urgency tendency (α = 0.76) and permanence tendency (α = 0.64), suggesting good reliability in both of them. In addition, well convergent validity was checked with other validated instruments, and finally, the factor loadings were shown to be invariant. In conclusion, it was demonstrated the reliability and validity of reducing the Revised Test of Need for Cognitive Closure in our social environment.

El profesorado argentino del Nivel Superior y las tecnologías: una mirada de género en contexto de pandemia

This study analyzes, from a gender perspective, the profile of Argentine university and high school teachers in relation to their perceptions about their digital competences, with the type of digital tools that they incorporate into their practices and their experience in ICT for teaching. This study was developed after a year of emergency remote teaching in Argentina in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. The information was collected from a self-administered questionnaire answered by 1149 teachers at that level. The analysis shows significant gender differences in length of service, in the type of institution to which they belong, in the disciplinary areas where teachers work, in the perception of teachers about their own digital skills, in the experience of use and in the type of digital tools used to mediate teaching.

El dispositivo TUYA como estrategia de personalización en educación en línea

This report is a summary of the experiences and insights gathered across 2021 within the Family and Technology course at Austral University in Argentina. Students take this course during the third year of their Family Counseling bachelor’s degree program. Attendance is carried out remotely, through the university’s virtual campus in the Moodle 3.9 learning platform. Course load is 60 hours a month.   At the center of it all is the TUYA approach, a Spanish acronym meaning: “Ubiquitous and self-regulated trajectories.” This approach is novel and disruptive, countering the typical alternatives usually found in online educational spaces. The goal is to promote students’ self-regulation skills, bringing them closer to the subject matter and the course’s specific contents by considering their own, particular interests. Students’ own time-management is one of the central tenets of this approach. And to make this possible, students are granted ubiquitous access, both to the campus and to the dynamics of the virtual classroom itself.   This experience has led to important insights, both for students and faculty. These can be derived from students’ own coursework as well as the thinking processes promoted during the course and reinforced at the very end.&nbsp

University Reform of 1918: Establishment of the Continental Network of Scientific, Educational and Student Community in Latin America

The transformation of the university system in Latin America, initiated by the reform in Argentina in 1918, marked the beginning of a period of democratization and modernization of society. The university reform was the result of a stubborn and dramatic struggle of students against the clerical-aristocratic order in the universities of Argentina. Ideologically, the movement was based on radical anti-clericalism, on the ideas of the conflict of generations, the special role of the young, on the Kulturtraegerism, on the concept of Arielism — a term coined by Enrique Rodo. The student movement, supported by progressive intellectuals and left-wing political parties, almost from the point of its inception, created a network of contacts and solidarity with other countries of the continent, which showed its high efficiency in disseminating ideas, political programs, and forms of struggle. This ability of the intellectual movements to create cross-border networks of influence and activism is relevant today and not only in Latin America. Thanks to this, the reform spread throughout the continent with various and sometimes contrary results, somewhere very successfully, and somewhere met with fierce resistance. The further ideological evolution of the movement and its leaders led to the emergence of new ideological and political currents, such as revolutionary nationalism, which became the dominant political trend in Latin America in the 20th century world. The spread of revolutionary nationalism, the main ideologist of which was the student leader in Peru, Victor Raul Haya de la Torre, relied on the same network of youth structures that led to the spread of the movement for university reform. The reform movement also resulted in the emergence of powerful left-wing movements of the intellectuals, such as the Latin American Union, closely associated not only with the student movement, but also with the labor movement. University reform was not only a political, but also a cultural phenomenon that marked a profound change in Latin American society, which chose the path of modernization of all spheres of life. This work is devoted to the study of this process.

Written argumentation practices in two Argentinian undergraduate courses: multidimensionality and epistemic potentials

This paper states that the epistemic potentialities of writing and arguing are largely derived from the interweaving of four dimensions. Three of them are constitutive (the logical, rhetorical, and dialectical dimensions), and one is integrative (the epistemic dimension). Thus, we characterize how these four distinct dimensions operate in texts produced by first-year university students in two disciplines (Linguistics and Biology) and how those students reflect on their processes of writing and arguing. The results belong to qualitative research designed as a multiple case study, which focused on teaching practices that intertwine disciplinary contents, writing, and argumentation in Argentinian university classrooms. These results deepen the academic literacies’ lines of research regarding the role that argumentation plays in academic writing. We analyze texts produced by students and interviews with them to characterize the dimensions that such students deploy when writing and arguing to learn in their disciplines.

Alejandro Parra and Dante’s Eighth Circle of Hell

None, as it is a short commentary, but if you need one, here it is.
 This commentary places Alejandro Parra's very long list of plagiarisms and data missrepresentations within the context of Dante's classification of human foibles. The responses from two Argentinean universities are described, along with continuing examples of Parra's misrepresentations.

Psychoactive Substance Use In Medical School Students At A Public University In Argentina

The cross-sectional study assesses lifetime use of psychoactive substances in medical students. During 2018, medical students from “Universidad de Buenos Aires” (UBA) in Argentina were offered the survey. Males significantly used at least one of the substances studied once in their lives compared to women (AOR: 1.75; IC 95%= 1.11- 2.77). Similarly, males used more marijuana (AOR: 1.69; 95% CI = 1.08-2.63). The lifetime prevalence increased with career level for any substance, marijuana and stimulants. Being employed was associated with lifetime consumption of marijuana (AOR: 1.6; 95% CI = 1.03-2.48). Living with peers was associated with lifetime prevalence for stimulants (AOR: 3.5; 95% CI = 1.54- 7.97). This study shows a lifetime prevalence for the total substances studied was higher compared to studies in the region. marijuana was the substance with the highest consumption, with more than half surveyed having tried it.

Trabajo docente y capitalismo académico. Girando las lentes para comprender el trabajo cotidiano en la universidad contemporánea

The introduction of the principles of New Public Management in higher education worldwide caused profound transformations in the systems, institutions and practices of the actors. University teaching work underwent significant modifications in its conditions, forms of organization and evaluation. In this writing we focus on the forms that teaching work assumes in the context of academic capitalism from the understanding of what circulates in the daily life of the university. For this, fragments of interviews and extracts of informal conversations with professors of public universities in Argentina are recovered. Issues such as the material and symbolic recognition of the work done, the relationships between teaching work and daily life, the question of working time as the computer of life time, the intensification of tasks and the growing demand for permanent availability are addressed.

Central incisors shape and proportions prevalence in Argentinian university students: by visual assessment and a new standardized method.

The aim of this study was to analyze the dimensions of the clinical crown of upper central incisors and the prevalence of tooth shapes by two different protocols. Assessment was performed on each of the 111 dental stone type V maxillae models of students of dentistry from Buenos Aires University [93 females and 18 males, mean age 23.70 (± 2.26) years] The mesial and distal-vestibular angles were defined on each right upper incisor, and the following segments were defined: AB (zenith - incisal edge), CD, EF, GH (apical, middle, and incisal thirds - vestibule - mesial and vestibule-distal angles) and their lengths were determined with a precision caliper. Then, the CD/AB, EF/AB and mean CD-EF/AB ratios were calculated. Shapes were assessed by four independent observers, three of whom evaluated digital images of the models, while the fourth had no access to the images, and determined the shapes using an algorithm developed from the dimensions of the studied segments. Rates and confidence intervals were determined, and Fleiss' Kappa was calculated to assess the agreement among the evaluators who worked with the images and among all of them. Average incisor length was 10 mm, and widths at CD and EF were 7.35 mm (0.65) and 8.27 mm (0.58), respectively. Regarding shapes, 51.58% (47.90-55.20) of the incisors were identified as square, 18.02% (14.50-21.90) as ovoid and 30.41% (30.00-30.90) as triangular. Fleiss' Kappa agreement was 0.71 (0.62-0.80). The application of the proposed algorithm provided a considerable level of agreement among the observers. Regarding tooth size, both the average segment length and the proportions were similar to those reported by various authors.

ASSESSMENT OF A GENRE-BASED APPROACH TO SCIENTIFIC WRITING THROUGH THE ANALYSIS OF STUDENT-PRODUCED ABSTRACTS

A course aimed at writing Scientific Research Articles (SRA) in English was offered to Spanish-speaking researchers at a public university in Argentina. It deployed activities described by the Reading to Learn Pedagogy (R2L) (MARTIN; ROSE, 2012). This article assesses the effectiveness of this pedagogy by analyzing students’ productions. We compared students’ abstracts of SRA written before and after the implementation of R2L’s practices, considering the presence or absence of rhetorical sections and the use of evaluative language under the light of the System of Appraisal (MARTIN; WHITE, 2005). Texts written after the course include a larger number of sections compared to the ones written before, and they also exhibit a larger amount of Attitude and Graduation elements. The higher complexity of the texts written after the course suggests that the teaching of scientific genres to English as a Foreign Language students through an R2L-informed approach is effective.

Intersectional Gaps in Self-Efficacy among Post-Graduate Students in International Renewable-Energy Programs: The Role of Maternal Employment

Relatively little empirical research has analyzed the sources of students’ self-perceptions outside the US and Europe, and in new fields of study like renewable energy. This paper aims at filling this gap by identifying differences in self-efficacy levels of post-graduate students in Erasmus+ capacity-building programs on renewable energy in Argentinian and Guatemalan universities. We analyzed a sample of 43 students to test intersectional differences in self-efficacy, looking at students’ gender, country of origin, and maternal employment. Using the New General Self-Efficacy scale, we performed the t-test to compare mean differences in self-efficacy, and one-way and two-way ANOVA tests to check the consistency of the results. Our estimates did not show significant gender gaps in self-efficacy among renewable-energy post-graduate students, but they did uncover relevant country differences in mean self-efficacy levels, mainly due to differences in socio-economic indicators and gender norms between the two countries analyzed. Moreover, we found a mediating role of maternal employment in cross-country self-efficacy differences, whereas the characteristics of fathers appeared uninfluential. We conclude by stressing the importance of intersectional analysis in terms of country of origin, family backgrounds, and gender norms to increase knowledge about differences in self-efficacy of students.

Perfectionism and rumination in depression

The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between perfectionism, rumination, and depression severity in non-clinical and clinical populations. To this end, a sample of 151 Argentinian university students (i.e., the non-clinical sample) and a sample of 42 Argentinian outpatients in psychotherapy with a diagnosis of a depression (i.e., the clinical sample) completed the Almost Perfect Scale, Beck’s Depression Inventory, the Rumination–Reflection Questionnaire and the Positive Beliefs About Rumination Scale. We found an association between maladaptive perfectionism, rumination, and depressive symptomatology, in both samples. Also, the study yielded differences between the profiles of perfectionism for the variables rumination and depressive symptomatology. Rumination mediated the relationship between maladaptive perfectionism and depression. Finally, we found that the level of endorsement of positive beliefs about rumination moderated the indirect effect of maladaptive perfectionism on depression. The implications of these results for clinical intervention are discussed, both in relation to the different profiles of perfectionism and to rumination as a cognitive mechanism of emotion regulation. Among the limitations of this study we can mention the use of self-report measures and the fact that the non-clinical sample was entirely obtained from a population of mostly female students of Psychology.

Universities in Argentina between Lanusse and Peron (1971–1973): youth, repression and dialogue

ABSTRACT The Military regime that took power in 1966, led by General Juan Carlos Onganía, aimed at restructuring the economy while putting to an end all political activities. As part of its national plan committed to anticommunism, the regime took over the national universities, which were believed to be loci of communist activities. In 1969, however, a series of popular rebellions, followed by a steady increase of urban guerrilla activities, weakened the military government. By 1970, its only option was to restore democracy and, if possible, prevent Juan Perón from winning the elections. In this context, the presidential term inaugurated by General Agustin Lanusse in 1971 signalled a shift not only in national politics, but also in university life, where the policies shifted from mere repression to an expansion of the system. This article analyses this process, stressing the importance of youth, and especially university students, in the new political scenario: as the rise of armed organizations was linked to the presence of youth, this social actor gained political momentum. Hence, the government sought to address it from several courses of action. Among them, a new university policy, which lead to a huge restructuring of the public system, stood out.

Research trends in library and information science in Argentina during the first decades of the XXI century

Objective. This paper aims at describing and analyzing the research lines on Library and Information Science (LIS) developed within the institutional framework of the Argentinian universities where careers in Library Science, Archival Science, and Museology are offered.
 Design/Methodology/Approach. Documents presented at academic events from the Mercosur's schools were gathered, as well as former studies that address the issue. Additionally, the scientific production of researchers and academicians from the LIS field was systematized using the Publish or Perish app, considering Google Scholar as a data source.
 Results/Discussion. A consolidation of the LIS field was observed, both from the contributions for the conceptual and methodological strengthening of the discipline, and from the inquiries that seek to resolve issues that arise in the professional field of libraries, archives, museums, and other information units.
 Conclusions. The existence of work lines that combine topics dealt with at an international level in the field was highlighted, as well as areas of specialization, focused on local realities. It was shown that the research development and productivity are concentrated in few schools. Finally, the incipient constitution of postgraduate studies at the specialization, master's degree, and doctorate levels was addressed, which, over time, will broaden the spectrum of research carried out in the universities developing these training sections.
 Originality/Value. There was no study of this type in which documentary analysis was combined with bibliometrics to reveal researchers, topics, and scientific production in the LIS field in Argentina, something not always easy to capture and address.

Participation in Drinking Games and Predrinking Among University Students in Argentina, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand.

The limited existing research on drinking games and predrinking among university students in Argentina, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand suggests that participation in these risky drinking practices is relatively widespread among this population. Drinking norms and alcohol use can vary across countries and in different regions of the globe. The measurement of drinking games and predrinking participation between studies also differs, making cross-country comparisons difficult. The present study explored differences in past month participation in drinking games and predrinking among university students from a large public university in Argentina, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. The data analytic sample consisted of 1134 university students (ages 18-25, Mage=20.2years; 72.6% women) from Argentina (n=349), Australia (n=280), Canada (n=262), and New Zealand (n=243) who reported weekly alcohol consumption. Students completed a confidential survey on drinking attitudes and behaviors. Controlling for age, gender, and weekly drink consumption, there were no cross-country differences in past month participation in predrinking. In contrast, university students from Canada and New Zealand were more likely to have played a drinking game in the past month than students from Australia and Argentina. The present finding suggest that university students from Argentina, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand are equally likely to participate in predrinking regardless of country; however, the likelihood of playing drinking games differs as a function of country site.

Artes escénicas, universidad y sociedad

Desde hace unos años, la universidad argentina empezó a asumir la promoción cultural como una de sus funciones sustantivas, de modo que se hizo necesario pensar formas de relacionarla con la investigación y la formación. Este artículo expone una experiencia de vinculación social en torno a la formación de espectadores, llevada a cabo desde las materias Artes Escénicas I y II de la licenciatura en Cultura y Lenguajes Artísticos de la Universidad Nacional de General Sarmiento (UNGS). Se enfoca principalmente en cómo la innovación pedagógica se desplaza hacia una innovación social que involucra el trabajo de estudiantes, graduados, docentes y no docentes de la universidad. Analiza, además, conceptos alrededor de la formación de espectadores y de la relación entre educación superior y acceso a la(s) cultura(s).