University Of Chile Research Articles

Understanding the connection between pre-service teachers’ emotions and identity through metaphor: a qualitative study into six candidates from a Chilean university

ABSTRACT This qualitative study, based on semi-structured interviews, analyses the emotions of six (n = 6) pre-service teachers (PSTs) enrolled in a Chilean full-year education programme through metaphors they used to describe the process by which they became professionals. Findings suggest that pre-service teachers understand emotions as burdens, tools, and sources for self-knowledge. Metaphors also indicate that teacher training might be experienced as a shifting and hostile proof that challenges their self-conceptions, impelling personal adaptation and learning. Accordingly, this study shows that candidates employ metaphors to create professional knowledge, review past experiences, and develop identities. Lastly, it is also suggested that integrating metaphor-based work during the training might help PSTs to build narrative agency and gain valuable insight into their processes.

Preservice teacher professional identity: Influence of the teacher educator and the teacher education model

The objective of this study is to estimate the association between the following variables: teacher professional identity, the teacher education model adopted, the type of teacher educator, and academic progression of teacher education students. A purposive and convenience sampling process was used to recruit 662 preservice teachers attending teacher education programs at three Chilean universities. A sociodemographic survey and teacher professional identity scale were administered to these preservice students. Data were analysed using Spearman correlation, the Kruskal-Wallis test, and multiple linear regression. Results how different types of teacher educator profiles and teacher education models positively correlate with professional identity; furthermore, levels of professional identity were found to differ in connection with students’ level (year) within their teacher education program. It was also found that the profile of teacher trainers, who are also schoolteachers, and the critical-intellectual educational model are predictors of teacher professional identity. In the discussion, these results are analysed based on the literature.

Profiles of University Students Who Graduate on Time: A Cohort Study from the Chilean Context.

Graduating from higher education on time is an important topic, given its relation to students' academic success and the efficiency of the institutions. However, a low percentage of university students finish their studies on time, which poses a challenge that requires the identification of the factors that account for this phenomenon. This study aimed to identify and characterize profiles of students who graduate on time. The population is 514 university students (45% men, 55% women), with an average age of 19.5 years (SD= 1.9) studying business at a university in Chile who belong to four cohorts entering between 2011 and 2014. The results obtained from the Classification and Regression Tree (CART) technique demonstrate eight student profiles constructed considering different variables at the pre-university, transition-motivation, and university levels. As the primary outcome, the profile of the student who graduates on time is characterized by a good performance in the first year of university, enters university right after high school, and takes advantage of institutional support by participating in academic tutoring. These findings suggest that institutions can implement specific strategies from the beginning of the university journey to promote on-time graduation.

Development of Digital Competences in Students of a Public State-Owned Chilean University Considering the Safety Area

The present study was carried out in a Chilean public university with the purpose of describing digital competences in safety area and their relationship with contextual variables in first-year students of different programs. In this research study, we processed the competences of the safety area of the COMPDIG-PED test, which is based on the European reference framework for digital skills DIGCOMP. The instrument was applied to 4360 higher education students, attending undergraduate courses in 2021 and 2022. The results indicated a relationship between the context variables analyzed through the COMPDIG-PED test and the digital safety competences. This relationship is linked to higher scores in the female gender, in students with more years of experience in the use of digital technologies, in those who came from private paid or subsidized institutions, and in those who were trained in a humanist scientific education.

Characterization of teaching practices that facilitate or limit student participation from a gender perspective. A case study for the training of physical education and mathematics teachers in a regional university in Chile

The study addresses from a gender perspective, the scope of the practices that university teachers have implemented in Initial Teacher Education. The main objective was to know the teaching practices in the university and school classroom, which facilitated and/or limited the participation of students from the experience of those who have lived them as students of Secondary Education Pedagogy in Mathematics and Physical Education Pedagogy. This is a multiple case study, with a qualitative approach. The results show the presence of various teaching practices in which both the absence of a gender approach and the persistence of an acceptance of certain gender roles and stereotypes that continue to be transmitted in university and school classrooms are evident. Although future teachers of Mathematics and Physical Education are clearly aware of the characteristics of these practices and the discrimination associated with some of them, new challenges arise from this study to promote changes in initial teacher training which will allow young people to be agents of the social transformation required in terms of gender equity in education.

P14-064-23 Association Between Mediterranean Diet and Depressive Symptoms in Chilean University Students

P14-064-23 Association Between Mediterranean Diet and Depressive Symptoms in Chilean University Students

Chilean Universities and Universal Gratuity: Suggestions for a Model to Evaluate the Effects on Financial Vulnerability

Financial vulnerability can be understood as the risk of an organisation being unable to carry out routine its normal operations due to financial restrictions. Models to estimate financial vulnerability have mainly been developed for profit-making organisations, while few exist for non-profit organisations (NPOs). One example is higher education institutions, which have experienced important changes in Latin America through gratuity policies for student tuition. This study proposes a model to estimate the effects of gratuity on financial vulnerability, as previous studies have focused on the effects of enrolment. A binary logistic regression model is proposed, considering the following variables: debt, income concentration, operating margin, administration costs, and square metres of rooms per student. We applied this model to 54 universities between 2013 and 2019. The results showed that the model is relevant for the debt, size, and operating margin variables. Additionally, we observed that on average, all universities were negatively affected. This result is particularly true for state-owned universities because of certain management restrictions. A limitation of this study is the unavailability of other sources of non-financial information, such as each university’s business model and stock of strategic resources, which could improve our model, as this information is more related to control than to management.

Initial teacher training and the incorporation of TIC. a study in a Chilean university

Initial teacher training and the incorporation of TIC. a study in a Chilean university

Living with invisible medical disabilities: experiences and challenges of Chilean university students disclosed in medical consultations

ABSTRACT Purpose The objective of this qualitative study is to explore experiences and challenges of university students living with invisible disabilities. Methods Nine videotaped medical consultations with students, conducted at the health centre of a higher education institution in northern Chile, were analysed, drawing on the thematic analysis to organize the most salient themes. Results Three major themes were identified in the analysis, along with their subthemes: (1) experiencing overpowering symptoms, including variable, multiple, and severe symptoms; (2) facing medical, social, and academic barriers; (3) engaging in self-management behaviours, such as self-medication, self-treatment, changing therapies, and non-compliance. Conclusion As the healthcare system is mostly ineffective in diagnosing students with invisible disabilities as well as providing them with long-lasting help, the students often have to manage their conditions by themselves, without much success. It seems essential to promote the development of stronger links between health providers and universities to allow for early disability detection and awareness-raising programs within educational institutions. Further research should focus on strategies promoting effective support mechanisms to decrease barriers and increase the inclusion of these individuals.

The Value of Observing the Buyers’ Arrival Time in Dynamic Pricing

We consider a dynamic pricing problem in which a firm sells one item to a single buyer to maximize expected revenue. The firm commits to a price function over an infinite horizon. The buyer arrives at some random time with a private value for the item. He is more impatient than the seller and strategizes over the timing of the purchase in order to maximize his expected utility, which implies either buying immediately, waiting to benefit from a lower price, or not buying. We study the value of the seller’s ability to observe the buyer’s arrival time in terms of her expected revenue. When the seller can observe the buyer’s arrival, she can make the price function contingent on the buyer’s arrival time. On the contrary, when the seller can’t, her price function is fixed at time zero for the whole horizon. The value of observability (VO) is defined as the worst-case ratio between the expected revenue of the seller when she observes the buyer’s arrival and that when she does not. First, we show that, for the particular case in which the buyer’s valuation follows a monotone hazard rate distribution, the upper bound of VO is [Formula: see text]. Next, we show our main result: in a setting very general on valuation and arrival time distributions: VO is at most 4.911. To obtain this bound, we fully characterize the solution to the observable arrival problem and use this solution to construct a random and periodic price function for the unobservable case. Finally, we show by solving a particular example to optimality that VO has a lower bound of 1.136. This paper was accepted by Itai Ashlagi, revenue management and market analytics. Funding: This work was partially supported by the Agencia Nacional de Investigación y Desarrollo Chile [Grants ACT210005 and FONDECYT 1220054], and by the Center for Mathematical Modeling at the University of Chile [Grant FB210005]. The work of D. Pizarro has benefited from the Artificial and Natural Intelligence Toulouse Institute, which is funded by the French “Investing for the Future – PIA3” program [Grant ANR-19-P3IA-0004]. Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2023.4794 .

Life-style behavior upon admission to higher education in Chilean university students: A longitudinal observational study.

The main objective of this study was to analyze the change in physical activity, quality of diet, and weight upon admission to higher education and at one-year follow-up in Chilean university students. 376 Chilean university students were prospectively recruited. All participants were assessed at bas eline and one-year follow-up. Sociodemographics and other co-variables were described. Physical activity, healthy eating behavior, height, weight, and body mass index (BMI) were assessed using the Global Physical Activity Questionnaire (GPAQ), and quality of diet (with Healthy Eating Index), SECA 213 stadiometer and TANITA HD-351, respectively. At the one-year follow-up, high-intensity METs (Metabolic equivalents) decreased by 147.9 (95% CI: 79.5 to 216; p = 0.000), moderate-intensity METs decreased by 85.0 (95% CI: 52.2 to 117.7; p = 0.000), sedentary behavior increased by 45.0 min/week (95% CI: 54.6 to 35.4; p = 0.000), total METs decreased by 793.6 (95% CI: 613.0 to 974.1; p = 0.000), HEI decreased by 45.4 points (95% CI: 48.5 to 82.1; p = 0.000), weight increased by 5.9 kg (95% CI: 3.5 to 6.3; p = 0.002), and BMI increased by 2.8 kg/m2 (95% CI: 2.7 to 3.2; p = 0.000). The correlation between total METs and the HEI was r = 0.21 (p = 0.013). There are statistically significant differences at one-year follow-up in Chilean university students in decreased physical activity, impaired healthy eating behavior, and increased weight and BMI.

Preventing brain aging by the artificial enforcement of the unfolded protein response: future directions.

Instituto de Ciências Biomédicas, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (Cabral-Miranda F) Center for Geroscience, Brain Health and Metabolism, Santiago, Chile; Biomedical Neuroscience Institute, Faculty of Medicine, University of Chile, Santiago, Chile; Program of Cellular and Molecular Biology, Institute of Biomedical Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, University of Chile, Santiago, Chile; Buck Institute for Research on Aging, Novato, CA, USA (Hetz C) Correspondence to: Claudio Hetz, PhD, [email protected] or [email protected]. Received March 07, 2023 Received in revised form March 27, 2023 Accepted April 17, 2023 This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 Unported, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Emotions of University Professors and Students in Times of Pandemic: An Analysis from the Perspective of Resilience in Chilean Higher Education

COVID-19 forced a change in the usual face-to-face teaching–learning process to remote modalities in a matter of weeks. An abrupt change, within the context of uncertainty surrounding the pandemic, significantly increased the stress experienced by professors, students, and their families. Black screens were also a sign of anxiety in the face of new emergency didactic interaction. It has been documented that emotions influence learning; however, few studies have analyzed learning during a pandemic from a resilience approach. The perceptions of the teaching–learning process of 654 professors and 1540 students from 34 Chilean universities were analyzed. Emotions experienced in remote education during the pandemic were studied in relation to professor empathy, respect in the virtual classroom, student/professor technological resources, didactic strategies, student participation, group work, tutoring, perception of learning, assessment, and perception of demand. The results show a direct relationship between professor and student positive emotions and the quality of perceived pedagogical practice and interaction.

Factors influencing professionalism during dental training at the University of Chile: perception of students and patients

BackgroundThe University should be considered a favourable space and agent for the training and transmission of values and attitudes related to professionalism, such as responsibility, teamwork and ethical commitment. In addition, dentistry is a profession with a deep social sense that seeks to solve the oral health problems of the population to improve the quality of life. In this context, our aim was to explore the perception of students and patients about the contribution of the curriculum to the development of professionalism and to identify the factors that strengthen and weaken this perception.MethodsA qualitative approach was carried out through focus groups and semi-structured interviews with students from the 4th, 5th and 6th year of training and patients treated at the Dental Clinic of our Faculty.ResultsIn the opinion of patients and students, the factors that debilitate the training in professionalism are associated with weakened professional values/behaviours in the training, the lack of teacher training of the professors and factors of educational environment. On the contrary, factors strengthening the professionalism are mainly related to hallmark values/ professional behaviours trained in the institution and to the good evaluation by patients. The respondents also perceive the implementation of a new curriculum as a positive factor for the training in professionalism.ConclusionThe patients and students interviewed believe that the main strength for the training in professionalism in the institution is the development of adaptability for the future professionals to any social context, especially to a vulnerable one, the ability to solve the problems they face and the responsibility towards the patients and their treatment.

The roles of vocabulary knowledge and metacognitive awareness as mediators between prior knowledge and L2 academic reading

AbstractIn recent years, reading comprehension studies have followed a componential approach aimed at determining the way in which variables interact. However, in L2 academic reading comprehension, this progress is still in its initial stages. With this context in mind, this paper aims to explore the relationship between prior knowledge and L2 reading comprehension by proposing a mediation model that considers L2 vocabulary knowledge and metacognitive awareness as mediating variables. A final sample of 75 Chilean university students with an intermediate level of English was used for the study. The variables measured were prior knowledge, vocabulary breadth, metacognitive awareness of reading strategies, and reading comprehension. Among the findings of this study, we propose a simple mediation model in which vocabulary knowledge functions as a mediator between prior knowledge and reading comprehension. Unexpectedly, the impact of metacognitive awareness was not found to be statistically significant.

Jemmy Button syndrome? Subjective effects of international mobility experiences in 243 Chilean university students

ABSTRACT The present study examined the well-being and the emotional experience of Chilean university students after participating in an international exchange programme and the association between these factors and the underlying discontents of Chilean society. We sought to determine the extent to which the participants’ evaluation of their student exchange experience predicted their opinion of Chile. We employed a quantitative methodology with a descriptive and correlational design. The participants were 243 Chilean students who taken part in an exchange programme between 2014 and 2018 in 13 countries. Regression analyses showed that subjective experiences in Chile had a stronger predictive value for evaluating the country’s situation than subjective experiences developed abroad. This shows that, unlike Jemmy Button, the participating students were not as deeply shocked by their time abroad; rather, their deep-seated dissatisfaction with Chilean society is determined by their experiences in Chile and by a prior, permanent colonial domination that has entered the country through various paths.

The endogenous formation of common pool resource coalitions

We present the results of framed field (lab-in-field) experiments designed to investigate the endogenous formation of common pool resource (CPR) coalitions when the resource is co-defended with costly monitoring by coalition members and sanctions for encroachment imposed by the government. The experiments were conducted with fishers who were members of Chile's territorial use rights fisheries (TURFs) and in the lab with Chilean university students. Consistent with theoretical predictions, the fishers frequently formed CPR coalitions, even when they could not deter outsider poaching. When the cost of monitoring was low, fishers frequently formed the grand coalition. Coalitions tended to be smaller when monitoring was more costly, but not significantly so. However, coalitions were significantly smaller when monitoring was not available relative to when the cost of monitoring was low. Fishers also invested in monitoring frequently and these investments reduced poaching. When coalitions formed, total harvest effort was curtailed and earnings for coalition members generally increased. Students formed coalitions less frequently, these coalitions tended to be small, and they infrequently invested in monitoring, even when it was profitable to do so. Consequently, student coalition members were not better off on average than under open access.

Preference of medical specialties among medical students in a Chilean university.

This study describes medical specialty preferences expressed by medical students at a regional university in northern Chile. This descriptive study is based on primary information with a sample of 266 valid responses and a response rate of 58.7%. The information was collected through a Google Forms questionnaire before voluntary consent of participation from May to July 2022. We found that the medical specialties preferred by the Universidad Católica del Norte students were clinical specialties, including internal medicine, and medical-surgical specialties, including emergency medicine and gynecology-obstetrics. Women markedly predominated in child and adolescent psychiatry, gynecology-obstetrics, pediatric surgery, pediatrics, and family medicine, while men predominated in radiology and anesthesiology, both associated with indirect patient interaction. We also found that surgical specialties, traditionally preferred by men, could be in the process of generational change, as there is an increase in the presence of women, especially in general surgery.

Strategies of Pre-Service Mathematics Teachers when Articulating Representations of a Function

Background : Several investigations have shown the difficulties that pre-service mathematics teachers present in articulating the elements of a function, in particular, its different representations. Objective : To analyse pre-service mathematics teachers’ articulation of semiotic representations and partial meanings of the notion of function. Design: This research uses qualitative design. Setting and participants : The respondents’ sample comprised 37 pre-service mathematics teachers from a Chilean university. Data collection and analysis : To collect the information, interviews were applied based on the answers given by the pre-service teachers when solving problem situations that involve functional relationships, of which they had to produce and connect their representations, both with conceptual elements and with the sociocultural context. The information was processed using the content analysis technique. Results: The results show a good state of development of the mathematical dimension of the participants’ didactic-mathematical knowledge. Regarding didactic knowledge, while some managed to articulate the partial meanings of function and the representations produced adequately, others show limitations, by not putting at the service of mathematical knowledge the knowledge with which they can potentially carry out teaching situations, establishing few connections between the elements of the representations produced, with corresponding conceptual and sociocultural elements. Conclusions: There is a need for implementing strategies that allow pre-service teachers to articulate partial meanings and representations of a function with conceptual and sociocultural elements that leads them to envision potential teaching activities of this concept.

Sample-Driven Optimal Stopping: From the Secretary Problem to the i.i.d. Prophet Inequality

We take a unifying approach to single selection optimal stopping problems with random arrival order and independent sampling of items. In the problem we consider, a decision maker (DM) initially gets to sample each of N items independently with probability p, and can observe the relative rankings of these sampled items. Then, the DM faces the remaining items in an online fashion, observing the relative rankings of all revealed items. While scanning the sequence the DM makes irrevocable stop/continue decisions and her reward for stopping the sequence facing the item with rank i is Yi. The goal of the DM is to maximize her reward. We start by studying the case in which the values Yi are known to the DM, and then move to the case in which these values are adversarial. For the former case we are able to recover several classic results in the area, thus giving a unifying framework for single selection optimal stopping. For the latter, we pin down the optimal algorithm, obtaining the optimal competitive ratios for all values of p. Funding: This work was partially supported by The Center for Mathematical Modeling at the University of Chile (ANID FB210005), Grant Anillo Information and Computation in Market Design (ANID ACT210005), FONDECYT 1220054 and 1181180, and a Meta Research PhD Fellowship.