Mexican Primary School Research Articles

Ideas about the nature of science in pedagogically relevant contexts: Insights from a situated perspective of primary teachers' knowledge

AbstractThere is evidence that science teachers give naive responses to direct questions about the nature of science. However, there is also evidence that such responses underpredict the more sophisticated knowledge that teachers may use in classroom situations. The purpose of this study was to characterize the informal ideas used by teachers in situations directly relevant to their teaching of science. The sample comprised 50 Mexican primary school teachers. Three areas of informal expertise were addressed: scientists and their work; scientific inquiry; and data measurement. The teachers' thinking was explored through questionnaires and semistructured interviews using pedagogically relevant contexts. The database was analyzed first to describe ideas shared by teachers and second to identify any recurrent themes and patterns among responses. Teachers' responses were characterized around four areas of discourse: demarcation of science; scientific procedures; approaches to reliable knowledge; and professional and institutional features of science. The teachers' responses were diverse in their contextualization, that is, they incorporated specific background and contextual details to a different extent. Most responses showed limited or intermediate contextualization across all four areas of discourse, though some more sophisticated responses were noted. A general framework was developed to characterize this diversity in teachers' responses. This paper concludes with a discussion of the extent to which this sample of teachers was equipped to discuss the nature of science in pedagogical contexts and, given their starting points, how they might be supported in developing their expertise in doing this. Implications for teacher education and curriculum development are presented. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Sci Ed 94:282–307, 2010

Keeping La Llorona Alive in the Shadow of Cortés: What an Examination of Literacy in Two Mexican Schools Can Teach U.S. Educators

This article, a 5-month ethnographic research in Oaxaca, Mexico, examines various aspects of the literacy curriculum in 2 Mexican primary schools. The author observed and interviewed 35 students in 6th grade and 7 teachers in 2 schools, as well as examined student writing and teaching materials. The research suggests that though the Secretaria de Educación Pública (Secretary of Public Education, SEP) of Mexico mandates progressive educational theories, in practice, the national curriculum reinforces the Spanish colonialist views of indigenous languages and beliefs. In addition, there is a powerful intimate culture of children and families who interact with this curriculum. This study looks at what happens when the ideas and practices of the SEP collide with indigenous traditions, and what U.S. educators can learn from this.

Exploratory Talk, Argumentation and Reasoning in Mexican Primary School Children

The study analyses the effects of training primary school children in the use of a linguistic tool called 'Exploratory Talk' (ET) on their capacity for argumentation. ET allows for reasoned confrontation and negotiation of points of view, making the reasoning visible in the talk. Eighty-eight Mexican children from the 5th and 6th grades of primary school (10 to 12 years old), were assigned to either an experimental or control condition. Participants were administered an adapted version of the 'Standard Raven's Test of Progressive Matrices'. This was answered in small groups before and after training in ET was conducted with the experimental group. Experimental students, in comparison with control, produced significantly more and better arguments. They also presented their arguments in a more cohesive and explicit way, providing more links and supports to sustain their opinions, thus making their reasoning more visible in their language. These improvements had a highly significant effect on their capacity to solve problems. The study provides valuable information on the argumentative capacities of primary school children, on effective ways to promote them, and on the effect this training has on their use of discourse as well as their capacity for problem solving and knowledge construction.

Learning From Rural Mexican Schools About Commitment and Work

During the last 3 years we have made many visitsto two rural Mexican primary schools. As a resultof our experiences there, we believe that students'sense of responsibility in a school setting dependson the nature of the commitments they make andthe work they do in and for the school. We havealso learned that certain educational and socialconcepts expressed in Spanish can enrich our thinkingabout the social curriculum that teachers andstudents create in classrooms. In this article weexplore the idea of students' "social work" by explainingwhat we are learning in these Mexicanschools and providing examples from selected writingsabout life in U.S. classrooms.

Talking for reasoning among Mexican primary school children

We analysed the development and promotion of ‘exploratory talk’ as a discursive tool to facilitate collective and individual reasoning in Mexican primary school children, following Mercer et al. (Br. Educ. Res. J. 25 (1999) 95) in the UK equivalent experimental and control groups of primary school children were administered a group and an individual problem-solving test before and after training. Teachers of the experimental groups trained their respective students to use competently exploratory talk to make their reasoning visible to others for solving diverse problems. In contrast with control children, experimental ones used significantly more exploratory talk, and this gain was accompanied by a substantial improvement in group and individual problem-solving. Results confirm sociocultural claims that language can function as a powerful tool to facilitate reasoning in social contexts, confirming previous UK findings.

Learning from Rural Mexican Schools About Commitment and Work

During the last 3 years we have made many visits to two rural Mexican primary schools. As a result of our experiences there, we believe that students' sense of responsibility in a school setting depends on the nature of the commitments they make and the work they do in and for the school. We have also learned that certain educational and social concepts expressed in Spanish can enrich our thinking about the social curriculum that teachers and students create in classrooms. In this article we explore the idea of students' "social work" by explaining what we are learning in these Mexican schools and providing examples from selected writings about life in U.S. classrooms.

Scaffolding the development of effective collaboration and learning

Research in Mexican and British schools provides an empirical basis for arguing that, by the use of certain kinds of interactional strategies, teachers can enable children to become more able in managing individual and joint reasoning and learning activities in the classroom. The research described is based on a sociocultural conception and analysis of education, which focuses on the ways that children can be inducted into the communicative and intellectual activities of the classroom as a ‘community of enquiry’. The research has provided (a) an account of strategies teachers use, and for relating teacher’s scaffolding to the interactive process of knowledge construction; (b) an analysis of ways that children talk when working together on joint activities; and (c) a practical method for promoting children’s effective collaboration, communication, reasoning and learning, successfully tested with British and Mexican primary school children. The results of the research are discussed in relation to a Vygotskian conception of the relationship between ‘intermental’ (social) and ‘intramental’ (psychological) development.

Anthropometric study of Mexican primary school children

This paper presents the results of an anthropometric survey conducted on male and female Mexican primary school children age 6–11 years in the metropolitan area of the city of Guadalajara. A set of 50 body dimensions was taken based on international standards. The sample consisted of 4758 children (boys and girls). The anthropometric measurements were compared to those of American, Cuban and Mexican children. The results indicate that the body dimensions of Mexican children from this study are different from those of American, Cuban, and other Mexican children, probably due to ethnic differences and the time lapse between the different studies. It is considered that the 50 parameters are necessary for the design of school furniture, fittings and equipment in order to minimize musculoskeletal, visual, and circulatory problems resulting from using those badly designed elements.

Mexican Primary School Teachers' Sense of Professional Responsibility

Mexican Primary School Teachers' Sense of Professional Responsibility

Straightening Out Some of the Lumpen in the Development

Three different historical issues are raised and discussed in this section. Barbara A. Tenenbaum critiques André Gunder Frank's explanation of Latin American history using Mexico (1821-1856) as her example. The basic thesis of this paper is that the post-independ ent "bourgeoisies" in Latin America were not cohesive groups but reflected the overall weakness of their republics. Ms. Tenenbaum teaches history at Vassar College. Mary Kay Vaughan, who teaches history at the University of Illinois, Chicago Circle, treats Mexican primary school policy between 1890 and 1930 and argues that in this period, school programs were designed primarily to mold a labor force equipped with skills and attitudes appropriate to the modernization process and values and beliefs that legitimized bourgeois rule. Finally, we present a study by Juan Felipe Leal of the development of the state in Mexico between 1867 and 1914. This article is a convincing application of a whole proble matique first formulated by Antonio Gramsci: the notion of hegemony, class fractions, and hegemonic power blocs. Juan Felipe Leal is a member of the Facultad de Ciencias Politicas y Sociales of the Universidad Autónoma de México.

Education and Class in the Mexican Revolution

This paper treats Mexican primary school policy between 1890 and 1930 and argues that in this period, school programs were designed primarily to mold a labor force equipped with skills and attitudes appropriate to the modernization process and values and beliefs legitimizing bourgeois rule. Mexico differed from other countries (e.g., the United States and European nations) with similarly defined goals for two principal reasons. On the one hand, a dependent mentality on the part of official educational policy makers expressed in contempt for Mexican culture and a sense of shame vis-a-vis Mexico's lack of development was reflected in a rigidity of program design perhaps greater than that of the metropolitan countries. Secondly, in 1910 Mexico began a revolution in which a petty-bourgeoisie of small businessmen, commercial farmers, lawyers, doctors, and educators challenged the monopoly of economic and political power exercised by the existing elite - large land- and mineowners and some industrialists, most of whom were closely tied to foreign counterparts. Fighting to emerge as an enlarged bourgeoisie, the petty-bourgeoisie was confronted with the problem of containing the forces of organized peasants and workers, who fought in the Revolution with goals often at variance with those of the petty bourgeoisie. From 1910 to 1930 schooling was not only viewed as a means of facilitating economic growth, it was moreover an instrument designed to restrain and co-opt the popular forces. In this period, resistance to official school policy took the form of growing support among certain sectors of workers, peasants, and teachers for theories of anarchist pedagogy derivative of the ideas of Spanish anarchist Francisco Ferrer Guardia. This potential challenge to the more conservative direction being taken by government educational policy makers was diminished in the period under study by the government's success in co-opting groups, by its repression of grass-roots movements, by political divisions within the popular forces, and by general socio-economic conditions in Mexico. However, this challenge to official policy laid the basis for socialist education when workers and peasants forced the Mexican Revolution leftward in the 1930s. Most of the historical studies about Mexican education lionize Justo Sierra, a key figure in the formulation of public school policies in the late nineteenth century who directed the Secretaria de Instruccion Pu'blica y Bellas Artes from 1905 to 1910. Despite the nothing less than heroic stature commonly assigned to Sierra as the proponent of the liberal view of schooling as emancipation in the sense of classical humanism, it becomes clear from a re-examination of the evidence that his more important motives were both consciously and unconsciously directed toward the preparation of a skilled labor force in accordance with the needs of the Mexican bourgeoisie, whose interests Sierra represented. While other attitudes toward primary schooling existed among the elite (some feared that education would increase the revolutionary potential of the poor while others were con