Schools In Argentina Research Articles

Las escuelas étnicas de la comunidad francesa. El caso argentino, 1880-1950

Based on unpublished French information, this text analyses the main characteristics and the historical evolution of French schools in Argentina between 1880 and 1950. It begins by establishing an analytical and operational definition of the concept of ethnic schools, and proceeds to study the causes of the weakness of these institutions, distinguishing between those related to pre-migratory conditions (such as levels of illiteracy and of adoption of French national identity by emigrants, French policies towards Latin America) and those taking place after migration (the evolution of the Argentine public education system, the class cleavage inside the immigrant community, the expectation of return-migration, etc.).

Comparison of the prevalence and severity of asthma (ISAAC phase I vs III) in children from primary school in Argentina

Comparison of the prevalence and severity of asthma (ISAAC phase I vs III) in children from primary school in Argentina

Neoevolucionismo y ecología cultural. La obra de Julian Steward y la renovación de la enseñanza de la antropología en la Argentina

La introducción de la obra del antropólogo norteamericano Julian Haynes Steward (1902-1972) produjo una parcial renovación de la enseñanza de la antropología en la Argentina desde mediados de la década del cincuenta. Principalmente en arqueología (y más tarde en lo que comenzaría a llamarse antropología social), el enfoque materialista, neoevolucionista y ecológico entró en tensión con la corriente histórico-cultural alemana que había hegemonizado el campo antropológico nacional liderado por el italiano José Imbelloni desde la Universidad de Buenos Aires. La circulación de estas nuevas ideas -que también provocaron fuertes polémicas en su ámbito de gestación original- es abordada principalmente a partir de la labor transformadora y revitalizadora de Alberto Rex González, posgraduado en la Universidad de Columbia y alumno de Steward a fines de los años cuarenta. De este modo, se propone un análisis de las maneras en que nuevos postulados conceptuales provenientes de una tradición metropolitana se difundieron en un contexto periférico.

About Authors

About Authors

Kindergarten and primary school children’s implicit theories of learning to write

This paper studies the process of learning to write from an insider perspective, by adopting the framework of implicit theories of learning. We interviewed 160 children attending kindergarten or primary education in public schools in Argentina (20 children from each of the eight grades from kindergarten to seventh grade). Main questions explored children’s accounts of their learning activity, learning difficulties and awareness of learning in the field of writing. The textual transcriptions of their oral responses were analysed with the lexicometric method. Results indicate an early shift from a direct theory of learning to write to an interpretative one revealing increasing complexity, dynamisation and internalisation of learning agency.

Comparison of Different Anthropometric Indices for Identifying Insulin Resistance in Schoolchildren

Anthropometric indices have been associated with insulin resistance in children. This study (1) determined the association between insulin resistance and anthropometric indices, including body mass index (BMI), waist circumference (WC), WC/height, weight/(sitting height)(2), and WC/sitting height, and (2) compared the abilities of these five indices to identify children with insulin resistance. Data were collected from six elementary schools in Argentina between April and August 2007. Anthropometric data and Tanner staging were obtained. Fasting serum concentrations of glucose, lipids, and insulin were measured. Six hundred twenty-five children (318 boys) between 6 and 14 years old were examined. The mean age of the children was 9.6 +/- 2.0 years. Ninety-six (15.4%) of the children were obese, 91 (14.6%) were overweight, and 438 (70.1%) were normal weight using Centers for Disease Control and Prevention norms. Sixty percent, 23.0%, 14.0%, and 3.0% were Tanner stage I, II, III, and IV, respectively. The areas under the receiver operator characteristic curves were as follows: WC = 0.78 +/- 0.021 (95% confidence interval [CI] 0.74-0.82), BMI = 0.77 +/- 0.022 (95% CI 0.73-0.82), weight/(sitting height)(2) = 0.76 +/- 0.022 (95% CI 0.72-0.81), WC/height = 0.67 +/- 0.027 (95% CI 0.62-0.72), and WC/sitting height = 0.67 +/- 0.27 (95% CI 0.62-0.72), indicating that BMI, WC, and weight/(sitting height)(2) were acceptable predictors for insulin resistance, whereas WC/height and WC/sitting height were fair predictors as the areas under the curve were <0.7. This study suggests that WC and BMI are (and remain) the best correlates for insulin resistance. In contrast, the indices of the ratio between WC and height were fair predictors for insulin resistance. Additional longitudinal studies should be done to further confirm these findings.

DANCING WITH DEATH

abstractThe author reviews her 40‐year professional career in forensic psychotherapy. She describes her formation at medical school in Argentina, the Menninger School of Psychiatry in Topeka, Kansas, and the Henderson Hospital in Surrey. She reflects on her work, for 30 years, at the Portman Clinic. ‘Dancing with death’ is a metaphor for seeking serious danger, and she offers an extensive clinical vignette from her early career to illustrate the complexities involved in the assessment and treatment of perversion, reviewing the case in the light of her more recent thinking. Perversion is seen as a manic defence against the dreaded black hole of depression but, as well as being associated with the death instinct, perversion secures survival. Both features have to be born in mind in therapeutic work, and she considers both technical and transference/countertransference aspects of treatment, emphasizing the particular advantages of group‐analytic psychotherapy. The context in which Mother, Madonna, Whore was written is reprised. Lastly, she surveys the work of the International Association for Forensic Psychotherapy and our developing understanding of severe female psychopathology.

La enseñanza de la ciencia y la tecnología en la escuela argentina (1880-2000) : un análisis desde los textos

En el presente trabajo se efectúa un análisis histórico sobre la enseñanza de la ciencia y la tecnología en los niveles primario y secundario del Sistema Educativo Argentino, desde 1880 hasta el presente. El estudio se centra en los libros de texto históricamente utilizados en la escuela argentina para las materias de física, química, cosmografía, biología, manuales de ciencias naturales, y manuales para maestros y profesores de las asignaturas mencionadas. Se divide en tres secciones: a) la evolución histórica de las propuestas didácticas de los textos, b) las posturas epistemológicas que respaldan tales propuestas y c) la enseñanza de la tecnología en la escuela secundaria. Se obtienen conclusiones acerca de cuestiones tales como el grado de actualización y politización de los contenidos, la adecuación del nivel matemático, la infl uencia del positivismo y las limitaciones en la enseñanza de la tecnología.

Environmental Literacy: Knowledge for a Healthier Public

In 1988, New York City’s West Harlem community had a problem. The recently opened North River Sewage Treatment Plant, which stretches eight blocks along the Hudson River, was doing a poor job of processing about 170 million gallons of raw sewage daily. Residents were concerned about the foul smells coming from the plant, and parents complained that their children were suffering from respiratory problems. The community knew it needed help, but it also needed something else: information on the exposures it was facing, on the health effects of those exposures, and on the courses of action open to the people. When the community mobilized months later to form West Harlem Environmental Action Inc. (WE ACT), it had taken the first step toward cultivating just that sort of environmental literacy.

Persistence and ruptures: the feminization of teaching and teacher education in Argentina

This article argues that in order to understand the feminization of the teaching profession in Argentina, it is essential to examine two key dynamics: (1) the historical and institutional life of teacher education programs and the social representations about what teachers ought to be advanced by those programs; and (2) the symbolic, economic and social relationships established between a feminized teaching workforce and the development and maintenance of a national project of public schooling. Accordingly this article will analyze the three most significant institutional structures developed to educate public school teachers in Argentina and the paradigmatic images of teaching emphasized by each model of teacher education: ‘normal school’, the ‘technical development school’ and the ‘flexible professional school’. Each of the three models had a favored social representation of teachers (‘apostles/second mothers’, ‘technicians’ and ‘adjusted professional’) which expressed in complex ways institutional responses to the social, political, and economical conflicts that structured and strained the project of public schooling in Argentina.

Autonomy, Participation and Learning: Findings from Argentine Schools, and Implications for Decentralization

Student learning can be raised by school autonomy and parental participation through separate channels, but this paper suggests a mutually supportive effect. Increased school autonomy increases the rent that can be distributed among stakeholders at the school, while institutions for parental participation (such as a school board) empower parents to command a higher share of this surplus, for instance through student learning. Results from a sample of sixth‐grade and seventh‐grade Argentine students and their schools suggest that autonomy and participation raise student test scores in such a multiplicative way. For subsamples of children from poor households, children of uneducated mothers, schools with low mean family economic status, and public schools, the results are the same or stronger. The data available do not allow the potential endogeneity of autonomy and participation to be ruled out with certainty. If decentralization moves responsibility from the center toward local level governments, the results are relevant if this raises autonomy and participation in schools. More generally, the results are relevant for efforts to moving decision‐making towards users and the local community. More importantly, perhaps, we illustrate the importance of checking who is empowered when higher‐level strings are loosened.

The Programs and Context of Medical Education in Argentina

There are 29 medical schools in Argentina (this number has increased rapidly in the last decade) offering a 6-year curriculum that usually consists of 3 years of basic science, 2 years of clinical sciences, and one internship year. Annually, 5,000 physicians graduate from these programs. Admission requirements vary depending on each university's policy. Some do not have entry requirements; others require a course, usually on the basics of mathematics, biology, chemistry or physics, and some introduction to social and humanistic studies. Each year, there are approximately 12,000 first-year medical students attending the 29 schools, which suffer a high dropout rate during the first years because of vocational problems or inability to adapt to university life. Some schools have massive classes (over 2,000 students), which makes it difficult for the schools to perfect their teaching. The number of full-time faculty members is low, and some of them have appointments at more than one medical school. Residency programs offer an insufficient number of places, and fewer than 50% of the graduates can obtain a residency position because of strict admission requirements. Coordination between the Ministry of Health, representing the health care system, and the Ministry of Education, representing the medical education system, needs to be improved. Despite the problems of medical education in Argentina, the movement to improve the education of health care workers is growing. The author offers two recommendations to help accomplish this goal.

Children's autobiographies of learning to write

Learning conceptions may be studied as specific implicit theories based on theory of mind. Previous studies suggest that a developmental shift from a direct implicit theory of learning to an interpretative one occurs during childhood. Here we explore the development of children's autobiographies of learning to write by adopting this framework. We aim to study children's autobiographical accounts of learning to write and whether these accounts change according to the mentioned developmental shift and sociocultural environment. Sixty children attending public schools in Argentina that were equally distributed according to school level (kindergarten, first grade, fourth grade) and sociocultural environment (middle and marginal). Children were interviewed individually at school and requested to write 'as you used to when you were just beginning to write'. This question was repeated for one-year-intervals until child's current age was reached; anticipation of writing next year was also requested. Children's responses were coded into descriptive categories. A multiple correspondence factorial analysis studied the relations among response categories, school grade and sociocultural environment. On the basis of these results, categories were ordered into a Guttman scale. A developmental shift from a focus on isolated products to the integration of procedural and representational changes was evident. School grade and sociocultural environment were statistically significant. Children's writing autobiographies show developmental differences that suit the shift from a direct to an interpretative theory of learning on the basis of hierarchical integration rather than conceptual replacement.

Families, schools and primary-school learning: evidence for Argentina and Colombia in an international perspective

This article presents evidence on the associations between family background, school characteristics and student performance in primary school in Argentina, Colombia and several comparison countries. As a general pattern, educational performance is strongly related to family background, weakly to some institutional school features and hardly to schools’ resource endowments. In an international perspective, family-background effects are relatively large in Argentina, and relatively small in Colombia. A specific Argentine feature is the lack of performance differences between rural and urban areas. A specific Colombian feature is the lack of significant between-gender performance differences. Nonnative students and students not speaking Spanish at home perform particularly weak in both countries. In Argentina, students perform better in schools with a centralized curriculum and ability-based class formation.

The Evolution of Bilingual Schools in Argentina

This paper sets out to provide a preliminary descriptive account of an important subsector of the Argentine education system: those schools locally known as 'bilingual schools' or ' colegios bilingües '. As the authors will show, the label 'bilingual' has, at times, been applied rather loosely to a number of institutions. For current purposes, the authors limit this description to those schools that aim to teach through the medium of two languages. These schools may be characterised both in terms of the shared features that set them apart from other schools in Argentina, and in terms of the distinctions among them, which make this a diversified sub-sector. The authors also argue that these schools have been transformed since they were first founded in the 19th century, evolving from what were originally Heritage Schools to Dual Language Schools and, ultimately, to a new form of Bilingual school that the authors label the 'Global Language School'. Finally, the paper surveys some recent trends within this sector and suggests avenues for further research.

Tabaquismo durante la adolescencia temprana: estudio en escolares argentinos

OBJETIVOS: 1) Conocer la prevalencia del tabaquismo durante la adolescencia temprana (11-12 anos) y 2) identificar los factores de riesgo de hacerse fumador. DISENO: Estudio transversal en 2467 escolares de 19 establecimientos de 7 localidades. Instrumento de registro: encuesta estructurada, autoadministrada a sobre cerrado. RESULTADOS: La prevalencia de tabaquismo fue de 15.1% (7.9% en 7o ano a 23.9% en 9o ano). La edad media de inicio fue de 11.7 anos. La influencia de los pares y la presencia de fumadores en la familia resultaron ser factores estadisticamente significativos. CONCLUSION: Los hallazgos refuerzan la hipotesis de que los programas preventivos sobre el habito de fumar deben iniciarse antes de la adolescencia temprana.

Smoking during early adolescence. A study in schoolchildren from Argentina

To investigate the prevalence of smoking among pre-teenagers (11 and 12 years of age) and to identify risk factors for smoking. A cross-sectional study was carried out with 2,386 schoolchildren from 19 schools in Argentina. A structured, self-completed and anonymous questionnaire was employed. The prevalence of smoking was 15.1%, ranging from 7.9% in the 7th grade to 23.9% in the 9th grade. The mean age at the start of smoking was 11.7 years. Peer and family pressure were statistically significant risk factors for initiating the habit. These findings support the recommendation to begin smoking prevention programs before early adolescence.

Children talk about learning to draw

This study investigates four- to six-year-old children’s conceptions of learning, by applying the lexicometric method to their oral responses to questions about their learning of drawing, in an individual interview at school. Interviews were videotaped and fully transcribed. Subjects were 26 children from a middle-class background attending public schools in Argentina (in a four-year-old class, a five-year-old class and first grade in elementary school). Differences among groups are described on the basis of correspondence analysis and modal response procedures. Such differences are then systematised into several interrelated dimensions regarding changes in children’s conceptions of learning to draw, namely: learning agency as the internalisation of social mediation, nature of both learner’s and teacher’s actions and mental states, learning goals and temporal frame of reference. Thus, three main conceptions are identified: external agency, external/internal agency and internal agency conceptions, which are associated to the three different school grade groups studied.

Microbiological Quality and Safety of Ready-To-Eat Cooked Foods from a Centralized School Kitchen in Argentina

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the microbiological and sensory quality as well as the safety of ready-to-eat (RTE) cooked foods prepared in and distributed from a centralized kitchen to schools in Argentina. A total of 101 cooked food samples delivered as hot RTE cooked foods (group A) and as RTE cooked foods at room temperature (group B) and 140 surface swab environment samples were collected from February to November 1999. Petrifilm plates were used for aerobic (PAC), coliform (PCC), and Escherichia coli (PEC) counts. Standard methods were used to determine Enterobacteriaceae (EntC) and thermotolerant coliform counts (TCC). Samples were also tested for the presence of Salmonella spp., Staphylococcus aureus, Bacillus cereus, and Clostridium perfringens. Food temperatures just before samples were put into containers ranged from 80 to 98°C and from 28 to 32°C for group A and group B, respectively. For group A food samples, PAC ranged from 1.04 to 3.50 log CFU/g, and PCC, PEC, TCC, and EntC were not detected. For group B food samples, PAC ranged from 3.63 to 6.48 log CFU/g, PCC ranged from 1.90 to 5.36 log CFU/g, TCC ranged from 1.30 to 3.95 log CFU/g, and EntC ranged from 3.60 to 5.46 log CFU/g. Of the foodborne pathogens, only B. cereus was isolated (63.4% of samples) in both food groups (<4 log CFU/g). The microbiological and sensory quality and the safety of group A foods were satisfactory. Large numbers of PAC and EntC detected in group B foods show that better control is needed to avoid potential foodborne diseases.

Cuerpo, Género y Poder em la escuela: el cado de la Educación Física Escolar Argentina (1880-1930)

O artigo realiza uma exaustiva revisão histórico-social da educação física escolar argentina e de suas implicações em relação ao corpo masculino — e feminino. A análise identifica duas grandes características que condicionaram as práticas esportivas durante o período de 1880 a 1930: por um lado o aspecto militar, por outro o higiênico. Essas práticas tiveram um forte impacto prescritivo, que colocou em relevo, de forma muito especial, a contribuição para a construção de uma certa masculinidade.