Objective: The paper describes the findings of a doctoral dissertation aimed at interpreting the cultural inclusion of immigrants in Chilean schools and teachers’, principals’ and non-educational professionals’ representations of multicultural and intercultural education. Methods: The research follows a qualitative paradigm with the prevalence of descriptive and interpretative tools to analyze the educative agents’ cultural background. A case study of collective or multiple characters was carried out for understanding proximity, distance, similarities, and dissenting opinions; likewise, interviews were used to collect information. Results: The findings reflect a poor theoretical background knowledge on the part of teachers, principals and non-educational professionals to distinguish between multicultural and intercultural models, their assessment of the limit role played by Chilean Ministry of Education and local authorities, usually focused on measuring students’ learning through standardized tests, and the limited attention to immigrant students inclusion in the school community. Conclusion: The management of the inclusion of immigrant students to the school community is facing difficulties that demand a professional development of teachers, principals and non-educational professional to lead education in the multicultural and intercultural context.

Objective: This article belongs to a series of papers about competency-based education. This one aims at outlining the theoretical framework and the corresponding antecedents from the beginning, together with the main obstacles facing university education in competency professional education. Methods: To characterize the antecedents of competency-based education at the university the analysis-synthesis, induction-deduction and concrete-abstract methods were used. Results: The study reveals theoretical and methodological inconsistencies by examining the evolution of competency-based education, particularly the paper accounts for the introduction to a deeper analysis of current curricula and the teaching practice. Conclusions: The challenge of improving university education demands a change of current approaches, a truly competency-based oriented perspective, and the corresponding sound knowledge of epistemological grounds on the part of the professor staff.

Objective: The paper aims at proving the inefficiency of administrative imposed overloaded number of assessment exercises in a single semester. This will reduce the time allotted to formative activities. The collected data were also examined in the light of today commercial approach to education. Methods: The quantitative and qualitative outcomes of theoretical and practical evaluation exercises are compared. The students of nine groups of the University of Cuenca were chosen as a sample. Results: In this study, these legal obligations are put into question, proving that one and other types of evaluation measurement are equivalents. This fact empirically invalidates legal normalizations that promote a greater number of evaluations for students’ benefit. The results suggest that there is a significant, positive and moderate correlation of the scores obtained in two types of evaluations: theoretical and practical ones. Conclusions: The author figures out that regardless of the type of technique used poor-performance students will get low grades, while outstanding students will get good marks. The excessive number of evaluation exercises hinders the normal development of teaching and learning in the classroom and the students’ autonomous learning.

Objective: This paper aims at constructing a frame of reference for the strategic management of the scientific-research and postgraduate activity at a university faculty, resulting from the systematization of good practices and the evaluation of results achieved at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering of the Universidad de Oriente. Methods: The research followed two main stages: exploratory and explanatory. At the first stage, analysis-synthesis and historical-logical methods attain to share relevant political, strategic, theoretical and institutional referents to the strategic management of the scientific research and post-graduate activity, facing Cuban universities main challenges. At the explanatory stage, by integrating the systemic-structure approach and action-research methods, the fundamental characteristics of the projection of the strategic management of the scientific research activity and postgraduate is explained; the empirical methods as documentary analysis and interviews with executives, teachers, and students were used to assess the results obtained before and after the application of good practices. Results: The fundamental result of the study is the proposal of a projection of the strategic management of scientific-research and postgraduate activity. Conclusions: The adequate strategic management of the scientific-research and postgraduate activity in a faculty, mediated by the entrepreneurship of executives and scientific/academic leaders, guarantees the improvement of the human capital formative process outcomes at the universities.

Objective: The discipline genre related problems faced by the students at the university reveal the need of figuring out the corresponding ways of inclusion in the new and complex academic culture. This article aims at examining the characteristic features of the discipline genre and the implications of its didactic transposition in learning contents and the foreign language. Methods: The didactic transposition theoretical framework construction was needed for determining, through the analysis and synthesis, the necessary elements to devise the didactic approach of mathematical contents related to discipline genres teaching and learning. Results: The main finding of the paper involved the description and foundations of the generic perspective and the implications of its didactic transposition in the field of learning contents and the foreign language. The paper also includes a full description of an assessment tool of a generic progressive character, focused on the learning of mathematics contents through oral interaction, reading comprehension and academic writing in the foreign language. These tasks include the recognition of mathematics objects from written sources (in English) and its representation in several semiotic systems, its corresponding comprehension, communication and translation to mathematics codes. Conclusions: The basic elements of generic perspective have contributed to install planning, organization and evaluation of disciplinary contents and linguistic-communicative aspects in accordance with socio-cultural factors in teaching and learning a unit, widening the potentials of the English Language Curricular Strategy based fostering the didactic transposition of contents and the foreign language.

Objective: The papers aims at assessing the reliability of a strategy for introducing play in preschool centers. The strategy is based on pedagogical a model a model that describes the logic of the introduction as a ludic activity in the educational process of four to five years old children. Methods: The pertinence of the descriptors and tools to be used was assessed by expertise interviewing and critical opinion and collective construction workshops. The strategy reliability assessment was completed with a pedagogical experiment (four groups of Solomon) with children of four to five years old attending to preschool centers of following the “Educa a tu Hijo” program at the Camagüey city. Result: The findings revealed significant differences in pre-school chess introduction descriptors in the experimental groups as compared to the control groups, therefore the impact of the pedagogical strategy and the relevance of the experiential-modeling method were confirmed. in the initiation of Chess in the educational process of boys and girls from four to five years. Conclusion: The achievements in the introduction of chess playing in preschool-age suggests the significance of chees initiation a ludic possibility in the educational process of preschool education.

Objective: The paper aims at describing a developmental program for Chinese teachers of Spanish Language promoting professional performance by contextualizing current teaching methods and procedures to the Chinese university context. Methods: The study focuses on examining legal documents and teaching foreign language reference sources, and comparing the resulting theoretical framework to the teaching practice as observed and registered by one of the authors while teaching at the Hebei International Studies University. Results: The main finding is a developmental program for Chinese teachers of Spanish as a foreign language based on the antecedents and general principles of foreign language teaching and its contextualization to Chinese university education. Conclusion: The Spanish language teachers’ improvement should be characterized by the development of teaching professional competencies based on critical assimilation of the action-oriented approach (the international view), the selective assimilation of the preceding methods, the Chinese educational tradition, the vision of the Chinese education reform.

Objective: The current society has witnessed how the role of teachers at the university has been transformed by the impact of ICT. The purpose of this research is to assess the Pedagogical Sciences university teachers behavior during a one-year period as scientific communication and collaboration in academic social networks is concerned. Methods: A panel longitudinal study was carried out on a sample of 12 researchers. Instruments applied for gathering information were the interview and the network profiles observation. Results: A conceptualization of scientific communication and collaboration processes in academic social networks was an outcome. The main finding of this research shows that researchers are reluctant to share resources and to contribute with their knowledge to other academician s researches in digital environments. Another relevant outcome is that academic social networks are used essentially for disseminating information, in paper format preferably. Conclusions: Scientific communication and collaboration in academic social networks are affected fundamentally by two elements: the trend to avoid sharing or requesting information and the inertia to the use of collaborative technologies for researching.

Objective: The paper aims at devising an alternative for teaching and learning how to calculate the capacity of the load of the cylindrical gears with the use of automated methods. This alternative is based on a mathematic model of the locus of the points of the contour of the teeth in polar coordinates. Methods: Using synthetic analytical methods and statistical mathematics, it was possible to perform the referred calculation and proposing a teaching method. Results: The text illustrated that it is possible to instruct the students to calculate gear load capacity by means of automated procedures. Likewise, the need for a new teaching method to deal with gears is argued. This method fosters students learning of professional techniques to examine gears and how to distinguish worn-out properties. Conclusion: The introduction of automated methods to learn how to calculate the capacity of the load of the cylindrical gears facilitates students learning and the development of professional competencies of the would-be mechanical engineer.

Objective: This article aims at describing a system of continuing education activities to promote the teachers’ role in stimulating memory in primary students during the first years of development. Methods: The researchers relied on theoretical methods, such as historical-logical, analysis-synthesis, inductive-deductive; as well as empiric methods such as observation, pedagogic tests, interviewing, the analysis of documents, the learning of ten words, the reproduction of stories, the methodology of A. N. Leontiev, workshops of critical opinion and collective opinion. Results: The main contribution of the study is a system of continuing education activities that describe the role of teachers in stimulating visual-auditory memory, involuntary or voluntary memory and the semantic-logical memory of primary students during the first years of development. Conclusions: The methodological guidelines given enable educators to lead the process of memory stimulation by training high potential memory types that foster students’ learning.

Objective: Information and communication technologies are quite common in daily life. Their potentials are becoming a learning tool. This article aims at assessing the use of informational services of the Ministry of Education in a sample of professors and students of Najasa municipality. Methods: Different methods were used. The statistical analysis served to assess what are the most frequently visited web sites and how they serve the purpose of researching and recreation. Analysis – synthesis was used in the theoretical framework construction. Result: The main finding is the creation of a web directory the Municipal Education Office and the outlining of users’ tendency in using the internet. Conclusion: The use of new technologies, including the use of web applications such as the directory, promotes larger and efficient use of telematic services that the Ministry of Education provides. The directory offers a users’ guide for searching the internet, favoring in better use, and process efficiency.

Objective: In Cuba, the education of artists takes place at schools of art of the Art Education Division of the Ministry of Culture. This paper aims at describing a pedagogical strategy based on theoretical framework devised for the pre-service training of Violin students, to contributing to their education. Methods: The process of art education of violin students were examined by contrasting the students’ performance at the opening of the pre-service training period to their achievements once the proposed strategy was put into practice. The potentials of that strategy were assessed following a set of descriptors proposed by the authors. Results: The initial diagnosis showed the students are distributed among the middle and low levels at the beginning of the pre-service training period, moving respectively to middle and high levels by the close of that period. Conclusions: The pre-service training, based on the theoretical framework constructed fosters students’ professional development and performance as shown by third-year students’ outcomes in all descriptors.

Objective: The article explores the contribution of competency-based learning in the area of musical language for the benefit of the students of art high schools of Ecuador. Methods: The authors rely on the qualitative-quantitative descriptive method. The researchers attempted to reveal how Competency-based learning contributes to the strengthening of school performance in the area of musical language during the 2016-2017 school year. Results: The findings are the description of the teaching strategies used and the features that characterize the learning results derived from a competency-based approach in the area of musical language, as a solution to the learning former difficulties. Conclusions: The use of inappropriate strategies in the direction of the learning process has led to the predominance of mechanic learning. This situation could be transformed by training the teachers in introducing a competency-based learning approach.

Objective: This work is contextualized in the Chilean crisis of 2019 that confronted society with the discussion about the legitimacy of the main foundations of its political, social and economic system. Its aim is to describe the meanings attributed by pedagogy students in history and geography, to citizenship education, considering their experience of participation during the social crisis. Methods: The study was conducted through content analysis with a qualitative approach. The corpus reviewed corresponds to seven first person accounts, that were analyzed from three aprioristic dimensions (civic skills and abilities, civic knowledge and values ??in citizen formation) and two emerging dimensions (emotions and pedagogical function of citizen formation). Results: The results show that citizen education, as an area of ??knowledge that is part of the educational system, acquires meanings in which conceptual dimensions of the theoretical field, skills and civic competences coexist, in addition to value-base orientations, in which it is impossible to subtract the emergence of the emotional as a reflexive domain that leads to the construction of pedagogical meaning. Conclusion: The main conclusions show that the challenges in teacher education lie in integrating the dimensions of citizen formation in reflective exercises, assuming that crises are learning scenarios in which democracy is built through civic self-intervention.