Martha Armida Fabela-Cárdenas’s research while affiliated with Autonomous University of Nuevo León and other places

This article focuses on teacher attitudes towards learner autonomy and discusses whether teachers’ attitudes change through teacher training. The study was carried out with teachers working in different self-access centres within the State University of Nuevo Leon, Mexico (UANL). The aim of the study was to report any changes in teachers’ opinions and beliefs on issues after a teacher training course. These issues range from teacher-centeredness, learner-centeredness, learner autonomy, work in the SAC, views on language learning, the role of teachers, the role of learners, views on local culture, and on motivation. The study was carried out using Q Methodology.

Mexico, like many other countries in the world, has subscribed to a UNESCO policy for the inclusion of children with special educational needs in mainstream education. Thus, at least since 1994, public and private mainstream schools have included children with special educational needs. In this study, the authors intend to explore the issues in the Mexican context in order to identify teachers' attitudes, perceptions and concerns about their practice, their preparation and their skills to help children with special educational needs in their classrooms. Among the dimensions the authors are trying to investigate are those opinions and experiences expressed by classroom teachers in relation to the collaboration and support they receive from all the stakeholders in the process of educating children with special needs. The study uses the techniques and procedures of Q methodology since it is seen as a method that is particularly compatible with a social-constructionist research paradigm which allows the participants to express their own opinions and to produce an individual configuration of their own beliefs and attitudes.

Las tendencias educativas actuales recomiendan que la práctica aulística debe implementar las características del aprendizaje centrado en el estudiante. En este modelo pedagógico, los estudiantes juegan un papel central y deben también asumir ciertas prácticas nuevas que el modelo centrado en el docente no les asignaba. El objetivo de este estudio es conocer las opiniones de los estudiantes sobre el aprendizaje centrado en el estudiante y tratar de determinar en qué medida los estudiantes asumen su nuevo rol, específicamente en cuanto a implicarse en el aprendizaje de manera profunda y significativa y qué efecto tiene esto en la implementación exitosa o no del modelo pedagógico.

Current educational trends promote the implementation of student-centered learning in the classroom. In this pedagogic model students play the main role and they are expected to assume new roles that the teacher-centered model did not assign them. Our aim is to get to know students' opinions about student-centered learning, and to try to determine to what extent students assume their new role, specifically in relation to students' deep and meaningful participation in their own learning and the effects it has on the successful implementation of the model.

This paper puts forward emerging theory on determining factors for quality of education in private higher education institutions. A model of factors and sub-factors that influence the quality of education, result of in-depth interviews with leading figures of the institutions, is presented. The study was conducted with a sample of twenty-two leading figures of private higher education institutions, using a Delphi methodology or expert consultation, and it reveals an update of Arcaro's model of 1995.