Carmen Lopez

Fundamental motor skills of children can be affected by different variables, such as executive functions, gender and relative age. However, the effects of these variables on FMS have been scarce studied, especially in early childhood, and show inconsistent results. To clarify these relationships, this study was carried out. Its aim was to analyze whether EF, gender and relative age influenced FMS in 43 Spanish kindergarteners. A multimethod and mixed methods approach was used. Kindergarteners’ teachers completed the Childhood Executive Functioning Inventory to know the children level of EF. Kindergarteners’ parents complimented ad hoc questionnaire reporting the children gender and birth data. A Nomothetic/Punctual/Multidimensional observational design was used to observe children FMS in their habitual motor sessions at school. Two-way ANOVAs were performed to know the independent and interactive effects of working memory level, inhibition control level, gender and relative age on FMS. Results showed these variables have independent and interactive effects on some FMS, but not on others. FMS influenced by these variables vary depending what independent variable is/are considered. Therefore, it can be concluded that the influences of teacher-rated EF, gender and relative age on observed FMS in kindergarteners are complex and specific. Results obtained must be taken into to design and implement instructional and intervention strategies, as well as educational and sport policy changes, especially in early childhood, when FMS are more malleable.

This essay examines how hermeneutic philosophy, particularly Gadamer's, recovers rhetoric, less as the art of speaking well than as a statement of a truth of the sensus communis, that which communicates veracious content through argumentation. This is the sense in which Gadamer acknowledges the ubiquity of rhetoric and hermeneutics as components of linguisticity (Sprachlichkeit). Conceived in the context of non-methodical wisdom and phronesis, Gadamer's rehabilitated rhetoric is concerned with pragmatics and ethics. Rhetoric is no longer viewed as a technique of verbal manipulation and becomes relevant for dialogic communication. Gadamer thus joins the Habermasian criticism of formalized reason that is detached from values. Both of them reject instrumental reason, because it has colonized communicational reason. However, since Gadamer's view of rhetoric has also been criticized by Habermas and Ricoeur their objections cannot be overlooked in a discussion of his hermeneutics. The essay concludes with a brief consideration of the implications of the debate on rhetoric, hermeneutics, and communication for the twenty-first century

_María Zambrano. __A Life of Poetic Reason and Political Commitment _de Beatriz Caballero Rodríguez y _The Cultural Legacy of María Zambrano_, editado por Xon de Ros y Daniela Omlor, son dos recientes aportaciones críticas al pensamiento de María Zambrano, pioneras en su contexto al constituir los dos primeros libros monográficos en lengua inglesa sobre esta filósofa y escritora. Por ello se abordarán en una reseña conjunta con el fin de mostrar la vigencia del pensamiento de Zambrano en el siglo XXI.

The Philosophy Program for Children initially inspired by Lipman’s work has been successfully applied in different countries. This program defends the necessity to teach children to think philosophically. In order to achieve this goal, it is necessary both that teachers are philosophically educated and that philosophy is included in the curriculum of all schools. The aim of this paper is to show that phenomenology helps toward the success of this task as much as pragmatism, the tradition that inspired Lipman. The interest of Husserl and his followers in Lebenswelt and in knowledge makes pedagogical reflection and practice richer. Phenomenological applications and methodologies are so broad that they give education a critical orientation. The controversy between Merleau-Ponty and Piaget shows the validity of the Philosophy Program for Children. Hermeneutic phenomenology goes deeply into dialogue, an activity essential to the institution of an investigative community in the educational process.

This research aims to describe how practicing lawyers perceive ‘plain writing’ in the legal field and to conceptualize this notion through the discourse analysis of these specialists. To do so, a qualitative research framed in the interpretive paradigm has been developed. Specifically, 18 practicing lawyers, from different countries and with different specializations in the practicing of Law, were surveyed. After analyzing the discourse of the interviewed lawyers, eight macro categories accounting for plain language both generally and particularly were identified. The audience was identified as a key element in the production of legal texts which facilitate justice to citizens. Based on our analysis, we conclude with a definition of plain writing.

As a discourse genre, statements of purpose are characterized by their occluded status in the academy and by their hybrid nature. Statements of purpose are required in applications for a place in a postgraduate course, and they are requested to obtain information about the academic and professional background and skills of each applicant. A study of the genre’s linguistic and textual features is needed in Spanish to discover and understand writers’ and readers’ perception of this genre. A corpus of 50 motivation letters in Spanish is analyzed here. We study the distinguishing macro- and microtextual features of this particular genre and co-occurrences between both kinds of features. At the macrotextual level, statements of purpose display prototypical rhetorical moves, which can be classified as writers’ moves and readers’ moves. On the microtextual level, modalization resources and discourse markers are discussed. This multiple perspectives analysis of the corpus shows evidence of significant co-occurrences among modalization, discourse markers, and rhetorical moves. Writers’ ideal representations of this discourse genre, which spans the academic and professional fields, can also be deduced.

La instauración del sistema penal acusatorio en varios países de Latinoamérica ha enfrentado el reto, entre muchos, de configurar nuevos estándares para la actuación judicial. Este artículo se centra en el reto que representa para los juzgadores valorar la confiabilidad de la prueba científica, dado que su naturaleza excede el conocimiento de la mayoría de ellos. Evaluar la confiabilidad y corrección de la prueba científica para asignarle un peso específico en el acervo probatorio es una labor para la que el juez requiere de un análisis multidisciplinario. A manera de guía para el juzgador y como una herramienta innovadora en el ambiente judicial latinoamericano, se proponen lineamientos generales y específicos a seguir en la valoración de la confiabilidad de la prueba en tres áreas forenses.

Writing the Final Degree Project is a difficult task for most undergraduate students. This is the case of Computer Engineering, a discipline in which the proper presentation of results is a complex written production activity. The RESULTS section is more complicated than others due to its structure, its communicative purposes and the way to achieve them. While there have been some descriptions of its rhetorical-discursive organization, most have focused on the prototypical organization of only one of the types of TFGs produced in this discipline. Therefore, in this mixed research of descriptive scope, we rhetorically-discursively analyze the RESULTS section of Computer Engineering TFG’s, considering the particularities of the different types of TFG’s existing within the discipline. To this end, using genre analysis, we analyzed 117 RESULTS sections of Computer Engineering Final Degree Project. Among our findings, it is observed that in the section the moves ‘Present preparatory information’, ‘Report results’ and ‘Interpret results’ are prototypically employed. In turn, variations in the rhetorical-discursive organization are established, which are related to the 4 types of TFG that occur in the discipline. We conclude that there are 4 types of TFG in Computer Engineering, which affect the rhetorical-discursive organization of the RESULTS section. At the same time, we argue that attention should be paid to the particularities of the genre and of each section, since due to the different purposes pursued in each of them, the discursive functional units used differ from each other.

Handwriting is a complex activity that involves continuous interaction between lower-level handwriting and motor skills and higher-order cognitive processes. It is important to allocate mental resources to these high-order processes since these processes place a great demand on cognitive capacity. This is possible when lower-level skills such as transcription are effortlessness and fluent. Given that fluency is a value in virtually all areas of academic learning, schools should provide instructional activities to promote writing fluency from the first stages of learning to write. In an effort to determine if teaching handwriting enhances writing fluency, we conducted a systematic and meta-analytic review of the writing fluency intervention literature. We selected 31 studies: 21 true and quasi-experimental studies, 4 single-group design, 3 single-subject design, and 3 non-experimental studies, conducted with K-6 students in a regular school setting. A total of 2,030 students participated in these studies. When compared to no instruction or non-handwriting instructional conditions, teaching different handwriting intervention programs resulted in statistically significant greater writing fluency. Moreover, three specific handwriting interventions yielded statistically significant results in improving writing fluency, when compared to other handwriting interventions or to typical handwriting instruction conditions: handwriting focused on training timed transcription skills, multicomponent handwriting treatments, and performance feedback. There were not enough data to calculate the impact of sensory-motor and self-regulated strategy handwriting interventions on writing fluency. The significance of these findings for implementing and differentiating handwriting fluency instruction and guiding future research will be discussed.

Background Moral distress appears when a healthcare professional is not able to carry out actions in accordance with their professional ethical standards. The Moral Distress Scale-Revised is the most widely used to assess levels of moral distress, but it is not validated in Spanish. The aim of the study is to validate the Spanish version of the Moral Distress Scale – utilised within a sample of Spanish healthcare professionals treating COVID–19 patients. Methods The original (english) and the portuguese and french versions of the scale were translated into spanish by native or bilingual researchers and reviewed by an academic expert in ethics and moral philosophy as well as by a clinical expert. Research design: Descriptive cross-sectional study carried out using a self-reporting online survey. The data was collected between June- November 2020. A total of 661 professionals responded to the survey (N = 2873). Participants: healthcare professionals with more than two weeks of experience treating COVID–19 patients at the end of their life and working in the public sector of the Balearic Islands Health Service (Spain). Analyses included descriptive statistics, competitive confirmatory factor analysis, evidence on criterion-related validity and estimates of reliability. The study was approved by the Research Ethics Committee at the University of Balearic Islands. Results An unidimensional model in which a general factor of moral distress explained by 11 items of the Spanish version of the MDS–R scale was an adequate representation of the data: χ 2 (44) = 113.492 (p 0.001); Comparative Fit Index = 0.965; Root Mean Square Error of Approximation = 0.079[0.062,0.097]; and Standarized Root Mean-Square = 0.037. Evidence of reliability was excellent: Cronbach’s alpha = 0.886 and McDonald’s omega = 0.910. Moral distress was related to discipline, with nurses having statistically significant higher levels than physicians. Additionally, moral distress successfully predicted professional quality of life, with higher levels of moral distress being related to poorer quality of life. Conclusions The Spanish version of Moral Distress Scale–Revised can be used as a reliable and valid measurement tool for the evaluation of moral distress experienced by health professionals. This tool will be highly useful for managers and applicable to a variety of healthcare professionals and settings.