John Dewey,The Other Face of the Brazilian New School

This paper intents to analyze the influence of John Dewey’s ideas in the movement that defended the educationl renovation in Brazil (named New School) at the end of the 1920s and in the 1930s. For this, it explains two trends of that movement: the first is described by the metaphor of industrial or mechanical efficiency, whose emphasis was in the power derived from the disciplinary idea of progress, which was embedded in the process of rationalization of the social relations submitted by a factory model; the second, developed by influence of Dewey, is characterized by a project of democratization of society and school that prevented the individual massification and the adoption of the rationalizing model inspired by the factory without any criticism. When Dewey was put in the center of the debate on political, pedagogical and social goals of the Brazilian New School, he was called to introduce a series of concepts that helped to find the balance between the respect for individuality and the observation of the social needs. This paper has some of the conclusions of a major research project, “Philosophy and Science in the New Educational Discourse (Brazil: l930–1960),” sponsored by CNPq.     

Reception of experimental pedagogy and psychology in Chile. Analysis of the intellectual influences of Wilhelm Mann, 1904–1915

This article provides a detailed analysis of the intellectual research project of Wilhelm Mann, one of the pioneers of experimental and educational psychology in Chile. Mann's work has been the object of so little analysis that his intellectual influences and networks are not clearly known. We analyzed 338 intratext citations from 22 works by Wilhelm Mann published during the period 1904–1915. As a result, we obtained a mapping of his cooperation networks and used a quantitative approach to study the authors who most influenced his career, among whom were William Stern, Herbert Spencer, Wilhelm Wundt, Alfred Binet, and Ernst Meumann. Mann was closely connected to the international and contemporary advances and discussions of his time, despite the lack of infrastructure and difficulties in communication. Mann was the first psychologist to develop a long-term project in Chile that aimed to measure the individualities of Chilean students and their intellectual development.     

The structure of executive functioning in 11 to 14 year olds with and without special educational needs

The structure and development of executive functioning (EF) have been intensively studied in typically developing populations, with little attention given to those with Special Educational Needs (SEN). This study addresses this by comparing the EF structure of 132 adolescents (11–14 years-old) with SEN and 138 adolescents not requiring additional support (Non-SEN peers). Participants completed verbal and non-verbal assessments of key components of EF: inhibition, working memory and switching. Confirmatory Factor Analysis on each group tested one-, two- and three-factor models of EF. In both groups, there was statistical support for the fit of one- and two-factor models with no model being clearly better than the others; there was little support for three-factor models. Parsimony suggests that the one-factor model best represents the structure of EF. In light of our results, the implications for the nature of EF in early adolescence in both SEN and Non-SEN groups are discussed.