The role of the school curriculum is in tension with two points: socializing the essential knowledge needed for life and reflecting the inequalities of society. The present study looks at the effectiveness of this socialization by comparing learner interests with the national curriculum. 442 10th grade students in Chile were divided into 4 groups…

Research shows that students face a range of difficulties when using the Internet to solve information problems. Using a quasi-experimental design, we tested a strategy to improve Chilean 10th graders' skills for information problem solving using the Internet (IPS-I). The intervention was based on a workshop in which students learned IPS-I…

This article contributes to the study of the gender gap for women in STEM, by exploring the socio-emotional dimensions of gifted girls with positive attitudes toward math and science, as measured by the TOSRA and TOMRA. The variables of self-concept, self-efficacy, and gender stereotype identification were examined, using the Piers-Harris…

Young people are increasingly connected in a digital and globalized world, but technology-mediated interactions alone do not necessarily lead to a culture of meaningful participation and meaning making processes. Students from disadvantaged contexts are especially vulnerable to this. Drawing on the "Activity-Centred Analysis and Design"…

This study aims to measure fifty-two high school students' affective reactions after doing individual and pair-based speaking activities then completing a semantic differential scale of nine bipolar adjectives. Results do not show significant statistical differences between the two types of activities or the schools involved in this study, but…

This classroom-based study explored links among second language (L2) learners' interaction mindsets, interactional behaviors, and L2 development in the context of peer interaction. While peer interaction research has revealed that certain interactional behaviors (e.g., receiving corrective feedback and engaging in collaborative interaction) assist…

In this dissertation, I address the issue of social inequalities in education and the role of the education system in confronting them. The project involves two main parts, one empirical and the other conceptual. In the first part--chapters 1 and 2--I address the practical dimension of how to reduce social inequalities in education by exploring…