Abstract

Minors are daily confronted with advertisements, which are occasionally controversial. In order to promote adolescents’ moral advertising literacy, this intervention study explores how to stimulate secondary education students’ knowledge on advertising law and their moral judgement of advertisements. Because a lot of new ?especially online? advertising formats have arisen during the last years, 191 students from 12 classes were randomly assigned to either a no tablet condition or a tablet condition (to raise authenticity of learning material). The results show that students who use tablet devices perform less well on a post-test about advertising law. Regarding adolescents’ moral judgement of advertisements, thematic analyses reveal that especially the use of nudity and feminine beauty are labelled as contentious in both conditions, because of, inter alia, the negative effects for adolescent girls’ self-image and the desire to lose weight. After the intervention, the tablet condition has proven to be more effective in promoting critical thinking about nudity/feminine beauty in advertisements. However, none of the conditions did provide evidence that a critical attitude towards alcohol advertising is encouraged. In this regard, implications for future research in the context of advertising literacy education are discussed.

Abstract

The «Network Society» is identified by accelerated changes that occur between real and virtual worlds. The progress of digital devices has generated a new model of leisure that it has conditioned family interactions. The aim of this research was to identify the relationship between digital leisure experiences and perceived family functioning in post-compulsory secondary education Spanish students. The sample was composed of 1,764 Spanish young people 15-18 years old; all of them were post-compulsory secondary education students. Students’ digital leisure activities were measured by an opening question by which they indicated the three most important leisure activities for them, and family functioning was measured by the answers from the Spanish adaptation for FACES IV questionnaire (Family Adaptability and Cohesion Scale). A descriptive analysis about digital leisure activities of young people was used. The family functioning coefficient of each subject was determined and, finally, the relationship between students’ family functioning perceived and students’ digital leisure practices assessed by a factorial analysis of variance (ANOVA). Young people give importance to digital leisure activities, highlighting social network participation, playing videogames and browsing the Internet. Cohesion, flexibility and family functioning are healthier when children don´t point to any digital activity into their preferred leisure practices. The results suggest that new research should be conducted to confirm whether this negative association between family functioning and digital leisure is causal or due to other factors.

Abstract

This paper analyses the phenomenon of academic plagiarism among students enrolled in Secondary Education and High School. It is a subject poorly studied at pre-university level and very scantily discussed in the Spanish-speaking context. It investigates the frequency of committing plagiarism and the relationship between gender and procrastination and such practices. A questionnaire was administered to a representative sample (n=2,794). The results show that plagiarism is certainly present and widespread in the secondary classrooms. Furthermore, it shows that men have significantly higher levels of perpetration than women and than students who tend to leave the tasks until the last moment are more likely to plagiarize. The fruits of this research suggest the need to take into serious consideration the magnitude and severity of the problem identified; secondary schools should urgently plan and undertake measures in order to reduce and prevent the commission of this type of academic fraud. Secondly, results are useful to give clear guidance to teachers about the need for them to follow up and apply an effective control of the writing process of academic essays and tasks by students. Improving IT and library competences of the students has been identified as one of the main strategies needed to effectively address the problem.

Abstract

Secondary students´spelling and punctuation mistakes are not affected by electronic writing. Competent Spanish speakers differentiate between disorthographic writing in chats and orthographic writing in other texts. Associating electronic writing with secondary students´ spelling mistakes is not correct. On the contrary, a high competence in electronic writing goes with a positive attitude towards orthographic writing in secondary education.

Abstract

In today’s context of media proliferation and increasing access to diverse media content, it becomes necessary to address young people’s motivation to consume information. Researching this age group is relevant given that adolescence is a key period in people’s civic socialization. This study explores how 13 to 17 year old Chileans consume news, in a multiple-platform, convergent and mobile media context. There are few studies that focus on the information habits of this particular age group. Using a quantitative self-administered questionnaire applied to 2,273 high school adolescents from four different regions in the country, this paper analyses participants’ news consumption habits, their interest in news, their perception about the importance of different topics, and their motivations to being informed. The results show that surveyed teenagers access information mainly via social media like Facebook, to the detriment of traditional media. These adolescents are least interested in traditional politics, but they think this is the most prominent topic in the news. Their motivations to consume news have to do with their wish to be able to defend their points of view and deliver information to others. Also, they think that their portrayal in the news agenda is both inadequate and negative. These findings suggest that the news industry has a pending debt with young audiences.

Abstract

The growing popularity of social network sites (SNS) is causing concerns about privacy and security, especially with teenagers since they show various forms of unsafe behavior on SNS. Media literacy emerges as a priority, and researchers, teachers, parents and teenagers all point towards the responsibility of the school to educate teens about risks on SNS and to teach youngsters how to use SNS safely. However, existing educational materials are not theoretically grounded, do not tackle all the specific risks that teens might encounter on SNS and lack rigorous outcome evaluations. Additionally, general media education research indicates that although changes in knowledge are often obtained, changes in attitudes and behavior are much more difficult to achieve. Therefore, new educational packages were developed –taking into account instructional guidelines- and a quasi-experimental intervention study was set up to find out whether these materials are effective in changing the awareness, attitudes or the behavior of teenagers on SNS. It was found that all three courses obtained their goal in raising the awareness about the risks tackled in this course. However, no impact was found on attitudes towards the risks, and only a limited impact was found on teenagers’ behavior concerning these risks. Implications are discussed.

Abstract

Technologies have acquired strategic importance and have been defined as unprecedented educational tools. In this study, we analysed the use that 1,488 Spanish adolescents made of five tools (i.e. search engines, wikis, blogs, podcasts and instant messaging), and the impact that use of these tools had on their academic performance in science, mathematics, Spanish language and English. To this end, we explored frequency of use, time spent, purpose, place of use and level of satisfaction for each of the tools, as well as academic performance in the four subjects analysed, using the HEGECO instrument. Results revealed differential patterns in the use of technologies according to purpose, and in academic performance according to sex, age and use of the tools. Adolescents used search engines and wikis to carry out academic tasks, and podcasts for entertainment. In relation to academic performance, females presented better mean performance in linguistic subjects, and younger adolescents did so in all the subjects analysed. In relation to use of tools, the use of search engines was associated with better performance in science, Spanish language and English, while the use of podcasts was associated with better performance in mathematics. The implications of these results are discussed and evaluated.

Abstract

Research on the integration of digital resources and materials in CLIL contexts is still scant. This article presents the results of a study carried out in eight schools in the province of Seville. Questionnaires and interviews were used to collect the data regarding CLIL teachers' and learners' opinions on the intergration of digital resources and materials in the classroom. The aims of this study are: 1) To analyse teachers' and learners' perceptions on the integration of digital resources and materials in the CLIL classroom; 2) To analyse how the educational stage affects teachers' and learners' perceptions on this use; 3) To analyse the type of digital resources and materials in English that learners use outside the classroom. The following analyses have been carried out: Categorical Principal Components Analysis; Mann-Whitney U test; qualitative content analysis; finally, Pearson correlation coefficients were calculated. Results show that there are discrepancies between teachers' and learners' perceptions regarding the use of digital resources and materials in the classroom; and that these perceptions are affected by the educational stage. This study concludes that the type of resources and materials that learners use outside the classroom is determined by those used in the classroom. However, at home, they are used differently, which is indicative of the need to adapt classroom practices to learners’ own independent uses.