Cooperative learning: we can also do it without task structure

The present study focuses on the use of a cooperative methodology with university students during the last year of their degree programme. The task structure could be freely chosen, and there were no restraints on group decisions to deal with the classroom work. All the elements of cooperation were based on a reward structure. The results show that internal group cohesion can be achieved through an inter‐group competitive reward system and positive interdependence can be reached with an extreme cooperative reward structure, grounded on individual assessments of the students. The results also point to the importance of a reward structure, based on grades, when using a cooperative methodology in the university classroom.

Este estudio supone la utilización de una metodología cooperativa con alumnos universitarios en el último curso de la carrera. La estructura de tarea es siempre libre y no hay ninguna restricción a las decisiones del grupo para abordar el trabajo de aula. Todos los elementos de la cooperación se abordan desde la estructura de recompensa: la cohesión interna de los grupos se consigue mediante un sistema de recompensa competitiva intergrupal y la interdependencia positiva se logra mediante una estructura de recompensa cooperativa extrema, basada en las evaluaciones individuales de los alumnos. Los resultados demuestran la importancia que tiene una estructura de recompensa, basada en las calificaciones, para la aplicación de una metodología cooperativa al aula universitaria.     

Bridging Environmental Science with Environmental Policy: Plasticity of Population, Affluence, and Technology

Objective . Sound environmental policy is fully dependent upon sound science. However, we have little scientific knowledge of the driving forces behind environmental change. We use the well-known I = PAT formulation (environmental i mpacts are the multiplicative product of p opulation, a ffluence, and t echnology) as a framework to assess the relative impacts of driving forces. Methods . We introduce the concept of plasticity —the potential for each factor to vary, particularly because of purposive human action (e.g., policy)—to fine tune our understanding of how each factor can influence different impacts. We illustrate plasticity by assessing each driving force for a variety of environmental impacts. Results . We demonstrate that population, affluence, and technology have different potentials for mitigating different types of impacts and that no one factor is of greater importance than the others. Conclusions . We conclude that plasticity measures can guide policymakers toward identifying and prioritizing those environmental problems most responsive to policy solution.     

Practices and rhetoric of migrants’ social exclusion in Italy: intermarriage,work and citizenship as devices for the production of social inequalities

The article aims to investigate the intersection of legislative dimensions, economic conditions and intimate life contributing to racialising and marginalising the poorest non-European migrants. First, this article focuses on the central role played by the private life in claiming citizenship rights and in building a sense of belonging within migratory contexts. As a result, mixed couples become a border zone through which the state disciplines immigrants according to their class, nationality and gender. On the other side, mixed couples and their intimate lives define resistance against the state’s biopolitical power to control people and become the space of intimate citizenship. Second, the article analyses the matrix for immigrants’ exclusion and differentiation embodied within the institutional and legislative system through immigration and citizenship laws. Therefore, the ‘coloniality power matrix’ becomes an active component of the naturalisation system of social differences at an institutional level.     

Homogeneity test for functional data

In the context of functional data analysis, we propose new sample tests for homogeneity. Based on some well-known depth measures, we construct four different statistics in order to measure distance between the two samples. A simulation study is performed to check the efficiency of the tests when confronted with shape and magnitude perturbation. Finally, we apply these tools to measure the homogeneity in some samples of real data, and we obtain good results using this new method.     

Information theoretic methods in small domain estimation

Small area estimation techniques are becoming increasingly used in survey applications to provide estimates for local areas of interest. The objective of this article is to develop and apply Information Theoretic (IT)-based formulations to estimate small area business and trade statistics. More specifically, we propose a Generalized Maximum Entropy (GME) approach to the problem of small area estimation that exploits auxiliary information relating to other known variables on the population and adjusts for consistency and additivity. The GME formulations, combining information from the sample together with out-of-sample aggregates of the population of interest, can be particularly useful in the context of small area estimation, for both direct and model-based estimators, since they do not require strong distributional assumptions on the disturbances. The performance of the proposed IT formulations is illustrated through real and simulated datasets.     

Nonparametric Estimation of Nonadditive Random Functions

We present estimators for nonparametric functions that are nonadditive in unobservable random terms. The distributions of the unobservable random terms are assumed to be unknown. We show that when a nonadditive, nonparametric function is strictly monotone in an unobservable random term, and it satisfies some other properties that may be implied by economic theory, such as homogeneity of degree one or separability, the function and the distribution of the unobservable random term are identified. We also present convenient normalizations, to use when the properties of the function, other than strict monotonicity in the unobservable random term, are unknown. The estimators for the nonparametric function and for the distribution of the unobservable random term are shown to be consistent and asymptotically normal. We extend the results to functions that depend on a multivariate random term. The results of a limited simulation study are presented.     

A study of Italian young adults’ transnational mobility to Australia: The reproduction of unequal trajectories in the host society

In this article, we examine the mobility patterns of a group of Italian young adults migrating to Australia in the search of new education, labour and lifestyle opportunities. The article represents a contribution to the study of the link between youth mobility and unequal trajectories through the elaboration of a new conceptual framework based on the theory of epistemological fallacy that points to the growing disjuncture between the expectations of individual autonomy and the unequal distribution of resources to achieve them. This conceptual framework contributes to elucidate the paradox of mobility that drives young people between the aspiration to mobility and the reproduction of the structural factors that influence their success. We draw on data from a mixed methods research project examining the mobility of Italian young adults to Australia. Participants imagined mobility as a way of exiting insecurities and precarities in their local context to a more open and meritocratic society, but the analysis of their trajectories in the host country reflects similar patterns of stratification as experienced in the context of origin.     

Locking down adolescents: Victims,irresponsible subjects,or just social actors

The article presents the results of a qualitative study investigating the experiences of a sample of Italian adolescents during the COVID-19 pandemic. Data were analysed in the light of the two social representations (adolescents as criminals and as victims) that permeated the Italian public debate throughout the outbreak. The findings showed the ability of boys and girls in dealing with the relationships altered by the pandemic constraints and in adapting to different regulations. This demonstrated their competence as social actors, neither criminals nor victims, who were also able to cope with the coronavirus risk in safeguarding their significant others.     

Undoing raciolinguistics

In this commentary, we discuss common pitfalls associated with the study of race and language, focusing specifically on the recent emergence of raciolinguistics as a frame for these efforts. We examine how raciolinguistics can be taken up in ways that silo discussions of race from the rest of linguistics—as something that the “raciolinguists” do—such that careful study of issues including colonialism, power, and societal hierarchies is perpetually pushed to the margins of the field. We also consider how the nominalization of raciolinguistics can suggest that race and language are agreed upon objects in ways that reproduce troublesome essentializations. We show how a raciolinguistic perspective can resist such tendencies by continually interrogating the colonial reproduction and transformation of modern knowledge projects and lifeways across societal contexts, as well as by continually examining the fundamental nature of language, race, and power. We end with what we see as the implications of a raciolinguistic perspective for all of linguistics.