Search results

This article aims to present the results of an exploratory pilot study that demonstrates the validity of a self-created implementation methodology to develop the students' level of perceived achievement of the social entrepreneurship competency and explain how this is equally valid in developing the perceived achievement of the complex thinking competency.

Based on a multivariate descriptive statistical analysis, this article offers the results of an educational intervention carried out on a sample group of students from a Mexican university before and after a training program in social entrepreneurship.

The favorable results showed that the proposed methodology is valid for scaling social entrepreneurship and complex thinking competencies and their subcompetencies.

These results are not only academically valuable, as they highlight the need to delve into the relationship between these two competencies, but they also allow us to appreciate the ample opportunities for practical implementation of entrepreneurship programs by universities and other institutions to work directly with social entrepreneurs and seek alternatives to develop skills through devising, proposing and developing social entrepreneurship projects.

The purpose of this paper is to present the results of measuring a sample of engineering students’ perceived achievement of complex thinking at different stages of their professional training. This study intended to analyze and predict the differences in the self-perception of achieved complex thinking competency by gender, semester, course of study and high school of origin.

The methodology included applying the E-Complexity instrument to 225 university students from northern Mexico. The initial comparison of groups used the chi-square test and two supervised learning algorithms (logit regression with Lasso regularization and a classification tree).

The findings of this study indicated that the selected undergraduate degree did not reveal differences in self-perceived performance in complex thinking, while gender, semester and high school of origin had significant differences.

Among the limitations of the study is the size of the sample and the fact that it only focused on engineering students from a single educational institution; however, this limitation responds to the exploratory nature of this study and the guidance of the institutional ethics committee. With these results, it is feasible to request an extension of the sample to include other disciplines to evaluate these findings, which, although relevant, cannot be considered exhaustive.

Regarding possible lines of research, the authors propose that given the difference between students who graduated from the high school of the same institution and those who did not, a possible line of research could explore new hypotheses on whether the policies and practices of the institution’s high school emphasize the development of complex thinking skills; the teachers of this high school are trained to teach complex thinking; and the learning materials of this high school are designed to develop complex thinking skills.

The aim of this study is to analyse teachers’ perceptions of information and communication technologies (ICT) and the effect they have on their students, comparing male and female teachers in rural and urban areas of Mexico.

This is a quantitative study with a validated questionnaire that records the perception of school teachers from a state in the northeast of Mexico. The questionnaire was designed by interviewing 20 teachers who have had problematic situations in the use of technology by students. The main problems that were perceived in their students were cyberbullying, cyberviolence, online pornography, excessive use of videogames and also lack of ability to use digital technology. Hypothesis testing was applied to identify differences between gender (female or male) and region (rural or urban), considering these problems and the efforts made by the school to address these issues.

Both the gender of the teaching staff and the region where the school is located are variables that are influencing the willingness to incorporate ICT issues that are affecting the well-being of students into the educational agenda. While teachers are the main actors in preparing their students on how to face these challenges, students in schools with mostly male teachers, or located in rural areas, will be in a situation of greater vulnerability to be victims of the problems that arise as part of ICT risks in a digital society

This article only offers a first approach to ICT and teachers’ perceptions. It is necessary to broaden the scope of this type of research to include different educational contexts and to ask questions that reveal in greater detail how schools are dealing with ICT and its possible risks and the factors that have influenced the successes or failures they are having in these attempts.

This finding can help schools to promote programs focused to apply ICT for student flourishment and help them to deal with the risk that digital technology is generating in young students.

Although multiple research have been conducted to address teachers’ perception about diverse topics, there has been no specific research on the self-perception of teachers in dealing with technology and preparing students for the problems presented by ICT and its risks. This research contributes to the literature on the impact that teachers’ perceptions can have on the adoption of technology in education, and how this can be different by gender and region.

The aim of this article is to analyze the relationship between the personal life situation and marital status of the worker and how this relates to organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and job flexibility. The study has been carried out with a group of Mexican employees from a commercial company located in the northeast of the México.

The research is a nonexperimental empirical study using t-test, Levene’s test and Cohen’s test to analyze the significant relationship between the variables under study for 419 employees. The questionnaire was applied only once without a control group against which to compare. The study was carried out in a commercial company located in a city in northeastern Mexico, covering four municipalities in the conurbation area.

The research reveals that those workers who participated in the study and who have direct family responsibilities show greater OCB and value job flexibility more highly. The tests also found that a flexible working policy is valued by all those with direct family responsibilities, regardless of their marital status. It is also shown that there is a positive relationship between job flexibility and OCB, although not a strong one.

Decent work implies labor policies that support women and men to have an adequate work–life balance. Companies seeking work–family balance through the implementation of policies such as flexible working arrangements should consider the domestic background of their employees, as this has a direct impact on competitive advantage and is of importance when recruiting and retaining human talent. These findings may also be useful for companies interested in implementing flexible working policies to retain employees with family responsibilities who value the ability to reconcile work and family life.

This research demonstrates the relevance of OCB and job flexibility for employees. If the company wants to enhance OCB, they must consider that personal situation as well as the employee's marital status influences OCB. They should also consider that work flexibility is highly valued by those employees who have children or family dependents.

To analyze financial inclusion through digital banking in order to identify how digital banking is including or excluding different types of populations in an emergent economy.

Chi-square statistical tests were conducted to test the relationship between demographic variables (i.e. gender, region, locality and age) with having a digital banking account, types of services and reasons for not using them. As an example of an emergent economy, the Mexican Financial Inclusion Survey database was used, which includes stratified and clustered sampling.

Having a bank account with digital banking is related to gender. Women are more excluded than men, demonstrating a gender gap in access to digital banking accounts. Moreover, having a bank account with digital banking depends on the region. In regions where digital banking is more developed, the population uses a wide variety of digital banking services, in contrast to less developed regions. About the size of the locality, the lack of financial inclusion via digital banking is more common in rural contexts or small cities, demonstrating the exclusion of this type of population.

This study is conducted with data from the latest Mexican Financial Inclusion Survey. Since the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (NISG) in Mexico previously conducted the study for exploratory purposes, it was not possible for the researchers to modify the variables.

The results might be considered on similar emergent economies to promote financial inclusion of vulnerable groups such as women, people living in underdeveloped regions, rural areas, small cities and elders. These findings may provide criteria for both government agencies and banking institutions to make efforts focused on including these population groups that have not been financially included through digital banking.

Identifying the barriers that affect financial inclusion, such as gender, region, size of the city and age can help to guide efforts to achieve greater economic freedom and quality of life for diverse types of populations. Although the study is carried out in an emerging economy, the results can also shed light on how to address these forms of exclusion that occur in different types of economies. It is understood that the lack of financial inclusion is a limitation to the economic freedom and quality of life to which everyone should have access, hence the relevance of the article.

This article endeavors to detail the outcomes of an exploratory investigation into the perceived attainment levels of complex thinking competencies among business students at a technological university in western Mexico. It seeks to examine and contrast the students' self-assessed development of this critical competency, along with its associated sub-competencies, throughout their academic tenure.

Our analysis focused on two distinct groups of students, one at the beginning of their academic journey and the other nearing its completion, to explore whether perceptions of competency development were equitable across genders. Utilizing multivariate descriptive statistical analysis, we were able to substantiate the existence of a gender gap in the perceived development of competencies.

While both male and female students showed improvement in their self-perceived competencies, the results indicate that women outperformed their male counterparts in the area of complex thinking and its associated sub-competencies by the conclusion of their degree programs.

The evidence suggests that there is a gender gap in the educational process for this group of students, highlighting the urgent need to minimise disparities in the perception between male and female business students about their competencies.

This article presents findings that pave the way for future research aimed at exploring strategies to narrow the gap in perceived competency achievement throughout the educational journey in business studies, considering how the environment and cultural elements can be determining factors in how students perceive their abilities and skills.

This study develops and validates the “Perception of the Adoption and Training in the Use of Artificial Intelligence Tools in the Profession” instrument, designed to measure Latin American university students' attitudes and perceptions regarding AI training in their professional education across diverse fields.

The instrument was administered to 238 students from various disciplines at a Mexican university. Structural validity and reliability were assessed using a generalized structural equation model (GSEM) with quasi-maximum likelihood (QML) to handle data non-normality and analyze latent construct relationships.

Results show high internal consistency and validity, with strong correlations between items and constructs of “attitude” and “perception of AI training value.” The study found significant relationships between understanding AI tools and the perceived value of AI training, as well as between this perception and attitudes toward incorporating AI in professional training.

The instrument helps institutions identify student attitudes and training needs related to AI, enabling tailored curricula and training programs that foster positive AI acceptance, thus preparing students for modern technological challenges.

This study offers a validated instrument tailored to the Latin American context, addressing a gap in measuring student perceptions of AI in professional training. It serves as a diagnostic tool for educators and policymakers in designing AI-integrated pedagogical strategies that align with student needs.

The objective of this proposal was to propose an educational innovation resource for the delivery of workshops with lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex and asexual (LGBTQIA) themes aimed at students in high school and middle school to promote complex thinking as a necessary competency for understanding their continuously changing environment.

Training for sexual and gender diversity challenges higher education institutions, some of which have bet on developing complex thinking to meet this need. Although not all universities have sufficient resources to create activities that foster relevant and diversity-sensitive competencies, some have implemented strategies ranging from modifying their curricula to designing specific classroom tasks that support student inclusion. In response to the challenges faced by higher education institutions (HEIs) to promote the acquisition of thinking skills for complexity, this paper proposes deploying a humanoid robot as an educational innovation tool in training initiatives that promote issues of sexual and gender diversity. The deployment model is described, considering design, delivery and evaluation. The value of this proposal lies in using humanoid robotics as a classroom resource within the framework of social robotics, considering its implications in the educational context to develop complex thinking competency and training for diversity in higher education students.

The data presented here highlight the importance of educational institutions integrating content into their plans, programs and activities (both curricular and extracurricular) that promote inclusion and sexual and gender diversity and attractive teaching strategies to reinforce this perspective. So, this proposal offers a support tool for implementing this content in everyday educational contexts where the objectives focus on triggering complex reasoning competencies.

The varied responses and perceptions of students towards robotics and sexual diversity, as well as the lack of clear methods to assess educational outcomes, may compromise the effectiveness of the intervention.

The workshop proposed in this paper is configured as a series of iterations and repetitions in different educational fields, whether disciplinary (e.g. design or engineering) or transversal (e.g. entrepreneurship). The goal is to achieve educational strategies that generate a more significant impact at the institutional level. In this sense, the present proposal joins the actions implemented by other higher education institutions to make sexual and gender diversity visible to university students.

The overall aim is to bring awareness, understanding and education to students with an inclusive, respectful and equitable perspective.

Social robotics is an innovative and attractive tool for young people at the higher education level. We consider our study a pioneer in the area.

The purposes of this study were to calculate the confirmatory factor analysis in the measurement model using robust measures (McDonald’s omega and Cronbach’s alpha) to ensure the reliability of the proposed scale and to explore the measurement invariance of the scale per the participants’ gender.

The methodological sample had 408 students from a private university in northern Mexico, of which 200 (49%) were male and 208 (51%) were female; the sample age range was 18–58 years (M = 22.4 years, SD = 6.0). The data analysis included descriptive and normality, dimensionality, reliability and measurement invariance.

The social entrepreneurship competency measurement model showed acceptable adjustment indexes in evaluating the internal structure, reliability and factorial invariance by gender of the study participants.

Even though the contributions of this study are evident, these findings must be taken with caution due to some limitations. First, the proposed measurement model uses a self-reported scale, so it is essential to include other measurement methods with less implicit social desirability. Second, although the sample was intended to be representative, it only drew from a specific geographical area, making it difficult to generalize these findings to culturally diverse areas. Third, this study did not consider other validity measures; for example, concurrent, divergent and predictive, so future studies should consider examining the relationship of social entrepreneurship with other factors.

From the practical perspective, this study provides a parsimonious instrument regarding the number of items included in the measurement model. From the theoretical perspective, the present study contributes to delimiting the dimensions of social entrepreneurship competency.

This study contributes to the field of social entrepreneurship, particularly in the area of construct measurement, by offering a measurement model with solid evidence of internal structure validity, reliability and factorial invariance for the perceived achievement of social entrepreneurship competency.

This article aims to investigate whether there is a relationship between education for the labor market in the post-pandemic stage and the educational quality of universities, taking as a sample a group of Latin American countries and their main trading partners. Reference is made to the Global Competitiveness Report 2020 of the World Economic Forum (WEF) and the Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) index, which evaluates the quality of universities.

Correlations, clusters and T-tests were generated to test for significant differences, resulting in two blocks of countries being identified with statistically significant differences in educational efforts to prepare their citizens for the labor market and the quality of their universities.

It is concluded that there are examples of Latin American countries that, although they are emerging economies, are updating their educational systems at an accelerated pace to meet the needs demanded by the labor market, such as Chile and Argentina. In addition, there are some particular cases of Latin American QS universities that although they are not at a high level in their overall educational quality as a university, compared to North American and Asian universities, their graduates do show a high employability index. This means that in the graduate profile, these universities are also accelerating efforts to position them at a high level of preparedness to respond to the jobs and markets of tomorrow, just as the universities in developed economies do.

Although the sample size is a limitation of this work, since it is based on secondary information reported by the WEF (2020) and the QS World University Rankings (2021), it contributes value by analyzing specific cases. Despite its limitations, the study yields meaningful results that put the challenges of post-pandemic employment and the role that universities play in a comprehensible framework.

These results put special attention on the work of universities as a crucial entity to prepare citizens to develop the competencies needed for the post-pandemic labor market, especially in terms of critical thinking and digital skills. Human capital formation will drive the post-pandemic recovery process of leading countries and universities.