Multidisciplinary Journal of School Education

Editorial

Marcin Kaźmierczak, Paweł Kaźmierczak — Mon, 09 Dec 2019 21:02:31 +0100

Project Based Learning: Extending Social and Educational Reach

Stuart Dickinson — Mon, 09 Dec 2019 21:02:31 +0100

Project based learning approaches are being employed in the college as a creative and innovative means to engage and motivate learners through a transformative curriculum model for both further and higher education students. This article will examine how these pedagogical approaches have made a positive impact on our Childhood Studies’ students with regards to retention, achievement and success set within the context of widening participation and social engagement with and for those in society who are the hardest to reach including those children from the travelling community who have been integral partners in our Erasmus project. It will highlight the benefits of social learning, not only as a means of developing vocational skills for our students, but it will also examine the wider impacts of developing softer skills for our students, particularly with regards to employability skills, whilst considering the wider impacts this approach has had on society and building community cohesion.

First Year Students’ Perceptions in Transition to University: The Students’ Experience

Montse Freixa-Niella, Immaculada Dorio-Alcaraz, Franciele Corti — Mon, 09 Dec 2019 21:02:31 +0100

Studies about the transition to university emphasise the importance of the process of adaptation in the first year as a determining persistence factor. This article presents the results of the focus groups held with students of two undergraduate degree programmes, Pedagogy and Business Management and Administration, at the Universityof Barcelona(Catalonia, Spain) that dealt with the more significant situations they experienced in the process of adapting to life at university. The results are based on the five main tasks in the process of transition to university: starting and developing new social relationships; adjusting expectations about the university and degree programme; adapting to new academic codes at university; coping with academic/exam results; and construction of the university identity. These five tasks are identified in three moments in the initial period of adaptation. This study forms part of a Research+Development project.

Diseño y construcción de un Sistema de Soporte a la toma de Decisiones de los docentes sobre las interacciones comunicativas y lingüísticas en el aula

Mon, 09 Dec 2019 21:02:32 +0100

La creación de contextos comunicativos ricos que favorezcan el desarrollo de habilidades de lengua oral de los alumnos supone un reto en la práctica educativa de maestros. Con este objetivo, se diseña y construye el Sistema de Soporte a la Toma de decisiones EVALOE-SSD, a partir de la Escala de Valoración de la Lengua Oral en contexto Escolar (Gràcia et al., 2015), para ayudar a los maestros a reflexionar y a autoevaluar su propia práctica y a tomar decisiones informadas para mejorarla. El artículo presenta las características de la EVALOE-SSD, una herramienta digital semi-inteligente, y expone los diferentes ajustes llevados a cabo para su uso por parte de maestras de educación infantil y primaria en escuelas de diferente tipología.

Musical Assertiveness Training (MAT) as a method supporting the development of intra- and interpersonal relation

Izabela Przybylska — Mon, 09 Dec 2019 21:02:32 +0100

The paper introduces the topic of the Musical Assertiveness Training (MAT), developed in 2014, based on the application of music therapy and mixed arts therapies. The method is based on the latest worldwide achievements in the field of assertiveness training and adopts them for training based on the use of primarily music and art.

The MAT-programme is divided into the cycle of twelve music-therapeutic sessions and leads step by step to the basic skills of assertive behaviour. It is designed as a workshop and has been used so far in in the process of educating future pedagogues both as an educational and therapeutic method, supporting the development of emotional, communication and social competences.

The article describes the basic concepts of assertiveness and refers to the wider theory from which it originates and to which the innovative training refers such as: the cognitive theory of social learning by Bandura (modelling), the theory of multiple intelligences by H. Gardner and the concept of self-efficacy, self-presentation and self-esteem.

La competencia comunicativa y lingüística en la formación inicial de maestros: un estudio piloto

Marta Gràcia, Maria Josep Jarque, Marta Astals Murià, Kholoud Rouaz — Mon, 09 Dec 2019 21:02:33 +0100

The assessment of communicative competence (speaking and listening) of students in initial teacher training is a field of study with few research despite its importance both for the learning process itself and for the subsequent professional performance. This article presents the results of a pilot study designed to identify the changes in the students’ abilities from two groups in the initial teaching training when introducing a teaching innovation with the purpose of contributing to improve their oral communicative and linguistic competence. The evaluation instruments used are EVALOE and a rubric about the argumentative text. The results show the adequacy of these instruments as teaching innovation resources for both the improvement of the students’ oral competence and its assessment.