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Pedagogical renewal is a concept loaded with a historical-pedagogical trajectory linked to reflection, social justice, educational improvement, teacher commitment and the questioning of the educational model, with personalised education being a key aspect. The aim of this paper is to analyse how learning is personalised in primary education centres that promote processes of pedagogical renewal. A qualitative methodology is used, based on a case study. Two schools with a high intensity of pedagogical renewal were selected and in-depth interviews were conducted with the management team and teachers, focus groups with families and students, and participant observation. The information derived is analysed with the ATLAS.Ti 22 programme, after coding and categorisation. The results reveal a number of common elements and processes of personalisation of learning which are structured in three dimensions. In the first dimension, school characteristics, the following stand out: student autonomy, individualisation of learning and freedom of choice of learning pathways. As for the second dimension, educational project, the following elements stand out: flexible curricular organisation, active methodology where group work is a key element, organisation of timetables without previously established patterns, the role of accompanying teachers, student focus and active participation of families in daily school life. Finally, from the third dimension, inclusion, the following can be extracted: daily educational work where diversity is not a limitation, but a source of learning of great didactic value.

Education is seen as a resource at a global level but is currently considered to be in crisis in many parts of the world. This constitutes a significant drawback in terms of humanity's prosperity and well-being since education is the key not only to an educated workforce but also to humane, collaborative, and caring societies. Even within this dim landscape, there are certain educational systems that defy the odds and perform significantly higher than their otherwise comparable systems. This paper proposes using an unusual lens for educational policy comparative studies, that of positive deviance, to aid us in progressing towards a more stable educational state of affairs. Using a positive deviance methodology, which focuses on learning what is working well in systems that defy and overcome substantial challenges, this study investigates the patterns, attitudes, and actions of three selected cases: Massachusetts as a positive deviant in the US, Estonia as a positive deviant in Europe, and Castile-Leon as a positive deviant in Spain. The purpose is, by analysing educational policies, laws, and other related documents, to find commonalities that explain why these systems outperform others. The results of the comparative analysis pinpoint areas and strategies informative to those leading struggling educational systems, such as a strong commitment to equity and justice, placing teachers at the centre of reforms, using assessment as a tool for process monitoring and summative inquiry, and making preschool education accessible to all.

This paper deals with the implementation of flipped learning as a didactic method and its use through the Moodle platform. For this purpose, a quantitative research was carried out with the intention of analyzing the perceptions of new teachers in the acquisition of digital competences that they acquire during their teaching and learning process. The sample is made up of three groups of students in the subject Didactics of Social Sciences in the third year of primary education. The results obtained show that active learning methodologies promote digital literacy in higher education and the improvement of good teaching practices. In this way, through this research, students updated their use of new educational platforms, given the lack of initial training in digital literacy. In short, we can conclude that flipped learning is a useful and innovative teaching method that combines face-to-face and online learning for the education and training of new teachers.

Globally, there is considerable investment in education technologies leading to increased attention from stakeholders (Trucano, 2017). For a deeper understanding about the implementation of various technologies, research is needed to examine how teachers are incorporating them in teaching and learning. This study focused on eight countries to examine how teachers used ICT in mathematics instruction and factors that contributed to ICT use. Results show that teachers' education levels and cooperation amongst educators are associated with ICT use in instruction. The paper includes recommendations and implications for practice and future research.

Foreign language bilingual education has been common in many countries all over the world for many years after the Quebec issue in the 1970s. However, after all these years, bilingual education still remains as a criticized way of education. This research essay examined the most significant criticism by summarizing it into seven common misconceptions of the bilingual education schooling system in Spain in general education English-Spanish 1st-12th grade. A lot of criticism has been directed towards the differences between regular mainstream classes and bilingual classes especially in Primary education. This paper looks at seven commonly addressed issues. The paper especially focuses on Primary education but most revision matters also relate to secondary and even higher education. Special interest is paid to cognitive, social, economic, mode of bilingual education, role of the immigrant students and parents' attitudes. The conclusion leads to the understanding that English-Spanish bilingual education is not pernicious but, on the contrary, benefits the cognitive a linguistic development of most school children.

From the perspective of positive psychology, the study and measurement of subjective well-being has popularized a growing interest towards variables such as affective perception. In an attempt to explain and evaluate the affective structure in positive terms (PA) and negative terms (NA), PANASN affect scale (Sandín, 2003) constitutes the version adapted for children and teenagers of the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (Watson et al., 1988). Opposite to the confirmatory study made in teenagers by Sandín (2003), this paper proceeds to analyse the internal structure and reliability of the above mentioned questionnaire after being administered to 636 students aged between 6 and 14 years. An instrumental type of research methodology was carried out. The instrument used was the Positive and Negative Affect Scale for Children and Adolescents (PANASN). While confirmatory and exploratory analysis show an appropriate adjustment, these properties tend to fade when three or four factors are considered. In response to this, we reflect on the need to consider certain aspects of improvement in content and form, which are essential if we want to use said instrument with primary education students.

Digital literacy has moved away from its traditional instrumental conception, to be nourished by critical perspectives that have been increasingly adopted in all areas of the analysis of technology and education. The importance of generating educational models that contribute to the emancipation of people in a post-digital and highly complex world is an increasingly evident challenge. However, it is still difficult to find concrete examples of pedagogical strategies specifically devised to foster digital literacy in line with this much needed emerging critical lens. This paper presents a case study of a set of learning experiences integrated into a compulsory module for students in the 1st year of a degree in education sciences, which leads to the qualification required to teach at primary schools in Spain. The results highlight the importance of providing students with learning opportunities conceived to help them become future teachers ready to have a transversal impact on education for the emancipation of people in the post-digital world, rather than simply training them as operators who use technology to enhance skills.

This paper reports an exploratory, descriptive study on the emotions of content and language-integrated learning preservice teachers. The study, carried out in a Spanish university, aimed at analysing the internship experience of 19 preservice teachers in the context of a master's degree in bilingual education (Spanish-English) for primary and secondary school teachers to determine the emotions experienced and the causative factors. The participants completed a questionnaire which showed that positive emotions were more frequent than negative ones. The variable causing such feelings included the subject taught, the sex of the teaching staff, previous experience, attitudes of educational centre tutors, and the students themselves. Therefore, the study highlights the affective dimension of teaching content and language-integrated learning.

Soft skills enable the individual to successfully face the problems and challenges of a complex society in flux and under constant uncertainty. Music, in its different forms of expression, is here introduced as an ideal tool for the development of intrapersonal and action skills such as adaptability, optimism and proactivity. In this paper we analyse a case study regarding a project carried out by and for future teachers. Our data collection methods included questionnaires, observations, student productions and interviews. The results reveal that music can be a mediating element for the development of soft skills. Specifically, it has been observed that music can help the individual to face and effectively resolve changing and novel situations that require self-efficacy, self-confidence and social support. Music can also improve the physical and socio-emotional well-being of individuals as well as helping them successfully face adversity.

The circumstances in which humans live and learn are subject to constant change. Given these cycles of change, educational designers (teachers, instructional designers, and others) often search for new models and frameworks to support their work, to ensure their designs are in alignment with valued forms of learning activity. Our research foregrounds the entanglement of people (the relational), tasks (the conceptual) and tools (the digital and material) in formal and informal learning settings. In this paper, we explore the use of the ACAD toolkit "with the aim of understanding how this analytical tool supports design for learning." A thematic analysis of five workshops attended by 40 educators from diverse professional and academic backgrounds in Spain and Argentina, reveals how ACAD supports educational designers in four distinctive ways: encouraging dynamic engagement with key elements and concepts; supporting the visualization of (dis)connections and (in)coherence in designs; prompting critical reflection on past practices and contexts; and stimulating discussion about future teaching practices. A key contribution of this article is the discussion about how the ACAD toolkit helps educators see the ways in which all learning is situated, subject to constraints and affordances at multiple scale levels, and oriented towards certain pedagogical purposes or values.

It is widely accepted that concept maps are a meaningful learning tool. Even so, the use of concept mapping as a meaningful learning tool is probably less common than the use of concept mapping as an assessment tool. In first place, the easiest thing to with a student's concept map is to apply a rubric and give it a grade. And second, teachers often believe that by using a meaningful learning tool, their students are learning meaningfully while constructing their concept maps. We are then missing on the greatest power of the concept map, its use as a tool to learn meaningfully. In this paper we examine the difference between using concept maps for learning and for assessment, and propose steps on how to move towards the use of the tool to improve students' learning and understanding.

This paper presents a study on the perceptions of primary school teachers regarding their knowledge, usefulness, and use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in education. Likewise, the relationship between sex, age, working time and the educational center in which it is found with the perceptions about ICT is obtained. To answer these questions, a battery of 14 categorical closed questions is designed, divided into four blocks: socio-demographic information; knowledge of ICT; usefulness of ICT; and use of ICT. In the context of measuring the knowledge, usefulness and use of ICT in education, the novelty of this work relies on the design of an indicator for each of the ICT-related blocks following the methodology of Human Development Indicators created by the United Nations Development Program. In this research, 119 teachers from Spanish primary schools were chosen as the study sample to answer the questions' battery. The results show a direct relationship between knowledge, usefulness, and use, although not significant. Although teachers are aware of the usefulness of ICT, and the COVID-19 pandemic has increased the use of technological tools for planning teaching in blended or distance learning lessons, this does not mean teachers have a greater knowledge of ICT. In addition, the findings indicate a greater knowledge by teachers in public schools, which contrasts with the finding that teachers in grant-assisted schools make the most use of ICT and find it the most useful. Finally, it is also suggested that the study's methodology and approach could be applied to other contexts or countries.

This study compares the effects of two resources, a paper rubric (CR) or the comment bubbles from a word processor (CCB), to support peer co-evaluation of expository texts in primary education. A total of 57 students wrote a text which, after a peer co-evaluation process, was rewritten. To analyze the improvements in the texts, we used a rubric that was similar to the one in the first condition. The messages and suggestions for improvement were quantified and classified according to their range, evaluative content, and rhetorical content. Lastly, the incorporation of these suggestions in the final version of the expository text was analyzed. The results showed that the evaluative comments focused mainly on pointing out, rating, or simply correcting errors. However, hardly any justification was given for such corrections, nor were there any questions or improvement alternatives recorded for other shortcomings or non-error content. The students who co-evaluated each other with a rubric wrote more comments, addressing the different rhetorical components in a balanced way, even though these comments were written in a generic way. This might be why many of them were not incorporated in the second version of the texts, where a significant improvement could be noticed, but only in the conclusion section. In contrast, the comment bubbles recorded much more specific suggestions for correction. Although there was a slightly higher percentage of modifications in the second version of those texts, it was not enough to indicate a significant improvement in quality compared to the first version.

Different methodologies have arisen in the last century, and all of them advocate for a change of the traditional method. In this paper, Inquiry-Based Learning is introduced in an experimental group (17 students) to see the different results of children following this innovative method as compared to the control group (16 students) that followed the traditional method. The participants of the study are doing the third year of Primary Education in Spain. The assessment results showed that although just after the post-test both groups did not have significant differences, they became more prominent when the test was repeated in a couple of weeks. This suggests that inquiry-based learning is a better methodology to teach Science due to the students' significant learning, their interest and motivation, and the academic results achieved. The biggest problem we are concerned with is if children acquire the knowledge or it is just because they study to pass the exams.

There is a good body of literature about digital-game-based language learning (DGBL), but research has mainly focused on students as game players rather than as future educators. This paper reports on a research conducted among 154 teacher candidates at a higher-education institution in Spain regarding the adoption of digital games in education. It analyzes the participants' knowledge of and attitudes toward digital games in foreign language learning. Quantitative and qualitative data were gathered through a pre/post-test, digital game presentations, and student blog posts. The research comprised five stages associated with critical thinking skills (definition, selection, demonstration, discussion, and reflection), including a game learning module. In the first two stages, preservice teachers completed the module activities and selected different games aimed at teaching English to children in preschool and elementary education. In the last two, they illustrated, discussed, and evaluated the digital games in class following a rubric and reflected on their perception in blog posts. In this four-week research based on a mixed method and convenience sampling, quantitative and qualitative data were gathered through a pre- and post-test survey about student perceptions toward the use of video game in the classroom, class discussion, and blog posts. Statistical data analysis unveiled gender-based differences related to gameplay frequency and genre preferences. The Wilcoxon signed-rank test was used as a nonparametric statistical hypothesis test to compare the two sets of scores resulting from the same participants, and it showed a significant difference (p[less than or equal to]0.05) after the treatment in two of the five dimensions in the survey about teacher candidates' attitudes toward game usage in education, namely, usefulness (U) and preference for video games (PVG). Research findings revealed preservice teachers' positive attitudes but lack of practical knowledge about the use of digital games in foreign-language learning.

Background/purpose: This paper aims to examine school mentors' assessments on the degree of competences developed by preservice (candidate) teachers they supervise during teaching practicum (TP). Materials/methods: A descriptive and cross-sectional study was conducted with a questionnaire applied to 373 school mentors for the evaluation of competences of 989 preservice teachers studying Early Childhood Education or Primary Education degrees at the end of three TP periods conducted in schools located in one region of Spain. Results: From the perspective of school mentors, this study highlights that preservice teachers' competences are progressively developed during periods of TP in teacher education. The results show a more positive assessment of the school mentors about the development of the preservice teachers' personal competences than their professional competences. Conclusion: The main contribution of this study is the innovative approach applied to competence development in the TP, based on school mentors as the assessors.

The way we learn is changing, and this requires seeking learner-centred pedagogical strategies. Based on this idea, this paper is about the process of construction and validation of a pedagogical model approach based on the perspectives of co-design, learning pathways and self-regulated learning. Through a process of Design Based Research, different techniques and instruments have been applied to collect information aimed at the creation and validation of a co-design model in the construction of personal learning pathways. Among them is the validation of the results through an expert judgment carried out in a future workshop. These results and the methodology of how they were validated is the part that is presented in this work. The data show the dimensions of the model and its representation from two perspectives, teacher, and student. Both points of view have the objective that the students reach new knowledge and improve self-regulated learning, being the protagonists of the whole process. In addition, the work is a proposal for a strategy to be implemented in hybrid, online or mixed contexts where the students become the protagonists of their learning.

Teachers must often analyze and select the educational resources they consider relevant for their students, being textbooks one of the curricular materials of preferential use. A textbook lesson shows the instructional process planned by the author to promote the learning of a given content by potential students, so it is essential that the teacher is competent to analyze and assess what happens in this process. Reflection on the relevance of a lesson provides didactic-mathematical knowledge to guide the teacher in making decisions about the management of the text. This paper describes the design, implementation, and results of a training action with 45 preservice teachers, oriented to the development of reflective competence through the analysis of the didactic suitability of a lesson on direct proportionality. In the initial evaluations of the lesson made by the preservice teachers, we found some features of didactic suitability indicators in different components. However, the reflections elaborated by the participants are vague or ambiguous. The results of the implementation show an evolution in reflective competence on the part of most of the preservice teachers, who were able to make a detailed assessment by correctly applying suitability criteria, mainly in the cognitive-affective and instructional dimensions. The participants recognise the importance of the training received to guide their reflection on teaching practice, which they need to complement with content-specific didactic-mathematical knowledge to achieve adequate competence in analysing instructional resources.

The creation and implementation of innovation proposals in education can provide a new key towards sustainable development. We are aware that schools perform very different innovations but often, with very low levels of impact and dissemination in their community. There are not many studies that describe, put a value on, categorize or analyse the innovations. This study sought to gain insight into the ICT innovations produced in Spanish primary and pre-primary schools. A quantitative approach based on a questionnaire was used to collect the data, named MANEDUIN, completed by 86 teachers selected by stratified random sampling (public - private, rural - urban). The reliability and the construct-related validity was evaluated from the questionnaire and the validity of content decided by means of experts' judgment. Our findings point to a good consistency in the questionnaire (Cronbach's Alpha: 0.848). The descriptive statistics and the analysis were made by factorial categories. The results of the factorial analysis confirm the dimensions proposed in the design of the questionnaire in the categories of the factors included in the innovation (social cohesion, interaction with the community, technologies, and success), the innovative schools and their characteristics, the topic and the type of innovation (on resources, direction, materials and time), as well as the obstacles to the innovation. This paper concludes that the questionnaire MANEDUIN is a valid and reliable tool to measure the management of schools' innovations.

Our contribution is based on the most noteworthy results of a research project focusing on teaching strategies at a time when the contents of the primary education curriculum are becoming digital. The expansion of the digital content industry is forcing a paradigm shift. In this paper we analyse the strategies implemented by teachers of the fifth and sixth year of primary school in relation with the digitisation of curricular content. With this aim, we planned our research following ethnographic methodology, analysing a period of two years of a case study. The main data collection tools we used are the analysis of the centre's documents and website, semi-structured interviews with different participants, and direct observation of fifth and sixth year primary education classrooms. We can infer from the analysis that technology facilitates processes of inclusion in the centre, enhancing collaborative and cooperative work. Furthermore, the use of digital devices promotes attention to diversity. The implementation of digital technologies in schools implies redefining teaching practices and teaching-learning processes. The results show that the addition of digital materials is a step forward in the centre's attention to diversity, improving accessibility and overcoming the digital gap thanks to schools' access to technological resources.

Emergency Remote Language Teaching is a new term coined after the concept of Emergency Remote Teaching (Hodges, et al., 2020), which emphasizes that teaching that is being done during emergencies and crises, as the pandemic caused by COVID-19, is neither distance nor online teaching properly. This paper explores the attitudes and perceptions of pre-service bilingual primary teachers at the University of Córdoba (Spain) regarding the design of socially and culturally responsive learning materials in a real Emergency Remote Language Teaching context. Due to the nature of this exploratory research, this study was designed to perform a qualitative analysis. To analyze the data, the grounded-theory scheme was followed to establish different categories and topics, then content analysis was applied, and finally, a manual SWOT analysis was created. Participants showed positive attitudes towards the design of materials for Emergency Remote Language Teaching, emphasizing the feeling of real teachers, the design of resources with a meaningful purpose, and the importance of 'thinking outside the box.' They also found challenges derived from the new, complex situation, and the lack of experience designing materials for distance teaching. Recommendations are proposed for teacher training and materials design in Emergency Remote Language Teaching contexts.

This paper describes teachers' practices and their perceptions regarding the teaching and learning of oral language in Catalan schools. We used the Assessment Scale for Oral Language Teaching in School Settings (EVALOE) instrument, created and validated with the aim of assessing teachers' practices for promoting the development of language skills (speaking and listening) in their classrooms, as well as their own perceptions of their classroom practices through an interview. Research participants are 111 teachers and their student's groups from 36 schools around Catalonia. The study shows that the teachers themselves direct the communication in the classroom, that they often fail to clearly state the content of the oral language being studied, and that they do not systematically assess the learning outcomes of this content. In addition, they use few of the teaching strategies that have proved most useful in language learning. This paper stresses that these practices need to be revised so that teachers and students be aware of language teaching and to create environments that promote the development of students' language skills.

This paper describes a quantitative study that explores both the degree of preservice teachers' (PSTs) motivation and achievement, and the dimensions of need-supportive teaching, when PSTs were involved in designing and implementing contextualized physical cooperative challenges (CPCCs) in primary schools. The analysis was based on the PSTs' perceptions of the dimensions of need-supportive teaching (namely autonomy support, structure, and involvement), and the dimensions of motivation. Need-supportive teaching was evaluated through a version of the Teacher as a Social Context Questionnaire (TASC-Q), and motivation through a SMOTIV motivation questionnaire. Results showed that the dimensions of the teaching process were all positively correlated, thus, implying the importance of a teacher's role in supporting autonomy, providing structure, and being involved. While motivation during the in-class definition of the CPCCs was correlated with the teachers' involvement, the out-of-class implementation of the CPCCs was found to correlate with the three dimensions of teaching, thus, implying that the PST students' perceptions of developing instructional approaches in schools is mediated by the role their university teachers play in defining and structuring all aspects of the teaching process. Students' achievement, on the other hand, was a process that relied on the synergies between the teachers' involvement and the PST student motivation during the stage when the CPCCs in the classroom environment were defined. This interlink responds to the constructivist position adopted to implement a cooperative approach in the university that, in turn, responds to assessing a student-centered cooperative-based learning approach.

The teaching guides that complement textbooks have key importance in the assessment of competence in problem solving, because these materials contain the assessment tools that teachers frequently use to quantify the achievements of their students. In this paper, we set two aims: to analyze which curriculum contents are given priority in the assessment tests of the teaching guides; and to check to what extent these tests assess the steps of the mathematical problem solving process. For this, an analysis of the initial and final assessment tests of six Spanish publishers was conducted. The results show that the distribution of mathematical tasks by type of content does not fully conform to the theoretical framework proposed by TIMSS. In addition, only one of the six publishers considered the problem-solving process as evaluable.

Catalonia has a long tradition of school innovation movements. These have increased in recent years as public administration and private entities have initiated substantial school reforms oriented toward the use of evidence in teaching practice. As the Catalan education system is highly autonomous, not all schools have embraced the evidence-informed practice (EIP) movement, and this has created differences between schools that choose to implement a change or innovation based on scientifically demonstrated evidence and those that do not. In the present paper, we will attempt to understand the current state of the inclusion of evidence-informed practice in Catalonia and to assess teachers' perceptions of its adoption as part of their daily practice. In order to address these issues, we start by exploring the legal and structural framework grounding the implementation of evidence-informed practice in the Catalan system, and through interviews conducted in a sample of primary school leaders and teachers, we approach the organisational and individual level to explore the opportunities to implement an authentic evidence-informed practice approach in the Catalan education system.

This perspective paper draws on the interest in ensuring that students who enter primary teacher training programs have a solid background knowledge of mathematics. We describe the access criteria and requirements for admission to the primary education degree programs at the Universidad de Alicante and Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, in Spain, and the University of Helsinki, in Finland. We present the results of an evaluation of the mathematical knowledge that students bring to their education as teachers at these three institutions. The results show that in each program, the subgroup of students who had followed the longer track of mathematics courses scored significantly higher on the mathematical test, although this was no longer as clear when we compared across universities. We also found that the students who had taken the mathematics section of the entrance examination or the matriculation examination scored higher on the test than those from the same program who had not, but this tendency broke down when cross-university comparisons were made. We also explored how the cap set on the number of students admitted to the three programs -- this being the most striking difference in the admission policies -- could be an explanatory variable for these discrepancies. The comparison between universities leads us to hypothesize that expecting applicants to have met certain requirements in their academic trajectories prior to university entrance and adjusting the cap set on the number of places could ensure a better mastery of mathematical knowledge among those students admitted to the Spanish programs.

Mobile learning is a resource that can enhance the teaching-learning process of students and improve the training of future teachers. Specifically, augmented reality (AR) technology allows for immersive and experiential learning without the need to leave the classroom. The purposes of this paper were to apply AR technology in the training of future Primary Education teachers and to analyze the perceived usefulness of AR in the classroom by future teachers. A quantitative approach was used based on a design with a control group and two experimental groups with a post-test using a sample of 171 second-year students studying an education degree. The results showed that experimentation with AR promoted a slight increase in student motivation. However, no significant differences were found between the control group and the experimental groups. Finally, the findings allowed us to establish that the implementation of resources such as AR does not differ in the opinion of future teachers about the inclination to implement AR in the classroom.

This paper studies how four primary-school in-service teachers develop the mathematical practices of conjecturing and proving. From the consideration of professional development as the legitimate peripheral participation in communities of practice, these teachers' mathematical practices have been characterised by using a theoretical framework (consisting of categories of activities) that describes and explains how a research mathematician develops these two mathematical practices. This research has adopted a qualitative methodology and, in particular, a case study methodological approach. Data was collected in a working session on professional development while the four participants discussed two questions that invoked the development of the mathematical practices of conjecturing and proving. The results of this study show the significant presence of informal activities when the four participants conjecture, while few informal activities have been observed when they strive to prove a result. In addition, the use of examples (an informal activity) differs in the two practices, since examples support the conjecturing process but constitute obstacles for the proving process. Finally, the findings are contrasted with other related studies and several suggestions are presented that may be derived from this work to enhance professional development.

In the particular case of Spain, student and teacher difficulties associated with the mathematical discipline have been evidenced in PISA and TEDS-M reports. As we consider that the teachers' difficulties are connected to the students' performance, we propose a multi-disciplinary approach to deliver specific didactic/mathematical knowledge to the trainee teachers. Such additional instruction shall be meaningfully connected to the real needs of the schools, so a service-learning approach is proposed here. In the present manuscript, the trainee teachers have co-designed educational escape rooms (in coordination with local schools) with the aim of mobilizing curricular knowledge. The goal of the educational escape rooms is to foster the mathematic-related competencies by establishing meaningful connections to other curricular disciplines (music-related knowledge, in the case of this study). This paper reports on the particular experience developed with a group of students (trainee teachers) while designing their educational escape rooms, focusing on the particular case of a specific student to evidence the formative potential of the procedure. The didactic suitability of the proposed escape room has been analyzed and professional development has also been discussed, showing the mobilization of relevant professional skills and fostering the related music and mathematical didactic competencies by shifting the teaching perspective from an algorithmic point of view to a more "reasoning and designing" strategy. This constitutes an evidence of the formative potential on the co-design of educational escape rooms, when designed in the frame of a service learning approach.

This paper studies the pre-service teachers' mathematics teaching self-efficacy throughout the bachelor's degree in Primary Education. Our hypothesis is that the mathematical courses included in the bachelor's degree can influence their mathematics teaching self-efficacy. To carry out the study, pre-service teachers of each year of the Primary Education Degree answer the Mathematics Teaching Efficacy Belief Instrument (MTEBI) at the end of the 2016-17 academic year. The MTEBI is comprised of two sub-scales, namely, Personal Mathematics Teaching Efficacy (PMTE) and Mathematics Teaching Outcome Expectancy (MTOE). Obtained results evidence a statistically significant difference (in positive) between the pre-teachers of the first and the last year of the bachelor's degree in the PMTE subscale. Therefore, these results show that the three teaching and learning mathematics courses (TLM) included in the bachelor's degree do change the students' PMTE. Concretely, the second TLM course, which is connected to a student teaching practice period, really makes the difference. Scores obtained in the MTOE subscale, on the contrary, do not increase throughout the Degree. To sum up, this study shows that the Mathematical Curriculum of the bachelor's degree can influence on the PMTE of the pre-teachers. Therefore, teacher educators should be aware of the importance of the Mathematical Curriculum and design the teaching and learning mathematics courses in order to promote the PMTE of the pre-teachers.

To promote social consciousness and a sense of responsibility, educational proposals organised around the principles of technology-enhanced project-based language learning (Dooly & Sadler, 2016) should engage students in a process of reflecting upon and responding to crucial social issues. Thus, in this paper we will present a project carried out by two groups of primary education students who launched a solidarity campaign to collect money for four Syrian children living in a refugee camp in Greece. The project was implemented in a cross-disciplinary Arts and Crafts class taught through English and resulted in significant outputs in English (those addressed to the Syrian children) and in Catalan (those targeted at the local community). First, we outline the student-led project and then we analyse some fragments of student plurilingual practices during the project development that demonstrate their learning gains. Our findings reveal that our meaningful contextualised cross-disciplinary project favoured the natural integration of multiple skills, competences, and field knowledge form various disciplines while promoting a sense of social consciousness and empathy. First, it enabled children to put their plurilingual competence into play and take decisions regarding language choices to meet particular communicative objectives. Second, it contributed to the acquisition of 21st century knowledge, competence, and skills, while helping the learners gain social values. Third, it engaged learners in processes of problem solving, decision making and creative thinking that lead to the development of entrepreneurial competencies. To conclude we argue that when young learners are given responsibilities and opportunities to take up socially relevant challenges learning becomes meaningful for them and those around them.

This paper elaborates on the didactic implementation of musical theater with undergraduate education students. Students had to select, prepare, justify, design, elaborate, rehearse, stage, and record an educational tale that targets ecological and environmental values in its main plot or storyline. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the implementation of this didactic proposal went online, and the interactions between students took place through video calls. This study surveyed a sample of 86 participants (n = 86) from a population of 116 students (N = 116) from the Faculty of Education of Albacete (UCLM) to investigate the advantages and disadvantages of carrying out this activity in an online format. The main challenges exposed the complexity of coordinating a team in a completely online format, problems related to physical isolation, and the limited access to a high-quality internet connection. The reported benefits included the development of digital competences, the interactions through social media, and creative thinking. Most students viewed this activity as didactically innovative and 98.84% agreed that musical tales and musical theater can be useful for promoting environmental awareness.

Our paper focuses on the implementation of the flipped classroom model with the students of the subject ICT for EFL teaching and learning at a Spanish university. This pedagogical approach, generally speaking, reverses the traditional learning environment by delivering instructional content outside the classroom and working on it in class. The ultimate goal of our research is to evaluate the aforementioned model, used with a sample of 40 students, through a mixed-method approach. To this aim, a satisfaction survey (Gilboy, Heinerichs & Pazzaglia, 2015) plus two open-ended questions were administered to participants in the study. The results obtained, through both quantitative and qualitative techniques, reveal that the majority of the students completing the evaluation preferred the flipped method compared with the traditional one.

Western European countries have made impressive gender equality (GE) progress in education during the last few decades. Unfortunately, the implementation of gender mainstreaming (GM) in higher education has not been satisfactory. This paper describes a survey-based research study designed to explore student teachers' perceptions of training for GE in teacher education (TE) using the Sensitive Assessment for Gender Equality (SAGE) index. The study firstly aims to analyse the factor invariance across degree of the SAGE and secondly tries to describe the status of GM implementation in teacher education programmes from students' perspectives. Data were collected from 398 student teachers (84% female) aged 21.44, enrolled on two TE programmes from a public higher education institution in the Autonomous Region of Valencia (Spain). Using single and multi-group CFA the study revealed that the proposed three-factor structure of the SAGE fitted well to early childhood and elementary school student teachers' data, thus suggesting equivalence between its components in both samples. Early childhood students scored significantly higher than elementary school student teachers in their reported perceptions of gender equality training and awareness of gender inequalities. Results will be displayed in terms of identifying institutional and curricular needs for GE education practices as findings reveal a clear demand for change.

Modern technology progresses at an incredibly fast pace. With personal computers, mobile phones, tablets, and the Internet, technology is used in all spheres, affecting our daily lives greatly. Educational games are also taking advantage of the technological process, for example, many useful apps are available for children. Gaming and educational opportunities have expanded because of the development of tablets and smartphones. Teachers have the opportunity to combine physical and electronic objects when creating education materials, so they are not confined to the use of traditional physical objects. Storytelling remains one of the oldest teaching methods for children: the development of technology has given impetus to the creation of tangible digital storytelling, which combines programs with physical objects, creating a single field for learning. Creating stories in which a child can interact with his/her peers has also provided new opportunities for inclusion and cooperation in young children. Indeed, the increased use of speakers, videos, pictures, and other tools that can help to quickly create and easily adapt objects for children with various backgrounds has fostered inclusive teaching. This paper will consider the evolution of the storytelling practice, focusing specifically on tangible digital storytelling and its benefits in young children.

This work analyses the use of Spanish (mother tongue) by pre-service teachers (N=55) during a class activity that consists of explaining and solving Primary Education (6-12) mathematical problems in English (foreign language). The objectives are established in the form of three research questions about the amount of frequency of Spanish; its functional categories according to the original classification of De la Campa and Nassaji (2009); and the lack of competence in English of the participants. This is a mixed-method research since it includes both quantitative and qualitative data, collected through a questionnaire; the recordings of the pre-service teachers' discourse; and a virtual interview. The novelty of the study lies in a new functional category: lack of foreign language competence, which precedes others such as personal comment, activity instruction, arbitrary code-mixing, and translation, for instance. Likewise, 78.18% used Spanish at least once during the activity, although this is limited to 2.13/person. This works sheds light not only on the low amount of Spanish but especially on its functional categories, revealing a lack of language competence and pedagogical skills among the pre-service teachers. The paper ends with some recommendations for language teachers.

This research addresses the types of assessment tasks, the assessment criteria, instruments and procedures of communicative competence used by primary school teachers in Andalusia. This multiple-case study drew on the experiences of teachers from four schools in the south of Spain. The data source has been the focus groups in which the teachers took part. The transcripts were analysed thematically by three researchers who devised a system of categories designed through an iterative process. The findings reveal the paucity of tasks used to assess reading, listening and oral expression. The study also shows the diverse problems faced by teachers when it comes to evaluating communicative competence. This paper highlights the need to rethink the curricular contents and the methods applied to assess communicative competence in primary schools.

One of the emerging technologies that have sparked greater interest in pedagogical contexts is augmented reality. This paper aims to assess the impact, practices and attitudes that are generated from augmented reality in the initial training of future teachers, and the presence of these practices in a university training context. The study was carried out with 87 trainee primary teachers. Information was obtained by applying the Wilcoxon test. The qualitative data obtained in open questions were also triangulated. It is emphasized that students do not habitually use this resource at the university, and that with these practices there is sometimes a certain amount of distraction, and even of time being wasted. From the data analyzed, we also highlight that once the availability of resources, class planning and initial teacher training are overcome, augmented reality provides benefits and advantages centered on pedagogies that allow for greater enthusiasm on the part of the students, with significant advantages in creativity, innovation, participation, and especially in the motivation of participants. Coinciding with recent research, our results underline the need for initial training so as to be able to design and apply practices with augmented reality in teaching, and to take advantage of the aforementioned benefits.

Mobile assisted language learning (MALL) has developed and gained importance over the years in foreign language learning settings. However, mobile phones are still perceived as distracting devices in most of the schools. Within the field of second and foreign language learning, one of the most difficult things for school teachers is to give feedback to students when using a mobile device. In the present paper we present a case study research, which will investigate the best form of giving feedback via WhatsApp to students in primary education. Mobile instant messaging (MIM) has been used to practice vocabulary as well as the speaking and listening skills, but the study focuses on the feedback that the students have received. 30 primary (volunteer) students were selected to participate in the 3-week study and were divided into 3 groups, according to their age (low, middle and upper primary). A mixed approach method was employed to analyze the data (quantitative and qualitative). Results indicated that the most popular form of feedback among young students were smileys and images and not written feedback, and the study reveals that a set of varied images, even to send corrective feedback was an engaging element for the young students. Upper-primary students considered the written feedback more interesting, since they received more language-related details with this type of feedback than with a simple image.

This paper presents an exploratory study to examine the practices of outstanding primary school teachers in their professional development for ICT integration in teaching and learning, as a means of understanding how their learning ecologies develop and function. Outstanding teachers in the context of this study are teachers who innovate pedagogically and who are influential in the community, having successfully developed their learning ecology. Using a qualitative approach, we explore the concept of learning ecologies as a driver for innovation in the professional development of teachers, using a carefully selected sample of nine outstanding teachers. Drawing from in-depth interviews, specific coding and NVIVO analysis, our results show that these teachers develop organized systems for activities, relationships and resource usage and production, which can be characterized as the components of their professional learning ecology, to continuously keep up to date. We also identified some characteristics of teachers that perform outstandingly and factors that potentially facilitate or hinder their learning ecology development. Further research in the field will enable an improved understanding of the professional learning ecologies of school teachers and support future interventions and recommendations for professional development through the cultivation of emerging professional learning ecologies.