Abstract:

The new UCM Master’s Degree in Secondary School Teacher Education has been designed in the light of the European Higher Education criteria. In the case of English, the curriculum includes a Final Research Paper to be written and defended by students, in proficient English, at the end of the academic year. However, as the program has been running for two years now, it is due time to state that most of these final research papers have presented difficulties that need to be overcome. Students happened to complain to have serious problems to approach the papers and to comply with the guidelines established; supervisors did not always seem to realize the level of difficulty and the real aims of the papers in progress, and the same for evaluators, not always getting the expected results, whatever that means in this context of uneasiness. The present paper aims to decipher the sources of difficulty pointing to all the members of the academic community involved: students, supervisors and evaluators. With this purpose in mind, a unique questionnaire has been designed for all of them to report the difficulties they found in terms of organization, secondary sources and supporting ideas, data collection and analysis, grammar and style. Our expectations are that the analysis of results will lead to a better understanding of the problem and, consequently, to a better approach to the necessary solutions that need to be provided.

Keywords:

Master’s Degree in Teacher Education, Final Research Papers, Curriculum, Higher Education.