Abstract:

Background/Objective: The education system in Spanish universities evolves continuously, especially since 2010, when the Bologna Plan was incorporated for the construction of a European space of higher education, which encourages diversity, competitiveness, quality, mobility and autonomous work in higher education. In this sense some changes were needed in order to improve the quality of the most important subject of the Bachelor’s Degree in Primary Education: the practicum. It is well-known that the practicum is a crucial subject of the academic program for future teachers. Thus, the actual design of the practicum needs to be updated according to the rapid advances in higher education. This investigation shows a pilot experience, and the aim of this study is to demonstrate a new approach of the practicum in the Bacherlor’s Degree in Primary Education at the University of the Balearic Islands (UIB).
Methods: The Pilot project started in June 2017, recruiting the team, and presenting the project to the Physical Education Department of the University. Four months before the start of the project, I met the project team on multiple occasions, to design the specific steps. Two months before the start, a meeting with the students took place. There was also, a meeting with the coordinators and school supervisors. During the practicum, the University-supervisors visited all students, observing all students for one hour lessons, and having a meeting with the school-supervisor. At the end of the practicum, another meeting was carried out with the coordinators and school supervisors.
The internal evaluations were: university teacher-student and vice versa, school teacher-student and vice versa, school teacher-university teacher and vice versa, all at the beginning, during and at the end of the process. The external evaluation was: University in the design phase, professors from other departments during the process and at the end.
Results: The innovation of the practicum is the pedagogical partners, doing co-evaluations and giving each other feedback on every class. With a combined auto-evaluation, co-evaluation and hetero-evaluation. And the type of documents students had to produce. With the aim to motivate and to introduce them to the investigation ambit, one of the documents students made was a poster, presented in a poster session with all students, the topic of the posters was evidence based on the practicum.
Conclusions: We hope to get positive results, with objective evaluations, including all participants in the design, process and evaluation: University supervisors, school supervisors, school coordinators and students. Furthermore, we hope to get good results in learning, autonomy and competences, with the aim to improve the previous practicum system, and incorporate this new system for all branches of the bachelor’s Degree in Primary Education in the UIB.

Keywords:

Practicum, Autonomy, competences, pedagogical partners, Bologna Plan.