Abstract:

In the EHEA (European Higher Education Area) the expected result of the learning process should be the acquisition of determined competences by the students. Thus, the assessment should evaluate if the students have acquired such competences. More specifically, competences are defined as the set of knowledge, skills and attitudes needed to deal with tasks corresponding to such learning in a satisfactory way. Therefore, a complete evaluation system should clearly include elements in order to allow us to stablish the level of acquisition of attitudes of every student.

However, in most of the degree programmes the (competences) evaluation systems do not include specific elements for the evaluation of the student’s attitude. Moreover, a scale with levels of the accredited attitude is not provided and, therefore, grades on their attitude are not reflected in the curricula of the graduates. Actually, attitude assessment is usually tacitly considered as a part of certain assessed activities (like oral presentations, team or individual works, etc.), where the main part of the grades depends on the knowledge and skills shown by the student.

This situation contrasts with the current (European) social context, where attitude has become a distinguishing and projecting value. In fact, although less common in the public administration, attitude is a key feature, highly valued by the enterprises when selecting their staff to perform specific tasks for which several candidates accredit knowledge and skills enough to develop the required tasks.

More particularly, as indicated by pedagogical experts, attitude is fundamental for the teaching practice (especially in mathematics teaching). Hence, it seems a compelling need to measure the teacher students’ attitude independently of the level of acknowledge and skills.

Motivated by these issues, the main purpose of this work is to get an assessment methodology of attitude in the current context of the post pandemic ITC (Information, Technology and Communication) society, without forgetting the emerging impact of the AI (Artificial Intelligence).

In this sense, ideas from the EHEA policy, from the academic literature, from human resources departments and from the experience of professors and teachers have been studied with the objective of getting an assessment methodology of attitudes.

Thus, the work provides an approach on how to evaluate the attitude in pre-services (math) teachers, and shows how this approach could help to improve the (maths) teaching and motivate students.

It could bring some good implications as a more awareness of the importance of an adequate predisposition and behaviour to generate a better work atmosphere and results, and a professional development of (math) teachers reflected in their better attitudinal performance.

Keywords:

Assessment in the EHEA, teacher education, teacher attitude, attitude outcome, attitude grades, attitude level.