Abstract:

In the Spanish educational system, the Baccalaureate normally comes after Secondary Education and it comprehends two school years. Students must choose one of the following amongst the three Baccalaureate modalities: 1) Arts, 2) Humanities and Social Sciences, and 3) Science and Technology. The subject "Chemistry" corresponds to this last modality and takes place during the second year. Afterwards, students who want to access the University take the usually called "selectivity" written test. The access of the students to the chosen University grades will be determined by the mark obtained at selectivity, along with the average score obtained in the Baccalaureate.

This work was carried out during the 2016-2017 and 2017-2018 academic years. Through it, the relationships amongst the past and present training of the Chemistry teachers, the characteristics of the center, the methodology implemented, the average mark obtained in the subject in the test to access university and the teachers’ satisfaction with the obtained achievements were to be assessed.

With that aim, a questionnaire was designed and ten teachers of eight educational centers at the left bank of the Nervión estuary were interviewed face-to-face on its basis during the 2016-2017 academic year. The following academic year, the questionnaire was somewhat modified and sent to be responded online to five teachers at four educational centers of Bilbao.

All the questioned teachers had a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemical Sciences. They also reported they deeply knew the curricular decree of the Basque Government on the Chemistry subject. However, in 2016-2017 only half of them answered they had undertaken the ancient Pedagogical Adaptation Course or the current Master's Degree in Teacher Training whilst it was the 80% that had done so in 2017-2018 and the majority (≥60%) did not implement any innovative methodology when teaching Chemistry. Regarding the centers, they were all equipped with, at least, one laboratory.

In the academic year 2016-2017, after selectivity, another online questionnaire was posed to four teachers who had undergone the previous questionnaire. The questioned teachers reported the majority of students (93%) had taken the Chemistry exam at selectivity in the first call and that they mark obtained was, on average, 6.8. Regarding the teachers’ satisfaction with the achievements of the course, the overall response was around 83% except for the teacher of the center with the lowest grade in selectivity (6.3), whose satisfaction was 58%.

Keywords:

Formation, innovative methodology, selectivity, satisfaction.