Abstract:

One of the most important aspects of the project Tuning Educational Structure in Europe, better known as the Tuning project, is that students starting university studies have a reasonable level of the generic competence of "autonomous learning". This is justified because many of their activities and credits require autonomous learning, which later will allow them to work in groups or join seminars and other activities that require autonomously acquired learning.
The autonomous learning enables students to develop appropriate learning strategies, both cognitive and metacognitive, which aim to facilitate understanding of the content and verification of the learning process as well as the development of personal self-regulation skills. Autonomous learning is seen as a gradual process of development, evolution and adjustment, which occurs as a result of person´s dynamic development resulting from his or her interactions with the environment, in this case with the university institution. From a social constructivist view, it means that autonomous learning does not develop solely, exclusively from maturing, nor is it acquired passively from the context in which the student lives. It involves the interaction of the two areas, that is to say, learner´s active and meaningful construction of knowledge and one´s interaction with the environment.
Autonomous learning is not only important because it facilitates students’ opportunity to exercise multiple tasks they need to develop themselves, so evident in the ‘White Book of Teaching Degree’, where more than 800 teachers of teaching degree surveyed claim that autonomous learning is the third most important competence with an average of 3.05 points out of 5, among the general, systemic competences. In addition to the above, the competence has implications for the development and possibilities of exercising other generic competences such as maturity, personal safety, self-criticism, tolerance to frustration, flexibility and adjustment to environmental situations.
For all these reasons, at the beginning of the current academic year we want to conduct descriptive and explanatory research in which we want to find out, using a Likert type scale, the level of development of the competence of "autonomous learning" in students starting their first year of teaching degree. Apart from that, by means of the interval, we wanted to know if the level of initial acquisition in that competence revealed homogeneity or heterogeneity among the respondents, addressing the greater or less degree of dispersion shown in the survey. Finally, we valued the significance level of some descriptive variables in shaping the generic competence of "autonomous work" in the students, considering variables such as age, sex, population of the locality where they reside, level of studies (professional training) (bachiller) (other studies), qualifications required to access the degree. All this allowed us to determine the degree of students´ homogeneity / heterogeneity in this competence and contextualize the curriculum of different courses addressing these students’ opportunities and training needs in this competence.

Keywords:

ICT, competition, teacher's degree.