teaching profession

Every time a new political party has taken office in Spain in recent decades, it has fully or partially repealed the education law enacted by the previous government and, almost simultane­ously, there has been renewed talk of an educa­tional pact. However, unlike legislation, the pact never materialises, leading to disagreements within the political class and great frustration among members of the educational community.

Among the difficulties that prevent a pact from being reached, ideological and political reasons have been cited and the model of edu­cational administration has also been blamed, with claims that it interferes negatively and arguments that its decentralised nature pre­vents unity in the field of education. This article highlights some of its strengths and suggests they might be good advocates for reaching an education pact in Spain. In this respect, each autonomous community must meet certain minimum requirements as an in­termediate step towards correcting the overall data. The following reasons for an education­al pact are priorities: reducing school dropout rates, improving the number of students in vocational training, improving the figures for education spending, and, with regards to teachers, strengthening processes for select­ing students to train as teachers as well as the social status of this profession. If territorial differences are reduced by improving educa­tional indicators, it seems more likely that a consensus can be reached as a prelude to an education pact.

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Please, cite this article as follows: Sánchez Lissen, E. (2022). Razones para un pacto educativo en España en el marco de una administración descentralizada | Reasons for an educational pact in Spain within the framework of decentralised government administration. Revista Española de Pedagogía, 80 (282), 311-329. https://doi.org/10.22550/REP80-2-2022-03

The results of the 2019 Pisa Reports confirm that the Spanish education system continues to stagnate after compulsory ed­ucation has been completed. This situation calls for self-criticism on the part of all ac­tors involved. One of the groups concerned are the university professors and lectur­ers who provide training for prospective teachers. Among them are those who teach General Didactics. They provide basic and multi-purpose training on teaching meth­ods for prospective teachers. For this pur­pose, they usually consider traditional and recent textbooks and other reference texts on teaching theory and practice, which help to define the discipline. The aim of the study is to find out whether these works train and equip prospective teachers with teaching competences and to verify their educational and professional potential with regard to the teaching theory they convey. In order to fulfil this aim, a descriptive documentary study of 35 reference works on General Didactics was carried out, in­cluding both textbooks and texts used as sources of didactic knowledge. The content of the structure and composition of these texts was analysed. The results show a tendency to prioritise theoretical aspects over competences and to order chapters based on a technical and administrative tradition, rather than a conceptual and semantic approach focused on designing a meaningful learning experience. As an ap­plied summary, recommendations are pro­vided for the development of textbooks on General Didactics, aimed at initial teacher training, from a more competence-based and less academic approach.

 

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Please, cite this article as follows: Moral Santaella, C., & De la Herrán Gascón, A. (2021). Análisis de contenido y teorías subyacentes en los textos españoles de referencia sobre Didáctica General | Analysis of content and underlying theories in Spanish reference texts on General Didactics. Revista Española de Pedagogía, 79 (280), 437-455. https://doi.org/10.22550/REP79-3-2021-01

In a context in which the «policies based on the teachers» have acquired a major interest in the international level, this contribution focuses its attention on strengthening the teaching profession and its central core: the model of selection and initial training of teachers. From a concept of profession that is typical of robust professions, analyzes the status of the teaching profession and highlights their weaknesses. Later it describes the model of access to specialized medical profession by MIR system (Resident Internal Doctor) and it analyzes the fundamental mechanisms by which the so-called in Spain «educational MIR» can contribute to the strengthening of the teaching profession.

Finally, it proposes and justifies the transposition of MIR model, with the appropriate adaptations, to the educational field in the Spanish system.

Reform of Secondary Education Teacher Training in Spain has been articulated from the new regulation of masters degrees. Considering teaching a regulated profession, the ministerial regulations define some compulsory basic requirements and let each university to design their specific program.

With the purpose of knowing and assessing the Practicum, a research which involved 85% of public universities and 88% of private higher education institutions providing the Master Program in Teaching in Secondary Education has been conducted. The overall results reveal a good conceptual harmony, some organizational diversity and a significant operational weakness in the documentation concerning the Practicum.

Drawing on the findings of the study and the existing literature on the Practicum as a privileged space for learning how to teach, several reflections to improve teacher training programs are suggested.