Teaching innovation project: Improving the scientific training of Primary Education students

The teaching of written language in our context is the victim of numerous misunderstandings about its development and learning. This often results in classroom teaching not being based on current theories about how we learn to read and write. The results in written expression often leave teachers at all levels of education dissatisfied. Moreover, teachers feel unprepared to address the teaching of writing, according to recent national and international surveys (Brindle et al., 2016; Sánchez et al., 2018). The empowerment of future teachers will involve providing them with the necessary skills to face this and other similar challenges. 

In this sense, the teaching innovation project aimed to contribute to the scientific culture of teachers and other educators in the field of language. The objective was that future educational professionals give importance to classroom practices informed by scientific evidence (Davies, 1999; Ferrero et al., 2016). The science training of future educators will allow them to (1) have the ability to keep abreast of new pedagogical work and innovations in the field of literacy (and other domains); (2) be able to integrate their prior knowledge and experience with quality empirical evidence; (3) avoid applying methodologies that have not been rigorously tested; and (4) transmit the value of science as a producer of knowledge to their students.

Specifically, the project will design a program of 10 tutoring sessions in the framework of the TFG course of the degrees involved (GEP and GL). We considered that the realization of a TFG of empirical type was an excellent opportunity to confront the students with the scientific operation in an area of maximum relevance for them as future educators: the teaching of the written language. Given that the duration of the project was only one semester (October-Gener), the implementation was still in progress at the time of writing this final report.