Fàtima Vega

Estudios recientes destacan la necesidad de introducir en los planes docentes objetivos vinculados a la Competencia en Lengua Oral (CLO), especialmente en los grados y másteres en los que se forma a futuros docentes. El objetivo principal del estudio es analizar la percepción de profesorado de los grados de Educación Infantil, Educación Primaria y del Máster de Educación Secundaria sobre cómo se enseña y se aprende la lengua oral en sus asignaturas. Fueron entrevistados 17 docentes de 4 universidades catalanas. Los resultados indican que la mayoría del profesorado suele implementar al menos una actividad o estrategia relacionada con el desarrollo de la CLO, a pesar de que ésta no constituya un objetivo de aprendizaje, aunque menos de la mitad realiza actividades específicas para favorecer la CLO. La mayoría del profesorado evalúa la exposición oral (individual o en grupo), la participación en clase, y una buena parte del profesorado indica que comparten los criterios de evaluación antes de que el alumnado realice las exposiciones, usualmente a través de una rúbrica. Finalmente, los argumentos mencionados con más frecuencia para justificar la baja propuesta de actividades CLO son la falta de tiempo y que no se incluye en el plan docente. Se concluye la necesidad de generar procesos de reflexión colaborativa entre docentes de diferentes áreas de conocimiento para contribuir a incorporar recursos para entender la relevancia de la CLO en las clases universitarias.

Recent studies highlight the need to introduce objectives in Initial Teaching Education focused on the development of oral language competence (OLC). The main aim of the study is to examine activities to promote the development of OLC that are carried out in university classrooms and their evaluation, to analyze the relationship between students’ awareness of OLC work and class activities and to identify proposals to improve students’ OLC. Participants were 175 university teachers who teach on the bachelor’s degree in Initial Teacher Education (ITE) and the master’s degree in Secondary Education (MSE) at seven Catalan universities. The data collection instrument was an online questionnaire with 69 questions. The results indicate that 92.5% of participants work on OLC in their subjects, that 76.5% propose activities that are specifically linked to OLC and that 65.1% of participants evaluate OLC in their subject. A total of 39.4% of participants reported the need to increase discussions to generate processes of collaborative and interdisciplinary reflection between university teachers from different areas of knowledge, among others. We conclude that professional development processes need to be designed for ITE teachers to reflect on how they help students to develop OLC from a pragmatic perspective.

Digital tools can guide and support teachers in professional development programmes. The aim of this study was four-fold: (1) to explore changes introduced in classroom methodology by secondary school teachers during their participation in a professional development programme, using the digital tool EVALOE-DSS, based on conversational methodology; (2) to analyse the impact of introducing conversational methodology in the development of students’ oral competence; (3) to determine the relation between students’ self-perception of oral competence and self-perceived emotional competence; and (4) to find out the teachers’ opinion about their experience in the programme. The instruments used were the digital tool EVALOE-DSS, the Test of Self-Perceived Oral Competence, the Self-Report of Emotional Intelligence, the Trait Meta-Mood Scale, and a satisfaction questionnaire. The study was developed in four phases: initial intensive training, intervention using the digital tool for four months, students’ assessments and teachers’ evaluations. The results of teachers’ self-assessments using the EVALOE-DSS showed that their self-assessment of classes significantly improved throughout their participation in the programme. In addition, students whose teachers participated in the programme were self-perceived as more competent at oral language, and this had a positive influence on their self-perception of emotional competence. Finally, teachers were positive about their participation in the training process using the EVALOE-DSS. In conclusion, this study seems to suggest that a professional development programme using a Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) tool could provide an important strategy for increasing teachers’ oral language teaching quality and improving student learning.

This paper describes teachers’ practices and their perceptions regarding the teaching and learning of oral language in Catalan schools. We used the Assessment Scale for Oral Language Teaching in School Settings (EVALOE) instrument, created and validated with the aim of assessing teachers’ practices for promoting the development of language skills (speaking and listening) in their classrooms, as well as their own perceptions of their classroom practices through an interview. Research participants are 111 teachers and their student’s groups from 36 schools around Catalonia. The study shows that the teachers themselves direct the communication in the classroom, that they often fail to clearly state the content of the oral language being studied, and that they do not systematically assess the learning outcomes of this content. In addition, they use few of the teaching strategies that have proved most useful in language learning. This paper stresses that these practices need to be revised so that teachers and students be aware of language teaching and to create environments that promote the development of students’ language skills.

The school is a natural context in which the communication strategies of teachers in their interaction with students are essential for the development of their oral competence. The goal of the study is to contribute to the improvement of teaching practice in relation to communicative and oral language competence through the use of a digital tool. The participants were 8 teachers and their pupils from 6 kindergarten and primary schools in Catalonia, 5 of which are public (2 ordinary and 3 cyclical) and 1 is private (special). As for teachers, 4 constitute the intervention group and 4, the comparison group. For 6 months, the 4 teachers of the intervention groups used the tool to self-evaluate their practices, made decisions to improve it and to introduce changes. The researchers observed 5 class sessions of each teacher, evaluated them with the same tool and each teacher-researcher pair talked and reflected on the classes in 5 meetings during the semester. The evaluations of the class sessions yielded significant differences between the scores obtained by the teachers who participated in the professional development process and those who did not. We argue, therefore, that the digital tool has contributed to the professional development of teachers and to the improvement of the oral communicative competence of their students. The implications derived from this research highlight the need to train teachers in the area of teaching the communicative and linguistic competence of students with the help of digital technology.

This article presents the results of an action-research project. The project consisted of a reflection process involving a year-long collaboration between a teacher, a teaching assistant and a speech therapist in a special education school, together with two researchers acting as counsellors. The reflection process sought to promote changes in the participants’ approaches to working on communication and language in the classroom. This article sets out to identify and describe the processes of change in the three teaching professionals’ conceptions of communication and language teaching and learning, and about their teaching role. The collaborative counselling lasted 32 weeks and consisted of a total of nine group counselling (GC) sessions. All of the nine GC sessions were transcribed in order to analyse the changes in the teaching professionals’ discourse. The ATLAS.ti 7.0 program was then used to select speech quotations and to group them into thematic clusters based on content analysis. The results indicate that the teaching professionals’ conceptions subtly changed during the collaborative counselling process; specifically, their conceptions about how to develop communication and language, classroom interaction, the educator’s role, organisation of context and curriculum planning.

This paper reports the development and validation of a digital application (Assessment Scale of Oral Language at School - Decision Support System, EVALOE-DSS) for the professional development of teachers aiming to improve their students’ linguistic competence. We performed a multiple case study involving seven teachers and their students from seven different schools. Over a six–month period, the teachers used the digital application to self-assess their classes, make decisions and introduce changes into their teaching practices. The researchers observed four class sessions of each teacher and assessed them with the same digital application. Each teacher-researcher dyad discussed the tool and its use over three meetings during the semester. Despite some differences between the teachers, use of the digital application produced progress in the competences of both the teachers and the students. Thus, the digital application can be used for professional development in teachers.