Search

Could be easy to find interesting studies about the influence of some factors (personal, social, institutional, etc.) as facilitators or inhibitors of adequate academic transition from student's perspective. This paper describes the process of academic adjustment to high education college from the perspective of first-year teachers. Underlies also the relationship between faculty motivation and satisfaction and students retention. Collect opinions of first-year teachers could result of particular interest. They can have an important influence on students, being a reference for them. Could be possible to identify some profile of first year teachers, not only in terms of the characteristics of the discipline to be taught, but also the student's profile and the characteristics of the class groups. A statistical survey has been done to all first-year teachers at grades of Administration and Management (ADE) and Education studies, at the University of Barcelona. This survey was done at the end of the 2010-11 academic year, obtaining a rate 45% response. Sample includes "online comments" from faculty members. Statistical techniques as descriptive analysis and regression analysis, based on a principal components analysis, let identify relationships between variables. The study also collected qualitative results of the opinions of higher education teachers to incorporate personal aspects. Factors relating to teaching context are those that have a higher influence in faculty satisfaction. On the other hand, student previous academic preparation has a negative effect on it. Four factors were identified through a dimensional reduction of variables: teaching coordination and operation, teaching conditions, teaching experience and teacher gender. This paper would remark this point and suggest some improving needs for a first year teachers and those who have responsibilities on it. Results show how teachers' motivation and involvement decline slightly throughout the academic year. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is focused on the selfassessment trough e-rubrics. Rubrics as an instrument of self-assessment involve a process of reflection that can contribute to increase the involvement and awareness of their own achievements. Here we wanted to engage students from the design and creation of rubric through a collaborative process of building an e-rubric by the students and the teacher. In this study, undergraduate students of Pedagogy participated in an elective subject in their third year. It was developed in several stages in a semester: training for using e-rubrics, designing and construction of e-rubrics, using the e-rubric as a tool for self-assessment and filling a final questionnaire to collect their views. It's important to consider that when we work with innovative strategies of assessment, students have to know not only the features of the instrument but also they have to know the influence to improve their learning processes and they have to achieve the ability to incorporate it to their own skills as education professionals. As main result, students highlighted the importance of rubrics to guide their learning processes and to reflect about it and the capacity of rubric to predict their performance in the subject. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Systematic training for in-service teachers whose main occupation is not teaching presents challenges. This paper describes a teaching training program at a university of health sciences that deals with them. Around 40 professionals who teach in undergraduate and graduate courses of the Instituto Universitario del Hospital Italiano de Buenos Aires take part annually in this program. In order to explain how this program faces those challenges, we perform a pedagogicaldidactic characterization of some of its "training devices". This analysis is part of didactical design research undertaken by the authors and teachers responsible for this proposal and includes both systematic record of experience in the classroom, participants written work and their personal reflections. As a result we find that these devices can be grouped into three types: to mobilize the reflection on their own conceptions, to produce alternative courses of actions and to play the whole game of teaching. From the voice of the participants, these devices, complementary and throughout the two years of the program, problematize practices uncritically reproduce, modify conceptions and improve the practice of teaching. Thus, this analysis provides conceptualizations and training proposals that could support not only the activity of those who are responsible for designing and conducting such projects, but also to the production of knowledge in the field of teacher training in university teaching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]