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This paper builds on two research projects on initial and in-service education of teachers, their professional experience, and the pathways they travelled to become teachers. The policy documents analysed and the teachers’ professional histories, the micro-ethnographies and the discussion groups developed, allowed us to draw a broad picture of the development of the initial teacher education in Spain. Three fundamental stages were identified: (a) developmentalism and the last stage of Franco’s dictatorship; (b) constructing democracy and (c) the implementation of the European Higher Education Area. Our research shows that the reform implemented in each period represented a clear intention to professionalise teachers’ work and to move beyond the view of initial education as vocational training by transferring it to the university. Meant a move towards improving the relationship between theory, educational research and practice; and left a set of unfulfilled challenges.

[full article in English] This article builds on the results of a research project into the professional experience of seven academic women in universities and research centers in Catalonia, Spain. The aim of the Project was to explore the personal and professional experience of three generations of women in the process constituting their identity as university teachers, researchers and managers. The writing of their professional life histories has enabled us to investigate how they, as women, have become the types of higher education teachers, researchers and managers that they were becoming, and we wished to delve into the relationship between their personal experiences and the development of their professional careers. In this process, we have revealed the strategies of adaptation, resistance and creation developed by women, the forms of symbolic violence that they experience and the changes through which their careers have passed within the context of an institution that is still continuously revealed by different studies to be deeply discriminating and unequal for women.

Resumen: Ese artículo comienza con una panorámica sobre la proliferación de información propiciada por las tecnologías digitales y sus posibles consecuencias y efectos para la generación de conocimiento. Además de para la comprensión de la complejidad de una realidad que se nos ofrece filtrada y ruidosa en ese alud de información. Sigue con el análisis de cómo esa realidad repercute en la educación formal. Aquí se exploran algunos de los desafíos que han sido formulados tanto para replantear las finalidades de los sistemas educativos, como los modos de aprender y enseñar. A continuación, se presentan diferentes investigaciones realizadas por el grupo de investigación Esbrina. A partir de ellas se da cuenta de cómo estudiantes y docentes están experimentando esos cambios en sus vidas y cómo afectan las relaciones pedagógicas en las que participan. Finalmente, se pone en cuestión algunos aspectos del propio relato. Especialmente el determinismo adaptativo y acrítico que se genera desde los organismos e instituciones, que asumen lo nuevo sin analizar sus consecuencias en los modos de conocer, las relaciones sociales, los enfoques del trabajo y las desigualdades sociales. Lo que nos lleva a concluir urgiendo a la necesidad de debatir y plantear un proyecto de vida en común. Abstract: This article begins with an overview of the proliferation of information provided by digital technologies and their potential implications and effects on knowledge generation. In addition to understanding the complexity of a reality that we are offered filtered and noisy in this avalanche of information. It continues with the analysis of how this reality affects formal education. Here we explore some of the challenges that have been formulated both to rethink the aims of educational systems and the ways of learning and teaching. The following is a presentation of different research projects carried out by the Esbrina research group. From them, we see how students and teachers are experiencing these changes in their lives and how they affect the pedagogical relationships in which they participate. Finally, some aspects of the narrative itself are questioned. Especially the adaptive and uncritical determinism that is generated from the organisms and institutions, which assume the new without analysing its consequences in the ways of knowing, social relations, work approaches and social inequalities. This leads us to conclude by urging us to debate and propose a project of common life.

In the last 40 years, Spain became from a country of emigrants to a destination for immigrants. The 0.46% of immigrants of 1975 (165,000 of 36,012,682 people) went up to 12% (5,598,691 of 46,063,511) in 2009. The sudden demographic, economic, social, cultural, political and educational consequences of this move have been considerable. In this chapter, after offering an impressionist picture of this new scenario, we focus on the implications of this phenomenon in the educational system during two periods of the recent Spanish history, before and after the social and economic crisis. In these two periods, the arrival of immigrants was considered as a problem and maybe now could be an opportunity to rethinking schooling and develop a more comprehensive curriculum. Immigrants have arrived to school to remain, and that opens the possibility of promoting a more inclusive education for all in a more open and fair society.

In the last four years, we have been researching how five groups of young people were learning inside and outside secondary schools. The novelty of this proposal was to invite these young people to act as researchers by carrying out their own ethnographic cases. As a result we produced 10 ethnographic reports – 5 prepared by students and 5 by the university research team. In this paper, we show part of the conversation between the five ethnographic reports written by us giving account of the processes and results of the studies implemented by students. This meta-ethnographic process tries to accomplish two main objectives: (a) to characterise the variety of youth’ learning experiences in their mobilities and transitions in and outside schools and the ways of giving account of them in the ethnographic reports; (b) reporting own learning about the possibilities and limitations of the meta-ethnographic analysis.

This paper contains the developments, discussions and decisions made in our research group since its inception in 1994. To do this, first, we situate the socio-historical context of the development of educational research in Spain. Second, we describe the evolution of the group, which led to a name change, a redefinition of the research topics and a greater accuracy in the definition of our ontological, epistemological and methodological positions. This includes our perspective on technology, visualities and educational environments. Finally we exemplify these concepts in two European projects we are developing right now. For us, research is not only inseparable from the academic task, but essential to go beyond the common sense and to be able to provide evidence on the complex phenomena that shape education. But, above all, it represents the best way to improve our work as teachers and educators. Keywords: educational technology, educational research, research methodology, research and theory.