¿Es necesaria la formación del profesorado en metodologías inclusivas?

El desafío, que actualmente se plantea la escuela, es el de conjugar la didáctica curricular con la inclusión educativa. La inclusión social y escolar desempeña hoy un papel fundamental en la aplicación de políticas y prácticas educativas eficaces e inclusivas. Pero, cabría preguntarse, ¿están preparados los docentes para ello? ¿Las metodologías y sus organizaciones responden a estos enfoques inclusivos? O, por el contrario, ¿se necesita más formación para los docentes generalistas? La investigación que se presenta indaga, a través de un cuestionario, en estos aspectos. Los resultados muestran la percepción de 606 profesores curriculares y de apoyo de las escuelas secundarias de segundo grado estatales de la ciudad italiana de Messina. El análisis de los datos pone de manifiesto la necesidad de una mayor formación y colaboración entre los profesores; así mismo, evidencia diferencias estadísticamente significativas en relación con la formación inicial del docente respecto a la respuesta a la diversidad y su valoración respecto a las ventajas que la inclusión puede aportar al aprendizaje, al clima socioafectivo y al crecimiento profesional. The challenge the school must take up currently is to combine school teaching activities with educational inclusion. Social and school inclusion has a key role in implementing efficient and inclusive educational policies and practices. However, a question should not be left unanswered: are teachers ready for this? Are methodologies and their techniques in line with these inclusive approaches? Or, on the contrary, is it necessary to have more training for generalist teachers? The aim of this paper is to investigate, through a questionnaire, these aspects. The results show the perception of 606 curricular and support teachers in high schools in the town of Messina. Data analysis reveals the need for a higher level of training and cooperation among teachers and at the same time points out statistically significant differences among teachers’ initial trainings in relation to response to diversity and their opinions about the benefits inclusion can have on learning, socio-affective environment and professional advancement.

Foreign language education in rural schools: Struggles and initiatives among generalist teachers teaching English in Mexico

In many countries, English as a foreign/second language (L2) teaching has become compulsory in urban and rural public schools. In rural areas, the challenges for the implementation of this state-sanctioned policy have been explored among L2 teaching specialists. However, this mixed-methods study considered a different teacher group and examined the struggles and initiatives of generalist teachers who are obligated to teach English in rural schools. To this end, data were collected from 115 teachers in 17 rural secondary schools in the Southeast of Mexico. First, the participants completed a survey with closed-ended questions that elicited information about teacher education, teaching experience and knowledge of the rural school system. Then, a subsample of participants completed an individual thematized semi-structured interview. They were selected on the basis of L2 teacher education involvement. In the survey data, response patterns were identified using frequency analyses. The interview data were analyzed using categorical aggregation. The data revealed that the generalist teachers struggle with L2 professionalization, sociocultural and instructional challenges. Nonetheless, only few participants have been engaged in L2 teacher education which could help them overcome these challenges. Instead, they rely upon limited strategies to counteract the day-to-day challenges at the expense of effective L2 teaching practices.

Editorial

It is my immense pleasure to share with you the first 2021 issue of Studies in Second Language Learning and Teaching. It brings together five papers reporting the findings of empirical studies as well as two reviews of very recent publications. The issue opens with the contribution by Mariusz Kruk, Mirosław Pawlak, and Joanna Zawodniak, who investigate changes in the levels of boredom experienced by 13 Polish university students majoring in English during four EFL classes as well as factors responsible for such fluctuations. Multiple sources of data were applied which included boredom-grids, where participants indicated the intensity of this negative emotion on a 7-point Likert scale at 5-minute intervals, class evaluation forms, narratives, semi-structured interviews with four students after each class, and lesson plans. A combination of quantitative and qualitative analysis demonstrated that boredom was indeed subject to between- and within-class variation, which resulted from various constellations of variables, with repetitiveness, monotony and predictability playing a key role. In the second paper, Xiaowan Yang and Mark Wyatt report a qualitative case study which examined teachers’ beliefs about learners’ motivation and their own motivational practices, and the actions they actually took in this respect in the classroom in the context of teaching English for Specific Purposes (ESP) in China. The analysis of the data collected from three university-level teachers of business English by means of pre-observation interviews, in-class observations and stimulated recall interviews yielded evidence for tensions between participants’ cognitions and practices they engaged in, showing that such mismatches negatively affect their self-determination. The existence of this cognitive disharmony is attributed to scarce opportunities for professional development, outdated knowledge about motivation and cultural influences. The theme of ESP also features in the following paper by Cailing Lu, Frank Boers and Averil Coxhead, who explored understanding of technical terms included in a list of technical words related to Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) with the aim of determining which of these terms should be emphasized during instruction. The requisite data were collected by means of a word association task, drawing on Read’s (1998) Word Association Test, as well as retrospective interviews from 21 BA students in China and New Zealand. The analysis showed that although the students manifested good understanding of the targeted items, especially high-frequency ones, some Chinese participants experienced difficulty understanding mid- and low-frequency words. By contrast, the Western learners mainly struggled with Chinese loan words, but their comprehension was not impacted by cultural differences. In the fourth paper, Bryła-Cruz reports the findings of a study which looked into the role of gender in the perception of English segments by Polish learners of English as a foreign language. The data were collected from 40 male and 40 female secondary school students who were asked to indicate the sound they heard in 20 sentences containing minimal pairs. The differences between males and females failed to reach statistical significance for most targeted segments and while the hierarchy of perceptual difficulty was not identical for both groups, it was similar, which suggests that differences between the sound systems of the first and second language might trump the mediating role of gender. In the final paper, Jesús Izquierdo, Silvia Patricia Aquino Zúñiga, and Verónica García Martínez shift the focus to the context of foreign language education in rural schools in southeast Mexico, zooming in on the challenges faced by generalist teachers, or non-language specialists, tasked with the job of teaching English. The data were collected by means of questionnaires administered to 155 such teachers in 17 schools and semi-structured interviews with those who manifested the greatest involvement in professional development. Using frequency analysis and categorical aggregation, the researchers show that generalist teachers are confronted with a wide array of problems related to their professional preparation, instructional techniques used as well as the sociocultural realities of L2 instruction in rural communities. In addition, only a few teachers are prepared to develop professionally, relying instead on limited strategies that help them combat the challenges they encounter. The issue also includes two book reviews by Jarosław Krajka and Mirosław Pawlak. The first book deals with the assessment of English proficiency among young learners while the second is devoted to research into learning and teacher psychology from the perspective of complex dynamic systems theory (Larsen-Freeman & Cameron, 2007). I am hopeful that all the contributions will provide food for thought to our readers and inspire them to further disentangle the intricacies of second language learning and teaching.

Comparing Canadian Generalist and Specialist Elementary School Teachers’ Self-Efficacy and Barriers Related to Physical Education Instruction

Purpose: We aimed to explore and compare generalist and physical education (PE) specialist (males and females) elementary teachers’ self-efficacy to teach and the barriers perceived when teaching PE. Methods: Canadian elementary school teachers completed the validated online survey, Teacher Efficacy Scale in PE, with 11 additional questions examining the perceived strength of barriers related to teaching quality PE. Results: Specialist teachers’ self-efficacy (n = 296) was significantly higher (p < .05) than that of generalist teachers (n = 818). Gender was found to predict teachers’ self-efficacy, with female generalists reporting the lowest scores on the Teacher Efficacy Scale in PE. There was a statistically significant difference between the perceived strength of nine out of the 11 listed barriers, with generalist teachers reporting barriers as more inhibitory than specialists. Discussion/Conclusion: This study highlights the gap between generalists’ and specialists’ self-efficacy to teach and the perceived barriers when teaching PE. Efforts specifically targeted to supporting female generalists teaching PE are necessary.

LAS COMPETENCIAS PROFESIONALES QUE REQUIEREN LOS DOCENTES GENERALISTAS QUE IMPARTEN EDUCACIÓN FÍSICA

Las competencias profesionales de la asignatura de educación física tienen el propósito de formar integralmente a los estudiantes, desde esa perspectiva los docentes generalistas que imparten la asignatura con el objeto de desempeñar su labor con responsabilidad y fomentar en los estudiantes una cultura de movilidad, necesitan la adquisición de dichas competencias. Actualmente se evidencia que estos profesionales de la educación, debido a una necesidad institucional imparten algunas horas de la asignatura de educación física, sin embargo, su conocimiento de las competencias de la materia es limitado. Por lo que, infiriendo en el adecuado desempeño del alumnado y considerando esta situación, la investigación aborda como objetivo el analizar el estado actual de los conocimientos profesionales que requieren los docentes generalistas en relación a las competencias necesarias para impartir la materia antes descrita. La aplicación del método histórico lógico, permitió comparar las ideas propuestas con otras investigaciones como antecedentes; además, gracias a la elaboración de una encuesta compuesta por 20 preguntas cerradas como técnica de recopilación de datos, se logró obtener información acerca de las necesidades de 10 docentes generalistas que constituyen la población total de la institución seleccionada para la investigación. Para interpretar los resultados se realizó un análisis estadístico descrito a partir del método cuali-cuantitativo, demostrando que los docentes generalistas necesitan de un programa metodológico que enriquezca sus conocimientos en competencias para la asignatura de educación física, permitiendo que asuman con responsabilidad los desafíos que el sistema educativo presenta. PALABRAS CLAVE: competencias profesionales; docentes generalistas; educación física. THE PROFESSIONAL COMPETENCES REQUIRED BY THE GENERALIST TEACHERS WHO PROVIDE PHYSICAL EDUCATION ABSTRACT The professional competences of the subject of physical education have the purpose of integrally training students, from that perspective the generalist teachers who teach the subject in order to carry out their work responsibly and foster a culture of mobility in students, need the acquisition of these skills. Currently it is evident that these education professionals, due to an institutional need, complete some hours of the physical education subject, however, their knowledge in the subject competences is limited. Therefore, inferring in the adequate performance of the students and considering this situation, the research aims to analyze the current state of professional knowledge required by generalist teachers in relation to the skills necessary to teach the subject described above. The application of the logical historical method, allowed to compare the proposed ideas with other investigations as antecedents; In addition, thanks to the preparation of a survey consisting of 20 closed questions as a data collection technique, it was possible to obtain information about the needs of 10 generalist teachers who constitute the total population of the institution selected for the research. To interpret the results, a statistical analysis was carried out, described using the qualitative and quantitative method, demonstrating that generalist teachers need a methodological program that enriches their knowledge of competencies for the subject of physical education, allowing them to responsibly assume the challenges that the educational system presents. KEYWORDS: professional competences; general teachers; physical education.

The potential of Lesson Study in primary physical education: Messages from a longitudinal study in Japan

This paper presents the view that Lesson Study has the potential to make a significant contribution to future developments in primary physical education. To set the paper in context, we explore the concerns that have long been voiced about primary physical education, particularly the nature of the professional development experiences of generalist primary class teachers. Contemporary approaches to teachers’ professional development, one of which is Lesson Study, are presented as having some potential in addressing these concerns as they are focused on teacher collaboration, autonomy and agency. Building on this background, the paper reports on a longitudinal physical education Lesson Study investigation that took place in one primary school in Japan: a country where Lesson Study has been a key feature of teachers’ professional development for more than a century. Working with 30 teachers over a three-year period, the findings highlight how the long-term, collaborative and situated nature of the Lesson Study experience helped create a positive context for the teachers’ professional development in physical education. Specifically, the findings reveal that the shared planning, observation and reflective experiences over time helped the teachers develop a more positive and detailed view of physical education. The paper concludes by proposing that Lesson Study, as a long-term, collaborative and situated endeavour, has the potential to foster productive developments in generalist teachers’ enactment of the primary physical education curriculum.

Playing to our strengths: Generalist teachers’ experiences of class swapping for primary physical education

Class swapping is the process whereby a generalist primary school teacher with a particular subject expertise and interest swaps classes with a teacher colleague and they teach each other’s class a specific area of the curriculum. Instances of class swapping for physical education (PE) have been noted in many countries, but there is currently no explicit research into this practice. Consequently, this research investigated the experiences of two generalist teachers with additional PE expertise teaching PE to classes other than their own in two Irish primary schools over two separate intervention periods totalling 18 weeks. The participants’ experiences of class swapping for PE were analysed using qualitative data generated by individual interviews, pupil focus groups, researcher observations and teacher reflections. Hargreaves and Fullan’s theory of professional capital was used as a theoretical framework. The lead teachers’ expertise and enthusiasm for PE provided the pupils involved with rich PE experiences. The opportunity to teach additional PE also increased the lead teachers’ ability and motivation to provide further PE leadership within their schools. Furthermore, class swapping contributed to increased teacher interactions focused on teaching and learning. These findings make a worthwhile contribution to our understanding of class swapping and its potential to enrich pupil experiences in primary PE settings where generalist teachers operate.