La formación inicial del profesorado de Educación Primaria dese la perspectiva de las competencias profesionales docentes: Visión supranacional y estudio comparado entre China y España

Abstract

Nowadays both the globalized trend and the challenges that arise requiring the citizens to have sufficient knowledge and adequate skills. Focusing on the education field, it requires the improving the quality of teachers. As it is considered that at present the responsibility of the teachers is not only to deliver the knowledge, but also they have to acquire certain competencies in order that, firstly, the students can develop their necessary knowledge, secondly, the teachers can acquire the emotional social intelligence with a result of an integrated development. The phenomenon configures a trend that it must pay more attention to teacher competencies in the area of pre-service teacher education. This also took place both in China and in Spain. To carry out the (pre-service) training of the teacher staff attending to the teaching competencies, these countries have made several renovations. These changes, including both the international education development and the renewal in the area of pre-service teacher training, support an opportunity of the realization of this present research. In addition to these reasons, it should be noted that the differences and similarities in the educational systems and teacher education between China and Spain that author observes and experiences in two countries have become another necessary prerequisite for this study. It is very interesting that although there are differences between these two countries in culture and evolution of the education system and teacher training, convergences can be found. All of these offer the possibilities to carry out a comparative study. In this circumstances, these motivations can be translated into two purposes of the thesis: “obtain the convergences and divergences between China and Spain from the perspective of the primary professional teaching competencies” and “present some recommendations based on the Chinese educational context”. Based on aforementioned, it is necessary to delimit the following general objectives and their corresponding specific ones to carry out concretely the comparative study: General objective 1. Describe and comprehend teacher training and teacher professional competencies from the perspective of historical development with the purpose of providing a basic context for carrying out the comparative studies. General objective 2. Contextualize the training of teachers in the supranational field through the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the European Union (UE), the World Bank (WB) and the Organization of States Ibero-American (OEI) in order to obtain an international view of (pre-service) teacher education. General objective 3. Describe the recent historical development in the last years and the current situation of Primary Education in the educational systems of China and Spain. 3.1. Make a review of the evolution of the characteristics of Primary Education in China and Spain based on the legislation. 3.2. Describe the current situation of Primary Education in China and Spain based on the legislation, and taking into account variables such as legislative framework, the current organization of education system, principles and objectives, didactic organization and structure of evaluation, etc.. General Objective 4. Describe the recent historical evolution situation in the last years and the current situation of the pre-service primary teacher training in China and Spain. 4.1. Describe the recent evolution of the primary pre-service teacher training in China and Spain. 4.2. Describe the current situation of primary pre-service teacher training in China and Spain, taking into account variables, elucidating variables such as its legislative framework, its organization of institution, its initial educational level, its access criteria, its didactic organization and its final qualification and degree, etc. based on the legislation. General objective 5. Compare the primary pre-service teacher training in China and Spain from the perspective of teaching professional competencies, which is the core of the study of comparison. 5.1. Analyze the emergence and evolution of the term of competency in China and Spain. 5.2. Describe the theoretical framework of the competency model in the area of education. 5.3. Describe the theoretical framework of the competency model in the area of primary pre-service teacher training. 5.4. Recognize the convergences and divergences both the policies and initiatives on the teacher professional competencies of China and Spain. 5.5. Discover the perceptions about the professional competences in the primary pre-service teacher training and the plan of study of the Normal Universities to know the current state of the training initiatives of futures primary teachers in Normal Universities. 5.6. Provide and construct the recommendations to contribute to the development of (primary) professional teacher competences in the context of China. 5.7. Provide the valid empirical data that contribute to the development and strategies to improve the quality of primary education of teachers. For the realization of these objectives, it is carried out through mainly the comparative study. Before carrying out this study, the thesis begins with a theoretical framework divided into three chapters. In Chapter 1. Teacher training in society from a general perspective, including: the definition of teachers, the profession of teaching and teacher education; the importance of teacher education; the historical development and current state of teacher education; and in the same way, it also deals with the training of Primary Education teachers. Chapter 2. Profile of Teacher professional competencies, this chapter also has a totally theoretical nature. It begins with the definition of “teacher professional competencies”, “professionalism, professionality and professionalization” and “competency and qualification”. The second section deals with the competency model to explore the origin in the work environment. And the third part focuses on professional skills for teaching of the primary teacher. Finally, we try to justify the professional competence for the primary teachers with which to establish the third category of comparison: the competences of Primary Education future teachers. Chapter 3. Supranational framework of (pre-service) teacher training, it is sought to contextualize teacher education at the supranational level through the OECD, UNESCO, WU, BW, and OEI in order to obtain a point of international view of teacher training. And Chapter 4 the methodological framework, as presented in the previous section, including the hypothesis and the objectives; the introducation of methodology used in the investigation; foundations and comparative study design and phases of the study. The comparative study was carried out in Chapter 5. China; Chapter 6. Spain; Chapter 7. Juxtaposition and comparison. According to the procedures and progress of the study, three phases are distinguished: first, the phase of description and interpretation (see 5.2 and 6.2.), in which the comparative parameters and indicators are established in three categories: I. educational system and Primary Education (I.1. Education system; I.2. Primary Education; I.3. Evaluation of Primary education). II. Pre-service teacher education in general and pre-service in Primary Education stage (II.1. organizational structure of pre-service teacher education; II.2. entry requirement for the pre-service teacher education in Primary Education; II.3. access to pre-service teacher education in primary Education; II.4. curricular structure of primary pre-service teacher education; II.5. process of pre-service teacher training in Primary Education). III. The professional competence of Primary Education (III.1. organizational structure; III.2. the professional dimension of competency; III.3. cognitive dimension of competency; III.4. instrumental dimension of competency; III.5. attitudinal and affective dimension of competency; III.6. professional beliefs) in which the indicators are established to collect data from two selected countries. But before carrying out the descriptive phase, Chapter 5 and 6 establish a contextual framework focusing on the territorial, socio-political and economic state according to the educational context (sections 5.1 and 6.1). Although the two countries have the convergences both in the development of education and in the training of the teachers staff, China and Spain are in possession of different culture and history. Based o these, this phase can provide a basis for carrying out the following phases of the comparative study. With these data, Chapter 7. Juxtaposition and comparison, through analyzing the three categories including their relative parameters and indicators, presents all the data in a confronted manner in order to obtain the convergences and divergences between both countries and presents them in the tables, and if necessary, in the figure, too. Based on all the previous stages, especially the data coming from the juxtaposition, it is also a phase of obtaining the results. And the Chapter 8. Final conclusions: reflections of the results that includes the reflections of the results through presenting the convergences and divergences of both category I, II and III. And the last, Chapter 9. Prospect and limitations of the research, according to these final conclusions it will give the recomendations from the perspect of pre-service teacher education in China in order to improve the quality of it. Finally, they indicate the limitations of the study and new lines of investigation.