The Linguistic Competence in the frame of the transition to the Grade: assessment and training

Author(s):

Hugo Gonzalez Gonzalez(submitting)Clara Chacón Muñoz(presenting)Gemma Fernandez-Caminero José Luis Álvarez Castillo

Conference:

ECER 2017

Network:

09. Assessment, Evaluation, Testing and Measurement

Format:

Paper

Session Information

09 SES 08 B, Investigating the Validity of Assessment and Grading Practices and Their Effect on Student Achievement

Paper Session

Time:

2017-08-24

09:00-10:30

Room:

W5.18

Chair:

Stefan Johansson

Contribution

In the current educational paradigm, among the competences, which are the responsible for molding the curriculum all over the world (Labraña, A. M., Durán, E., Ajenjo, G., y Hansel, G., 2010), a competence which stands behind our students’ success must be highlighted. It is the competence in Linguistic Communication (Pérez Esteve, 2008). The Reading Competence, as a fundamental part of the linguistic communication, is no longer understood as a mere decoding of texts in the early school years, and now it is seen as an ongoing combination of knowledge, skills and strategies that the individuals are developing along their lives, in diverse contexts and with different aims (OCDE, 2006). In the year 2004, Montanero Fernández realized that the evaluation of this complex skill was being repeatedly used as one of the most discriminatory indexes, by emphasizing the educative differences between regions and countries.

The research carried out by the Junta de Andalucía (2012), has confirmed the results of Pérez Esteve from a quantitative point of view. So, it is observed that the level of the Communicative Competence in Secondary Education correlated with the results obtained after assessing the level of other competences, like the mathematic or the scientific ones.

It is necessary to consider the international evaluations like the TIMSS or PISA (OCDE, 2003, 2006, 2009, 2012, 2015), which state that the level of the Spanish student in the Communicative Competence, and in the other ones, is below the average. This situation is also the same in the first year of the Grade in all Spanish universities. According to Velásquez Rivera, Cornejo Valderrama y Roco Videla (2008), the low performance of the university students in comprehension tasks when taking national and international tests, is a well-known situation by all of us. Teachers and researchers of the educational area have pointed at the urgency to design and implement developing programmes of reading skills in all the academic levels.

It is also a fact that the imbalance that exists between the results obtained in Secondary Education and requirements in the University stage produces a high rate of academic failure among the students (MECD, 2012; García, M., & San Segundo, M. J., 2001). So, taking into account the peculiarities of the university context and the difficulties that our students have to face, we have implemented the first phases of a project of innovation (Nº Projects 2014-12-4001 y 2015-2-6012) during the academic courses 2014/2015 y 2015/2016. Its main objective is to reduce the negative effects which are typical of the normal transition from the Secondary Education to the University.

Bearing this objective in mind, several teachers from the Department of Education of Córdoba University have been implementing an educational model which is composed of three stages: Firstly, an initial evaluation, followed by a stage of training in the Linguistic Competence, finishing with a final assessment. The preliminary results seem to be promising and they will contribute to improve our students’ possibilities when facing the challenges which are typical of their new educative stage.

Method

In order to reduce the difficulties concerning the gap between the level of Competences learned in Secondary Education and the level required in the Grades, it was created a web where several texts recommended by the OCDE can be found. The OCDE suggests that these texts, which were used years ago in their international standard tests, can be used by teachers in their classes with the aim of improving the level of the Linguistic Competence of their students. The texts were organized according to their level of complexity and the students could access to the new text only once the previous task had been done. There were eight texts, one per week, together with a group of texts used in the initial and final evaluation. The activities consisted of a reading of the texts and several questions about them. Secondly, the student could access to the criteria of the evaluation of the texts. According to these criteria, they had to do a self- assessment of their answers to mark their work. It is important to highlight that this self-assessment activity takes place only in the training phase (8 weeks). In the initial and final evaluation, the teachers were who evaluated the students’ answers. In this way, the design was Pre-post with control and experimental groups. The sample was composed of 348 students from the first course in the Grades of Primary Education, Pre-school Education and Social Education.

Expected Outcomes

The results of the initial, formative and final tests are conclusive. Particularly, it is observed an initial level of the Linguistic Competence which is medium-low, and a significant improvement after the training phase. Moreover, the level of improvement is higher in the groups that have participated in the training phase (experimental groups) in contrast to the progression observed in the control groups. Although these results have not been confirmed yet, it is anticipated a higher academic performance in the different subjects that the students of the experimental groups are studying in their Grades. Nevertheless, it is obvious the importance of keeping on improving the level of the Communicative Competence, not only because of the data collected in this research, but also due to the high level of participation and requests of the students. Thanks to this experience they have had, they are now more conscious of the great significance of having an adequate level of this so transcendental Competence.

References

García, M., y San Segundo, M. J. (2001). El rendimiento académico en el primer curso universitario. X Jornadas de la Asociación de Economía de la Educación. Downloaded from: ftp://ftp.puce.edu.ec/Facultades/CienciasEducacion/Maestria/CienciasEducacion/Econom%C3%ADa%20de%20la%20Educaci%C3%B3n/Garcia_SanSegundo.pdf Junta de Andalucía. Consejería de Educación, Cultura y Deporte (2012). Guía de evaluación de destrezas lectoras. Educación Secundaria Obligatoria. Sevilla: Agencia Andaluza de Evaluación Educativa Labraña, A. M., Durán, E., Ajenjo, G., y Hansel, G. (2010). Plan de estudios basado en competencias para la carrera de nutrición y dietética de la Universidad de Concepción, Revista Chilena de Nutrición, 37, 302-307. MECD (2012). Proyecto de Integración Curricular de las Competencias Básicas 2012/2013. Downloaded from: http://www.mecd.gob.es/cniie/investigacion-innovacion/competencias-basicas.html Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte (2012). Datos y Cifras del Sistema Universitario Español. Downloaded from: http://www.mecd.gob.es/dctm/sue/datos-y-cifras-sistema-universitario-espanol.pdf?documentId=0901e72b814eed28 Montanero, M. (2004). Cómo evaluar la comprensión lectora: alternativas y limitaciones. Revista de Educación, 335, 415-427. Downloaded from: http://www.revistaeducacion.mec.es/re335_25.htm OCDE (2002). Literacy Skills for the World of Tomorrow: Further Results from PISA 2000. Descargado de: http://www.oecd.org/pisa OCDE (2003). Learning for Tomorrow's World – First Results from PISA 2003. Downloaded from: http://www.oecd.org/pisa OCDE (2006). PISA 2006 Science Competencies for Tomorrow's World. Downloaded from: http://www.oecd.org/pisa OCDE (2009). PISA 2009 Results: what students know and can do. Downloaded from: http://www.oecd.org/pisa OCDE (2012). PISA 2012 Results: What Students Know and Can do: Student Performance in Mathematics, Reading and Science (Volume I) [Revised edition February 2014]. Downloaded from: https://www.oecd.org/pisa/keyfindings/pisa-2012-results-volume-I.pdf OECD (2015). Education at a Glance 2015: OECD Indicators. OECD Publishing, Paris. Downloaded from: http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/eag-2015-en. Pérez Esteve, P. (2008). La comprensión lectora y la competencia en comunicación lingüística en el nuevo marco curricular: algunas claves para su desarrollo. CEE Participación Educativa, 8, 41-56. Velásquez Rivera, M., Cornejo Valderrama, C., y Roco Videla, A. (2008). Evaluación de la competencia lectora en estudiantes de primera año de carreras del área humanística y carreras del área de la salud en tres Universidades del Consejo de Rectores. Estudios Pedagógicos, 1, 123-138.

Author Information

Hugo Gonzalez Gonzalez (submitting)

University of Cordoba, Spain

Clara Chacón Muñoz (presenting)

IES Manuel Reina, Spain

Gemma Fernandez-Caminero

University of Cordoba

Education

Cordoba

José Luis Álvarez Castillo