This work focuses on the teaching and assessment of the learning-to-learn (LTL) competence in university degrees, and its results come from a three-year research project [1]. LTL is a key competence for lifelong learning in the European education systems (EU, 2006 & 2018). The definition of LTL relies mainly on the scientific literature on Strategic Learning (Weinsten, 1988) and Self-Regulated Learning (Pintrich, 2004; Zimmerman, 2002).
At the beginning, the researchers included three dimensions to explain how students ‘learn to learn’: cognitive (skills, strategies and techniques related to information processing), metacognitive (awareness and management of the learning processes) and affective-motivational (self-concept, motivation, etc.) (Hoskins & Fredriksson, 2008).
Later, a fourth dimension was added: the social/relational dimension, rooted in the social-cognitive theory (Thoutenhoofd & Pirrie, 2013). These ideas clearly influenced the current proposal of the EU (2018), who has renamed LTL as ‘personal, social and learning to learn competence’ (Caena, 2019; European Comission et al., 2020).
Based on a literature review, our research team developed a model on LTL, including these four dimensions and we added an ethical dimension (Gargallo et al. 2020). The student has to learn respecting ethical codes and contributing to create an increasingly equitable society (OECD, 2005; Cortina, 2013; Buxarrais & Conceiçao, 2017).
The objective of the European Union was for the students to achieve an adequate mastery of LTL at the end of compulsory schooling. However, it is not proved that university students handle it with an adequate skill, and they need specific training (Cameron and Rideout, 2020; Viejo and Ortega-Ruiz, 2018).
That’s why we are developing an intervention model to teach this competence, which can be useful for European researchers and university professors. We are trying to test functional proposals to teach the competence, integrated into the teaching of university degree subjects. To do this, we defend a “constructive alignment” (Biggs, 2005), in which competences, contents, learning outcomes, and teaching and assessment procedures are aligned to achieve learning of quality.
In this way, the learning tasks to teach the competence can be used as assessment procedures, from a perspective of authentic tasks and authentic assessment: learning projects, problem solving, case studies, portfolios, etc. Furthermore, organized, and systematic observation will be a good procedure to assess the achievement of LTL.
Then, we developed the curricular design of LTL, specifying dimensions and sub-dimensions to work on, in the different subjects of the university degrees and in their academic years. We also concretized assessable learning results, contents and teaching and assessment procedures, and made the necessary materials.
Later, we are applying the training proposals organized in the previous phase, in two universities of Valencia (Spain) in different degrees (Education, Medicine, Engineering, and Architecture), and collecting evidence to assess the possible success achieved.
In this work, we present the results of the training proposals developed in the previous phase, in one of the subjects of the Education area. This is a first test to validate our proposal, specifically in the Theory of Education subject, which is taught in the 1st year of the Pedagogy degree at the University of Valencia.
[1] ‘The learning to learn competence in the university, its design and curriculum development. a model of intervention and its application in university degrees’ Project PID2021-123523NB-I00, funded by the MCIN/AEI /10.13039/501100011033 and by ERDF A way of making Europe.
