Theoretical Framework, Research Question and Objective

The educational model advocated by the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) focuses on learning skills so that all curricular and organizational elements are defined around the competencies that the student has to acquire (Holmes, 2001).

In Spanish universities, the skills set out in the design and Postgraduate Degrees is taking place in accordance with the classification given in the Tuning Project (González & Wagenaar, 2003), which mentions two types of skills: the generic or transversal,  common for all degrees, and specific skills, characteristic to each degree.

Currently there is no doubt need to include two separate kinds of skills in the university curriculum, insisting, as a novelty, on the generic (Badcock, Pattison & Harris, 2010). This pedagogical approach allows for the comprehensive education of students, not only for entry into the world of work, but also for life in general. Generic skills are aimed at achieving an adequate education in democratic values and human development, while specific competencies enable the acquisition of skills and professional skills specific to the field of study.

Evaluation is one of the key elements of the curriculum (Cowan, 2010), so in continuous interaction with the rest, should seek to highlight the achievement of predetermined competencies. Since university teaching practices are changing, the same can be said of the evaluation practices (Gilles, Detroz & Blais, 2011). One of the changes being developed at European universities aims to give the students more involvement in the evaluation process of acquiring skills (Trevitt, Breman & Stocks, 2012). This achieves the objective that assessment has the potential to engage students in reflection, metacognition and encourage them to take greater control of their learning (Hodgson & Pang, 2012).

One way to increase student participation in their own assessment and help us reflect on it, whilst being fully aware of the limitations that entails (Braun, Woodley, Richardson & Leidner, 2012), is to allow students to comment on their level of achievement with regard to their skills. This opinion, together with that of the teacher, in order to check if the student scores are consistent with the degree of competence development (Goodman, Arbona & Dominguez, 2008), and that while this relationship should occur at all times (Braun, Sheikh & Hannover, 2011), sometimes it does not happen (Lopes, Branco & Jimenez-Aleixandre, 2011), predominantly due to an overestimation of skills acquired (Baartman & Ruijs, 2011).

In the present work we start from the following research question: What is the level of achievement of specific and generic skills in first-year students of Primary Education from their own perception?

The objectives are:

1. Rate the overall level of acquisition of specific and generic skills developed by students.
2. Analyze the degree of development of the skills acquired by students in each of the subjects studied.
3. Observe the relationship between the level of achievement of competencies from the perception of students and grades earned by it.

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