Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

A report on teaching profession and teacher education with improvement proposals has been published by the  Spanish Ministry of Educational and Vocational Training (MEFP, 2022), putting up both of them under discussion. Thanking to this Journal for this debating initiative, his article is a contribution specifically focusing on teacher professional development. My election is due to two main reasons. Firstly, because the in-service professional stage, what last for some decades, is the most decisive factor for teacher learning and teacher development, the most influential for student school experiences and learning outcomes, so as for institutional and system education and society. Secondly, because in recent times continuing teacher education become almost invisible found gone, out of focus although the generalized recognition of its important. Some evidence of it is the way teacher professional development is considered and tea by the official Report and also by some of the published reactions to it by different voices. The first point of the article analyzed and valued the official approach to the issues in question, what it is said and proposed. A managerial halo, some linguistic and conceptual carelessness and criticized. The second point offers a broad characterization of teacher learning and teacher development and, finally, the third one sketch out relevant dimensions of teacher continuing education, framework and purposes, content, processes and different political and professional necessary conditions and supports.

In January 2022, the Spanish Ministry of Education and Professional Training published a document with 24 reform proposals to improve the teaching profession. After a series of generic considerations on the role of teachers and their impact on the quality of teaching, the document proposes 24 improvement measures that it submits to debate by professionals and experts in this field. The proposed measures refer to the central issues of teacher training: access to studies, initial training for both the Preschool and Primary stages as well as for Secondary, permanent training, access to the profession, specific training linked to different teaching specialties and professional development of teachers. Seen as a whole, the proposed measures and the pedagogical philosophy that underlies them tries to set up a new "model of the teaching profession". This article critically analyzes this professional model from a perspective focused on a more systemic and institutional vision of teaching as a profession, built from the axes of collegiality and teamwork.

Teacher training and improving the teaching profession has been a challenge for education systems for decades. Everything, or almost everything, we expect from education, from teaching and learning, from pre-school to university, is related to it. And although the need to recognise and dignify teachers’ professional work is frequently highlighted, we are still a long way from turning words into tangible realities with the necessary levels of consistency. If as stated in the Report drafted by the International Commission on the Futures of Education (2022) “teachers are key figures on whom possibilities for transformation rest”, rethinking their initial and ongoing training must not be delayed, whatever our territorial, educational, or social environment. With this in mind, we welcome the opportunities opened up by the "24 Reform Proposals for the Improvement of the Teaching Profession", which the Ministerio de Educación y Formación Profesional (MEFP) has recently made available to the educational communities and to society in general. We also present a series of reflections, evidence, proposals and more, with the clear intention of adding new arguments to the deliberations and decisions to be made, including the cross-discipline report written by the authors on the Master's Degree in Teacher Training for Compulsory Secondary Education, Vocational Training and Language Teaching (MUPF) in the nine Catalan Universities that offer it, based on an initiative by the Agència per a la Qualitat del Sistema Universitari de Catalunya (2021). The analysis carried out, using data obtained through the Framework for the Validation, Monitoring, Modification and Accreditation of recognised university degrees (VSMA) adopted by the AQU, identifies results, conclusions and challenges for the future that align with some of the 24 proposals made in the MEFP Discussion Paper.

The current global context has been described by the scientific community as a time of both ecological and social emergency. In this scenario, a reform of the teaching profession is proposed, and its rationale is outlined in the Document of the 24 reform proposals for the improvement of the teaching profession of the Ministry of Education. Taking the aforementioned document as a reference, in this paper we try to reflect on and share some ideas about what a new teaching professionalism could be like, one that is aware of and co-responsible for alleviating the profound eco-social tensions we are experiencing. And we do so using everything we have learned in our university teaching over our years of experience, with a special focus on the last two academic years, in which we have implemented profound changes in our teaching, driven by the need and urgency of events. For this reason, our first proposal is not to discard everything we have learned during this time and to analyse which aspects of the new practices we want to preserve and to which places we would not like to return once the pandemic is over. In this article, we propose four elements for a new professionalism that, we believe, should be at the heart of the debate on new teacher training plans: care, experimentation and the reflective professional, collaboration and trust, and dialogue as a habitat for teacher work.

The Spanish Ministry of Education published in January 2022 under the title: 24 reform proposals for the improvement of the teaching profession, a document that seems to come to collect the idea of the proponents of "promoting a debate" that leads to proposals that improve the teaching profession. To respond to this invitation to the debate, we have thought it convenient to carry out a review of the different investigations that the research team that I have coordinated has developed in the last thirty years in relation to beginner teachers and induction programs. Throughout the article we describe the characteristics of the different induction programs aimed at beginner teachers that we have promoted in Spain and outside Spain. Programs that have been developed at different levels of the educational system, including the university. The experience accumulated in these thirty years allows us to affirm that -in line with the results of international research- induction programs are essential if we are really concerned about quality teaching. But the reality in Spain is far from being aligned with the countries most concerned about their educational quality. If we ask ourselves, how do you learn to teach? In many countries the answer to this question is: designing a continuous, diverse training program rich in training experiences that help new teachers learn the language and knowledge of practice. The answer in Spain is the classic one: you learn to teach by teaching.

Teachers are the key and the spearhead for the success of any educational reform. However, it rarely becomes the focus of a proposal specifically aimed at the teaching profession. The Document “24 reform proposals for the improvement of the teaching profession” represents one of those occasions in which the gaze is focused on that group of professionals who make teaching and learning their reason for being. The Ministry of Education and Vocational Training presented it in January 2022, in compliance with the seventh additional provision of the LOMLOE (BOE 12/30/2020). This article echoes the relevance of a reform proposal that aims to improve the teaching profession and the education and professional development of teachers.The reading and analysis of the cited document, and a dive between its lines, encouraged me to select those aspects and proposals most committed to attention to the interaction between theory and practice: teachers who produce knowledge, professional skills, access to the teaching profession and the relevance of initial education. All of them account for the relations between theory and practice, explicitly or implicitly.I have organized the content of this article into two main parts. The first contains a global look at the document of the 24 reform proposals, its structure and contents, and the critical analysis of the aspects mentioned in the previous paragraph.The second will be dedicated to delving into the relationship between theory and practice in initial education; passionate relationships, elusive, but essential when it comes to understanding the problems of teaching in the process of being a teacher.

Presentación del tema correspondiente al número 32, que lleva por título "Dialogando sobre las 24 propuestas del MEFP para la mejora de la profesión docente".

In Memoriam José Ramón Alberte Castiñeiras

Presentation of the contents of issue 32th

Desde fines del siglo XX se difundió la idea de la inteligencia emocional (IE) y su importancia en prácticamente todos los ámbitos de la vida social e individual. Dado que, a diferencia del coeficiente intelectual, la IE se puede desarrollar, se ha ido agendando como un factor educativo. Como muchos problemas públicos, se incorporó primero a la agenda de algunas asociaciones civiles e incluso se fundaron otras para atender específicamente la educación social y emocional. También la han agendado algunos gobiernos locales y nacionales. En este artículo cuestiono la incorporación de la educación socioemocional en la agenda de los organismos internacionales encargados de la educación (UNICEF, UNESCO, OCDE, OMS), partiendo de la idea de que estos influyen de manera importante en la agenda pública de los gobiernos. La hipótesis es que la problemática educativa en torno a la educación socioemocional la han incorporado no solo el UNICEF y la UNESCO, que se centran en las cuestiones educativas más urgentes como la asistencia a la escuela, la alfabetización y la equidad de género, sino también, y de manera importante, la OCDE.