Person in charge: Dr Moises Esteban Guitart.

Analyses, design, implementation and assessment of educational and community programmes for educational personalisation and contextualisation. The fundamental purpose is to provide learning processes with personal and social meaning and value. An ecological-systemic conception is adopted taking micro, meso and macro levels into consideration. At the same time, work is carried out on identifying and developing educational personalisation and contextualisation strategies, resources and experiences. More specifically, the main line of research-action is based on the development of the funds-of-knowledge perspective, as well as the proposed theory of identity and community funds.

Person in charge: Josep Maria Serra Bonet.

A shared and cross-cutting concern among several members of the group is improved teacher-training. This concern has been dealt with through two specific projects. The first, under the approach of funds of knowledge and identity, aims to establish relationships of mutual trust and collaboration between the school and families for improving school learning and performance. The teachers, within the framework of study groups, regarded as examples of practice communities and learning and training contexts, visit the homes of some of their students, who are in vulnerable situations, with the aim of identifying the families’ skills and abilities and enabling them to link them to the of the families and being able to link them to the school curriculum and practicals. The second focuses on the notion of “Real Practical Situations” as a heuristic and methodological tool for linking theory and practice in training future primary-school teachers.

Person in charge: Victor Lopez Ros.

This line of research is based on studies and analyses of teaching and learning processes in the area of Physical Education and Sport. An important part of the production here is centred - and remains directed - on the study of educational-influence mechanisms, in an attempt to answer the question: how is the educational-aid process coordinated and carried out to ensure learning, considering the joint activity and its organisation, as unit of analysis? What interests us is understanding what the participant players do, in natural settings (in ecological contexts) make so that learning certain content is possible. A second large area of research has to do with studying and analysing several sports-teaching models at educational stages. What interests us is having guidance models available that help out primary-school teachers and sports specialists in their teaching and that these models, besides having sound theoretical bases, are supported by empirical data.

Person in charge: Julie Waddington

At the same time, it is also a line of research and intervention that seeks the transformation and improvement of educational practice from an inclusive perspective. More specifically, it is based on the consideration and analysis of organisational changes in the school environment that enable greater personalisation of educational practice to improve all the students’ academic performance. That means developing school-education practices that help all students to progress academically, beyond their native language and knowledge of the vehicular language. It is based on the need to consider and treat the languages and cultures of the students’ families in classes educationally to promote knowledge of the school language. That way emphasis is put on increasing students’ self-esteem and the meaning that the secondary school and its educational practice have for them.

Person in charge: Thomas Castelain

This line of research focuses on the appearance and development of epistemic surveillance, trust, social hierarchies and reasoning among pre-school children. Another interest is in understanding the underlying processes that explain why collaborative learning and the impact of culture on its development can be so powerful. It is therefore based on experienced methods implemented in development and intercultural environments. A complementary line of research aims to apply this knowledge to generate educational proposals that enable improvements to the collaborative-learning instructions and their implementation at school, as well as foster activities that can have a positive impact for the development of the argumentative and reasoning skills among infants-education children.

Person in charge: Alfredo Jornet

The current climate and social-injustice crisis, and the need for structural and systemic change that it entails, present an existential challenge to all social standards; and to education as well. What is the meaning of educating for a future that is not only uncertain but where the same possibility of having a future, any future, is uncertain? What can or must be the goals and educational approaches in a context where the most basic conditions for maintaining a decent life are not guaranteed but systematically threatened? How can our educational practices and research close the gap between knowledge and action characterising the current situation? This line of research tackles these questions through several forms of participatory research-action, involving educators, students, civil-activist platforms, and governance, with the aim of understanding as well as of transforming the current educational realities.