Ongoing Research projects

Summary

Research on teaching writing in compulsory schooling has undergone extensive development in our country and in the last decade, in line with international research. However, there is a lack of transfer of the results to all teachers and therefore a low impact on classroom practice. When students arrive at university they have a very low writing level which suggests that students spend little time writing in school. This in turn suggests that teachers are not aware of the need to adequately address the complex teaching-learning process that writing requires and the need to break the dynamics of poor teaching of written composition that continues throughout schooling and that affects the preparation with which students access the Master’s Degrees. This project assumes that it is necessary to interrelate a) the reflective processes of the learners at the time of writing, b) the creation of dialogic spaces in the context of written composition to develop critical reasoning and c) the implementation of interventions in the classroom aimed at accompanying the teaching-learning processes. The project is organized around a series of specific objectives: (1) to characterize the students’ knowledge and content on written composition and critical reasoning in the subject programs; (2) design a direct instruction intervention; (3) implement this direct instruction design in the classrooms of Teacher Degrees; (4) know through the analysis of the texts written by the students if such intervention has produced improvement; (5) indicate if there is transfer when students write a text outside the margins of the designed intervention; (6) know the degree of ability of students to reflect on their own texts; and (7) prepare an orientation document for teachers in charge of the Teacher Degrees. In the context of global, interconnected and rapidly transforming societies, this project aims to respond to these needs in two ways: not only we are in the position of forming future critical and communicatively competent citizens. These citizens, in the development of their teaching profession, must become aware of the importance of this knowledge and know how to teach it. In this respect, a set of guidelines for teacher training will crystallize in a final document that will help to disseminate the results obtained.

Project details (project led by GREIP)

• Dates: 01/09/2021 – 31/08/2025
• Funding entity: Ministerio de Ciencia y Innovación
• Code:  PID2020-117813RA-I00
• Budget: 41,091€
• PI: Dr. Xavier Fontich
• Other UAB members: Dr. Dolors Masats Viladoms
  • Work team: Marcos Troncoso Diáz (predoctoral student), Juddy Torres Villamil (predoctoral student)
  • Participating institutions: Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona; Universidad de Zaragoza; Universidad Complutense de Madrid; Universidad de Extremadura; Universitat Internacional de Catalunya; Fontys Hogeschool Sittard (Holland); Université de Paris (France); Université de Cergy-Pontoise (France); Universidad Nacional de la Plata (Argentina); Instituto Politécnico de Setúbal (Portugal); Pädagogische Hochschule Heidelberg (Germany); Université du Québec à Montréal (Canada); Odense University (Denmark)

Summary

This project is part of the Horizon Europe programme HORIZON-CL2-2024-TRANSFORMATIONS-01-08.

The ALPHABETICA project adopts a multi-method and participatory approach for the study of the impact of arts-based education on the holistic development of children/young people, while also focusing on the transformative effect of their active participation and empowerment in their learning process for lifelong learning and addressing future challenges.

The project focuses on finding transferable and replicable solutions that can be used in various socio-economic-cultural contexts, and that ensure that all children can access arts-based education and assessing if, how and where skills developed through arts-based education can be transferred and stimulate lifelong learning. Some research questions that guide the project include:

1. What is the subjective understanding and perception of art by children, young people, parents and other stakeholders in education and society?
2. How do the arts and art education promote a more holistic and engaged learning experience and sustain a commitment to lifelong learning beyond traditional educational settings?
3. How does art education impact children’s and young people’s ability to cope with the challenges imposed by complexity in different social domains?
4. What actions and good practices at local and national level can ensure equal and wide access to arts to all children?

In order to respond to these questions and to ensure the engagement of young people as active civil society actors, the project builds on five main theoretical and methodological approaches:

1. Arts-based education
2. Participatory Action Research – PAR
3. Pedagogies of care, love and enchantment
4. Pedagogies of past, present and the imagined future
5. More-than-Human

Through a participatory and practice-based approach, ALPHABETICA’s ambition/vision is to have a transformative impact on the teaching of arts and arts-based education by bridging research gaps, by activating arts-based educational training to make art education available to all children, and by assessing and validating the instrumental outcomes of the transferable approaches learned through the arts and arts-based education.

Project details

• Dates: 01/01/2025 – 30/06/2028
• Funding entity: Ministerio de Ciencia y Innovación
• Code:  HEU_101177819_ALPHABETICA
• Budget: 2.978.702,50 € – Amount granted UAB: 240.750€
• PI: Dr. Claudia Vallejo
• GREIP team: Dr. Melinda Dooly, Dr. Júlia Llompart, Dr. Dolors Masats, Dr.Emilee Moore, Dr. Claudia Vallejo (PI), Marta Arumí, Mireia Vargas, Gema Rubio, Postdoc: Dr. Denise Holguín
  • Participating institutions: Università di Bologna – UNIBO; Open University – OU; Oxford Brookes University – OBU; Interkulturalni PL – IPL; Synthesis – SYNT; Universidade NOVA de Lisboa -NOVA; Elhuyar – ELH; Università di Torino – UNITO; Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona – UAB; União de Refugiados em Portugal -UREP; Kirklareli İl Özel İdaresi – Kirkareli; Ministero della Cultura – MiC; Save the Children – StC IT
• Website: ALPHABETICA

Summary

AILIT addresses the sector priority on the “Development of key competences” by offering an engaging way to learn and practice reading and writing in a collaborative and networked way, providing authentic reader and writer roles for students in primary education. This is done by creating an AI-driven platform that scaffolds students writing and lets students read and work on each other’s writing across geographical and linguistic borders. This project addresses these concerns by matching students’ texts to student readers in other countries, applying state-of-the-art human AI-technology to establish authentic reader and writer situations. The cutting-edge innovation in AILIT is the application of recommender algorithms to make sure that the students get texts that trigger their interest, and the offering of digital scaffolding material (video, text and audio) as a complement to conventional teacher scaffolding of students’ writing. AILIT addresses the sector priority on tackling learning disadvantage, early school dropout and low proficiency in basic skills. It will allow each student write at their own level, and still find an audience interested in reading the text. The digital scaffolding material also allows some students to self-teach, and may potentially give the teacher more time to focus their guidance on students with special educational needs.

Project details (GREIP as research team member)

• Dates: 01/09/2022 – 31/08/2025
• Funding entity: Erasmus+ KA220-SCH – Cooperation partnerships in school education
• Code: 2022-1-NO01-KA220-SCH-000087617
• Budget: 400,000€ (total project); UAB: 38,967
• PI: Dr. Arild Michel Bakken (Universitetet i Stavanger, Norway)
• GREIP members: Dr. Melinda Dooly (PI UAB), Dr. Xavier Fontich, Dr. Dolors Masats, Dr. Emilee Moore.
• Other partners:
  • Universities: Universiteit Twente (Belgium), Dublin City University (Ireland), Universidade de Aveiro (Portugal), Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (GREIP team)
  • Schools: Fjelltun skole (Norway), Escola Les Llisses (Spain), Scoil Mhuire Gan Smal (Ireland)

Summary

The project defines plurilingual and intercultural education as a “holistic concept” that “sets out to foster the development of integrated linguistic repertoires in which languages interrelate and interact” (§3.i.). The project facilitates this development by providing decision-makers in schools with a clear rationale for holistically rethinking language education, valuing the entire language repertoire of the learners, and at the same time developing concrete tools and teaching materials for teachers in secondary schools, where languages are often considered in isolation. These tools and materials can be adapted to different contexts. They are based on existing ECML resources, most notably on the Framework of Reference for Pluralistic Approaches to Languages and Cultures (FREPA/CARAP). The rationale and the tools is complemented by a series of inspiring examples of practice from across Europe.

Project details (GREIP as a research team member)

• Dates: 2024 – 2027
• Funding entity: ECML (European Centre for Modern Languages)
• Code: www.ecml.at/integrateddidactics
• Budget: 80,000€ (total project); UAB: 18.000€
• PI: Dr. Christian KOCH (Universität Siegen)
• GREIP members: Dra. Dolors Masats (PI UAB)
• Other partners:
  • Universities: The University of Warsaw (Poland), University of Utrecht (The Netherlands), Universität Siegen (Germany), Université du Maine (France), Pädagogische Hochschule St. Gallen (Germany), Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona (Equip GREIP)