A digital tool designed to support secondary education teachers’ professional development and to develop students’ oral language competence

Abstract

Digital tools can guide and support teachers in professional development programmes. The aim of this study was four-fold: (1) to explore changes introduced in classroom methodology by secondary school teachers during their participation in a professional development programme, using the digital tool EVALOE-DSS, based on conversational methodology; (2) to analyse the impact of introducing conversational methodology in the development of students’ oral competence; (3) to determine the relation between students’ self-perception of oral competence and self-perceived emotional competence; and (4) to find out the teachers’ opinion about their experience in the programme. The instruments used were the digital tool EVALOE-DSS, the Test of Self-Perceived Oral Competence, the Self-Report of Emotional Intelligence, the Trait Meta-Mood Scale, and a satisfaction questionnaire. The study was developed in four phases: initial intensive training, intervention using the digital tool for four months, students’ assessments and teachers’ evaluations. The results of teachers’ self-assessments using the EVALOE-DSS showed that their self-assessment of classes significantly improved throughout their participation in the programme. In addition, students whose teachers participated in the programme were self-perceived as more competent at oral language, and this had a positive influence on their self-perception of emotional competence. Finally, teachers were positive about their participation in the training process using the EVALOE-DSS. In conclusion, this study seems to suggest that a professional development programme using a Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) tool could provide an important strategy for increasing teachers’ oral language teaching quality and improving student learning.

Keywords:

• Digital tool
• language learning
• oral language competence
• secondary education
• teachers’ professional development

Acknowledgments

Authors would like to acknowledge the support of the middle schools (INS Pere Calders -Cerdanyola, INS L’Estatut - Rubí, Escola FEDAC - Barcelona, IES Beatriz Galindo -Madrid, IES Las Canteras - Villalba) and the teachers’ participants in the research.

Disclosure statement

The authors report there are no competing interests to declare.

Institutional review Board statement

The study was conducted according to the guidelines of the Declaration of Helsinki and approved by the Institutional Review Board of University of Barcelona (protocol code IRB00003099 and 21st December 2020) and Deontological Committee of Faculty of Psychology, Complutense University of Madrid (2020/21-007, 29th October 2020).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (Spain) under grants PID2019-105177GB-C21 and PID2019-105177GB-C22 by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033.

Notes on contributors

Marta Gràcia

Informed Consent Statement: Informed consent was obtained from all subjects and/or tutors -when minors were concerned- involved in the study.

Marta Gràcia PhD from the University of Barcelona, postdoc at the Austin University (Texas). Full professor in the Department of Cognition, Development and Educational Psychology in the Faculty of Psychology of the University of Barcelona. Coordinator of the CLOD research group (Communication, Oral Language and Diversity) and coordinator of the Interuniversity Doctorate program in Educational Psychology (DIPE). Her research and publications in recent years have focused on collaborative work with teachers and families, and in developing digital tools to contribute to the development of oral communicative and linguistic competence in children and adolescents.

Jesús M. Alvarado

Jesús M. Alvarado PhD from the Complutense University of Madrid. Professor in the Department of Psychobiology and Behavioral Sciences Methods in the Faculty of Psychology of the University Complutense de Madrid (UCM) and Director of the UCM research group ‘Cognitive Psychology: Measurement and Modeling of processes’ https://memopro.weebly.com/. His current research interest is psychological and educational evaluation focused on the validity of tests, psychometric and factor analyses.

Fàtima Vega

Fàtima Vega PhD from the University of Barcelona (Programme in Education and Society). Lecturer. Her research focuses on advising teachers in L1 teaching and learning using digital tools, naturalistic intervention and augmentative and alternative communication (AAC).

Maria Josep Jarque

Maria Josep Jarque MA in Linguistics (University of New Mexico, USA) and PhD by University of Barcelona (Interuniversity Programme in Educational Psychology). Lecturer. Her research interests lie primarily in the fields of language development (spoken and signed) and language intervention in school setting supported by digital tools.

Pamela Castillo

Pamela Castillo Doctoral student at the University of Barcelona (Interuniversity Programme in Educational Psychology). Her research and publications in recent years have focused on collaborative work with teachers and families supported by digital tools to contribute to the development of oral communicative and linguistic competence in children.

Ana Luisa Adam-Alcocer

Ana Luisa Adam-Alcocer MA in Education Sciences (Merida, Mexico) and PhD by Ramon Llull University (Programme in Psychology). Her research interest lie primarily in the fields of support for people with DID, quality of life, inclusive education and language intervention in school setting supported by digital tools.