Skills learning through a Bilingual Mentors Program in higher education

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study was to demonstrate the effectiveness of a Bilingual Mentors Program to develop cognitive, non-cognitive or second language skills on senior and freshmen university students, respectively, from two different Degrees at the University of Granada (Spain). Two Degrees were involved in this project, English Studies provided student mentors and Primary Education Teacher Training provided mentees. The procedure consisted of the following steps: (a) a collaboration agreement between institutional staff responsible for both Degrees was reached, (b) a sampling process was designed and implemented, (c) measurement instruments were built and selected, (d) mentors training for two 90 minutes sessions took place, and finally, (e) the program intervention itself consisted of 10 90-minute mentoring sessions delivered during one semester. The results show significant size effects for most of the dependent variables analyzed for mentors and perceived benefits on second language command for mentees.

KEYWORDS:

• Mentoring
• bilingual education
• cognitive skills
• language attitudes
• integrative motivation
• maintenance bilingual education
• CALP

Notes on contributors

José L. ArcoTirado, Ph.D., has over 16 years of teaching and research experience on national and international research institutions and projects. Before entering the University of Granada he worked at the Provincial Center for Drug addiction and the Andalusian School of Public Health with different positions, tasks and responsibilities. He has taught different courses at different grades and academic levels such as undergraduate, graduate and postgraduate. He currently teaches three courses (Educational Psychology, Learning Disabilities and Developmental Psychology) on a bilingual group at the Faculty of Education, University of Granada. Dr Arco focuses his research interests on different topics like bilingual education, counseling, peer tutoring, service-learning, motivation and learning strategies and public program evaluation. He has published several books and articles in national and internationally indexed and recognized journals and editorials.

Francisco D. Fernández-Martín, Ph.D., is Tenure Professor at the Department of Developmental and Educational Psychology, University of Granada (Spain). For almost 13 years he has been teaching in Higher Education at the same time implementing several innovation and research projects tied to the improvement of quality in the Higher Education, Compulsory Education and Elderly Education. Prof. Fernández-Martín has a large experience on implementing public program evaluations, research studies and assessments in the education field with particular focus on entrepreneurship skills, plurilingual education, civic-community engagement (peer learning and service-learning), counseling and guidance services, inclusive education (special educational needs and bullying) and elderly education. As a result of this experience, he has published several articles on nationally and internationally recognized journals and publishers, and several books, book’s chapters and papers on international and national congress and conferences.

Nuria Hernández-Moreno currently works as a secondary English teacher. She received her degree in English Studies from the University of Granada in 2012. During her degree, she was an Erasmus student in the UK in two consecutive years, in 2009–2010 in Essex, and in 2011–2012 in Aberdeen. She has an M.A. in Foreign Language Teaching from the University of Granada. Her job as a secondary English teacher in Madrid sparked her interest in the impact of digital tools on learning so she is currently enrolled in a Master of e-Learning and Educational Technology from the University of Camilo José Cela, Madrid.

ORCiD

José L. Arco-Tirado http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8390-9724