Schools In Catalonia Research Articles

Exploring educational ecosystems: insights from the implementation of SchoolWeavers tool in Catalonia

ABSTRACT Education has undergone significant changes, leading to more complex and collaborative approaches that recognize schools as ecosystems where diverse stakeholders interact. Consequently, new processes and tools are needed to promote leadership within these ecosystems. To guide school leadership teams, we developed and piloted the online tool ‘SchoolWeavers’, which fosters relationships and collaboration across the ecosystem to improve learning and well-being. This study examines the initial outcomes of using SchoolWeavers as a school leadership strategy in five schools in Catalonia, Spain, by surveying 1,615 members of the ecosystem, including teachers, leaders, staff, families, students, and community professionals. The aim is to investigate school ecosystem dynamics through the domains addressed by the tool, such as empathy, trust, shared purpose, innovation, collaboration, equity, and personalized learning, identifying opportunities for improvement and ways to foster stronger educational ecosystems. Leadership teams showed the highest scores and positive perceptions, while students rated the domains lower. Community professionals had low participation, indicating weaker collaboration with the community. Trust and equity received the highest scores, whereas innovation and personalized learning were less valued. This study highlights the need for tools to strengthen educational ecosystems and identifies areas for improvement, particularly in innovation and student agency.

Maladaptive eating behaviors and health-related quality of life in Spanish children

In children, assessing health-related quality of life (HRQoL) and identifying the factors that can influence it are essential to understanding their overall health and well-being. Although eating disorders in children have been associated with reduced HRQoL, the impact of maladaptive eating behaviors, such as external eating, emotional eating and restrained eating, on children's HRQoL has not yet been prospectively explored. Therefore, the aim of this study was to determine whether external, emotional and restrained eating at baseline was associated with HRQoL in children after 14.65 months (95% CI: 14.57–14.73) of follow-up. The study involved 690 boys and 681 girls aged between 8 and 10 years, recruited from primary schools in Catalonia (Spain). To assess the relationship between external, emotional and restrained eating behaviors at baseline and HRQoL at follow-up, the Dutch Eating Behavior and KIDSCREEN-10 questionnaires were used, respectively. After adjusting for sex, age, intervention allocation group, school, maternal education, zBMI and physical activity, external and emotional eating behaviors at baseline were negatively associated with HRQoL at follow-up (p < 0.01). These associations were attenuated after final adjustment for HRQoL at baseline. Furthermore, a composite score of maladaptive eating behaviors at baseline was created by summing the individual scores for emotional, restrained and external eating behaviors. This composite score showed a significant inverse association with HRQoL at follow-up, even after adjusting for baseline HRQoL (p = 0.024). In conclusion, external and emotional eating behaviors seems to negatively affect HRQoL prospectively in Spanish children. The composite score of maladaptive eating behaviors showed a stronger inverse association with HRQoL than each eating behavior individually. Trial registration numberISRCTN registry: ISRCTN68403446; Date of registration, August 01, 2014 ′Retrospectively registered'.

P-463 Transforming teen fertility awareness: the impact of a specialized health education initiative delivered by senior human reproduction nurses in high schools

Abstract Study question Can we enhance fertility awareness among young individuals through targeted health education? Summary answer The initiative, led by senior human reproduction nurses, demonstrated a remarkable increase of 23.78% in fertility knowledge among adolescents. What is known already Understanding factors impacting fertility is key to making informed reproductive decisions. However, a pervasive gap exists in evidence-based fertility knowledge within Western societies, underscoring the need for specialized health education. Young adults often overlook fertility considerations until they encounter challenges in conceiving. Interestingly, recent findings indicate that although fertility awareness is valued amongst young people, it can also lead to stress and anxiety. Therefore to foster early and impactful learning, introducing fertility education to high school curriculums is recommended. Study design, size, duration The reproductive health and fertility awareness initiative was conducted across five public high schools in Catalonia, Spain, during the 2022-2023 academic year. The training consisted of 45-minute presentations delivered by 2 senior human reproduction nurses and focused on modifiable factors influencing fertility. To assess the success of the initiative, we compared teenagers’ knowledge before and after the educational sessions. Participants/materials, setting, methods During the academic year, presentations reached 157 high school students. Assessment was carried out through the virtual platform “Kahoot”, employing 10 multiple-choice questions with 4 response options. The responses before and after the intervention were recorded and analyzed using a paired Fisher’s exact test. P-values &amp;lt;0.05 were considered significant. Main results and the role of chance Prior to the initiative, the correct response rates to the fertility questions varied, with averages ranging from 47.6% and 73.8%. Following the fertility awareness presentation, when students were asked the same questions, there was a marked improvement in student performance. Average scores improved to 89.0%, 90.2%, 88.1%, 84.5%, and 89.5% across the respective schools. These improved scores were significant across all five high schools (p-values: 0.0074, 0.0229, 0.0221, 0.0006, 0.0163), emphasizing the effectiveness of the initiative in varying educational environments. The overall average of correct answers initially stood at 64.5%, and significantly increased to to 88.3% (p &amp;lt; 0,0001) post-intervention, reflecting a relative improvement of 23.8%. The consistent increase in knowledge across diverse student demographics suggests that the program’s content was well-received and comprehensible, contributing to its success. Limitations, reasons for caution The initiative only included participants from Catalonia, which may introduce regional biases, limiting broader applicability. Translating increased knowledge into sustained behavior change remains a challenge. A longer-term follow-up period would provide insights into the retention and application of fertility knowledge over time Wider implications of the findings The positive reception and rapid knowledge assimilation among students underscores the potential of targeted health education, extending empowerment beyond classrooms to influence their future reproductive health decisions. This initiative also lays groundwork for addressing potential disparities in fertility knowledge, which has implications for promoting equitable access to reproductive health information Trial registration number not applicable

The Impact of Territorial and Demographic Factors on Academic Performance in Public Schools Across Catalonia

Decades-old studies found students in schools from small municipalities academically lagging behind urban peers due to location and economic factors, but recent data reveals some schools in these areas now match or surpass urban school performance gains. For this reason our study examined the influence of territorial and demographic size on academic achievement in public schools in Catalonia. The data for this analysis were obtained from the publicly accessible database of the Department of Education, which contains the results of the assessments of basic skills and knowledge at the end of primary education from 2009 to 2023. Advanced statistical methods were applied to explore the relationship between academic achievement and demographic variables, such as population size and the territorial area of the students’ municipality of residence. The results demonstrated a significant correlation, but of limited magnitude, between territorial size and academic performance in the subjects evaluated.

Online assessment practices during the pandemic in secondary schools in Catalonia

ABSTRACT During the COVID-19 pandemic, teachers had to face different teaching and assessment challenges. This study aims to analyse the relationship between the assessment practices of teachers (related to their assessment conceptions) with their self-perceived level of teachers’ digital competence (TDC) and their received TDC and assessment training courses. For this, the authors applied an online questionnaire that analysed the case of secondary school teachers in Catalonia (Spain) (n = 278). Results show that participating teachers who have the highest self-perception of TDC are the ones who perceive themselves as integrating mainly formative assessment. Significant correlations were also found between recent teacher training and the kind of assessment practices carried out by participants. Official certification of TDC also has a statistically significant association with different assessment characteristics and purposes. Finally, the implications of these findings for pre-service and in-service teacher training are discussed, both regarding the TDC and the assessment competence.

Audio Description Practice in the Catalan L1 Classroom

Audio description (AD) has been successfully used in educational settings, especially in foreign language learning—often in combination with other audiovisual translation modes. Most studies have focused on advanced foreign language learners, in the context of higher education. The use of AD in school settings, and in connection with L1, is a promising but arguably under researched area, which our study explores. The AD workshop conducted in a Catalan secondary school in the realm of the research presented in this article is now part of a forthcoming catalogue of activities to encourage the use of Catalan among students, which is published by the Generalitat de Catalunya and addressed to Catalan schools. The article outlines the pedagogical design of the intervention, its main results, limitations, and ways forward. We report a positive effect of practising AD on students’ lexical and syntactic abilities in Catalan and an important impact on their awareness on blindness and functional diversity, as well as the development of critical thinking and empathy. One of the challenges of the activity was to evaluate students’ productions and another was to deal with multilingualism and translanguaging in the classroom, two key aspects that are also discussed in the article. Lay summary Film audio description is an aural description of what happens on screen inserted between dialogues and important sounds. It is a mode of audiovisual accessibility for persons with blindness or low vision, but we can also use it in education. In this context, students create an audio description as a way of practising their language skills: this is called didactic audio description and it has been used with success in foreign language learning in universities. Our study explores the use of didactic audio description in secondary school and in the local language of instruction (L1). Our project took place in a secondary school in Catalonia. The project involved two researchers (the authors of this article), a professional audio describer, a teacher of Catalan, and 80 students aged 12-13. These students participated in a workshop. The workshop included a presentation of what audio description is, a first practice, and a guided final practice. This final practice consisted in the audio description of a short film where the main character is blind: The Fish and I, by Babak Habibifar (2020). In this article we inform on didactic audio description, we explain the methodology of our study, the realisation of the workshop, and our most important results. These results concern the main benefits of didactic AD in L1 in secondary school. The most important results are: The benefits of didactic AD for developing language skills in L1. The benefits of didactic AD for developing other competences, such as working in team or analysing a film. The benefits of didactic AD for making students aware of blindness and diversity. The benefits of didactic AD for the revitalization of Catalan, a minority language. The article also presents the difficulties that the research team encountered. Some of these difficulties were evaluating the students’ work and dealing with multilingualism in the classroom.

Passive exposure and perceptions of smoke-free policies in hospital and university campuses among nursing students: A cross-sectional multicenter study.

Outdoor smoke-free regulations reduce exposure to secondhand smoke (SHS) and help to denormalize tobacco use. As future key agents in health promotion, nursing students' attitudes should agree with tobacco-control policies. The objectives of this study were: 1) assess nursing students' exposure to SHS in nursing schools, 2) explore their perceptions of compliance with the existing smoke-free regulations in acute-care hospitals; and 3) describe their support for indoor and outdoor smoking bans on hospital and university campuses. This was a cross-sectional multicenter study conducted in 2015-2016 in all 15 university nursing schools in Catalonia, Spain. A questionnaire gathered information on SHS exposure, awareness of the smoke-free regulation in acutecare hospitals, and support for smoke-free policies in indoor and outdoor areas of hospitals and university campuses. Participants were nursing students attending classes on the day of the survey. We performed descriptive analyses and calculated adjusted prevalence ratios (APR) and 95% confidence interval (CI). Of 4381 respondents, 99.1% had seen people smoking in outdoor areas of their university campus, and 75.2% had been exposed to SHS on the campus (6.0% indoors and 69.2% outdoors). Nearly 60% were aware of the smoking regulation in place in acute-care hospitals. There was widespread support for smoke-free indoor hospital regulation (98.7%), but less support (64.8%) for outdoor regulations. Approximately 33% supported the regulation to make outdoor healthcare campuses smoke-free, which was higher among third-year students compared to first-year students (APR=1.41; 95% CI: 1.24-1.62), among never smokers (41.4%; APR=2.84; 95% CI: 2.21-3.64) compared to smokers, and among those who were aware of the regulation (38.4%; 95% CI: 1.37-1.75). Exposure to SHS on university campuses is high. Nursing students express low support for strengthening outdoor smoking bans on hospital and university campuses. Interventions aiming to increase their support should be implemented.

Education "in" a regional or minority language

Catalonia has developed a model of schooling in which Catalan is the medium of instruction and both Catalan and Spanish are compulsory subjects. In 2020, the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia ruled that at least 25% of teaching must be delivered in Spanish in all schools in Catalonia, raising the issue of whether this obligation conforms to the undertakings chosen by that Spain under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. To clarify, we first need to answer the following question: what does “education in a regional or minority language” mean? This paper provides an answer to this question based on the interpretation of the Committee of Experts of the Charter, and addresses two side issues: whether education in a regional or minority language can be compulsory for all pupils, and under what scenarios would it be legitimate to enforce the use of the State’s official language in schools where a regional or minority language (RML) is the medium of instruction. A conclusion is reached that may offer guidance for future discussion on the role of the State’s official language(s) in RML-medium schools.

Attitudes towards single parents’ children in private and state-dependent private schools: experimental evidence

Single parenthood is on the rise worldwide. While acceptance of single-parent households is increasing, some authors point out that single-parent families still suffer from negative societal attitudes compared to heterosexual two-parent families, while also being among the most vulnerable groups of society. Motivated by these findings, we study whether private and state-dependent private schools in Catalonia (Spain) are more reluctant to interact with single parents than with heterosexual couples. We conduct a field experiment during the children’s pre-registration period. We create three types of fictitious families (heterosexual couple, single mother, and single father) and send e-mails to schools in which the family structure is made explicit. Our results indicate that schools are more prone to interact with single parents than with heterosexual couples.

School principals’ actions to promote informal learning among teaching staff

ABSTRACT The development of informal learning (IL) by the teaching staff relates to the generation of contextualized learning at the school which is integrated into daily working life. This study analyses the roles and actions of school principals in the generation and promotion of teaching staff’s informal learning and is based on the application of online questionnaires to a sample of 686 participants, 415 principals and 271 teachers from schools in Catalonia (Spain). The study begins with a descriptive-comparative analysis between the two groups that make up the sample spread and ends with the development of four multiple regression models that allow for the verification of the independent effects among the variable criteria used and the four roles of the school principals considered for informal learning. The results show that principals perform the majority of the actions presented; however, they show differences of opinions with teachers in the frequency of performing several actions.

Self-touching, genitals, pleasure and privacy: the governance of sexuality in primary schools in Spain

ABSTRACT Until December 2020, Spanish primary schools were not required to provide any kind of sexuality education, and most teachers did not receive training to carry it out. However, sexuality is clearly present in children’s daily lives in school. We carried out qualitative research with teachers from four primary schools in Catalonia (Spain), aiming to explore how teachers without specific training in sexuality approach the issues in the classroom. Our analysis shows that teachers in the four schools governed children’s sexuality in a gendered manner, using communicative vigilance and surveillance to regulate how children touched their own genitals. Findings suggest the need for continuing professional development and training to ensure teachers (re)think what adults may communicate to children about sexuality and gender when they have not received training in relationships and sex education.

Successors’ Future Training in Family Farms: The Impact of Intrinsic and Extrinsic Factors

This study examines the effects of different intrinsic and extrinsic-to-potential successors’ factors on the willingness of potential successors of family farms to continue training in the future. Building on socioemotional wealth (SEW) theory and a knowledge-based view, we consider the potential successors’ (yet students in agricultural schools) perspectives, and conceptually and empirically examine whether they believe intrinsic factors, namely, their own personal interest and willingness to create a new business, as well as extrinsic factors, namely, confidence in farm viability and the fact that they have been instituted as successors, influence their willingness to continue training in the future. Our unique data on 156 students enrolled in agricultural schools in Catalonia (Spain) reveal that while intrinsic factors increase potential successors’ tendency toward continuous training, extrinsic ones, contrary to our expectations, do not. These findings address an important practical issue in terms of family farm successors’ perceptions, offering contributions to agriculture, family business in general, and family firm succession literature in particular.

Why do opt-out movements succeed (or fail) in low-stakes accountability systems? A case study of the Network of Dissident Schools in Catalonia

External and standardized assessments based on student results are a contested education policy among school actors. Movements of opposition have emerged in different countries, especially in those contexts with high-stakes accountability systems. However, this phenomenon has not been analyzed in soft accountability systems. The objective of this article is to study the opt-out movement in Catalonia, understood as an anti-standardization movement in a system of soft accountability. In order to do so, we adopt the case study approach as a methodological strategy, based on the triangulation of semi-structured interviews with activists (n = 14), key stakeholders (n = 3), and document and press analysis (n = 25). The results shed light on the emergence and nature of the movement, its opportunity structures, the discursive frames and the repertoires of collective action. Our results show how accountability instruments have a ‘life of their own’ beyond their policy design. In this sense, the opt-out movement in Catalonia identifies potential risks and adverse effects similar to those reported in high-stakes systems, developing a repertoire of collective action and discursive frames similar to other emerging anti-standardization movements in high-stakes contexts.

Why Do Opt-Out Movements Succeed (or Fail) in Low- Stakes Accountability Systems? A Case Study of the Network of Dissident Schools in Catalonia

Why Do Opt-Out Movements Succeed (or Fail) in Low- Stakes Accountability Systems? A Case Study of the Network of Dissident Schools in Catalonia

Beyond ethnocentric perspectives in Spanish schools: Rethinking inclusion, the curriculum, and subjectivity

AbstractIn this paper, we examine how schools in Catalonia (Spain) are responding to the needs of migrant students by challenging the limitations of the curriculum. The paper presents some of the findings of an ongoing project titled Migrant Children and Communities in a Transforming Europe (MiCREATE). It is based on 31 semi‐structured interviews and 6 focus groups conducted with 78 participants (teachers, school representatives, and community members such as child psychologists, social workers, and other collaborators) from six state primary and secondary schools in Catalonia (Spain). Analysis of the interviews showed that Spain still has a monolithic conception of the curriculum, with Eurocentrism and ethnocentrism at its core. Nonetheless, school staff are producing pedagogical practices that challenge this position in order to respond to the needs of migrant students. We argue that it is necessary to consider other frames of reference such as critical interculturality, decolonial perspectives, and critical cosmopolitanisms in order to create collective and multiple experiences of belonging that go beyond the dominant cultural identity.

Teaching English as a foreign language in multilingual milieus in Catalonia: perspectives and practices of educators in three state schools

ABSTRACT The aim of this article is to explore how the teaching of English as a foreign language is planned in three plurilingual state schools in Catalonia. We carried out classroom observations (first and second grade of primary education) and interviewed the English teachers who teach these lessons and the headmasters of the three schools. The use of these qualitative methods to generate data allowed us to see what teachers say they do in the classroom, and what they really do. The results showed that although the three schools analysed work to make learners aware of their linguistic repertoires and foster their plurilingual competence, the English classroom is still seen as a monolingual space where students’ languages and the use of plurilingual strategies are not present. Similarly, we can state that the participating teachers do not prioritise plurilingual and intercultural education in the English classroom, as this is promoted in other school spaces. The findings have strong implications; namely, there is the need for foreign language teachers to encourage the use of students’ first languages in the classroom if we want to advance towards a plurilingual and intercultural education.

School administrators’ perceptions of democratic coexistence in Catalan schools: An analytical study

In democratic societies, education should help build a participative, critical and responsible citizenry and therefore promote the role of schools as settings where students learn democratic coexistence. With the study reported on here we aimed to analyse how coexistence is fostered in classrooms and schools, as well as the possible synergy between schools’ efforts to educate in democratic coexistence, and the children’s social participation in their setting. To do so, we focused on the perspective of 476 school administrators at schools in Catalonia (Spain) based on an ad-hoc questionnaire comprised of 22 items on a Likert scale. The results reflect settings that value democratic coexistence at school and in society, although when we delved a bit deeper, we found aspects that still required more work. Actions that should be the focal point in the immediate future include developing more innovative educational strategies, training the administrators and enlisting students’ participation in running the schools.

Individual prevention and containment measures in schools in Catalonia, Spain, and community transmission of SARS-CoV-2 after school re-opening.

Despite their clear lesser vulnerability to COVID-19, the extent by which children are susceptible to getting infected by SARS-CoV-2 and their capacity to transmit the infection to other people remains inadequately characterized. We aimed to evaluate the role of school reopening and the preventive strategies in place at schools in terms of overall risk for children and community transmission, by comparing transmission rates in children as detected by a COVID-19 surveillance platform in place in Catalonian Schools to the incidence at the community level. Infections detected in Catalan schools during the entire first trimester of classes (September-December 2020) were analysed and compared with the ongoing community transmission and with the modelled predicted number of infections. There were 30.486 infections (2.12%) documented among the circa 1.5M pupils, with cases detected in 54.0% and 97.5% of the primary and secondary centres, respectively. During the entire first term, the proportion of "bubble groups" (stable groups of children doing activities together) that were forced to undergo confinement ranged between 1 and 5%, with scarce evidence of substantial intraschool transmission in the form of chains of infections, and with ~75% of all detected infections not leading to secondary cases. Mathematical models were also used to evaluate the effect of different parameters related to the defined preventive strategies (size of the bubble group, number of days of confinement required by contacts of an index case). The effective reproduction number inside the bubble groups in schools (R*), defined as the average number of schoolmates infected by each primary case within the bubble, was calculated, yielding a value of 0.35 for primary schools and 0.55 for secondary schools, and compared with the outcomes of the mathematical model, implying decreased transmissibility for children in the context of the applied measures. Relative homogenized monthly cumulative incidence ([Formula: see text]) was assessed to compare the epidemiological dynamics among different age groups and this analysis suggested the limited impact of infections in school-aged children in the context of the overall community incidence. During the fall of 2020, SARS-CoV-2 infections and COVID-19 cases detected in Catalan schools closely mirrored the underlying community transmission from the neighbourhoods where they were set and maintaining schools open appeared to be safe irrespective of underlying community transmission. Preventive measures in place in those schools appeared to be working for the early detection and rapid containment of transmission and should be maintained for the adequate and safe functioning of normal academic and face-to-face school activities.

Study protocol for monitoring SARS-CoV-2 infection and its determinants in Catalonia (Spain): an observational and participatory research approach in a Sentinel Network of Schools

IntroductionSince the SARS-CoV-2 became of concern in January 2020, many preventive measures have been adopted in educational settings to ensure the control of COVID-19 pandemic among children and staff in...

Experiencias de coeducación en Cataluña: Explorando facilitadores y resistencias

The current renewed rise of feminisms is placing the issue of gender inequalities in the different spheres of society, including education, at the centre of the debate. With a national and regional regulatory framework that contemplates coeducation, and a global discursive framework that increasingly positions it as a priority, many educational centres carry out coeducation practices. Based on 15 discussion groups with representatives of the students, the teachers, the school leaders, and the families and the environment of 12 public secondary schools in Catalonia, this article aims to explore the agency of these centres in terms of the development of coeducational practices and, more specifically, to identify what factors emerge as drivers or limitations for its implementation. The results are articulated around the four main agents (students, teachers, school leaders, and families and environment), and show that most of the identified factors can be both driving or limiting forces depending on their absence or presence.