Mejora de la Calidad Educativa mediante Aprendizaje Cooperativo y Proyectos de Aula : Áreas Básicas, Competencias Ciudadanas y Educación para el Desarrollo Sostenible

Abstract

Improving Educational Quality through Cooperative Learning and Classroom Projects: Learning Areas, Citizen Competencies and Education for Sustainable Development. The objective of this study focuses on contributing to the increase in Educational Quality in the teaching of Basic Areas (Language, Mathematics, Social Studies, and Natural Sciences), strengthening training in Citizen Competencies, and promoting Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). The intervention was addressed by focusing on guiding the teaching-learning processes of the 4 Basic Areas in Elementary Education through Cooperative Learning methods and in an interdisciplinary and integrated manner in Classroom Projects structured around one of the 17 Sustainable Development Objectives (SDO). The intervention was carried out in Colombia, with 513 fourth-grade students, from 15 groups of students with their fifteen homeroom teachers, who made up the intervention group, and two comparison groups of 69 students with their two teachers, also fourth grade. In total, 11 educational centres enrolled in the intervention. The intervention length time was 11 months. The objectives, hypotheses, and research questions were answered based on a quasi-experimental study with a comparison group combined with a qualitative analysis of the intervention implementation process. The quantitative results indicate that the program's implementation positively affected the 3 study variables: Educational Quality, Citizen Competencies, and Education for Sustainable Development. The intervention group showed statistically significant differences between the pre-test and post-test handled in the three research variables. The comparison group, which continued using usual classroom methodologies, also experienced improvements, but there were statistically significant differences between the final results (post-test) of the two groups in favour of the intervention group. As stated by the results of the process analysis in the qualitative phase of the study, it was possible to determine that the intervention had positive effects on the changes observed in the three variables, while at the same time, some of the factors causing these changes could be identified. The educational scenarios that promoted Cooperative Learning and Classroom Projects provided explanatory elements for the academic increase quality by answering the research questions. Among them, team collaboration, active student participation, stating roles in teams, developing social and critical thinking skills, learning as a transformative instrument, meaningful, relevant, contextualized learning, and interdisciplinary character stand out as practical and experimental in the proposal. This study highlights the goodness of the proposed methodological approach in the context of improving educational quality and its practical implications.

Date of Award	19 Mar 2024
Original language	Spanish
Supervisor	Marta Flores Coll (Director)