No és la meva competència intercultural, soc jo.’ La identitat intercultural del professorat de llengües estrangeres en formació

This article examines the intercultural identity of pre-service foreign language teachers to determine whether they are aware of their intercultural stance and that of others, and whether they portray an identifiable emergent professional persona in relation to interculturality. The ultimate goal of this study is to identify common traits on which to focus future teacher training. The results show that these prospective teachers display an incipient intercultural identity characterised by a tendency to avoid agency and a certain shortage of intercultural knowledge, yet they are notably concerned about their professional image and their responsibility in work environmentsEste artículo indaga en la identidad intercultural del profesorado de lenguas extranjeras en formación para averiguar si es consciente de su postura intercultural y de la de otros, y si presenta una imagen profesional emergente reconocible en relación con la interculturalidad. El objetivo final de este estudio es identificar rasgos comunes en los que podría centrarse la formación del profesorado. Los resultados demuestran que este futuro profesorado muestra una identidad intercultural incipiente caracterizada por su tendencia a evitar la intervención y por una cierta falta de conocimiento intercultural, aunque está notablemente preocupado por su imagen profesional y su responsabilidad en contextos laboralesAquest article indaga en la identitat intercultural del professorat de llengües estrangeres en formació per esbrinar si és conscient de la seva postura intercultural i de la dels altres, i si presenta una imatge professional emergent recognoscible en relació amb la interculturalitat. L’objectiu final d’aquest estudi és identificar trets comuns en els quals es podria centrar la formació del professorat. Els resultats demostren que aquest futur professorat té una identitat intercultural incipient caracteritzada per la seva tendència a evitar la intervenció i per una certa falta de coneixement intercultural, encara que està notablement preocupat per la seva imatge professional i la seva responsabilitat en els contextos laboralsThis work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competition under Grant FFI2016-77540

Movilidad Erasmus y la formación de los docentes europeos interculturalmente competentes

This article is a report on the scope and significance of European structured credit-mobility at the Faculty of Teacher Training and Education of Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain. More specifically, it presents the data on student mobility at this faculty under the Erasmus and Erasmus+ programmes – both for studies and for training – since the implementation of the new degrees, compliant with the guidelines of the Bologna Process, until the present. The study is framed within the context of intercultural teacher education and mobility as a tool to promote European citizenship as theoretical tenets. Results reveal that our student teachers do profit from Erasmus mobility in different ways, especially from the programme Erasmus for Traineeship. They also yield information on the mobility flows of incoming and outgoing students, partly confirming the ties and relationships between countries that are shown in larger studies. Nevertheless, the figures of outward mobile students in relation to the university are low, and the numbers of outgoing and incoming students are unbalanced. For that reason, measures for boosting and improving mobility are put forward, for instance in relation to internationalisation at homeEste artículo es un informe del alcance y la significación de la movilidad europea estructurada por créditos en la Facultad de Formación del Profesorado y Educación de la Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. En concreto, se presentan los datos de movilidad de estudiantes bajo los programas Erasmus y Erasmus+, tanto para estudios como para prácticas, desde la implementación de los nuevos grados de Bolonia hasta la actualidad. El estudio se enmarca en la formación intercultural de profesores y en una concepción de la movilidad como herramienta para promover la ciudadanía europea como principios teóricos. Los resultados muestran que nuestros profesores en formación se benefician de la movilidad Erasmus de diferentes formas, especialmente del programa Erasmus Prácticas. También aportan información sobre los flujos de movilidad de estudiantes salientes y entrantes, y confirman en parte los lazos y relaciones con países que también se ven en estudios más amplios. No obstante, la cifra de estudiantes salientes es baja con respecto a toda la universidad, y tiende a haber una descompensación entre movilidad saliente y entrante. Por esta razón, se presentan medidas para incrementar y mejorar la movilidad, por ejemplo en relación con la internacionalización en cas

Teachers’ narratives of resistance to Madrid's bilingual programme: an exploratory study in secondary education

This paper looks at secondary teachers’ discourse about Madrid's Bilingual Programme (Spain). Madrid's Bilingual Programme is a large education plan whereby some content subjects are taught in a foreign language –mainly English– following Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) and whose characteristics and ubiquity have had an impact on teachers’ daily lives and professional career. By drawing on both Grounded Theory and Positioning Theory as analytical tools, data were collected and analysed from the transcription and annotation of 30 semi-structured interviews with experienced secondary teachers working in CLIL and non-CLIL secondary schools. Our findings point to clear tensions in reconciling these teachers’ personal beliefs and professional motivations within the current organisational and political setting and describe a pattern of resistance towards the Bilingual Programme which manifests discursively through emphatic and emotional verbalisations. The results may be of interest to education authorities, policy makers and researchersThis work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Competitiveness (Research Project FFI2016-77540-P

OPINIÓN DEL PROFESORADO SOBRE LAS FORTALEZAS Y DEBILIDADES DE LAS EVALUACIONES EXTERNAS DE APRENDIZAJE EN ESPAÑA

The aim of this paper is to identify the strengths and weaknesses of highstakes examinations in the view of Primary and Secondary school teachers in Spain. For that purpose, we have analyzed the answers to two open questions from a larger survey designed to determine the teachers’ opinions on these strengths and weaknesses. Out of the total sample, we have selected 1,607 responses corresponding to five Autonomous Communities or regions, distributed as follows: 321 from Andalusia, 445 from Catalonia, 239 from Galicia, 491 from Madrid and 111 from the Basque Country. The questionnaire was applied between November 2013 and May 2014. Its administration began shortly before the new Organic Law for the Improvement of Quality in Education (LOMCE) was passed, although the debate around it had already been taking place for at least a year in the educative community, an important trait of the context in which the survey was carried out. Responses were coded and categorized applying an inductive-deductive process with this sequence: I.Source of information; II. Emerging codes; III. Categories; and IV. Dimensions.The information has been treated according to the following variables:(a) Autonomous Communities; (b) education stage (Primary Educationand Compulsory Secondary Education); and (c) main role undertaken byrespondents at the school (members of the school managing team vs. the rest of the teachers). Results show that by and large there are more references to weaknesses than to strengths. Also, the diagnostic function of tests and their decontextualisation stand out as the most frequent strength and weakness respectively. The analysis reveals significant differences between autonomous communities and also, in some cases, differences depending on the role undertaken by respondents.El objetivo de este artículo es presentar las fortalezas y debilidades que, según la opinión del profesorado de centros de educación primaria y educación secundaria obligatoria, tienen las evaluaciones externas de España. Para ello se han analizado las dos preguntas abiertas de un cuestionario más amplio orientadas a identificar las opiniones sobre estas fortalezas y debilidades. Del total de respuestas obtenidas se han seleccionado las 1.607 correspondientes a 5 Comunidades Autónomas repartidas de la siguiente manera: 321 de Andalucía, 445 de Cataluña,  239 de Galicia, 491 de Madrid y 111 del País Vasco. La aplicación del cuestionario se inicia poco antes de aprobarse la nueva Ley Orgánica para la Mejora de la Calidad Educativa (LOMCE), aunque el debate en torno a ella ya llevaba al menos un año dentro de la comunidad educativa, un rasgo que define el contexto en el que se desarrolló la encuesta. Las respuestas obtenidas fueron codificadas y categorizadas mediante un proceso inductivo-deductivo que ha seguido la siguiente secuencia: I- Fuente de Información, II- Códigos emergentes, III- Categorías y IV- Dimensiones.La información ha sido tratada de acuerdo con las siguientes variables: a) «Comunidad Autónoma», b) «Etapa Educativa» (Educación Primaria y Educación Secundaria Obligatoria), y c) «Función principal desempeñada» en el centro por quien ha respondido la encuesta (miembro del equipo directivo y resto de profesores). Los resultados muestran que, en términos generales, hay mayor porcentaje de respuestas que hacen mención a efectos negativos que a positivos. Dentro de las fortalezas destaca la función diagnóstica que pueden tener las evaluaciones externas y dentro de las debilidades destaca especialmente la descontextualización de estas pruebas. El análisis muestra importantes diferencias por comunidad autónoma y, en algunos casos, también por función principal desempeñada por el que ha contestado la encuesta

Foreign language teachers’ feedback practices: A comparative study

The purpose of this study is to describe the current foreign language (FL) assessment and feedback practices as reported by 213 experienced primary teachers in Slovenia and Spain. An ad hoc questionnaire was designed, validated and administered to 113 Slovenian and 100 Spanish teachers. The data were collected and analysed with the use of descriptive and inferential statistics. Among the most relevant findings, it is noteworthy that Spanish teachers focus on providing feedback on receptive skills while their Slovenian colleagues pay more attention to productive skills. Also, results from both groups reveal a lack of FL pronunciation feedback and scarce attention to interactive aspects of communication

La lectura en segundas lenguas: análisis de la efectividad de la contextualización previa y sus implicaciones metodológicas

Este artículo presenta una investigación llevada a cabo con noventa estudiantes de inglés como segunda lengua con el fin de medir la incidencia de la contextualización a través del título como estrategia metodológica previa a la lectura de textos auténticos en segundas lenguas. En primer lugar se revisa la literatura existente y en particular la Teoría del Esquema, la cual pone de manifiesto la efectividad de dicha estrategia. Posteriormente, tras la descripción detallada de las características y el diseño del experimento, se exponen los resultados obtenidos; éstos corroboran la existencia de una mejora significativa en la comprensión del texto en presencia del título original, que resulta, por tanto, un elemento activador de los esquemas necesarios para la comprensión. La traducción del título al español, sin embargo, no supone un incremento significativo de la comprensión. Por último, se extraen conclusiones, se consideran las posibles implicaciones metodológicas y se sugieren posibles vías de continuación de la investigación. Palabras clave: habilidades lectoras, aprendizaje de segundas lenguas, inglés como segunda lengua, Teoría del Esquema, contextualización.This article presents an experiment carried out with ninety students of English as a second language in order to measure the impact of contextualising through the title as a methodological strategy prior to reading in the comprehension of authentic texts in second languages. Firstly, we revise the existing literature and, in particular, the Schema Theory, which highlights the effectiveness of such strategy. Then, after a detailed description of the characteristics and design of the experiment, we present the results obtained; these corroborate the existence of a significant improvement in the comprehension of the text when the original title is present, thus proving that the title activates the squemata necessary for comprehension. Translating the title into Spanish does not lead to a significant increase in comprehension, though. Finally, we draw conclusions, consider the possible methodological implications and suggest possible further research

TCP performance enhancement over wireless mesh networks by means of the combination of multi-RAT devices and the MPTCP protocol

The last trends at communications realms, in particular, wireless technologies, where it is more and more usual that devices carry more than one interface (i.e. multi-RAT, Radio Access Technology), to get access to the Internet, question the classic single-path paradigm, imposed by the mainstream transport protocol, TCP. In this work we assess the behavior of Multipath TCP (MPTCP), which allows the transparent breakdown of a single TCP session into multiple simultaneous subflows. This straightforward feature might lead to remarkable performance enhancements, yielding as well a stronger resilience against failures within any of the routes. Moreover, we evaluate three different routing algorithms (link, node and zone disjoint) that aim to discover the optimal route configuration of disjoint paths over a Wireless Mesh Network (WMN), exploiting the possibilities arisen by this brand new protocol. We use the obtained results to evaluate, by means of simulation, the behavior of the MPTCP protocol, showing that the aggregated performance is significatively higher than that of achieved by the traditional single-path and single-flow TCP.The authors would like to express their gratitude to the Spanish government for its funding in the project “Connectivity as a Service: Access for the Internet of the Future”, COSAIF (TEC2012-38574-C02-01)

Even lower latency in IIoT: evaluation of QUIC in industrial IoT scenarios

In this paper we analyze the performance of QUIC as a transport alternative for Internet of Things (IoT) services based on the Message Queuing Telemetry Protocol (MQTT). QUIC is a novel protocol promoted by Google, and was originally conceived to tackle the limitations of the traditional Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), specifically aiming at the reduction of the latency caused by connection establishment. QUIC use in IoT environments is not widespread, and it is therefore interesting to characterize its performance when in over such scenarios. We used an emulation-based platform, where we integrated QUIC and MQTT (using GO-based implementations) and compared their combined performance with the that exhibited by the traditional TCP/TLS approach. We used Linux containers as end devices, and the ns-3 simulator to emulate different network technologies, such as WiFi, cellular, and satellite, and varying conditions. The results evince that QUIC is indeed an appropriate protocol to guarantee robust, secure, and low latency communications over IoT scenarios.The authors are grateful for the funding of the Industrial Doctorates Program from the University of Cantabria (Call 2020). This work has been partially supported by the Basque Government through the Elkartek program under the DIGITAL project (grant agreement number KK-2019/00095), and by the Spanish Government (Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad, Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional, FEDER) by means of the project FIERCE: Future Internet Enabled Resilient smart CitiEs (RTI2018-093475-AI00)

And QUIC meets IoT: performance assessment of MQTT over QUIC

We study the performance of the Message Queuing Telemetry Transport Protocol (MQTT) over QUIC. QUIC has been recently proposed as a new transport protocol, and it is gaining relevance at a very fast pace, favored by the support of key players, such as Google. It overcomes some of the limitations of the more widespread alternative, TCP, especially regarding the overhead of connection establishment. However, its use for Internet of Things (IoT) scenarios is still under consideration. In this paper we integrate a GO-based implementation of the QUIC protocol with MQTT, and we compare the performance of this combination with that exhibited by the more traditional MQTT/TLS/TCP approach. We use Linux Containers and we emulate various wireless network technologies by means of the ns3 simulator. The results of an extensive measurement campaign, show that QUIC protocol can indeed yield good performances for typical IoT use cases.The authors are grateful for the funding of the Industrial Doctorates Program from the University of Cantabria (Call 2018). This work has been partially supported by the Basque Government through the Elkartek program under the DIGITAL project (Grant agreement no. KK-2019/00095), as well as by the Spanish Government (Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad, Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional, FEDER) by means of the project FIERCE: Future Internet Enabled Resilient smart CitiEs (RTI2018-093475-AI00)

La consultoría como instrumento para la integración y mejora de la cultura organizacional en una empresa mixta (Proyecto Conexión)

El presente trabajo aborda el tema de la consultoría organizacional de procesos a partir de una experiencia práctica en una empresa cubana radicada en el sector de la economía mixta (empresa mixta). Refleja paso a paso las actividades fundamentales que en este ámbito se recomiendan seguir, para identificar y evaluar los problemas y sus causas, y proponer las posibles soluciones a través de un plan de mejora, sobre la base de la participación activa y protagónica de sus propios miembros, como consultores internos. El trabajo muestra los resultados obtenidos a partir del diagnóstico de las variables seleccionadas que caracterizan la cultura organizacional en la empresa y plantea las direcciones de trabajo principales de las cuales parten las propuestas de mejora para contribuir a su integración y perfeccionamiento. El ejercicio de consultoría desarrollado revela, que la efectividad de las acciones, así como la satisfacción del cliente con los resultados brindados, aumenta en la medida en que se logre una mayor integración entre consultores internos y externos en el propósito común de cumplir con los objetivos planteados