Workshops with children in pre-service teacher education: Overcoming the transmissive educational model upon a university-school experience

This work comprises a critical analysis of an educational experience based on the University-School model, developed in the Faculty of Education of Donostia-San Sebastian. Our fourth grade students of the Early Childhood Education Degree began this experience in the 2013-2014 course with the organization of psychomotor and science workshops. 328 children from 10 schools and their tutors took part in it. Among the objectives of this practice, firstly we highlight the impact in the autonomy and in the reflective capacity of our students, also to lay the foundation for a model of action-research in the improvement of our teaching, as well as to strengthen ties between the university and the school on the basis of a more egalitarian and dialectical relationship. The analysis of the final reports of the workshops, our observations and experience of the whole process, and a specific questionnaire destined to our students and to the tutors who visited us, allow us to characterize this first edition of the workshops. Students noted that guiding their own learning process as well as the co-evaluation among students increased their sense of self-efficacy and confidence. On the other hand, tutors who visited us demanded a greater relationship between these workshops and the day-to-day work at their school. For our part, we have clearly evidenced the establishment of a new pedagogical relationship with our students, based on trust and requirement. Finally, the importance of analyzing and evaluating the whole process directly affects the questioning and improving our own teaching.