PRE-SERVICE TEACHER EDUCATION AND COMPREHENSION OF DIDACTIC CONCEPTS. AN EXPERIENCE WITHIN THE MASTER OF SECONDARY EDUCATION TEACHERS

Abstract

The main purpose of the research was to figure out which was the level of comprehension of the didactic concepts that the students of the Secondary Education Master of the University of Alicante of the academic year 2011/12 had. With this purpose, we have collected the information provided by the answers of 227 students to an ad-hoc-elaborated semi-structured questionnaire whose data have been treated with a quantitative methodology using the SPSS.19 device. The statistic techniques were descriptive, differential and correlational. In this analysis, we take into account the scores obtained by students in variables related to their learning process and their attitudes towards it. The most interesting results prove that the students don’t master the basic didactic concepts in a satisfactory way, there are differences between the levels of comprehension and other variables related to the learning of the concepts and with attitudinal variables of this learning. The research based on these results indicates the need to focus the teaching and learning processes of the Master from a different point of view and combining the strategies which enhance the understanding of these concepts by the students. Key words: concept comprehension, didactic training, pre-service teacher education, Secondary Education Master.