Both projects, undertaken as part of the programme for Improvement and Innovation in Teacher Training (MIF), were led by M. Teresa Fuentes, a lecturer in the Faculty of Education Sciences at UIC Barcelona: “Formación en alternancia: espacio para en la investigación y la construcción de los saberes profesionales” [Work-linked training, space for research and the construction of professional expertise] (2017) and “El feedback comunicativo como estrategia formativa y formadora desde la tutoría y el mentoraje en las prácticas de alternancia de la formación de maestros” [Communicative feedback as a strategy for formative evaluations and self-evaluations in teacher training] (2020).

Participants included representatives from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, the University of Barcelona and Holy Family University, in Pennsylvania (USA).
The conference, which was divided into morning and afternoon sessions, included lecturers from, in addition to UIC Barcelona and those already mentioned, the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) and the University of Montpellier, as well as members of the Government of Catalonia’s Ministry of Education and school teachers and directors.

The first session included two presentations linked to each of the projects. The first, “Classroom observation in initial teacher training: opportunities to promote the development of professionalism”, was presented by Michel Ramos, assistant director of the Faculty of Education at the University of Montpellier. Ramos spoke about the importance of observation in teacher training “to stimulate not only reflection, but also the various dimensions of the students’ reflexivity, thus achieving self-regulation.”

The second conference was delivered by UOC lecturer Maite Fernández-Ferrer, a member of the Learning, Media & Social Interactions Consolidated Research Group and the Teaching Innovation Group in Evaluation and Technology (GIDAT) at the UB.

Lastly, the afternoon sessions were held behind closed doors. Participants were restricted to members of the research team from the 2020 ARMIF research project, comprised of UIC Barcelona lecturers M. Teresa Fuertes, Carmen Balaguer, Anna Carballo, Mariona Graell, Maria Pujol and Yolanda Scoot; UB lecturer Isabel Álvarez; and UAB lecturer Inmaculada Dorio. The team also included teachers from a number of different schools: Escola Vedruna Vall and Escola Tecnos, in Terrassa; Escola Sil, in Barcelona; and Escola Garbí, in Esplugues de Llobregat.

During the closing session, Brian Berry, a professor at Holy Family University in Pennsylvania, presented the Danielson coaching model and exchanged ideas for achieving the project’s objectives.