Nota editorial

Résumé

Volume 50 (3) of the journal Publicaciones, the official journal of the School of Education and Sports Sciences of Melilla (University of Granada), is the last of the ordinary issues corresponding to the year 2020, as the following issue -50 ( 4) - is of a special type.  Issue 50 (3) is fruit of a year of intense work at the journal, which is proud to be featured in Scopus Q2, in education journals, and Q3 in educational and developmental psychology journals. On this venture for the national and international dissemination of the knowledge published in the journal, we would like to recognise the work of a team of people linked to Publicaciones, the institutional and financial support of the organisations that sponsor its publication (Ministry of Education, Culture, Festivals and Equality of the City of Melilla, the Vice-Rectorate for Research and Transfer at the University of Granada, and the School of Education and Sports Sciences of Melilla), and thank the authors for their trust in us, and the journal citations that other authors have given us.  This issue includes 10 articles, each published in their entirety in Spanish and English, the being the first issue of the journal featuring this totally dual format. The works are grouped by the topics they deal with, and we hope that they will be of interest to all the readers of Publicaciones.  García-Martínez, Sierra-Arizmendiarrieta, Quijano-López and Pérez-Ferra offer, through a systematic review of the fields of Linguistics and Teacher Training, an overview of how linguistic competence is tackled in the international arena. In their analysis, they address the relevance assigned to methodological pathways aimed at transmitting linguistic knowledge, as well as the acquisition of the necessary communicative competences by students at the different educational levels. They also stress the importance of training the teachers of tomorrow in communicative competence as something vital to their professional performance.  The role of school principal entails the carrying out of multiple tasks often existing in parallel to didactic activity and that can be related to a school’s results and atmosphere. Hence, Figueroa-Gutiérrez, Silvestre and Chaljub-Hasbun focus their study on: i) describing the activities carried out by school principals; ii) identifying those who Publicaciones 50(3), 7-13 Lorenzo, O., & el Mahraoui, F. (2020). Nota editorial 12  assist them in their different activities; iii) analysing the relationship between administrative activities and school performance.  Educational institutions’ assessments tend to focus on teacher evaluation. However, the approach put forward by Iglesias seeks to go further, considering teacher/student interaction, and gathering the opinions of both groups, as active and responsible agents of university education. The results of their work show lower-than-expected levels of proactivity, motivation and attention, high levels of boredom, as well as general dissatisfaction with the classic teaching model (master class) and the type of assessment (exams), in addition to considering the prevailing teaching approach to be quite impractical.  The study by Ramírez-Orduña, Sánchez, Cubero and Borrachero stems from the need to gauge the effects of bilingual teaching on students’ emotions and academic performance during the learning process in Science and the Natural Sciences. The study concludes that language is clearly a factor impacting both the grades obtained and the emotions experienced by students who study science in English, with students from a non-bilingual school earning better grades and having more positive emotions.  The aim of the study carried out by Navarro-Patón, Arufe-Giráldez, Mecías-Calvo and Lago-Ballesteros was to determine the possible influence of gender and years of teaching experience on the methodological preferences of Early Childhood and Primary Education teachers who teach Physical Education at schools in Galicia. The results yielded by this study indicate that teachers with fewer years of experience show a greater preference for methods of individualised teaching, socialisation, student participation, and a methodological approach that encourages creativity.  With a total of 294 Early Childhood Education teachers from the province of Málaga, Madrid, Mayorga-Fernández and Pascual analyse teachers’ perceptions of educational inclusion from an organisational and curricular perspective. The results illustrate that changes are taking place at both the school and classroom levels in relation to inclusion. Noteworthy are the deficiencies perceived in both initial and on-going teacher training, as well as the need to bolster the development of a collegial and collaborative culture amongst the members of the educational community.  The objective of the López-Cordero study is to analyse the community support perceived by young people and to establish whether this differs depending on whether or not they participate in volunteer activities. The sample consisted of 1,567 young people, and the results of the study highlight the need to develop strategies that promote volunteering in young people, given the social and psychological implications that this entails.  In his study Manzanares presents the current situation of the teaching of Spanish in mainland China, addressing how it is approached in studies for the degree in Hispanic Philology, describing the methodology that pervades in classrooms, and, finally, identifying gamification as a pedagogical alternative, exploring its possible implementation in light of a list of success stories.  Flores’ article centres on verifying whether or not the different levels of the Hall-Tonna model have the same impact on the epistolary and narrative discourse of Inés María Mendoza, and establishes axiological maps based on a comparison of the different discourses considered and the varying predominance of the various axiological levels of said model.Publicaciones 50(3), 7-13 Lorenzo, O., & el Mahraoui, F. (2020). Nota editorial 13  Finally, Marín-Liébana, Blasco and Botella present a study on the cultural approach taken to Music in the primary-level education curriculum for this subject in Spain. The results indicate that the culturalist approach to Music is secondary, with a formalist one predominating. It is observed that, when this is used, a nationalistic and ethnocentric orientation towards Music is adopted, emphasising the genuineness of local identity, formulated around a notion of “we”, with non-Western music being categorised as “Other Music”.