The analysis of research at the University within the framework of University Social Responsibility, in accordance with the guidelines and strategies of national and international organisations, places the link between research and inclusion in the foreground. It emphasizes the ethics of research process, the gender perspective in research management, open access to results, citizen participation in the communication of results and participation of the university community in research approaches that are accessible and open to diverse perspectives and voices. The scientific literature and our previous work point to research with an inclusive approach as an example of responsible research and innovation, oriented towards collaborative culture, democratic practices and social transformation based on the mobilisation of knowledge. Therefore, this study is based on the idea that the effort to mobilise, communicate and co-produce knowledge gives research an added value and makes it contribute to equity and social transformation. The aim of this study is to generate indicators and guidelines for improvement from an inclusive approach, within the framework of University Social Responsibility. This brings the production of knowledge closer to the practical and political sphere and links it to the formation of a critical citizenship.
Main researcher: David Devins
Financial support institution: European Agency. Erasmus Programme
It is a 2 year international research project aimed at identifying best practice in work/practice relevant learning in higher education settings. Researchers at Leeds Metropolitan University, UK, are leading the EU Lifelong Learning programme-funded project which seeks to place integrated curriculum at the forefront of developments in higher education. Integrated curriculum is seen as one of the key factors in improving the match between graduate skills and employers’ needs. This is a challenge which HE curricula must respond to in today’s economic climate to realise the aspiration set out in the strategic framework for European co-operation in education and training.
Main researcher: Maria Lidón Moliner Miravet and Andrea Francisco Amat
Financial support institution: Oficina de Cooperación al Desarrollo y Solidaridad (OCDS) Universitat Jaume I
Main researcher: Auxiliadora Sales Ciges
Financial support institution: Fundació Bancaixa-UJI
The overall objective of this project is to understand the current education system’s response to socio-cultural diversity and analyse its needs and demands in order to develop resources and teaching strategies from the perspective of inclusive, intercultural education. Building on the training model developed in the previous project "The construction of the inclusive, intercultural school through action-research processes", we conducted a search and analysis of materials and training resources that are currently available. Subsequently, based on the demands of the teachers, we have developed new resources and strategies to implement and evaluate them in educational environments through action-research processes.
The resources and teaching strategies developed improve learning and good practices in schools from an intercultural and inclusive point-of-view, that is to say, through collaborative, democratic and egalitarian techniques.
Main researcher: Maria Auxiliadora Sales Ciges.
Financial support institution: Oficina de Cooperación al Desarrollo y Solidaridad (OCDS), Universitat Jaume I
The project has enabled the development of a virtual platform as an educational resource for the training of teachers in intercultural education. It has been developed from the training needs of teachers, which has led to the design of a training model. We visited centres of intercultural education resources which are of reference in our country to understand its functioning and through all of this, we developed the virtual platform which enables the advising and monitoring of innovation projects and the exchange of experiences between different education professionals and centres of education.
Main researcher: Joan Ferres Prats
Financial support institution: Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (prev Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación)
This research project aims to identify needs and gaps that reflect in a lack of competition in civic audio-visual communication. The Coordinated Project advances the effort to generate scientific knowledge through a team of researchers from 19 universities across 12 regions of the state (Andalusia, Catalonia, Castilla-Leon, Aragon, Asturias, Canary Islands, Cantabria, Galicia, La Rioja, Madrid, Murcia, Navarre and Valencia).
Main researcher: Maria Odet Moliner García
Financial support institution: Oficina de Cooperación al Desarrollo y Solidaridad (OCDS), Universitat Jaume I
Main researcher: Joan Andrés Traver Martí
Financial support institution: Fundación Bancaixa-UJI
This piece of research uncovers some clues as to the teaching of values ??and attitudes that help us advance in the initial training of university students towards approaches and objectives of innovative learning: learning to learn, learning to transform and to improve. This aspect is especially relevant in the case of students qualifying to be teachers, since the teaching models and perspectives that will shape their future careers, will have much to do with the learning experiences received over the course of their initial training as teachers, and will clearly have an impact on the basic and compulsory educational offering, that new social generations will receive.
To carry out this project, there was an analysis of attitudes towards innovation in education amongst a sample of students and teachers belonging to the two faculties and the Higher Technical School of the Universitat Jaume I of Castellón. This study examines how the development of new methodologies affects attitudes towards innovation in higher education. The results demonstrate that although they begin with strong predispositions, they are capable of consolidating and improving them.
Main researcher: Auxiliadora Sales Ciges
Financial support institution: Generalitat Valenciana
This project is based on the concept of school as a learning organisation and an exceptional space in which to cultivate multiculturalism and inclusion. From an action research approach, our intention was to analyse the school reality and how it addresses cultural diversity from within to facilitate self-assessment processes, proposals for action, implementation and consideration of them by the educational community. We have begun the process of innovation and school improvement through the collaboration and commitment of educational institutions.
The project has established a model of intercultural and inclusive training that guides and adequately prepares education professionals to take on the challenge of building amongst other things a school also for everyone. In the course of our work we have designed and developed self-assessment instruments ("Guide for the construction of the intercultural, inclusive school.") And audiovisual resources (Sales, Moliner and Traver, 2010) that facilitate this training, always from a collaborative perspective between the research team, the educational community and the teachers involved in the study.
Highlights of this project include relevant educational implications on distributed leadership, community participation, inclusive practices, professional development and school change.
Main researcher: Mª Reina Ferrández Berrueco
Financial support institution: Generalitat Valenciana
It attempts to make a comparative international quality assessment of universities from the internal mechanisms that they use to promote this quality. Specifically, the project focused on the use of economic incentives on university teachers, analysing the conext and mechanisms in which these incentives are applied and by analysing the results and measuring instruments.
Main researcher: Maria Odet Moliner García
Financial support institution:Fundació Bancaixa-UJI
This is a contextualized analysis of the experiences of the teachers, students, families and other professionals in the ESO centres of Castellón inquiring about specific measures for diversity and measures for relocation or assignment of students to them. Using two case studies one is able to triangulate concepts, perceptions, opinions and emotions regarding the enrolment of students considered to have specific educational needs. It makes an assessment of the specific resources to address diversity in ESO "giving a voice" to its protagonists.
Main researcher: Maria Odet Moliner García
Financial support institution: Fundació Bancaixa-UJI
This is a descriptive study of the enabling and limiting variables perceived by education professionals involved in the daily task of responding to the educational diversity in classrooms. The qualitative study, took place through focus groups and semi-structured interviews that have allowed us to learn the opinion of professionals from 16 schools in the province of Castellón, and to draw some conclusions and pedagogical implications on the factors that promote innovation and those that hinder them. Amongst these conclusions are some that allude to the improvement of Secondary Education teacher training processes ; of the improvement of educational evaluation processes; and the involvement of families and the community towards the support from the education administration and the establishment of transformation and improvement plans of the centres.
Main researcher: Johannes Sauerman
Financial support institution: European Agency. Leonardo Programme
The study focuses upon the concerns of five Higher Education institutions with a significant proportion of practice oriented HE in different European countries (Austria, Czech Republic, Finland, Spain and the UK), to improve the processes by which they ensure that their curricula reflect the needs of their respective labour markets, as one of the main features in the Curriculum Design Process (Contreras, 1991). This relationship is seen as a particular feature of practice oriented higher education. The definition and analyses of the problems inherent in sustaining effective relationships in this regard, and in sharing current practice, is one aim of the project. It is also a method of distilling principles of quality assurance in this relationship through which to summarise ‘best practice’.
