4. Group of experts

Now that we've done a broad approach to what counselling is through the webquest and that we've seen different ways of understanding it worldwide, let's focus on the Spanish context. What does Guidance and Counselling mean in Spain? How does it work?

In order to research about it we've done a collaborative activity called group of experts. Here you have the instructions Miguel gave us:

I was assigned number 4 "Spain: Support Measures for Learners in Adult Education and Training"
So, within our group of experts, we decided to prepare our topic in order to explain it to our respective collaborative groups through a mind map (so we would see the key concepts and thus we would be able to develop the whole piece of information from it). We did it using Cmap (a tool we learned to use during the first term) so we would be able to share it with the rest of the class:

What we came back to our collaborative groups we explained each other the piece of information we worked on in order to share what we've learnt.


Next day we had a surprise exam about the topics of the previous session.
Then Miguel gave each of us every piece of information and we had to self-assess our exam and then write it again properly.


Here you have the exam questions:

I've found the links in Eurypedia for each piece of information:

1a) Guidance and Counselling in Early Childhood and School Education
1b) Education Staff Responsible for Guidance in Early Childhood and School Education
2a) Guidance and Counselling in Higher Education
2b) Support measures for learners in Higher Education
3) Guidance and Counselling in a Lifelong Learning Approach
4) Support Measures for Learners in Adult Education and Training




Self - reflection:


What I've rediscovered with this activity is that from learning to teaching a topic there is a huge step. It is not only the content but the way to transmit it what makes the others get involved or not... learn or not... You can just expose your information or you can try them to learn it. In my group I experienced both... and even more, one of us had to go so there was a topic about which we didn't work the same way than the others.
From my point of view, I think that it should be reinforced during the instructions that the aim is not just tell what you've learnt but think about a way to make that the others learn it as easy as possible.


The main reflection comes from the "exam experience". I truly hate exams, I don't feel it is the way to show what someone has learned and until what extend he or she did it... but... (look the silliness of my next statement) the best way - not the only fortunately - in which I believe I've learnt something is through a good mark in an exam :-( I feel I have a lot to "deconstruct" because even disliking exams and thinking they are neither didactic nor a good way to prove nothing else than stress resistance, I build my self-image as a student on them... Well it is never late to realize there are things inside that need to be reconsidered. 


Once said that, another reflection I'm making is on the exam itself... I felt it was tremendously  unfair. We were supposed to have 25% of the overall information so I would expect an exam that treat the way we learned and thus the content in a balanced way... but this wasn't the case... In the exam the topic in which I was an expert (topic 4) was valued with a question of 1 point while for the first topic there was a question with 8 sections valued with 4 points... (This topic was the one we couldn't prepare properly the day before because our expert had to go). As future teachers I found very enriching to be in the shoes of an student who feels that the way she is being assessed is not fair. 


On the other hand, I liked the way Miguel conducted the activity from this moment on. With the exam I had the feeling that now I knew what I didn't know... He made us self-assess our exam (after giving us all the information) and then, we had the opportunity to redo the exam. Maybe I should stop here for a sec. to think  how do we self-assess us... Again, the thing about having clear criteria came back to my mind... I tried to decide how to assess my own exam before starting to assess it... Let's keep working on this.
At the end of the activity, I was quite sure of knowing the info I was required to. This was reinforced with the feedback of Miguel. (But I'll come back with this topic about feedback later on :-) )


Here you have both attempts of exam (The first one with my own rubrics to assess it and the second one once I read the whole piece of info):

And here you have the second attempt :-)