Perception and beliefs of the students of first grade in early childhood and primary education in Jaén and Oviedo, about the ´teamwork´ competence

Abstract

It addresses the perception of the first year students of the undergraduate and elementary education studies, alluding to the treatment of information, their communicative ability and the perception of shared leadership. This research was developed on a Likert-type scale and was applied to students of the first year of Childhood and Primary Education about the generic competence “work in groups” at the University of Jaen and Oviedo. The objectives are to analyse the students' perception on teamwork on the basis of information management, communicative competence and shared leadership, and to compare the students' perception on both universities according to three variables of segmentation. It is part of a population of 740 students of both grades of teacher, selected a sample of 296 students by simple systematic sampling without affixing. A inferential descriptive study was carried out by using a nonparametric Mann-Whitney U test for independent variables as it did not meet the assumption of normality. The analyses show that students do not exercise tasks and capacities related to the treatment of information received and generated in groups, or to the shared leadership, although it shows the contrary regarding the capacities and tasks entailed in the communicative competence, which means serious difficulties for teamwork.