Teamwork skills are considered essential for personal, academic and professional achievement, so universities are increasingly integrating them into their syllabuses. However, little is known about how some specific features of students and their educational development can affect their acquisition. Accordingly, this study aims to fill this gap and describe higher education students’ mastery of teamwork skills and its relation to certain socio-academic variables (gender, academic year and grade point average—GPA). With the aim of determining the level of teamwork skills among university students, an observational, transversal descriptive study was designed with an intentional sample of Spanish university students. The sample is made up of 615 social science degree students. The results suggest significant gender differences, highlighting that female students outdid their male counterparts in most teamwork skills, except leadership. Likewise, students’ skills improved as they progressed in their studies, particularly those skills related to adaptability and decision-making. Finally, a positive relationship was observed between teamwork skills and GPA, except for interpersonal development. A regression analysis confirmed the influence of both academic year and GPA for women whilst no effect was detected in the case of men. Based on these results, it is suggested to make changes in university education programmes to compensate for the influence of socio-academic factors and benefit from the most positive features of each gender regarding teamwork to achieve an equal and fair higher education.

Self-assessment and peer assignment have clear advantages for the training of responsible, critical, and reflective professionals. In recent years, self and peer evaluation have also been shown to be even more effective than lecturer evaluation when we assure anonymity through online platforms learning tools. Therefore, self and peer assessments are to become a core aspect of student-centred evaluation processes in Higher Education. Besides, a high concordance with lecturer evaluation may allow lecturers to also benefit from self and peer evaluation without an increase in their workload. In the present work, we compare the formative evaluation from the lecturer with the self and peer assessments through a virtual learning environment. The subject of study if formed by assessments prepared by students in a first-year course in a Social Sciences degree at the Universidade de Vigo, Spain. We find a strong concordance between peer assessment and lecturer assignment, and a moderate agreement between self-assessment and lecturer assignment. These results show that students perform well as peer evaluators, with peer assignment being a procedure with high validity and reliability.

Educational changes require a great effort on the part of the entire educational community and, above all, the active involvement of teachers. The aim of this article was to analyze the main resistances to change that predominate among teachers at different educational stages. Through a non-experimental design, using an online questionnaire, teachers’ beliefs about factors influencing resistance to change were collected. The results indicate that the participants do not have great resistance to educational change and that legislative changes and the perception of teachers as having excessive functions are the most common aspects of resistance. There is greater resistance to change among men and in public schools and as the experience and age of the teaching staff increases. Based on the results, it is suggested that the educational center be placed as the unit of change, increasing the leadership of the director to carry out the changes suggested by the center itself, fostering teamwork among teachers, and institutionally supporting innovative initiatives that are evaluated or facilitating teacher training in relation to their teaching practice.

The role of emotions in the educational context is one of the lines of research that has generated most interest in recent years. This study explores the level of emotional intelligence (EI) and motivation towards studying of primary school (PS) students, as well as the relationship between both variables. For this, a quasi-experimental design has been used with an accidental sample of 541 students from public centers in the province of Pontevedra (Spain). The instruments used were a School Motivation Scale and an EI questionnaire for primary school students, based on the five areas of Goleman EI. The results maintain a mid to high level of EI in all of the factors (self-conscience, self-control, emotional use, empathy and social skills) and a good level of academic motivation. Therefore, they show a positive and significant correlation of both variables. Girls have a higher emotional intelligence index and there is no difference in academic motivation in terms of gender. Based on these results, it is suggested to implement programs that consolidate emotional competences given their importance in the psychoevolutionary development of students and their relationship with academic motivation.

Social-emotional skills have been an important object of study in recent years due to their relationship with academic, personal and professional success. The aim of this study was to analyse the relationship between these skills and different influential variables. The participants had a mean age of 14.18 years. The instruments used were the Social Emotional Competence Questionnaire (SECQ) and the Physical Activity Questionnaire for Adolescents (PACQ-A). Generally, the results indicated gender differences and no influence of age. Those who engaged in after-school activities scored higher on social awareness. In addition, artistic and musical extracurricular activities were associated with social-emotional skills, whereas sports activities were not. It was also found that the physical activity index was not related to socioemotional factors, except in self-awareness and in a negative way. It is necessary to analyse the quality of the extracurricular programmes offered and the training of the professionals in charge of their development. It also seems important to take into account the gender perspective in competence work, increasing self-management in girls and relationship management in boys.

Purpose: Continuous training in professional teaching competencies has become one of the challenges of the school of the 21st century, especially if we refer to the mastery of digital competence. The aim of this study is to analyze the degree of digital competence of secondary school teachers of different areas of knowledge during the global pandemic of COVID-19 in the Galician autonomous community and obtain data that allow us to infer whether there is an association between individual variables such as age, gender, degree, work experience and their mastery of digital competence.Design/methodology/approach: A cross-sectional descriptive quasi-experimental study is performed using an accidental sample of secondary school teachers from different fields of knowledge.Findings: The different results obtained determine that the level of knowledge and use of digital media and tools is low. There are no significant differences depending on the variables analyzed, but it is necessary to establish specific continuing education plans for the improvement of digital competence in secondary school teachers to enable the effective use and management of information and communication technologies in future professionals.Originality/value: Therefore, the findings of this study allow the development of educational interventions focused on increasing the digital competence of teachers, taking into account their individual characteristics.