Knowing what defines ‘effective teaching’ contributes significantly to the appropriateness and validity of the instruction provided to pre-service teachers during their initial training. This may help them to perform as expert teachers before finishing their university training. This study aims to reflect upon the most significant models and theoretical contributions of each of the five most common methods for investigating teaching effectiveness in the current scientific literature. To that end, the main scientific sources within this field of study have been obtained on the Internet through the Web of Science (WoS), Scopus and ERIC. The sources were selected for their relevance to the topic, which was determined by assessing the citations generated by the academic works and the impact of the journals in which they were published. The results show that the key and most central factor salient in teaching quality is related to the teachers themselves and their training. Thus, any educational model that seeks educational excellence must focus foremost on ensuring care and respect for teaching professionals, beyond economic investment, resource availability, or any other factors.

The Internet and social networks are full of nutrition information, offering people guidance to make healthy eating choices. These sources always present themselves as a gateway to reliable information on healthy eating; however, too often this is not the case. Far from being trustworthy, there are usually plenty of food myths. A food myth is a widespread false belief about food, nutrition, and eating facts that gives rise to certain behaviors, from fashionable trends to diets. Academic training is a valuable tool to combat food myths and the pseudoscience linked to them, but educators must participate in this battle. To test this idea, we analyzed the prevalence of nine highly popular food myths held by 201 secondary school Spanish teachers. The aim was to assess whether expertise in science areas prevents teachers from falling into these food misconceptions. Our study results showed that food myths are held regardless of specialty area. The power of the media in popularizing and spreading nutrition myths among educators may be the cause, even more potent than academic training. We conclude that since scientific knowledge is not enough to erase food myths, we need further actions if we aim to prevent the problems that food myths may cause.

This article presents the results of a research study on the role that affective motivation plays in learning a second language (L2). There were 171 American university students of Spain, German, Italy, and Japan as a second language participated in the study. This was an ex post facto, cross-sectional, and correlational quantitative study that informs us of which is the type of motivation most beneficial for learners and considers variables such as age, gender, academic performance, and the intention to continue studying a second language. An online questionnaire based on the Dörnyei motivational model was administered. The results show that the variables ideal self and “projection of intended effort” of the learners are positively and significantly related to the academic performance of the students and to the intention of enrollment in future foreign language classes. At the opposite extreme, the deontic self or ought-to-self does not correlate significantly with any of the rest of the variables considered. Regarding the cross-sectional analysis of age and gender, no significant differences were found in gender. However, there was a negative and significant correlation between age and academic performance. Furthermore, there was positive and significant correlation between age and projected effort.

Innovative Research and Practices in Second Language Acquisition and Bilingualism is a collection of articles on theoretical and empirical studies dealing with Second Language Acquisition (SLA) and bilingualism. This book will be useful for language teachers and scholars specializing in SLA, pedagogy and bilingualism. Both the empirical and theoretical articles contain a reasonable amount of specialized vocabulary and methodology; therefore the book would be better suited to readers with a minimal knowledge of SLA.