The COVID-19 pandemic has prompted higher university lecturers to develop their digital skills in order to adapt to online teaching. A group of university teachers decided to evaluate the educational uses of Mentimeter to promote student participation and active learning. A questionnaire was answered by 400 students and 12 participating academics. These 12 academic respondents also participated in a focus group after experiencing this software during an academic course. Qualitative and quantitative data was collected and analyzed to conclude that this software not only facilitated student participation during the pandemic (both face-to-face and online) in synchronous and asynchronous ways but also improved attention, engagement, collaborative learning and interaction. Immediate feedback made it possible for teachers to monitor the students’ learning processes and to adjust the content and pace accordingly. Students and educators highlighted the inclusive potential of this tool, as it allows participation from a diverse audience with different backgrounds and capacities, ensuring inclusive and equitable education for all. Some opportunities for improvement were also identified, namely more functions to make the software more attractive and adapt it to different educational objectives.

This article presents a study carried out in the subject of Didactics of English for Very Young Learners, taught in English to Spanish-speaking students at the School of Education of the Complutense University of Madrid, Spain. Three comparable classes were exposed to different teaching and assessment conditions. Two of them were the research groups, learning under a competence-based CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) paradigm, while the control group did so under a content-based EMI (English-Medium Instruction) model. The participants (n = 76) were asked to answer two questionnaires, which collected their expectations (pre-questionnaire) and final perceptions (post-questionnaire) in regard to their levels of anxiety towards studying in English. The qualitative and quantitative comparison of their answers facilitated results that allowed to discuss and conclude the beneficial effect of CLIL as a competence-based coping strategy to diminish foreign language anxiety among student teachers who face the challenge of learning in a bilingual classroom setting.

The urge to turn the teaching of English as a foreign language into an inclusive and diverse space has recently become greater. For a few decades now, it has been highlighted the need for learners to develop not only their communicative competence, but also the intercultural one. However, the gap between these abstract expectations and specific teaching practices shows how much renovation is still a necessity. Understanding interculturality in its broadest sense, the article aims to evidence the little importance masculinities have been given in gender-critical educational research into foreign language teaching. To do so, a theoretical presentation of such concepts is carried out, as they are key to identify the related discourses that can be found in the world of English language teaching. As a conclusion, it suggests the assumption of these analytical categories in order to complement intercultural approaches, thus favouring diversity in English-teaching contexts for speakers of other languages. Finally, a list of possible themes as specific variables of upcoming empirical analysis is also proposed.

Las iniciativas para incluir la diversidad afectivo-sexogenérica en el currículum escolar se han multiplicado en los últimos años. Lamentablemente, al menos en el contexto hispanohablante, estas carecen de un marco teórico suficiente para conceptualizar y sistematizar su metodología didáctica. En este artículo se propone asumir –y clonar en español– las ideas de usualising y actualising, propuestas y aplicadas con éxito por Sue Sanders y SchoolsOUT en el Reino Unido para superar las limitaciones de la gay lesson ocasional. Por ello, se justifica filológicamente la posibilidad lingüística y real de adoptar un neologismo (“usualizar”) capaz de compensar los inconvenientes inherentes al concepto de normalización. Se apoya la propuesta de forma teórica con una perspectiva necesariamente interseccional y descolonizadora del sistema educativo actual. Enlazando teoría y praxis, la presentación se basa también en el recorrido vital, profesional y activista de la autora.

Social research into English Language Teaching (ELT) has a long history. Within it, gender studies have gained ground in recent decades, with special focus on materials and resources. However, a proper integration of the category of femininity has not yet been achieved. The article offers an ample, argumentative, narrative literature review of the main realizations of femininity, as theorized in recent years, such as emphasized femininity or entitled femininity, as well as some other concepts like ambivalent sexism and postfeminism. It is written as the second item within a series of papers that aims to theoretically support the assumption of Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis as a suitable method to discover how all these social phenomena interact in ELT contexts, helping to shape its (gender’s) hidden curriculum. The paper concludes the necessity of integrating the issue of femininities in teacher training programs and in social research in ELT, for the sake of making this field more a liberating practice and less a means of (re)production of (gender) inequalities. To do so, it offers areas of interest for critical researchers and ELT practitioners to carry out such empirical investigation, which is the upcoming stage in this sequence of publications.

Las recomendaciones para la utilización no sexista de la lengua española son abundantes. Con el fin de descubrir si este criterio es efectivamente considerado en la evaluación de Trabajos de Fin de Grado, el estudio analiza las rúbricas de las universidades públicas presenciales de la Comunidad de Madrid para el grado en Educación Infantil, así como los documentos referidos a sus competencias profesionales y las recomendaciones de estilo de las propias instituciones. La lectura de estos documentos con perspectiva de género, sumada al cuestionario respondido por estudiantes de este título que han sometido la redacción de su trabajo a estas recomendaciones proporcionan los resultados, que son interpretados a la luz de los aportes de los estudios de lengua y género junto con el paradigma educativo de la evaluación competencial. Estos resultados sugieren, además, líneas de acción futuras para la mejora de las rúbricas de evaluación universitarias.