Meaningful and experiential learning in a fascial approach in practice education in the degree of physiotherapy: A pilot study at a Spanish University.

BACKGROUND AND INTRODUCTION: A pilot experience of teaching innovation was developed in the masotherapy practice classes of the University of Seville's degree of physiotherapy using an active learning approach. OBJECTIVE: Significant experiential learning-specific teaching strategies were implemented to address learning style diversity and promote dynamic participation, active listening, and the creation of clinical simulation learning environments. METHODS: The strategies implemented included establishing an affective climate in the classroom that would encourage interaction among participants, facilitating the flow of information and the teaching-learning process, considering students' previous ideas, elaborating upon content maps and key questions to guide the teaching-learning process, establishing discussions favoring student brainstorming, using illustrations and videos ("visual thinking"), implementing experimental demonstrations and simulated clinical scenarios, and collaborative activities mediated by information and communication technology. RESULTS: The evaluation, which was developed using a questionnaire (pretest-posttest) that allowed the development of learning ladders and considered the complexity of the generated knowledge, revealed significant advances in student learning. CONCLUSION: The implementation of significant experiential learning-specific teaching strategies is useful for achieving the learning objectives of this subject. Further research is needed to conclude firmly in this regard.

Literacy, power, and affective (dis)encounter: An ethnographic study on a low-income community in Spain.

In areas of social exclusion, there are greater risks of facing discrimination at school. The teaching-learning processes may contribute toward the perpetuation of this inequality. This research analyzes a literacy event that takes place in a low-income school in Southern Spain. The new literacy studies have come to examine how power relationships and affective bonds work in such literacy practices. An ethnographic method was followed to facilitate a deeper understanding of multimodal literacy. Further, a social semiotics multimodal approach was adopted to analyze the meaning-making social process that takes place in the classroom. The participants comprised two teachers and 17 children, whose ages range from 5 to 7 years. Data were collected in the form of reports, audio recordings, video recordings, and photographs over a two-years period. The results obtained have revealed that the children have been taught writing and reading through a dominant orthodox model that fails to consider the community's and families' cultural capitals. They also show that the literacy process does not grant any affective quality. Neither is there an authentic dialogic space created between the school and the community. This lack of dialogue generates an inequality in the actual acquisition of comprehensive reading and writing skills at school, with instances of groups exclusion, owing to the anti-hegemonic practices of knowledge acquisition.