State-of-art on multigrade teaching practices in Spanish-speaking countries

Abstract

A state-of-the-art is a way of situating oneself in a scientific field to delimit what has been researched on a subject matter, how this research has been carried out, and which disciplines have been used to achieve it. This research reports the state-of-the-art teaching practices in multigrade classrooms. The objectives are: a) to identify the contributions of the research analyzed on teaching practice in multigrade contexts and b) to recognize what remains to be researched in this area. As part of the literature review, 59 documents from Spanish-speaking countries also published in Spanish were selected, reviewed, and organized into categories and analysis areas. The former group works according to the methodology used to analyze the practice and the main areas are oriented by didactic aspects. The results show that the multigrade has gone from an administrative measure to expand the service and reduce the teaching staff to a learning space around teaching processes that show the importance of collaborative work among peers, the organization of teaching content, and group management.

Keywords

• teaching practice
• multigrade schools
• rural schools.