Double Degree in Primary Education and Sports Sciences

At Blanquerna-URL, you will find a training design in contact with professional practice and appropriate instruments to go deeply into these disciplines. The practicum shall give you the opportunity to observe and apply the different procedures, skills, and resources that you have learned, with guidance by a tutor from the School and a tutor from the practice centre. The aim of practice is projection, analysis, application of knowledge, introduction to research, and socialization within the working culture. The curriculum of the double degree course includes the entire practice periods of the two degrees. In this respect, we can ensure that students achieve the training needed to develop their profession in both disciplines.

The Practicum and student placement in external centres have a central role in the training of Primary Education and Sports Sciences Degree undergraduates. The Practicum allows us to arrange theory and reality of professional intervention in a basic manner and, at the same time, develop critical and self-critical skills necessary to pose questions; it becomes, thus, an essential motor for scientific research and for the global academic and professional development.

The Practicum programme at FPCEE Blanquerna-URL includes:

• Practice placements in the centres collaborating with the School.
• Weekly two-hour sessions of Practice Seminar.
• Practice Seminar assignment(s).
• Complementary lectures.
• Final report for each Practicum.
• Assessment by the teacher-tutor and the practice centre’s tutor.

Follow-up of placements: Individual and group supervision of practice

Students are assigned a practice tutor in the practice centre and a teacher-practice tutor at the School.

The practice tutors in the institution-centre monitor the student’s practical training in the field of the centre; they control and follow up the placements and inform the teacher-practice tutor at the School about any incident that may happen.

The teacher-academic tutor is the figure of reference for the FPCEE student; they are responsible for tutoring and supervising their placements in the academic context. This supervision and follow-up is carried out through two kinds of tutorial: individual and group. In individual tutorials, the teacher-academic tutor develops a follow-up through individualised tutorials with the student, closely and taking into account specific circumstances of the student and the practice centre. In group tutorials (2 hours per week throughout the entire academic year), the group follow-up of placements is carried out in the Practice Seminar, where students develop professionalising activities that allow them to integrate theoretical aspects of their profession and subjects taken, and their experience in practice centres. Below you can see a more detailed explanation of the Practice Seminar

The Practice Seminar

The Practicum is the scenario characterised by showing professional intervention models in a working context. And the Practice Seminar is the weekly setting that every teacher-tutor uses, with a small group of students, to work aspects related to the students’ placement in practice centres and the construction of their professional profile throughout the time that students are in the practice centre and every week for two hours. In this sense, it becomes fundamental as a teaching-learning setting, as in the other degree years, with the distinctive feature that students develop theory-practice activities linked to their practice centre and the acquisition of professional competences

The Practice Seminar has the following objectives:

• To promote the integration between the Practicum and the other part of the curriculum in the double degree course.
• To transmit the practice experience to the other members of the Seminar, with such clarity and depth as to stimulate joint reflection.
• To have contact with the different professional fields where Seminar peers develop their placements, and contextualise every activity (and every practice centre) in a wider framework.
• To get to know, in a wide and global way, the task of professionals, and to have a closer look at professional attitudes, competences and skills, characteristics of teamwork, etc.

The usual working methodology in the Seminar is based on the materials that students prepare in relation to their practice placements and with the aim of working in group. These materials can be varied: from observing individual and/or group interventions, developing materials, assessing evaluation methods, and following up and thoroughly studying observed cases, to research that students participate in; or any other situations that students choose based on the impact that they have had on them, questions that they have provoked, etc.

Practice Centres

The global programme of the Practicum allows students to get to know the diversity and plurality of professional intervention models in the different fields.

The Practice Department is responsible for coordinating the relationship between the School and the more than 1,000 practice centres.

The list of practice centres with agreement with Blanquerna for this double degree course include:

• State, semi-state and private Primary and Secondary Education school centres
• School sport associations
• Rural schools
• Highly complex centres
• Hospital classrooms in the main hospitals in Catalonia
• Adult training centres in penitentiary facilities
• Adult training schools
• Sports management in the public sector (town councils, municipal sports facilities)
• Sports management in the commercial private sector (fitness centres, sports services companies) and the association-related sector (clubs and federations) 
• Leisure sector in sports services companies (tourism, nature, out-of-school activities, etc.), sports associations and foundations 
• Sports training sector in clubs, federations, sports parks and technical skills centres
• Healthcare sector in foundations, research groups, hospitals, mutual insurance companies, rehabilitation centres and fitness centres