Practicum in early Childhood Education and Primary Education degrees: a progressive approach to the professional reality

The Practicum is understood as a training setting that, linked to an open, wide and complex professional reality, allows us to integrate the different variables intervening in educational action. This action is carried out with the aim of promoting professional competences in students. In this article, we present the concept of Practicum in the degree courses of Early Childhood Education and Primary Education at Ramon Llull University, and describe the role of the two essential settings linked to educational practice, schools and seminar, in a new training approach for prospective teachers based on co-responsibility of university and school in view of higher educational quality. Regarding the organization of the Practicum, we explain the four modules that students have to take, with distinct characteristics, which represent a progression in the levels of approaching their profession. The two Practicum modules in their last year are integrated with a mention and Final Degree Project (FDG). As an example, we describe the model of Practicum and FDG integrated module, and complement it with the results of a survey about the perception of schools regarding their role in the assessment of students. These results are part of a study conducted with 146 schools in Catalonia, with a long tradition of cooperation with our university in the area of training practice students.