Conference Agenda

The Summer School is a two-week program supported by the Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research (BMBWF) of the Republic of Austria that seeks to address the immediate educational disadvantages caused by the Covid-19-pandemic (BMBWF, 2022). It aims to promote students’ self-confidence and social skills by establishing opportunities of positive learning experiences. During the Summer School, students predominantly receive individual support and feedback for the subjects “German language”, “mathematics”. Participants of the Summer School are usually students with lacking German language skills and/or who performed poorly in the past school year. The program is conducted by teachers and student teachers. The latter group benefits from the Summer School by experiencing two weeks of “teaching practice” with associated classroom management to prepare them for the teaching profession (BMBWF, 2022).

According to the utilization-of-learning-opportunities model (e.g., Weinert & Helmke, 1997), there are many different variables and their interplay are accountable for learning success. Basically, the model aims to illustrate the multiple, multicausal, or even interdependent relations of variables in regard to learning success. Since learning success is evidently also influenced by affective dispositions of teachers and students, this research area was focused for this study. Student-related affective-motivational characteristics have been proven to influence school learning. Self-efficacy expectations might directly influence student behavior, but also influence goals, affective dispositions or perceptions in the social environment (Bandura, 2006; Bandura, 1997). Consequently, the question arises why some students remain confident and maintain their child-like optimism in coping with performance goals in school, while other students develop an anxious or even helpless attitude (Dweck & Leggett, 1988). At the student level, research has shown that teachers' self-efficacy expectations are positively related to student achievement and motivation. At the teacher level, self-efficacy expectations of teachers have been found to positively influence their own commitment to their work, the goals they set for themselves, and the level of job satisfaction they experience (Pfitzner-Eden, Thiel & Horsley, 2014). International studies have shown that the degree of self-efficacy among teachers varies across countries. Vieluf et al. (2013) were able to illustrate that teachers from Austria are in the upper range (higher values of self-efficacy) in the OECD compared to teachers from Iceland, Denmark, Ireland and Australia. In different studies with Austrian student teachers and teachers, Bach (2022) was able to show the connection between self-efficacy and professional experience. Interestingly, the self-efficacy expectation of student teachers after practical teaching experience is significantly higher than among experienced teachers. It is even higher for so-called teaching assistants, who are used to provide support in regular and extracurricular settings in Austria and make an important contribution to inclusive teaching.

Based on the available study results, the following research questions have emerged that require clarification in regard to the Summer School program.
- FF1: Which general and specific results on self-efficacy and teacher goals characterize Austrian Summer School teachers?

o H1: Professional teachers have higher self-efficacy expectancy scores than student teachers.

o H2: Teachers with ten or more years of professional experience have higher self-efficacy expectations than teachers who have less than ten years of professional experience.

o H3: Primary (elementary) school teachers have significantly higher self-efficacy expectations than teachers in secondary education.

- FF2: Are there discernable clusters of teacher characteristics in the data set?

The concern for youth civic commitment is shown in several recent years phenomena. On the one hand, educational systems of different countries have introduced civic or citizenship education in their official curricula, cross-curricular content and compulsory subjects, with diverse results (Davies and Chong, 2016; Johnson and Morris, 2012; MacLaughlin , 2000; Peterson, 2011). On the other hand, this interest concerns not only basic education, but also higher education, observing a change in the way the university links with the society in which it is located (Farnell, 2020). In this sense, the European Economic and Social Committee (2016) significantly has introduced the term “civic universities”, which goes beyond connections motivated by employment and economic growth, and underlines cultural and civic interconnection. Initiatives such as the TEFCE Project, whose objective is "To develop innovative and feasible policy tools at the university and European level for supporting, monitoring and assessing the community engagement of higher education institutions", the Living Knowledge Network (2023), the Foundation For Women in Science, or Horizon 2020 line 16: Science with and for Society, are some examples of this turn that higher education has been making.

Likewise, this scenario seems like responding to the alarm expressed by different authors, related with the questioning of the democratic system's quality. Jeffrey Stout (2004) warned of a progressive deterioration in the citizens' ethical-political training, which could pose a risk to democracy maintenance. More recently, Shoshana Zuboff (2018) finds in the current social technology a significant decrease in the citizens capacity for action, paradoxically hidden in the rhetoric of empowerment. For his part, Keith E. Whittington (2019) shows concern that the university is losing its status as an open space to dialogue, to exchange ideas and confrontate positions, typical of an academic community in a democratic setting.

In this situation, different initiatives arise from the institutions and university classrooms with pedagogical proposals focused on promoting the students' civic engagement. Service-Learning (S-L) is perhaps one of the most significant methodologies, that allows practical learning in social settings, while promoting the links with the nearby community, through a service that solves a real problem (Annette, 2005; Boston, 1997). Therefore, it represents an improvement both for the individuals themselves and for their social context (Arthur, Harrison and Taylor, 2015).

Such growing activity related to S-L, highlights the need to assess these programs and, specifically, the consequences, benefits and lessons that can be learnt, in order to improve the development of S-L proposals and the strengthening of this practice in education (Fuentes, Sirera and Redondo, 2022). But the adaptable and flexible nature of S-L, as well as its inherent ethical dimension (Alexander, 2016; Wright, Warren and Snow, 2020), gives rise to very heterogeneous proposals and interventions, which complicates the assessment and makes the tests standardization really difficult. Consequently, mixed assessment are needed, taking into account qualitative research that helps us to understand and explain the great diversity of capacities promoted by S-L.

The aim of this paper is to analyze the contributions of S-L methodology to the educator initial training, focusing on its capacity to promote ethical-civic engagement. Other critical aspects will also be analyzed by comparing four groups of different Degrees in Education that carried out projects with different social entities at Complutense University of Madrid, linked to curricular subjects.