Last December, from the 8th to the 11th, Dr. Buxarrais participated in the 42 Association for Moral Education Conference, which took place at Harvard Graduate School of Education, which is where this association was founded in 1976.

Dr Buxarrais presented a poster, coauthored by Dr Francisco Esteban (UB), entitled “Becoming a teacher: Ideas for university education and civic engagement”. This is the abstract:

In recent years university education has changed considerably. In brief, it could be said that it has adapted to the prevailing circumstances and that it is even proving to be an essential resource in the optimization of professional, social, cultural and economic domains. The changes it has gone through have led to the achievement of quite significant results. However, at the same time we have also witnessed the emergence of concerns and misgivings about the nature of this education, above all in relation to the personal, ethical, and civic development of today’s student populace. What makes a good teacher and what motivates a person to want to teach are timeless questions that concern us all.
This study focuses on those who are currently training to become teachers, more specifically undergraduates studying a degree in Primary Education in the universities of Catalonia. We employ a quantitative methodology based on a self-administered questionnaire conducted with a representative sample. Participants’ open-ended responses are recorded and codified. We construct three main categories: personal, authentic teacher; the teacher as story teller; and, the teacher as motivator of learning. Our results highlight important differences between these categories, extolling above all the authentic, personal teacher, who leaves a mark thanks to their character and way of being. This, together with other findings, allows us to offer some considerations for the university training of future teachers.

Also, as a senior researcher, Dr Buxarrais was invited by the conference organisers to participate as a mentor in the “Junior Scholar’s Reception” on the 9th. This AME conference popular event consists in a lunch that brings together a researcher with vast experience and a group of new researchers (students or reseearchers with less than ten years since their PhD) to talk about a topic, in this case “school curriculum” and answer their questions on the topic.