Jose L. Arco-Tirado’s research while affiliated with University of Granada and other places

This study investigated the impact of the service-learning on the social and civic competencies and motivation and engagement in the school of secondary school students. The methodological design was quasi-experimental with a non-equivalent control group. With the data collected from 232 secondary school students from five European countries, the following hypothesis was tested: students who engage in the service-learning will have more developed social and civic competencies, higher motivation and engagement in school, and a lower tendency to drop out. Before and after the intervention, the measurement showed statistically significant differences between the groups in several traits and attributions related to social competency measures, social responsibility, personal values, academic perseverance, learning mindset and overall student engagement and motivation. The results confirmed that service-learning can work effectively on social and civic competencies, to prevent social exclusion risks.

The aims of this systematic review were to identify, describe, and synthesize the characteristics and effectiveness of self-regulated learning training programs on primary education students' self-regulated learning and academic achievement. The study implemented a systematic review protocol that encompassed both primary and complementary literature searches to ensure the comprehensive inclusion of unbiased studies. Subsequently, the results were analyzed by narrative content analysis. After the selection process, 10 studies were finally qualified for data extraction and review. The results revealed that the selected interventions had a statistically significant positive impact and effectiveness in fostering students' self-regulated learning. Additionally, many of them seemed to be effective in terms of improving pupils' academic performance. Nevertheless, this systematic review emphasizes the necessity for additional studies employing robust evaluation research designs to enhance the quality of research in this domain.

The evolution and rapid expansion of online hate speech perpetration (OHSP) behaviors among adolescents toward different groups contrast with the lack of theory-based and empirically evaluated programs targeting this phenomenon. This study, developed by the Spanish Volunteering Platform, contributes to reversing this situation by investigating the impact of a service-learning program to prevent OHSP among students in secondary education. To do so, a cluster-randomized research design was adopted with a sample of secondary school students ( n = 60) from two public schools. After the random assignment of each class group to either the intervention or control condition, the service-learning program previously designed was implemented for 3 months. Regression results in model 7 with all predictors and controls yield a significant effect on the variable experimental group = 0.803, p < .05, and gender = 0.987, p < .05, explaining 45.9% of the variance. The effect size for this intervention was 0.42. From a theoretical perspective, participants are moving in the right direction to reduce and/or prevent OHSP behaviors, which demonstrates the theoretical utility of the theory of planned behavior in hate speech research. Finally, several recommendations are made to improve the impact of future replications or adaptations of this program.

The purpose of this study was to determine the impact of a peer tutoring program on academic performance among first-year students. The sample consisted of 102 first-year students from four degree programs at a Spanish University. The academic performance was evaluated through the student Academic Reports. The assignment of the sample units to the experimental group (N = 51) or control group (N = 51) was done randomly. The intervention consisted of 20 highly structured individual weekly tutoring sessions delivered by senior and doctoral students, previously trained in three training sessions. The results show statistically significant differences in favour of the freshmen of the experimental group in the total academic course, as well as in the Fall and Spring semesters.

This systematic review intends to report on the strength of evidences supporting the quality indicators (predictors) attributed to higher education bilingual, plurilingual or multilingual practices and programs across four key dependent variables (outcomes) analyzed (i.e., student performance, second language proficiency, employment, and motivation and attitudes). The rapid growth of both offer and demand of this type of higher education and learning worldwide requires the implementation of high-quality evaluation strategies and techniques to measure potential causal links between interventions and results. To do so, a pre-specified systematic review protocol following The Campbell Collaboration (2015) recommendations is designed and implemented. The results suggest the urgent need to increase the primary research quality standards in this sub-discipline by reducing bias in the processes of designing, implementing and reporting research. Several recommendations on how to scale up those quality research standards in this sub-discipline are provided.