Teaching materials in multigrade classrooms: A descriptive study in Spanish rural schools

Abstract

Teachers in rural schools face the significant challenge of developing teaching materials that support the inclusive and active-participatory methodologies used in multigrade classrooms, and the lack of knowledge and scarcity of specific teaching materials for rural schools has been referred to in various international studies on the subject despite their manifest need. Thus, the aim of this article is to identify and analyse the main teaching materials used by teachers in multigrade classrooms in Spanish rural schools, as well as the criteria that should be taken into account for their selection and elaboration, in order to improve the quality of multigrade teaching and the future creation of inclusive resources. For this purpose, a descriptive study was carried out based on data obtained from an online survey of teachers in Spanish rural schools considering all the autonomous communities (n = 537). The data analysis plan combined descriptive statistics and correlation methodology with inferential statistics. The study showed that teachers prioritise the use of graded and decontextualised teaching materials, such as textbooks, despite the fact that they are not considered the most useful for multigrade teaching. It further reflected the need to know how to adapt or create specific and useful teaching resources for this context. The research also revealed the most valued aspects of teaching materials that teachers consider should guide the creation of multigrade teaching aids, and it underlines the importance of improving teacher training programmes and implementing actions to share resources among teachers. Overall, the new findings reported allow us to know and rethink the teaching materials used and provide key elements to take into account for the future creation of curricular resources for the improvement of educational practices in rural schools.